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Edge Hill, Warwickshire

village in Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 13, 2025
Entity authorityQ5337661 ↗
Source-derived summary

Edge Hill is an escarpment and Edgehill is a hamlet in the civil parish of Ratley and Upton, Stratford-on-Avon District, southern Warwickshire, England. At Ratley, the escarpment rises to 219 m (719 ft) above sea level and 112 m (367 ft) above nearby Radway, within 300 metres of the Warwickshire border with Oxfordshire.

Edge Hill gave its name to the first battle of the English Civil War, in which it was a prominent feature.

The hamlet has a public house, an eccentric building of local Hornton Stone called the Castle Inn that was built in the 1740s to the designs of Sanderson Miller (1716–80). It is controlled by the Hook Norton Brewery.

Battle

The narrow wood on the scarp of Edge Hill, in the south-east overlooks the lower slope and the plain on which the battle was fought.

The battle of Edge Hill was fought on Sunday 23 October 1642 and was the first major battle in the English Civil War between the Royalist forces of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian army commanded by the Earl of Essex.

The King's army started the day on the plateau above the scarp and Parliament's front line was about 2,200 yards (2,000 m) away. From Edge Hill, the ground drops steeply, levels out, then rises to Battleton Holt and a little beyond it are the Oaks and Graveground Copice. It was across the latter two that Parliament's army was drawn up (grid reference SP346485 to SP367498).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Edge Hill, Warwickshire” is village in Warwickshire, United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Edge, Hill and Warwickshire, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1716, 1642—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Edge, Hill and Warwickshire is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “village in Warwickshire, United Kingdom” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5337661. VIAF identifies the subject as 315147349. The Library of Congress control number is sh95009902. Authority coordinates are 52.123, -1.456. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1716 and 1642.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Edge Hill, Warwickshire”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Edge Hill, Warwickshire primary sources, Edge Hill, Warwickshire archive and Edge research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Edge Hill, Warwickshire”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Edge Hill, Warwickshire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.