than that recorded in the Domesday book, far lower than the village's population in the nineteenth century and probably the twelfth and thirteenth century too. Since the 1950s the primarily agricultural population of the village has been replaced by a wealthy, well educated older demographic through a process of extended suburbanisation from the many nearby towns and cities. Residents are attracted by the quiet, well kept village, with good road connections. The village is in the Coventry Green Belt. Apart from one village pub, The Denbigh Arms, the village now has no shops or other commercial enterprises. There are two churches: St Edith's Anglican Church and St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church. There is also a well-used village hall and the Revel school. The village has moved significantly since the medieval era and particularly in the last seventy years. While the historic village was centred around the parish church, the centre of the village today is further to the north east: the village has merged with Brockhurst which was a separate hamlet on the other side of the Smite brook. Roman Catholic Community Monks Kirby has been a local centre for the Roman Catholic faith since the conversion of Rudolph, the 8th Earl of Denbigh to Catholicism in 1850. St Joseph's convent and girls school/orphanage were established in the village in the 1870s. The first nuns were Sisters of Charity from a convent on the Earl's other estate at Pantasaph in Flintshire, North Wales. The Sisters of Charity were succeeded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1923. During the Second World War, The 10th Earl of Denbigh handed over Newnham Paddox House to another community of nuns: Cannonesses of the Holy Sepulchre. These nuns had evacuated their convent, New Hall in Chelmsford in 1940, due to the threat of bombing. During the war, the Canonesses ran a school for local children. They returned to New Hall in 1945. The Sisters of Mercy remained at the Monks Kirby convent until 1977. In 1982 the convent was occupied by the first congregation of Mary, Mother of the Church (now called "Mater Ecclesiae") established by Sister Catherine Mulligan as a new convent for mature women looking to enter religious life. In 1998 the Mater Ecclesiae congregation moved to Street Ashton House in the neighbouring hamlet of Street Ashton, where it was based until 2020. The remaining, elderly sisters have now dispersed and Street Ashton