Lapworth railway station

Kingswood is an area in the civil parishes of Lapworth and Rowington in Warwick District, Warwickshire, England. It forms the main residential area of the parish of Lapworth, and includes about 18 properties in the parish of Rowington. The population of Lapworth parish was 1,828 in the 2011 Census. The population of Kingswood has been estimated as 1,152 in 2020. Kingswood is situated on the Grand Union Canal and the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. The two canals meet at Kingswood Junction. Kingswood also has a railway station called Lapworth railway station. It was originally called Kingswood, but the station name was changed to Lapworth to avoid confusion with Kingswood station in Surrey. Kingswood lies 5 miles north-west of Henley-in-Arden. In 1879-1872 Kingswood was described in the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales as a hamlet in the parishes of Lapworth and Rowington and had a unitarian chapel and property valued at £1,027.

Kingswood Junction (grid reference SP185709) is a canal junction where the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal meets the Grand Union Canal at Kingswood, Warwickshire, England.

Baddesley Clinton (grid reference SP199714) is a moated manor house, about 8 miles (13 km) north-west of the town of Warwick, in the village of Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, England. The house probably originated in the 13th century, when large areas of the Forest of Arden were cleared for farmland. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the house is a Grade I listed building. The house, park and gardens are owned by the National Trust and open to the public; they lie in a civil parish of the same name.

Packwood House is a timber-framed Tudor manor house in Packwood on the Solihull border near Lapworth, Warwickshire. Owned by the National Trust since 1941, the house is a Grade I listed building. It has a wealth of tapestries and fine furniture, and is known for the garden of yews.

Bushwood is a hamlet in Warwickshire, located three miles north of Henley in Arden and a mile west of the M40 motorway. There is no village centre as such because all the buildings in the hamlet are spread out so widely. It is named after the wood, Bush Wood, that runs through the centre of the area. The Stratford-on-Avon Canal runs along the eastern edge of the settlement. Population details can be found under Rowington. "Bushwood" is a corruption of byssopswode or Bishop's Wood, which refers to its former ownership by the bishops of Worcester, dating back to the 9th century. The wood itself is an ancient deer park, with an earthwork along its lower boundary. The manor house, Bushwood Hall, is located at the northern end of the settlement. The current building is adjacent to the site of a previous medieval structure built in 1314, of which there remains no visible evidence above ground; however the moat remains intact and contains water all the way round.

Packwood is a medieval settlement and former civil parish of 1760 acres, now in the counties of the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. In 1194 the ownership of Packwood estate was disputed between the Bishop of Coventry and the Prior of Coventry. In 1951 the parish had a population of 990. The small rural area includes the Grade I listed sixteenth century National Trust property Packwood House, the separate Packwood Hall (Grade II listed) and its adjacent church of St Giles.

Chadwick End is a small village which straddles the border of Warwickshire and the West Midlands Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, situated 3 miles (5 km) southeast of the large village of Knowle and 8 miles northwest of Warwick. It is almost contiguous with the slightly larger village of Baddesley Clinton, which lies a half-mile to the south on the A4141 route. The name Chadwick means 'farm near a spring', and the village remains a farming community. The south side of the village lies within Warwickshire with the north side lying in the Borough of Solihull. The civil parish was split from part of Balsall on 1 April 2014.A mile from the village centre lies Chadwick Manor and its Estate, built in 1875 by the architect Edward Holmes (1832-1909). During the 1930s the Manor became a country-house hotel and the estate a racing-stud both owned by Scottish racehorse owner and breeder Captain. Norman (Norrie) Stewart~MacKay (1895-1980), who sold the estate in 1964 (after which the Manor was converted to luxury flats).The former Poor Clares convent on Rising Lane was founded in 1850; it has been converted into private flats since its closure in 2011.

Baddesley Clinton is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England, about 5+1⁄2 miles (9 km) southeast of Solihull. The village has Anglo-Saxon origins. It is believed that at some point it was settled by an Anglo-Saxon called Baeddi, Badde or Bade as a clearing in the Forest of Arden to graze cattle. Such a clearing was called a leah or ley – hence Badde's Ley which became Baddesley. Through most the medieval era, the village was part of Hampton in Arden. In 1290 it passed to the de Clinton family. The de Clintons were a powerful Norman family of the area and held Maxstoke Castle, Brandon Castle and Kenilworth Castle at various times. It was at this point that it became known as Baddesley Clinton. The village is famed for its National Trust property, Baddesley Clinton. The village also has a Grade II listed church dedicated to St Michael, which shares a Rector with St Mary the Virgin's church in the nearby parish of Lapworth.

Lowsonford is a small village within the parish of Rowington in Warwickshire, England. The village lies 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Henley-in-Arden.

Rowington is a village and civil parish in the English county of Warwickshire. It is five miles north-west of the town of Warwick and five miles south-west of the town of Kenilworth. The parish, which also includes Lowsonford, Pinley and Mousley End, had a population of 925 according to the 2001 UK Census, increasing to 944 at the 2011 Census. The Grand Union Canal runs just south of the village and the M40 motorway is also close by. The Heart of England Way for long-distance walkers passes through the village. The parish church of St. Laurence which dates from medieval times is found on a hill in the centre of the village. In the Tudor era Rowington manor was owned by Queen Catherine Parr.Possibly the most famous building however is Shakespeare Hall, where a branch of William Shakespeare's family is reputed to have lived at the same time he was alive, and indeed Rowington is specifically mentioned in Shakespeare's will. It has been claimed he wrote As You Like It there. There is a more modern rival claim (dating from 1973) that that play was written at Billesley.There were once several windmills in the village but only one remains and its sails have been removed and the building converted into a house. At one time Rowington quarries supplied sandstone for several important buildings including St Philip's Cathedral in Birmingham, the parish church of St. Laurence and nearby Baddesley Clinton manor house. No quarries remain in Rowington. The village is home to several farms and livery yards. James Blyth once lived in the village and became a life peer in 1995.

Lapworth is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England, which had a population of 2,100 according to the 2001 census; this had fallen to 1,828 at the 2011 Census. It lies seven miles (11 km) south of Solihull and ten miles (16 km) northwest of Warwick, and incorporates the hamlet of Kingswood. Lapworth boasts a historic church, the Church of St Mary the Virgin, a chapel. Two National Trust sites are nearby: Baddesley Clinton, a medieval moated manor house and garden located in the village of Baddesley Clinton; and Packwood House, a Tudor manor house and yew garden with over 100 trees in Packwood. The church is a building largely of the 13th and 14th centuries. It includes several unusual features: the steeple is connected by a passage to the north aisle and is built sheer with a projecting stair; the clerestory has square-headed windows; and there is a two-storey annex at the west end. In the church the Portland memorial to Florence Bradshaw was the work of Eric Gill and was installed in 1928. It is a Virgin and Child carved in low relief. The village is a popular area for cuisine, with three pubs "The Boot", "The Navigation" and "The Punch Bowl". At Kingswood Junction, the Grand Union Canal joins the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, which has a major flight of locks. Catesby Lane in Lapworth is named after William Catesby (the great grandfather of Robert Catesby of Gunpowder Plot fame), whose family had been settled at Bushwood Hall, in the neighbouring parish of Bushwood, since the 14th century. The manor house was probably at Lapworth Hall, today Ireland's Farm, and in the 17th and 18th centuries the house of the Mander family of Wolverhampton. The furniture designer and maker Hugh Birkett worked from the late 1940s until 1966 in the garage at his parents' home in Lapworth. Examples of his work can be seen at Cheltenham Museum.

The Knowle and Dorridge rail crash was a fatal rail crash that occurred at Dorridge railway station in the West Midlands, England, on 15 August 1963. Three people died in the crash after a signalman's error routed a small freight train into the path of an express passenger train which slowed but could not stop before colliding with it. The express was a Birmingham Pullman service travelling from Birmingham Snow Hill to London Paddington, having departed at 1pm. The freight train movement in Dorridge station (formerly called Knowle and Dorridge) was a routine shunting manoeuvre, one that often occurred both before or after the express train had passed through the station. The Pullman was 9 coaches long, and was hauled by an 11-month-old diesel hydraulic Class 52 "Western" locomotive, No. D1062 Western Courier. The freight train was formed (from the London end) of a 20-long-ton (22-short-ton; 20 t) hopper wagon, a large prairie steam locomotive (Class 5101 no.4111), a 20-long-ton (22-short-ton; 20 t) brake van, an empty bogie flatcar, and a bogie flatcar loaded with Land Rover vehicles. The crash occurred in fine dry weather, at around 1.10 pm. The express was travelling at its usual speed of around 80 mph (130 km/h) approaching the station when the driver noticed the Knowle and Dorridge distant signal at caution. He applied the brakes but was only able to reduce speed to 20 mph (32 km/h), before colliding with the freight train which was stationary on the same line, having stopped when the signalman showed the driver a red flag. The distant signal was only 902 yards (825 m) from Knowle's up main home signal, insufficient distance for the express to stop from 80 mph (130 km/h). The locomotive struck the loaded flat car crushing the cab, but without derailing. Two freight cars were derailed, with the rest pushed 64 yards (59 m) down the track. All four men on the freight train, the driver, fireman, shunter and guard, managed to jump clear before the collision. The driver, co-driver and second man on the express locomotive all died. It was found that the signalman at Knowle and Dorridge signal box had forgotten he had signalled that the up main line was clear for the express train and allowed the freight train onto the same line, in its path. On receiving a "train approaching" signal for the express, he realised his mistake, but was only able to alert the freight train by red flag. Although it braked to a halt, it could not be cleared from the main line in time to avoid the collision. As a contributory factor to the crash, it was found that the signalman, in clearing the express, had disregarded a standing order known as Regulation 4A, governing the safe operation of signals in sections of track where the minimum stopping distance for trains was shorter than the distance between signals. He had given "line clear" for the express train to the preceding signal box before receiving the required clearance from the following signal box. Instead, he should have sent a "blocking back inside home signal" message to Bentley Heath, the preceding signal box, so that the express train could have been slowed in plenty of time by the Bentley Heath distant signal at caution. However, it was not determined at the enquiry whether the signalman had cleared the express before or after allowing the conflicting freight movement. This may have been academic if the express had been cleared before the freight train was permitted to foul the up main line, even if Regulation 4A had been obeyed. The express train was normally formed by a Blue Pullman multiple unit, an experimental type of new luxury train built for pullman services, but this regular train had to be taken out of service and replaced by the stand-by diesel hydraulic. One of the drivers killed in the accident was Ernie Morris, one of the first drivers to be certified on the Blue Pullman sets, and who had featured in the 1962 British Transport Film "Lets Go To Birmingham", a driver's eye view of the Blue Pullman sets on a run from London Paddington to Birmingham Snow Hill. Two drivers were required on this working and the other driver killed was Sid Bench. The second man, also killed, was David Corkery who was only on the train to cover for the rostered man who had gone sick. David left a widow and two young children.