Snitterfield

• 1. Introduction

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  Snitterfield is a small village in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, home to 1,226 people at the time of the 2011 census. It sits just north of the A46, only a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, yet this quiet parish keeps turning up in far bigger stories. A local landowner once stockpiled weapons here for a plot against a king. A farming family that lived in the parish shared its name with English literature's most famous playwright. A rector who preached from its pulpit was also a published poet, and a painter of horses and battle scenes was raised on its soil. None of that explains what the name Snitterfield itself once meant, or how a Norman-era survey valued the entire manor. Those answers, and what ultimately became of the conspirator, the poet, and the painter, are still buried in this village's records.

• 2. Name And Norman Roots

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  An open field where snipe gathered near the Sherbourne Brook gave Snitterfield its earliest name, Snytenfeld, joining feld, a cleared stretch of land, with snyten, a word for the birds. John Speed's map of 1630 provides the earliest surviving record of the village, and the spelling stayed unsettled for centuries; as late as 1814 it still appeared as Snitfield.

  At the time of the Norman Conquest, a free man named Saxi held Snitefeld, along with land at Walton, Charlecote, Bramcote, Dorsington, and Werlavescote. By 1086 the manor had passed to the Count of Meulan. The Domesday survey recorded it plainly: in Ferncombe hundred, Snitefeld covered 4 hides, with land for 14 ploughs. Two ploughs worked in lordship, and 10 slaves lived there alongside 11 villagers, a priest, and 4 smallholders, who together held 6 ploughs and 12 acres of meadow. Its value before 1066 and afterward stood at £4; by the time of the survey it had risen to 100 shillings.

  That modest Domesday valuation gives no hint of the family that would take root in this manor a few centuries later.

• 3. The Shakespeare Line

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  Before William Shakespeare's father made his home in Stratford, John Shakespeare lived in Snitterfield, leaving the parish once he married Mary Arden. In 1579 he handed over his remaining stake in the family's Snitterfield property to a man named Robert Webbe.

  Manorial records name Richard Shakespeare, the poet's grandfather, in 1535 and again in 1560, though he never appears in the parish registers that begin the following year, in 1561, suggesting he died sometime in between. Richard's wife, Abigail Webb, was John Shakespeare's mother, and her sister, Mary Webb, was herself the mother of Mary Arden, tying the two families together before John's marriage ever took place. Abigail died in Snitterfield in 1595. Another of her sons, Henry, stayed in the parish until his own death in 1596.

  Not everyone who held land in Snitterfield left it as quietly as the Shakespeares did; one who stayed, a few decades on, kept far more dangerous cargo behind his doors.

• 4. Gunpowder Plot Refuge

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  Norbrook, a moated house that no longer stands, belonged to John Grant, who became brother-in-law to Thomas Wintour by marrying his sister, Dorothy. In March 1605, Grant was recruited into the Gunpowder Plot alongside Robert Wintour and Thomas Bates, a servant of Catesby's.

  Norbrook itself became the conspirators' Warwickshire headquarters, its rooms used to store gunpowder and weapons through the summer of 1605. When Guy Fawkes' attempt failed, Grant rode from Norbrook to the Red Lion Inn at Dunchurch to await news, then returned there with other plotters once the plan had collapsed. They rested at Norbrook on the night of the 6th of November 1605 before moving on to Holbeche House in Staffordshire for a final stand.

  There, a spark from a fire ignited gunpowder that had gotten wet on the road, and the blast burned out Grant's eyes, leaving him blind. He was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Found guilty alongside the other conspirators, he was executed outside St Paul's Cathedral on Thursday the 30th of January, together with Digby, Thomas Wintour, and Thomas Bates. He refused to confess to treason, insisting, in his own words, that it was "no sin against God," and still blind, he let himself be led quietly up the ladder to the halter, crossing himself before he died.

  His confiscated estate passed to Bartholomew Hales, who became the new Lord of Snitterfield.

• 5. The Rector Poet

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  Richard Jago was born in 1715 at Beaudesert Rectory in Henley-in-Arden, where his father, also named Richard, served as rector. He was educated at Solihull School, which later named one of its houses after him, and there he met a fellow student, William Shenstone, who also became a minor poet.

  Jago went on to University College, earning his MA in 1738 after being made curate of Snitterfield the year before, in 1737. He became vicar of Harbury in 1746 and soon after took on Chesterton, both in Warwickshire, before adding Snitterfield to his charge in 1754, where he remained until his death in 1781. In 1771, Lord Willoughby de Broke granted him the rectory at Kimcote in Leicestershire, and Jago gave up Harbury and Chesterton while keeping Snitterfield and Kimcote. His best-known work, a long topographical poem called Edge Hill, appeared in 1767.

  Long after his death, three silver birch trees that his daughters had planted still grew in the vicarage garden.

• 6. Painter Of Sporting Scenes

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  John Wootton was born in Snitterfield around 1682 and went on to paint sporting subjects, battle scenes, and landscapes across England. He likely trained under Jan Wyck during the 1690s and may have been supported early on by the aristocratic Beaufort and Coventry households, just as Wyck had been.

  One account has him working as a page to Lady Anne Somerset at Snitterfield House, a building that stood south of the parish church until its demolition in the early 19th century, though the only real evidence is an early painting of the house and the family's later collection of his work. The critic Joseph Farington later saw a Wootton painting called Diana and the Nymphs, dated 1707, at Antony House in Cornwall, though that canvas has since gone untraced. Wootton's earliest surviving work with a firm date is a horse portrait titled Bonny Black, painted in 1711 and now held at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.

  By then he had already moved to London, settling there before his first marriage, to Elizabeth Walsh, in 1706. He subscribed to the first English Academy of Painting and Drawing in 1711, and by 1717 he had been elected a steward of the Virtuosi Club of St Luke's.

  Wootton's early view of Snitterfield House remains one of the clearest records of a building that has since vanished entirely, unlike the parish church that still stands over the village today.

• 7. Centuries In Stone

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  St James the Great, Snitterfield's parish church, is built from a chancel, nave, north and south aisles, and a west tower, with modern vestries added north of the chancel and south of the tower. The south arcade probably dates from the second half of the 13th century and the north arcade from the early 14th century; matching window styles suggest the south aisle was later widened to 9 feet to align with the newer north aisle.

  Built of rough rubble, the chancel appears to follow soon after the 14th-century north aisle, and it stretches unusually long compared with the nave, lit by large windows. The west tower rose in stages: its lowest 10 feet went up in the early 14th century, another 8 or 9 feet followed around 1340 in ashlar stonework with a moulded west window resembling the south doorway, and the top was finished around 1400 in larger ashlar blocks. A clerestory was added early in the 16th century, though the north arcade shows uneven arches from partial rebuilding, and most of its capitals were crudely remoulded at some point.

  By 1858, a description noted that the chancel's north side was heavily buttressed and its windows had lost their original tracery. The side doorways had already been closed and a new west doorway inserted by that time, while the erection of galleries in 1841 left scars and repairs still visible in the arcades; the vestry south of the tower was probably added in that same period.

  Restoration since then has given the chancel windows new tracery and added a north vestry and organ chamber, changes that left the church looking as it does today while the parish's economy and daily life carried on outside its walls.

• 8. Modern Snitterfield

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  Welcombe Hills, a vineyard on Kings Lane, has grown Pinot Noir, Dornfelder, and Bacchus grapes since it was established in 2001. In August 2009, all five of its wines entered in the Mercian Vineyards Association's regional competition won medals. Prospero Barn, on The Green, takes its name from the character in Shakespeare's The Tempest and now houses three of the village's employers: Structured Training Ltd, SalesPathways Ltd, and Predaptive OD Ltd. Other local employers include the Stratford Manor Hotel, a Mercedes-Benz dealership, the Wyevale Garden Centre, and Factoring Partners, one of the United Kingdom's oldest independent factoring brokerages.

  Snitterfield forms a ward of Stratford-on-Avon District Council, represented by Councillor Peter Richards of the Conservative Party. Nationally, the village sits in the Stratford-on-Avon parliamentary constituency, whose MP since the 2024 election is Manuela Perteghella of the Liberal Democrats; before Brexit took effect in 2020, the area also belonged to the West Midlands region of the European Parliament.

  The Monarch's Way, a long-distance footpath, traces the route King Charles II took while fleeing after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester, and it passes directly through the village. King's Lane owes its name to a tradition that Charles II rode through it with Jane Lane during his escape in September 1651.

  The village supports a sport horse training centre, a riding school, and a sports club covering tennis, bowls, cricket, and football. West of the village, the former RAF Snitterfield air station has split in two: its northern half became the Stratford Oaks Golf Course and Driving Range, completed in 1992, while its south-eastern side is now home to a glider club. The local Scouts group, Bearley & Snitterfield, runs Beaver, Cub, and Scout sections. Housing in the village grew by 10 per cent between 2002 and 2003.

  Snitterfield keeps one pub, the Snitterfield Arms, alongside a village shop that was voted England's best in 2002. Its second pub, the Foxhunter, was badly damaged by fire in June 2007 and, after five years standing derelict, was demolished and replaced with housing. Snitterfield Primary School serves the parish's children today.

  Any future growth in the village is now capped by policy: new development is limited to barn conversions and plots of no more than five properties each.