Tour the village

1851 MAP

The History Group invite you to tour the village using the Tithe Apportionment map of 1851. Just click on the link above, please give the map a few moments to download.

As you hover your mouse pointer over the buildings named on the map you will see a "hot spot" description, click and you will open a picture of the building and information on it, including information relevant to 1851.

If you want to visit the village and have a real tour then please contact a member of the group.

If you do take a real tour it generally starts at St. Mary's Church, you'll walk eastwards along Lilbourne Road to the cross roads where the village pond once was. Then back on the other side of the Lilbourne Road through the village center and Main Street to the school. Then down Station Road to the the "experimental" railway station, the Mill and the view across the Avon to the Rugby School Rifle Range.
Back up the hill, into the village, past The Bull and north along Church Street, turn back at the cross roads and walk to the Bull for a well earned rest.

Origins

The village first came into existence in Celtic times. Although the Romans by-passed the village they chose the Clifton ridge as the place to fight the Celtic tribes led by Bodice. That battle in AD 60 was a deciding moment in our history during which about 80,000 Celts were slaughtered. As a result the Roman occupation of most of Briton was secured for the next 400 years. In those early days the village was a remote, quiet, agricultural settlement, one of six such settlements that surrounded the tiny Iron Age market village of Rugby. The village is recorded in the Doomsday Book, the entry for Clifton shows that there was a priest in the village and a church.