Weedon Bec Northamptonshire Family History Guide

Northamptonshire | Northamptonshire Parishes

Updated onMarch 12, 2026

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Weedon Bec is an Ancient Parish in the county of Northamptonshire.

Other places in the parish include: Lower Weedon and Road Weedon.

Alternative names:

Weedon
Weedon Beck
Weedon on the Street

Parish church: St. Peter and St. Paul

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1588
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1706

Nonconformists include: Baptist, Independent/Congregational, Roman Catholic, and Wesleyan Methodist.

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Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

WEEDON, W.-Beck, or W.-on-the-Street, a village, a parish, and a sub-district, in Daventry district, Northampton. The village stands on Watling-Street, the Grand Junction canal, and the Northwestern railway, 4 miles SE of Daventry; is a scattered place; and has a head post-office, a r. station with telegraph, extensive military barracks, a military prison, and a police station.

The parish comprises 1,710 acres. Real property, £6,430; of which £100 are in gasworks. Pop. in 1851, 2,833; in 1861, 2,189, of whom 390 were in the barracks, and 130 in the prison. The decrease of pop. was caused by the removal of soldiers and the closing of Government stores. The property is subdivided.

A nunnery was founded here in 680, by Werburgh, daughter of Wulfere of Mercia; was burnt by the Danes; was refounded as a cell to Bec abbey, in France; and was given, by Henry VI., to Eton College. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough. Value, £300. Patron, the Rev. T. Thornton. The church was rebuilt in 1825, but has a Norman tower. There are Independent and Wesleyan chapels, an endowed school with £101 a year, and charities £52.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848

WEEDON, or Weedon-Bec (St. Peter and St. Paul), a parish, in the union of Daventry, hundred of Fawsley, S. division of the county of Northampton, 4 miles (S. E. by E.) from Daventry; containing 2195 inhabitants.

This place is supposed by Camden and other antiquaries to be the Benevenna of the Romans, but that station is now generally referred to Borough Hill, near Daventry. Wulfhere, the first Christian king of Mercia, had a palace here, which, after his death, was converted by his daughter Werburgh into a nunnery, of which she became abbess, and which was destroyed by the Danes in the ninth century. William the Conqueror made a religious establishment at this place a cell or alien priory to the abbey of Bee, in Normandy, whence Weedon derived the affix to its name.

The parish comprises 2000 acres by admeasurement, and is watered by the river Nene, which takes its rise a few miles distant; some of the land is very rich, the surface is undulated, and the scenery pretty.

The village, situated in a valley, is divided into Upper and Lower Weedon; the latter portion is partly on the Holyhead road, at its junction with the road from Northampton to Daventry. The London and Birmingham railway passes through the parish, and has a station here. An act was passed in 1846 for a railway hence to Northampton, about six miles in length.

Shoes are extensively manufactured, for the sale-shops in London, and for exportation, especially to the West Indies; and many young females are engaged in making lace.

Above the village is the royal military depôt, one of the most magnificent establishments of the kind in Europe, consisting of a handsome centre with two detached wings forming the residence of the principal officers, and, on the summit of the hill, barracks for 500 men, where troops are always stationed. At the bottom of the lawn are eight storehouses and four magazines, which, till within a few years, contained 240,000 stand of small arms, exclusively of a proportionate quantity of artillery and ammunition.

A cut communicating with the Grand Junction canal affords a facility of conveyance for stores to any part of the kingdom. Attached to the buildings are shops for artificers of every kind connected with the establishment, and an hospital with accommodation for sixty patients. A part of the buildings is now converted into additional barracks, and another part into a military prison.

Courts leet are held occasionally, and a court baron annually; near Dodford Mill is a spot called Gallows Furlong, where criminals were anciently executed.

The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king’s books at £11; net income, £240; patron and impropriator, T. R. Thornton, Esq., of Brockhall. The tithes were commuted for land in 1776, and there are 18 acres of old glebe. The church, with the exception of the tower, was taken down and rebuilt in 1825: the parsonage-house occupies the site of the ancient palace of Wulfhere.

There are places of worship for Independents and Wesleyans; and a school endowed with about £100 per annum. The Roman Watling-street passes through the parish.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848