Oldbury, Warwickshire

Hartshill Hayes Country Park is a country park located immediately west of the village of Hartshill in northern Warwickshire, England in between the towns of Nuneaton and Atherstone. The park covers 137 acres (55 ha) of woodland, and is run by Warwickshire County Council. The park is traversed by footpaths. It is on a hilltop location, and views can be enjoyed over the surrounding countryside.Within the park is a Memorial for Road Traffic Victims in Warwickshire.

Hartshill Castle is a ruined castle in the village of Hartshill on the outskirts of Nuneaton, Warwickshire (grid reference SP325942). It is on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register due to erosion, structural problems and vandalism; most notably when the castle was damaged by vandals in October 2016.The site is also privately owned, but can be viewed from a nearby footpath adjacent to the site of the castle.

Hartshill is a large village and civil parish in North Warwickshire, England, adjoined with the much larger town of Nuneaton, the town centre of which is 2.5 miles (4 km) to the south-east. The parish borders the district of Nuneaton and Bedworth at the south, the North Warwickshire district parishes of Ansley at the south-west, Mancetter at the north-west, and Caldecote at the east, and the parish of Witherley in Leicestershire to the north-east from which it is separated by the A5 road. The market town of Atherstone is 3.5 miles (6 km) to the north-west. At the 2021 census, the civil parish of Hartshill, which also includes the hamlet of Oldbury had a population of 3,655.The village stands on a hill overlooking the Leicestershire plains to the north. The county boundary is defined by the A5 road, the former Roman Watling Street. The area has been settled since at least the Iron Age, just west of Hartshill are the remains of an iron age hill fort. The village was mentioned in the Domesday Book as Hardreshull, derived from the old English term meaning Heardred's Hill. Near the centre of the village are the remains of Hartshill Castle, a medieval castle.The village grew due to its quarrying industry, which quarried red syenite and manganese from the local hillside. At one time there were several industrial tramways serving the local quarries and connecting them to the nearby Trent Valley railway line and Coventry Canal. The Talyllyn Railway locomotive Midlander was purchased in 1957 from Jee's quarries at Hartshill.The most famous person associated with Hartshill was the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton, who was born at Chapel Cottage in Hartshill Green in 1563. The cottage in which he was born was pulled down in 1941 due to a road widening scheme. There was a memorial to him in the form of the village bus shelter, which was erected in 1972, and was made from local stone and shaped like a scroll. This was removed around 2006 due to vandalism and replaced by a plaque. Michael Drayton Junior School in Hartshill also bears his name. Other schools in the village include Hartshill Academy secondary school. The village church of Holy Trinity was built as a commissioners' church between 1843 and 1848 by T.L. Walker. It is made from local stone, and is noted for its large doorway which has six orders of columns and arches. The church is grade II listed.The parish has five pubs: The Stag & Pheasant, The Malt Shovel, Royal Oak, the Hartshill Club, and The Anchor which is on the Coventry Canal. Immediately west of the village is the Hartshill Hayes Country Park, which covers 137 acres (55 ha) of woodland.

Hartshill Academy (formerly Hartshill School) is a mixed secondary school located in Hartshill area of Nuneaton in the English county of Warwickshire.Feeder schools include Nathaniel Newton Infant School and Michael Drayton Junior School amongst others. Established in 1957, the school converted to academy status in 2012 and is now sponsored by the Midland Academy Trust.Hartshill Academy educates pupils from the Hartshill area of Nuneaton and surrounding areas. The school offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils. The school formally joined United Learning in December 2023.

Mancetter is a village and civil parish in North Warwickshire, England at the crossing of Watling Street over the River Anker. The population had reduced from 2,449 to 2,339 at the 2011 census. It is situated on the B4111 road towards Hartshill and Nuneaton. It adjoins the town of Atherstone.

Galley Common is a suburban village on the outskirts of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. The community is a ward on the western fringe of Nuneaton and Bedworth district, on the border with North Warwickshire district, with a population taken at the 2011 census of 8,233.The village comprises a school, several small shops, riding stables, a social club, a small industrial estate and farmland. It is close to the villages of Ansley, Astley, Arley and Old Arley. It was previously a coal mining village separate to Nuneaton, and is still occasionally referred to as a village distinct from the town. The main social areas of the village are The Stute, St Peter's Church and the primary school.

Atherstone Rural District was located in the administrative county of Warwickshire, England, from 1894 to 1974. It was named after its main town and administrative headquarters of Atherstone. Over the years the district gained territory on the abolition of neighbouring rural districts. In 1932, it gained part of Nuneaton Rural District and in 1965 it gained most of Tamworth Rural District. As with all rural districts, Atherstone RD was abolished in 1974 (by the Local Government Act 1972) and was merged with part of the Meriden Rural District to form the new non-metropolitan district of North Warwickshire.

Atherstone Priory was a priory in Atherstone Warwickshire, England. The first monastic site in Atherstone was an Augustinian friary founded in the centre of the town in 1374 by Ralph, Lord Bassett of Drayton. Henry VII, as he was to become, took communion there before the Battle of Bosworth. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538 the nave became the town's parish church of St Mary, the chancel a grammar school and the remaining land leased to a Mr Cartwright. In 1837–41 a new priory, known as the Convent of the Rosary, was built by Joseph Hansom in the east of the town for Dominican nuns. After several years of financial hardship they were obliged to sell it in 1857 to the Benedictine nuns of St. Benedict's Priory, Colwich as a daughter house. The new priory convent, dedicated to St Scholastica, was founded in 1859 when a group of 19 nuns moved to Atherstone from Colwich. The priory was enlarged in 1873, again by Hansom. Faced by falling numbers and encouraged by the Vatican Council, St Scholastica's voted in 1966 to rejoin Colwich. On 31 July 1967 the eighteen members of the Atherstone community transferred to Colwich and the Atherstone property was sold. The graves of the nuns were moved to St Mary's churchyard and the building demolished. The site is now a housing estate.

The Queen Elizabeth Academy (formerly Queen Elizabeth School) is a mixed secondary school with academy status. It is located on Witherley Road, Atherstone, Warwickshire, England, and the Principal is Mr N. Harding. The school is dependent on the 4 values (pride, endeavour, kindness, resilience)

The Atherstone rail accident happened near Atherstone railway station in the small hours of the morning of 16 November 1860, and killed 10 people. A special cattle train from Holyhead to London via Peterborough was shunting just south of Atherstone station to let the Scotch mail train pass. Before the cattle train could clear the main line, the mail train struck it. The four rear carriages of the cattle train were 'shivered to pieces' killing all nine Irish drovers who were asleep in the brake van and the fireman of the mail train, James Sherry. 29 cattle were killed or had to be slaughtered soon afterwards. The Duke and Duchess of Montrose were passengers on the mail train but escaped without injury. The driver of the mail train was not aware that a cattle train was ahead of him when they left Tamworth (the preceding station) and claimed he had not seen the advance signal at all approaching Atherstone station, but did not worry as he was not aware of there being a train ahead of him. By the time he saw a red signal just before the station he immediately applied the brakes but it was too late to avoid the collision. The enquiry criticized the decision to allow the cattle train to leave Tamworth ahead of the mail train without allowing sufficient time to clear the lines at Atherstone, and of the failure to warn the mail train driver about the train ahead of him. It also criticized the driver for not seeing the advance red signal. A further recommendation was that in future in cattle trains drovers' vans be placed in front of the cattle trucks instead of behind them.

Manduessedum or Manduesedum was a Roman fort and later a civilian small town in the Roman Province of Britannia. It was located on and immediately to the east of the site of the modern village of Mancetter, located in the English county of Warwickshire, close to the modern town of Atherstone. The name is of Romano-Celtic origin, and is likely derived from the Gaulish essedum, meaning 'chariot', whilst the first element mandu was common in Gaulish place names, but its meaning is obscure.The fort was founded in around AD 50 on the Watling Street Roman road, guarding the point where the road crossed the River Anker. The final battle of the rebel queen of the Britons Boudica at the Battle of Watling Street in AD 60/61 may have taken place near Manduessedum. The British forces were defeated by the Roman general Suetonius Paullinus. The fort appears to have been fairly short lived, as there is little sign of military occupation at the site after AD 70.Manduessedum later developed into an important civilian settlement, and was the centre of an extensive pottery making industry which primarily produced Mortaria (mixing bowls). The remains of up to 70 pottery kilns dating from the Roman period have been found in the area, as well as the remains of a Roman villa. The area has been listed as a scheduled monument.

North Warwickshire is a local government district with borough status in the ceremonial county of Warwickshire, West Midlands, England. The borough includes the two towns of Atherstone (where the council is based) and Coleshill, and the large villages of Polesworth, Kingsbury, Hartshill and Water Orton. The North Warwickshire district was created on 1 April 1974 by a merger of the Atherstone Rural District and parts of the Meriden Rural District (the rest of which was merged into the West Midlands county).North Warwickshire is a mostly rural area with several small market towns and a number of former mining villages. The area historically had a large coal mining industry, but this has now all died out. The last coal mine in the area, Daw Mill at Arley, closed in 2013. The district is relatively remote from the rest of Warwickshire, as the county is almost split in two by the West Midlands Boroughs of Solihull and Coventry. The borough borders the neighboring Warwickshire district of Nuneaton and Bedworth to the south-south-east, Staffordshire to the west and northwest, Leicestershire to the north and northeast, the cities of Birmingham and Coventry to the southwest and southeast. The borough's landscape is primarily of the mildly undulating agricultural variety, with the North Warwickshire plateau rising to 177 m (581 ft) above sea-level at Bentley Common, 2.5 miles southwest of Atherstone. The most significant bodies of water within North Warwickshire are Kingsbury Water Park, Shustoke Reservoir, the River Blythe and the mid-section of the Coventry Canal. The boundaries of North Warwickshire are similar to those of the North Warwickshire parliamentary constituency. However the constituency also includes the town of Bedworth, but does not include the villages of Hartshill and Arley. The local MP is Craig Tracey. In 2007 the Conservatives took overall control of the borough council for the first time since the creation of the council within its current boundaries. The council was retaken by Labour in 2011, then returned to Conservative control in 2015.