Fenny Compton

Fenny Compton
SS Peter and Clare parish church
Fenny Compton is located in Warwickshire
Fenny Compton
Fenny Compton
Location within Warwickshire
Population808 (2011)
OS grid referenceSP417523
Civil parish
  • Fenny Compton
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townSoutham
Postcode districtCV47
PoliceWarwickshire
FireWarwickshire
AmbulanceWest Midlands
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Warwickshire
52°10′01″N 1°23′24″W / 52.167°N 1.39°W / 52.167; -1.39

Fenny Compton is a village and parish in Warwickshire, England, eight miles north of Banbury. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 808.[1] Its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon Fennig Cumbtūn meaning "marshy farmstead in a valley".

In 1498, Sir William Cope, who served as Cofferer of the Household of Henry VII from 1494 to 1505 (in the absence at that time of a Treasurer of the Household he carried out the duties of that office as well), was granted the Lordships of Wormleighton and Fenny Compton, part of the lands of Simon de Montford who had been attainted in 1495. He later sold the lands to the Spencer family, later of Althorpe. The Parish church of St Peter and St. Clare was built in the 13th century and is a Grade II* listed building.[2]

Fenny Compton had two railway stations, Fenny Compton on the Great Western Railway route from Oxford to Birmingham Snow Hill, and Fenny Compton West on the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway route from Bicester North to Broom.[3] The GWR station and SMJ station were built alongside each other controlled by a joint signal box. The Fenny Compton Railway Station (Great Western from Birmingham Snow Hill to London Paddington and the London, Midland & Scottish Railway branch line from Stratford-Upon-Avon to Blisworth) closed in 1964, apart from the railway line from Fenny Compton to CAD Kineton.

Fenny Compton was the home of Andrew and Kathleen Booth, computer pioneers in the 1940s who built a prototype electronic computer called All-Purpose Electronic Computer (APEC). That prototype led directly to the ICT 1200 computer, the UK's first mass-produced computer. [4]

The village was struck by an F0/T1 tornado on 23 November 1981, as part of the record-breaking nationwide tornado outbreak on that day.[5]

The village features in the 2024 TV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office about the British Post Office scandal as the location for the first meeting of ex sub-postmasters and mistresses in 2009.[6]

  1. ^ "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  2. ^ Historic England. "CHURCH OF ST PETER AND ST CLARE (1355534)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
  3. ^ "Archived copy". www.smjr.info. Archived from the original on 11 December 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ Birkbeck College, School of Computer Science, A short history by Roger Johnson http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/bbkcomments/2020/08/25/a-short-history-of-computer-science-at-birkbeck/
  5. ^ "European Severe Weather Database".
  6. ^ "Fenny Compton: The village where Post Office scandal battle began". BBC. Retrieved 10 January 2024.