Rugby, Warwickshire

Rugby is a town in the county of Wawrickshire in central England pop (1991) 61,100.

The town is famous for a number of reasons most notably the invention of Rugby Football which is played throughout the world. And also Rugby School where the game was invented by William Webb Ellis in 1823.

The school was also the setting of the Thomas Hughes semi-autobiographical masterpiece Tom Brown's Schooldays

The towns main industries include Engineering, Tourism, Warehousing, and Cement production, incidentally Rugby has one of the largest cement works in Europe.

And the town is conveniently situated next to several important transport links, Which I'll go into.

HISTORY

Rugby through fortune of geography found itself through the ages, at the centre of whatever transport system prevailed at the time.

Although Rugby didn't exist per-se in Roman times, two major Roman roads were built very close to the site of modern day Rugby the Fosse way and Watling Street. And just outside modern day Rugby, remains have been found of a Roman settlement called Tripontium situated on the original Watling Street which is now known as the A5. Historians believe that the settlement was a kind of ancient service station providing stabling and accomodation to passing Roman armies and travelers.

Rugby was first mentioned as a place,in the Doomsday Book in the 11th century, as a small farming setllement then called Rocheby.

Rugby remained a small hamlet of little significance for centuries.

In the heyday of the stagecoach in the 18th century the nearby village of Dunchurch (which is now part of Rugby) was a major road junction and had many stables and Inns for travelers, situated on the main coaching road from London to Hollyhead Dunchurch was for a long time more important than Rugby.

In the 1770's The Oxford Canal was built just to the north of Rugby.

But Rugby really came into its own in the 19th century with the coming of the Railways . In the 1830's The London to Birmingham railway, which was the origional part of what later became the West Coast Mainline was built through the town, which at the time was still a tiny village.

In the 1840's Rugby was chosen almost by chance as the point at which the Midland Counties Railway which linked the East Eidlands and the north east of England, would form a junction to the London and Birmingham railway.

Immediatly Rugby became the most important and busy railway junction in Britain. It became even more important when The Trent valley Railway which linked the north west of England, formed a junction at Rugby, and a number of other less important railways were also built into Rugby.

Rugby grew rapidly as a railway town with its population reaching 10,000 in the 1850's with the Railways employing most of the population. It was also in this period when Rugby School came to prominance. And due to its transport links many Manufacturing industries located in Rugby.

By the 1860's the Railway became extremely congested, so much so that Charles Dickens lampooned it calling it "Mugsby Junction" in one of his novels.

And to relieve this congestion a new line, what is now called the Midland Main Line was built which had a more direct route to London, and avoided Rugby.

Much traffic was diverted onto the new line and Rugby's importance as a Railway junction was much diminished.