Online Encyclopedia
Rugby, Warwickshire
Rugby is a market town in the county of Warwickshire in central England upon the River Avon. The town is located some 15 miles (24 km) to the east of Coventry. The town has a population of 63,900 (2002). The surrounding borough of Rugby which includes surrounding villages has a population of 88,783.
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Claims to fame
The town is most famous for the invention of Rugby football which is played throughout the world. Legend has it that the game was invented by William Webb Ellis in 1823 at Rugby School which is located near the centre of the town.
Rugby School is one of England's oldest and most prestigious public schools, and was the setting of Thomas Hughes's semi-autobiographical masterpiece Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Rugby is also birthplace of the jet engine - In 1937 Frank Whittle built the world's first prototype jet engine at the British Thomson-Houston works in Rugby and based himself at Brownsover Hall on the outskirts of the town, where he designed early prototype turbojet engines. Much of his work was also carried out at nearby Lutterworth.
In the 19th century, Rugby became famous for its once hugely important railway junction (see below) which was the setting for Charles Dickens's story Mugby Junction .
Famous people born in Rugby include poet Rupert Brooke, the scientist Norman Lockyer who discovered helium, banned Warwickshire cricketer Graham Wagg , and the athlete Katharine Merry. Other famous people who lived in Rugby include the author Lewis Carroll, poet Matthew Arnold, and the inventors Frank Whittle and Dennis Gabor who invented holography in the town. The bands Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized also came from Rugby.
Rugby today
Rugby is a lively town. The town centre includes a reasonable selection of shops, and also contains several large parks. A street market is held in the town centre several days a week. The centre also includes numerous nightclubs and restaurants and has a good nightlife. It is rumoured (by locals at least) that Rugby town centre has the highest density of pubs in England.
The town centre includes much Victorian architecture, but few buildings in the town pre-date the 19th century.
The modern town of Rugby is an amalgamation of the former villages of Bilton , Hillmorton , Brownsover and Newbold-on-Avon which merged with Rugby as it expanded, most still retain their former village centres. The town also comprises the areas known as New Bilton and Cawston .
Places of interest in the town, include the Rugby School Museum , and the combined art gallery and museum; the art gallery contains a nationally recognised collection of contemporary art. The museum contains, amongst other things, Roman artefacts dug up from the nearby Roman settlement of Tripontium.
There is also the Rugby Football Museum , where traditional rugby balls are hand made, and which contains much rugby football memorabillia.
Places of interest around Rugby include:
- Coombe Abbey
- Dunchurch- Historic village.
- Draycote Water - Reservoir and nature reserve
- Rugby School
- Rugby railway station
The town is near the M6, M1 and M45 motorways and is served by the West Coast Main Line railway. It is approximately 80 minutes away from London. The Oxford Canal also flows through the north of the town.
Economy
Rugby's economy is mainly industrial, the town is an engineering centre and has a long history of producing gas and steam turbines at the Alstom (formerly GEC and British Thomson-Houston) works which used to dominate employment in the town. The future of the Alstom works looks shakey given the troubles that the company is in, but it still remains the largest employer in Rugby.
Another major industry in Rugby is cement production; the giant Rugby Cement works on the western outskirts of the town is one of the largest of its type in Europe, and dominates the skyline for miles around.
The nearby Peugeot car factory at Ryton-on-Dunsmore is also a major employer in the town.
Warehousing and tourism are also important to the town's economy.
A link to Rugby's rural past can still be found in the cattle market held near the railway station. A cattle market has been held in Rugby since Medieval times.
Nearby Places
- Lutterworth, -- 7 miles (11 km) to the north,
- Daventry, -- 10 miles (16 km) to the south.
- Coventry, -- 15 miles (24 km to the west.
- Nuneaton -- 15 miles (24 km) to the northwest
- Leamington Spa -- 15 miles (24 km) to the southwest.
- Northampton, -- 25 miles (40 km) to the southeast
- Birmingham, -- 40 miles (64 km) to the west
History
Early History
In the iron ages it is known that the Rugby area was settled. The River Avon provided a natural barrier between the Dobunni and the Coritani, and remains of iron age forts have been located on either side of the river.
In Roman times, two major Roman roads were built very close to the site of modern day Rugby: the Fosse Way and Watling Street.
Just outside modern day Rugby, remains have been found of a Roman town called Tripontium, situated on the original Watling Street which is now known as the A5. Historians believe that the settlement was a kind of ancient service station, providing stabling and accommodation to passing Roman armies and travellers.
Rugby was mentioned as a place in the Domesday Book in the 11th century, as a small Saxon farming settlement then called Rocheberie - Roche meaning 'an important place', berie meaning 'stone'. Over the centuries, the name was gradually corrupted and shortened to Rokeby then Rookby, and by the 18th century it had become 'Rugby'.
In the 13th century Rugby gained a market charter, and became a small rural market town, which it remained until the 19th century. The layout of the streets in the town centre, still follows the pattern set down in Medieval times.
One of the most significant events in the town's history was the founding in 1567 of Rugby School: Lawrence Sheriff, a locally born grocer to Queen Elizabeth I, left money in his will for the establishment of a school in Rugby for local boys.
The Rugby area has associations with the Gunpowder Plot - On the eve of the plot on November 5th, 1605, the plotters stayed at an inn in nearby Dunchurch to await news of the plot. If it had been successful then they planned to kidnap Princess Elizabeth who was staying at nearby Coombe Abbey and install her as Queen.
From medieval times until the late 18th century, the population of Rugby stayed at around 1000. It began to grow in the 1770s the Oxford Canal was constructed around the town, which spurred some growth in local industries and in population.
19th-century development
Rugby really came into its own in the 19th century.
Rugby School, one of England's oldest and most prestigious public schools, rose to national prominence in the 1820s through the teaching methods pioneered by its headmaster, Dr Thomas Arnold, which contributed to a radical change in Public School education in England. Most of the present school buildings, located near the centre of the town, date from this period. The growing popularity of the school in the early 19th century led to an increase in population of the town.
In 1835 Rugby was a small rural town with a population of around 2,500, but developed rapidly with the coming of the railways. In the 1830s, the London and Birmingham Railway, an early part of what later became the West Coast Main Line, was built through the town. In the 1840s, the Midland Counties Railway, which linked the East Midlands with North East England, formed a junction with the London and Birmingham, making Rugby the busiest and most important railway junction in Britain.
It became even more important, when the 'Trent Valley line" a railway line to the north west of England also formed a junction at Rugby. A number of lesser railways also ran into the town. For nearly 30 years, nearly all rail traffic between London, the Midlands, the north of England, Scotland, and north Wales passed through Rugby junction.
By the 1860s the junction had become extremely congested, so much so that it was not uncommon for trains to have to queue for hours to pass through. This caused much anger and frustration amongst travellers, for whom Rugby became a byword for delays. Charles Dickens lampooned it in his short story Mugby Junction (1866). To relieve this congestion a new line, later called the Midland Main Line, was built, taking a more direct route to London, avoiding Rugby. Much traffic was diverted onto the new line and Rugby's importance as a railway junction, although still high, was much diminished.
Rugby's population reached 10,000 by the 1870s, many employed by the railways. Because of its transport links, a number of engineering and manufacturing industries developed in Rugby.
20th century
In the 20th century the population continued to grow, reaching 40,000 by the 1930s. Rugby became a borough in 1932.
From 1926, Rugby was also the site of a large antenna farm located to the east of the town. All but four of the radio masts (used to broadcast the MSF time signal) were demolished in June 2004 - albeit delayed by rabbits chewing through the wires controlling detonation[1].
It was in the late 1930s that Frank Whittle developed the jet engine in Rugby.
In the postwar years Rugby became a centre of the national motorway network. Two of Britain's most important motorways, the M1 and M6, as well as the M45, run close to the town.
At the same time several of the railway lines which radiated from Rugby were closed as part of the Beeching axe, including the once hugely important Midland Counties Railway (Rugby - Leicester) in 1961. As of 2003, only the West Coast Mainline still serves the town.
From the 1950s, Rugby gained a substantial Afro-Caribbean community, and a sizeable community from the Indian sub-continent, making Rugby a multi-cultural town.
External links
There are several places in the USA called Rugby. see, Rugby, North Dakota, Rugby, Tennessee.