Monks Kirby is a village and civil parish in north-eastern Warwickshire, England. The population of the parish is 445. Monks Kirby is located around one mile east of the Fosse Way, around 8 miles north-west of Rugby, seven miles north-east of Coventry and six miles west of Lutterworth. Administratively it forms part of the borough of Rugby. One of the largest and most important villages in this part of Warwickshire in the Anglo-Saxon and later medieval period, the village continued to be a local administrative centre into the early 20th century. The parish boundaries include two important landed estates: Newnham Paddox, seat of the family of the Earls of Denbigh since the 15th century and Newbold Revel, home of the medieval writer Sir Thomas Malory. Monks Kirby is today a small, attractive, wealthy commuter village with many residents working in Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester and London. Monks Kirby is dominated by the church of St Edith, a site of Christian worship since at least the 10th century and which functioned as a Priory in the Middle Ages. Reflecting its medieval aristocratic and ecclesiastical importance, Monks Kirby is the largest historic parish in Warwickshire and St Edith's one of the largest parish churches in the county. History Monks Kirby has been inhabited since at least Roman times, with evidence (Roman urns and bricks) found around the Church suggesting either a Roman cemetery or villa on the current Church site. Anglo-Saxon Period and Norman Conquest The good soils, strategic location (near the meeting point of the Fosse Way and Watling Street) and size of the parish suggest it was the dominant village in this part of Warwickshire before the Norman Conquest. The pre-Conquest church of Monks Kirby was the mother church for the surrounding area, connected to the important aristocratic estate of Newnham probably at least as far back as the eighth or ninth century. In the 900s the village was on the frontier between the Viking controlled Danelaw and Anglo-Saxon Mercia. Monks Kirby is just on the west (Anglo-Saxon) side of Watling Street, which was the border. The village's name is first recorded, in Latin, as Kirkberia in 1077 (see below); this is a mix of Danish English Kirk (church) and Anglo-Saxon bury meaning a fortified settlement. In time, the name became Kirkeby and then Kirby. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the neighbouring estate of Newnham Paddox was owned by