Early history and toponymy Daventry is overlooked by the
Borough Hill on the eastern edge of the town. The hill has been the site of human activity dating back into prehistory: remains have been found of two
Bronze Age barrows, two
Iron Age hill forts – one of which is the fourth largest found in Britain, and
a later Roman villa and farming settlement. According to local folklore Daventry had
Danish (
Viking) origins, this was partly due to the old pronunciation of Daventry as
Daintry, which was interpreted as "Dane Tree", however in more modern interpretation the town's name is thought likelier to be
Anglo-Saxon in origin: "Dafa's tree" (Dafa being a founding father or
paterfamila) and there was very likely a meeting tree, possibly on Borough Hill. Thus the name may have been formed on lines similar to
Coventry ("Cofa's tree", i.e. "tree of Cofa"). Another theory which was popular in the 19th century, was that of
Thomas Pennant, the Welsh naturalist and antiquarian, who acknowledged the town's 'considerable antiquity' and speculated that the name was
Brythonic,
dwy-avon-tre (town of two rivers), a derivation seemingly supported by the town's topography, situated as it is between the sources of the
River Leam, which flows west, and the
River Nene which flows east. This theory however is now discredited.
Medieval and Tudor Daventry was mentioned in the
Domesday Book of 1086 as
Daventrei. It was recorded as belonging to
Countess Judith, niece of
William the Conqueror. In around 1108,
Daventry Priory a small
Cluniac priory was founded at Daventry, alongside the parish church. The priory was closed in 1526 by
Cardinal Wolsey who granted its assets to
Christ Church, Oxford. In 1203 a
market was first recorded at Daventry. The market benefited from Daventry's location upon the main road (now the
A45 road) linking the important city of
Coventry with
Watling Street (now the
A5 road) which was the main route from the Midlands to
London, which brought in much passing trade. In 1576 Daventry
grammar school was founded by William Parker, a woollen draper and native of the town. The original schoolhouse on New Street, dating from around 1600 still stands, although it is now a private house. That same year
Queen Elizabeth I granted Daventry
borough status. The town was mentioned by
William Shakespeare in
Henry IV, Part I (Act IV, Sc II), which refers to "the red-nosed innkeeper of Daventry". Shakespeare would have known Daventry due to its relatively close proximity to
Stratford-upon-Avon, and its position on the main route from the Midlands to London.
English Civil War During the
English Civil War, the army of
King Charles I stayed at Daventry in 1645 after storming the Parliamentary garrison at
Leicester and on its way to relieve the
siege of Oxford. The King stayed at the Wheatsheaf Inn, whilst his
Royalist army camped on Borough Hill. According to local legend, it was during his stay at the Wheatsheaf Inn in Daventry that Charles was twice visited by the ghost of his former adviser and friend,
Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who advised him to keep heading north and warned him that he would not win through force of arms. However, Parliament's newly formed
New Model Army, led by
Sir Thomas Fairfax, was marching north from besieging Oxford after being instructed to engage the king's main army. Fairfax's leading detachments of horse clashed with Royalist outposts near Daventry on 12 June, alerting the king to the presence of the Parliamentary army. The Royalists made for their reinforcements at
Newark-on-Trent but after reaching
Market Harborough turned to fight, which resulted in the decisive
Battle of Naseby, in which the Royalist army was heavily defeated by the Parliamentarians. The village of
Naseby is approximately northeast of Daventry.
Dissenters English Dissenters founded a Dissenting chapel in the town around 1722 in buildings opposite The Wheatsheaf on the southern end of Sheaf Street. Later in 1752 a
Dissenting Academy was moved from
Northampton to this site. The chemist and theologian
Joseph Priestley studied there from 1752 to 1755. In 1789, the Academy moved back to Northampton.
Coaching town Daniel Defoe described Daventry as a "considerable market town which subsists chiefly on the great concourse of travellers on the old Watling Street way." During the
Georgian era of the 18th and early 19th century, a national system of
turnpike roads with improved road surfaces developed, this in turn allowed the development of a national system of
mail coaches and long distance
passenger stagecoaches. Daventry, being located on the main roads linking London with the West Midlands,
Holyhead and
Lancashire, flourished as a coaching town. There were many
coaching inns in the town including the
Wheatsheaf, the ''Saracen's Head,
the Plough and Bell,
the Dun Cow
, and the Brown Bear''. At the zenith of the coaching era in the 1830s, Daventry had become a major hub of the national network, with more than 250 coaches passing through the town every week, including services between London,
Warwick,
Birmingham,
Liverpool and Holyhead, and Birmingham and
Cambridge. Reflecting Daventry's prosperity, many of the town's finest building were constructed during this period, including, most notably, the
Holy Cross Church of 1758.
Stagnation and decline 1838–1955 The
Industrial Revolution largely passed Daventry by, owing to its failure to become linked to the newer transport networks: The
Grand Junction Canal (now Grand Union) had opened in 1796, and passed a few miles north of Daventry. An arm from the canal to Daventry was proposed, and was included in the Act of Parliament authorising it, however this was never built. The opening of the
London and Birmingham Railway in 1838 signalled the beginning of the
railway age; almost immediately the coaching trade slumped and Daventry entered a long period of stagnation and decline which lasted for over a century: In 1841 Daventry had a population of 4,565, from thereon it went into steady decline until 1911, when it bottomed out at 3,516, and then slowly recovered, reaching 4,077 in 1951, but did not recover to the 1841 level until later in the 1950s. The London and Birmingham Railway passed a few miles to the east of the town through the
Watford Gap. A branch line to Daventry was included in the original Act of Parliament, however, despite several earlier attempts, the line was not built until 1888, when
a short branch was built from
Weedon to
Daventry railway station. In 1895 the line was extended to
Leamington Spa. However being only a branch line this did little to revive the town's economy. The only significant industry to develop in the town during this time was
shoemaking, which at its height in the 1870s employed around 700 workers.
Broadcasting station In 1925, the newly created
BBC constructed a radio transmitting station on
Borough Hill just outside the town. Daventry was chosen because it was the point of maximum contact with the land mass of England and
Wales. From 1932 the
BBC Empire Service (now the
BBC World Service) was broadcast from there. The radio announcement of "Daventry calling" made Daventry well known across the world. It was the BBC's use of the literal pronunciation in this call-sign that resulted in the widespread displacement of the historical pronunciation "Daintree" (). The transmitting station contributed to the town's population revival, as a number of BBC staff and their families moved into the area. At its height by 1990 the station had 43
radio masts, however the station closed in 1992 and all but one of the radio masts was taken down, with most of the land being sold to Daventry District Council who opened it up to the public as a country park. A commercial unit of the BBC remained based locally for a few years after. A busy directional radio beacon (VOR), identifier "DTY", for aircraft is situated approximately south of the town. The town also gives its name to the busy Daventry
air traffic control sector.
Radar experiment On the early morning of Tuesday 26 February 1935 the radio transmitter at Daventry was used for what became known as the "
Daventry Experiment" which involved the first-ever practical demonstration of
radar, by its inventor
Robert Watson-Watt and
Arnold Frederic Wilkins. They used a radio receiver installed in a van at
Litchborough (just off the
A5 about south of Daventry) to receive signals bounced off a metal-clad
Handley Page Heyford bomber flying across the radio transmissions. The interference picked up from the aircraft allowed its approximate
navigational position to be estimated, and therefore proved that it was possible to detect the position of aircraft using radio waves. The success of the experiment persuaded the British government to fund the development of a network of full scale radar stations on the south coast of England, known as
Chain Home, which provided a decisive advantage to the
RAF in the
Battle of Britain in 1940. 75 years to the day of the original launch, on 26 February 2010, teams from the Coventry Amateur Radio Society & The Northampton Radio Club re-enacted the 'Daventry Experiment'. Signals from GB75RDF at
Borough Hill, reflected from aircraft (all of which were flown by radio hams), were detected in a receiving set housed in a replica
Morris van. The receiving station set up in the field that is the home to The Birth of RADAR memorial at
Litchborough. The team was led by Brian Leathley, known as Andrew G8GMU. Borough Hill was also the site of the
Gee Eastern chain master transmitter mast: this was part of a radio navigation system used by the
Allies during
World War II.
Borough Hill Roman villa is also located here.
Daventry since 1955 The modern growth of Daventry occurred from the mid-1950s onwards. Real growth started in 1955 when the
tapered roller bearing manufacturer
British Timken opened a large factory in the town (the factory closed in 1993 although the distribution Centre stayed open until 2000). The town's fortunes were also boosted when the first phase of the
M1 motorway was opened nearby, giving the town a direct motorway link with
London, with the expansion of the motorway network connecting it to the north of England within a decade. Despite the growth of the town,
Daventry railway station was closed to passengers in 1958, with the line closing to freight in 1963.
Planned expansion In 1961, Daventry was designated as an 'overspill' to house people and industry relocated from
Birmingham, as government policy of the time favoured moving
population and industry away from Birmingham. Although Daventry was not formally designated as a
New Town, its expansion bore many similarities to such developments: A
planned expansion of the town was carried out as part of a three-way agreement between
Birmingham City Council, Daventry Borough Council, and
Northamptonshire County Council: Birmingham's role was to buy land, and build houses and
industrial estates, Northamptonshire provided roads, schools and libraries, whilst Daventry provided drainage and sewage disposal. Work on the official expansion of Daventry began in the second half of the 1960s, when Birmingham City Council purchased nearly of land to be developed for housing and industrial use. The first phase of this expansion was constructed on the south-east slopes of Borough Hill and was named the Southbrook Estate. It was designed and laid out by the architect J A Maudsley for
City of Birmingham Architects Department. This began in 1966. In 1995
RAF Daventry was listed as a
USAF communication facility by the then
Minister of State for the Armed Forces Nicholas Soames in answer to a question from
Max Madden. RAF Daventry is most likely the transmitter base at a former WW1 isolation hospital site on the Staverton to Newnham road which was eventually sold by the
Ministry of Defence in 2007. In 2006, the
outdoor pool – which had been built and funded by Daventry residents in the 1950s following the drowning of three children in the local reservoir – was closed due to funding difficulties. In 2007, Daventry began plans to modernise the town with a futuristic
personal rapid transit system that would link outer estates to the town centre, and a canal arm with
marina next to the former site of the outdoor pool. In May 2018, the District Council dropped the building a canal arm and marina scheme in favour of achievable projects. In March 2018, the town's High Street was used as a filming location for the feature film,
Nativity Rocks!. ==Politics and government==