The Tern Valley Trail - Withington

Withington

St John's Parish Church, Withington

Like many of the villages on the Tern Valley Trail, Withington is a settlement of considerable antiquity. One interpretation of its name, meaning 'the farm or enclosure at the willows', implies the village is of Anglo-Saxon origin but local archaeological evidence, in the shape of a possible Iron Age enclosure on the edge of the village near Church Farm, suggests people may have lived in the area much longer, perhaps since 800BC.

The Hare and Hounds

In 1086, at the time of the Domesday Survey, the Lord of Withington was Fulcuius, who held the manor from the Norman overlord Roger de Montgomery. When Fulcuius first saw Withington, after the Conquest in 1066, it was apparently wasteland, although it had been held separately by two Saxons, Wulfrun and Wulfric, before that date. By 1172, Roger fitz Henry was Lord of the Manor and he gave the village mill, located on the River Tern, to Haughmond Abbey which subsequently became a notable local landowner until its dissolution.