Lillington is a suburb of

Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

, in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

of Royal Leamington Spa, in the

Warwick District Warwick is a local government district of central Warwickshire in England. It borders the Borough of Rugby and Stratford-on-Avon District in Warwickshire as well as the West Midlands County (of which Coventry and Solihull are within the historic ...

in the county of

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

, England. Historically a village which existed before the time of the ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

'' (1086), it was incorporated into the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

of Leamington in 1890. Lillington is a ward of

Warwick District Council Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined with Leamington Spa and Whit ...

and Royal Leamington Spa Town Council.

Geography

Lillington itself has two main areas – the new centre based around Crown Way which contains shops,

dry cleaners Dry cleaning is any cleaning process for clothing and textiles using a solvent other than water. Dry cleaning still involves liquid, but clothes are instead soaked in a water-free liquid solvent. Tetrachloroethylene (perchloroethylene), known in ...

and a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

. The area was predominantly built as a

council house A council house is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 ...

estate from 1950 onwards, and contains three

tower block A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently ...

s. The tallest of these, the fifteen-storey '' Eden Court,'' standing at the highest point of the estate, dominates the skyline and can be seen from south Leamington Spa,

Radford Semele Radford Semele is a village and civil parish in Warwickshire, England, situated close to the Regency spa town of Leamington Spa. According to the 2001 Census, Radford Semele parish has a population of 2,448, according to 2021 census. It lie ...

and for miles outside Leamington.The Buildings of England, Pevsner & Wedgwood, Penguin 1966. p. 340. The second, and older area, contains the former village with the

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

St. Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene (sometimes called Mary of Magdala, or simply the Magdalene or the Madeleine) was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to his crucifixion and resurre ...

, the manor house, some Victorian

terraced house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...

s as well as estates of predominantly

semi-detached A semi-detached house (often abbreviated to semi) is a single family duplex dwelling house that shares one common wall with the next house. The name distinguishes this style of house from detached houses, with no shared walls, and terraced house ...

houses built since 1930.

Campion Hills

The ''Campion Hills'' are the highest area of Leamington, rising to an altitude of 97m above OD. Situated to the north of, and above

Newbold Comyn Newbold Comyn is a park on the Eastern edge of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. History The first mention of Newbold Comyn in history was in the Domesday Book of 1086, which lists one of Leamington's two mills as being situated there. Th ...

park, they offer a view over the whole town. Sited here is Leamington's

transmission tower A transmission tower, also known as an electricity pylon or simply a pylon in British English and as a hydro tower in Canadian English, is a tall structure, usually a steel lattice tower, used to support an overhead power line. In electrical gri ...

which relays TV signals from

Sutton Coldfield Sutton Coldfield or the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield, known locally as Sutton ( ), is a town and civil parish in the City of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. The town lies around 8 miles northeast of Birmingham city centre, 9 miles south ...

and broadcasts local commercial

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

station,

Free Coventry & Warwickshire Free Radio Coventry & Warwickshire is an Independent Local Radio station based in Birmingham, England, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Coventry and Warwickshire. As of September 2022, the stat ...

. Its

Severn Trent Severn Trent plc is a water company based in Coventry, England. It supplies 4.6 million households and business across the Midlands and Wales. It is traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Severn Trent, th ...

water treatment Water treatment is any process that improves the Water quality, quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking water, drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recrea ...

plant serves the whole Leamington area.

runs a BMX track on the hills.

Bins Brook

The Bins Brook is a mainly

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

ed watercourse that runs south into Leamington. Just inside Lillington, on the Leamington town centre side adjacent to the Midland Oak, is a fenced area of meadow plants in a man-made depression. This excavated area is normally dry, but fills from the Bins Brook if it overflows during

flash floods A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and depressions. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, or tropical storm, or by meltwater from ice or snow flowing o ...

, to reduce the risk of local flooding to property.

The Midland Oak

The

Midland Oak The Midland Oak is an oak tree that grows in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The count ...

by the junction of Lillington Avenue and Lillington Road marks the supposed very

centre of England There has long been debate over the exact location of the geographical centre of the United Kingdom, and its constituent countries, due to the complexity and method of the calculation, such as whether to include offshore islands, and the fact tha ...

. The original oak is thought to have dated form the 16th century. Having died, it was removed in 1967, which allowed the Lillington Road to be straightened. Its successor was planted in the 1980s, from an acorn collected from the original.

Pre-historic and early remains

In the 1930s

pre-historic Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

elephant and

woolly rhinoceros The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived until the end of the last glacial period. The woolly rhinoceros was a me ...

remains were found in sand and gravel pits in Cubbington Road, near the site of the present Lillington Free Church. Some of these are displayed in Warwick Market Hall Museum.

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...

remains have also been found there. Roman artefacts and burials have been discovered in the area of Highland Road and Braemar Road.

Lillington Stud Farm

Lillington was once well known as a centre for horse-breeding at the stud farm owned by Sydney McGregor (1889–1970). McGregor's best known horse was probably

April the Fifth April the Fifth (1929–1954) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and sire. In a career that lasted from September 1931 until September 1932 he ran nine times and won three races. He failed to win or be placed in his first five races, but then ...

, which won the Epsom Derby in 1932. The farm buildings and house stood at the end of Epsom Road. After 1970, the area was developed for housing, with many of the new roads having racing-related names.

Education

The local schools are Lillington Nursery and Primary School, Telford Infant and Telford Junior Schools. The nearest secondary school is

North Leamington School North Leamington School (NLS) is a mixed, non-selective, comprehensive school for students aged 11 to 18 years located at the northeastern edge of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. It is rated as a ''good'' school by Ofsted, and has 6.7 ...

. A

Sure Start Sure Start is a UK Government area-based initiative, announced in 1998 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, applying primarily in England with slightly different versions in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The initiative o ...

Children’s Centre opened in late 2006, adjacent to the 1950s-built

community centre Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole co ...

, and Lillington

Library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

on Mason Avenue.

Churches

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

in Vicarage Road retains some Saxon work, but was largely rebuilt between 1847 and 1884. The late Perpendicular tower also remains, with a contemporary bell cast around 1480. With two seventeenth-century bells and five more dating from 1927, the present ring of eight bells was formed. They were re-hung by Nicholsons' of

Bridport Bridport is a market town in Dorset, England, inland from the English Channel near the confluence of the River Brit and its tributary the Asker. Its origins are Saxon and it has a long history as a rope-making centre. On the coast and withi ...

in 2007. The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady, in Valley Road next to the Public Library, was consecrated in 1963. It has notable stained glass in the '

Dalle de verre ''Dalle de verre'', from French: "glass slab", is a glass art technique that uses pieces of coloured glass set in a matrix of concrete and epoxy resin or other supporting material. Technique The technique was developed by Jean Gaudin in Paris i ...

' style, designed by

Dom Charles Norris Dom Charles Norris OSB (1909-2004) was an influential artist who created works in stained glass and dalle de verre for Roman Catholic churches in the UK. He is thought to be the most prolific artist working in dalle de verre in the UK in the 20th ...

Buckfast Abbey Buckfast Abbey forms part of an active Benedictine monastery at Buckfast, near Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. Buckfast first became home to an abbey in 1018. The first Benedictine abbey was followed by a Savignac (later Cistercian) abbey cons ...

, and made at

Prinknash Abbey Prinknash Abbey (pronounced locally variously as "Prinidge/Prinnish") (International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: ) is a Catholic Church in England and Wales, Roman Catholic monastery in the Vale of Gloucester in the Diocese of Clifton, near the villa ...

Lillington Free Church Lillington Free Church is a free church, located in Lillington, Warwickshire, Lillington, Leamington Spa, England. As of February 2019 the current Minister is Rev James Church who is assisted in running the church by ordained elder (Christianity ...

is on the north side of Cubbington Road, close to The Holt. File:Lillington Church Warks.jpg, Lillington Parish Church File:Lillington Free Church.jpg, Lillington Free Church File:Lillington Warks Manor House.jpg, Lillington Manor House, Church Lane File:Lillington - Eden Court - geograph.org.uk - 9348.jpg, Eden Court, Lillington, from Mason Avenue Park File:Former Lillington Infant School - geograph.org.uk - 1206291.jpg, Former School and Parish Room, Cubbington Road File:Lillington Warks RC Church.jpg, Lillington RC Church, Valley Road File:Lillington Library.jpg, Lillington County Library, Valley Road File:Old Library, Lillington - geograph.org.uk - 8959.jpg, Former Board of Health meeting room, corner of Cubbington Road and Pound Lane File:Lane to Red House Farm, Lillington Warwickshire.jpg, Lane to Red House Farm.

Civil parish

In 1901 the parish had a population of 1,241. The parish was abolished on 1 April 1902 to from "Leamington".

Nearby places

Lillington adjoins

Cubbington Cubbington is a village and civil parish with a population of 3,929, adjoining the north-eastern outskirts of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, approximately 3 miles from the town centre. Welsh Road, running through the village crossroads, ...

to the north.

References

External links

Victoria County History, Volume VI – Lillington
{{Royal Leamington Spa Populated places in Warwickshire Former civil parishes in Warwickshire Leamington Spa