Template:Wp-Rugby, Warwickshire-History

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Early history

Early Iron Age settlement existed in the Rugby area: The River Avon formed a natural barrier between the Dobunni and Corieltauvi tribes, and it is likely that defended frontier settlements were set up on each side of the Avon valley. Rugby's position on a hill overlooking the Avon, made it an ideal location for a defended Dobunni watch settlement. During the Roman period the Roman town of Tripontium was established on the Watling Street Roman road around north-east of what is now Rugby, this was later abandoned when the Romans left Britain.^[1]

The small settlement at Rugby was taken over by the Anglo-Saxons around 560 AD, and it was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rocheberie; although there are several theories about the origin of the name, a popular one is that this was a phonetic translation of the Old English name Hrocaberg meaning 'Hroca's hill fortification'; Hroca being an Anglo-Saxon man's name pronounced with a silent 'H', and berg being a name for a hill fortification, with the 'g' being pronounced as an 'ee' sound. By the 13th century the name of the town was commonly spelt as Rokeby (or Rookby) before gradually evolving into the modern form by the 18th century. In 1140 the first recorded mention was made of St Andrew's Church which was originally a chapel of the mother church at Clifton-upon-Dunsmore, until Rugby was established as a parish in its own right in 1221. In 1255 the lord of the manor Henry de Rokeby obtained a charter to hold a weekly market in Rugby, which soon developed into a small country market town.

In the 12th century Rugby was mentioned as having a castle at the location of what is now Regent Place. However, the nature of the 'castle' is unknown, and it was possibly little more than a fortified manor house. In any event the 'castle' was short lived: It was probably constructed early in the reign of King Stephen (1135–1154) during the period of civil war known as The Anarchy, and then, as a so-called adulterine castle, built without Royal approval, demolished in around 1157 on the orders of King Henry II. The earthworks for the castle were still clearly visible as late as the 19th century, but have since been built over. According to one theory, the stones from the castle were later used to construct the west tower of St Andrew's Church, which bears strong resemblance to a castle, and was probably intended for use in a defensive as well as a religious role.^[1]

Rugby School was founded in 1567 with money left in the will of Lawrence Sheriff, a locally born man, who had moved to London and made his fortune as the grocer to Queen Elizabeth I. Sheriff had intended Rugby School to be a free grammar school for local boys, but by the 18th century it had acquired a national reputation and gradually became a mostly fee-paying private school, with most of its pupils coming from outside Rugby. The Lawrence Sheriff School was eventually founded in 1878 to continue Sheriff's original intentions.^[2]

During the English Civil War, one of the earliest armed confrontations of the conflict took place at the nearby village of Kilsby in August 1642. That same year, King Charles I passed through Rugby on his way to Nottingham, and 120 Cavalier Horse Troops reportedly stayed at the town, however the townsfolk were sympathetic to the Parliamentarian cause, and they were disarmed by the Cavalier soldiers. Later, in 1645, Rugby was strongly Parliamentarian, and Oliver Cromwell and two regiments of Roundhead soldiers stayed at Rugby in April that year, two months before the decisive Battle of Naseby, some to the east, in nearby Northamptonshire.^[1][2]

Until the 19th century, Rugby was a small and relatively unimportant settlement, with only its school giving it any notability. Its growth was slow, due in part to the nearby markets at Dunchurch and Hillmorton which were better positioned in terms of road traffic. In 1663 Rugby was recorded as containing 160 houses with a population of around 650. By 1730 this had increased to 183 houses, with a population of around 900. Rugby's importance and population increased more rapidly during the late 18th and early 19th century due to the growing national reputation of Rugby School, which had moved from its original location at a (now long vanished) schoolhouse north of St Andrew's Church, to its present location south of the town centre by 1750. By the time of the first national census in 1801, Rugby had a population of 1,487 with 278 houses. By 1831 this had increased further to 2,501 in 415 houses. This growth was driven by parents who wished to send their boys to Rugby School, but were unable to afford the boarding fees and so took up residence in Rugby.^[3][1]

Modern history

Rugby's growth into a significant town was prompted by the arrival of the railways, as its location made it an ideal meeting place for various railway lines, by the middle of the 19th century, the railway junction at Rugby had become one of the most important in the country: The first railway arrived in 1838 when one of the earliest inter-city main lines, the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was constructed around the town. In 1840 the Midland Counties Railway made a junction with the L&BR at Rugby, which was followed by a junction with the Trent Valley Railway in 1847. By the mid-1850s there were five railway lines meeting at Rugby, with more than sixty trains a day passing through Rugby railway station.^[4] Rugby was transformed into a railway town, and the influx of railway workers and their families rapidly expanded the population.^[2] Rugby's population grew to nearly 8,000 by 1861.^[3] reaching nearly 17,000 by 1901.

In the later half of the 19th century, Rugby also developed some local industries: Large-scale cement production began in the town in 1862 when the Rugby Lias Lime & Cement Company Ltd was founded to take advantage of the locally available deposits of Blue Lias limestone.^[1] A factory producing corsets was opened in 1882, this survived until 1992, by which time it was making swimwear.^[2] In the 1890s and 1900s heavy engineering industries began to set up in Rugby, attracted by its central location and good transport links, causing the town to rapidly grow into a major industrial centre: Willans and Robinson were the first engineering firm to arrive in 1897, building steam engines to drive electrical generators, they were followed by British Thomson-Houston in 1902, who manufactured electrical motors and generators. Both firms started producing turbines in 1904, and were in competition until both were united as part of GEC in 1969. Rugby expanded rapidly in the early decades of the 20th century as workers moved in. By the 1940s, the population of Rugby had grown to over 40,000, and then to over 50,000 by the 1960s.^[5]

A local board of health was established in Rugby in 1848, to provide the town with necessary infrastructure for its growth, such as paved roads, street lighting, clean drinking water and sewerage, this was converted into an urban district council in 1894. Rugby's status was upgraded to that of a municipal borough in 1932, and its boundaries were expanded to incorporate the formerly separate villages of Bilton, Hillmorton, Brownsover and Newbold-on-Avon which have become suburbs of the town. In 1974 the municipal borough was merged with the Rugby Rural District to form the present Borough of Rugby.

In the postwar years, Rugby became well served by the motorway network, with the M1 and M6 merging close to the town.^[6]

Fame

Rugby is most famous for the invention of rugby football, which is played throughout the world. The invention of the game is credited to William Webb Ellis, a Rugby School pupil who, according to legend, broke the existing rules of football by picking up the ball and running with it at a match played in 1823. Although there is little evidence to support this story, the school is credited with codifying and popularising the sport. In 1845, three Rugby School pupils produced the first written rules of the "Rugby style of game".^[7]

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, published in 1857.^[7] A substantial part of the 2004 dramatisation of the novel, starring Stephen Fry, was filmed on location at Rugby School. Hughes later set up a colony in America for the younger sons of the English gentry, who could not inherit under the laws of primogeniture, naming the town Rugby. The town of Rugby, Tennessee still exists.

Rugby School is said to have been a major inspiration behind the revival of the Olympic Games: the French educator, and father of the modern Olympics Pierre de Coubertin, visited Rugby School several times in the late 19th century, and cited the school as one of his major inspirations behind his decision to revive the Olympic Games.^[7]

Rugby is a birthplace of the jet engine. In April 1937 Frank Whittle built and tested the world's first prototype jet engine at the British Thomson-Houston (BTH) works in Rugby, and during 1936–41 based himself at Brownsover Hall on the outskirts, where he designed and developed early prototype engines. Much of his work was carried out at nearby Lutterworth. Whittle is commemorated in Rugby by a modern sculpture near the town hall dating from 2005, made by Stephen Broadbent.^[7]

Holography was invented in Rugby in 1947, by the Hungarian born inventor Dennis Gabor, also while working at BTH. For this he later received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971.

In the 19th century, Rugby became famous for its once important railway junction which was the setting for Charles Dickens's story Mugby Junction.