around a central courtyard and a symmetrical west front rebuilt about 1700, with a very formal garden around the house and extending to the east of it. The central courtyard could have been derived from the priory courtyard. In Catesby churchyard is the tomb of John Parkhurst (1701–65). One of his sons was the Revd. John Parkhurst (1728–97), who was a biblical lexicographer. In 1861 the 17th-century church was demolished and replaced by the present Church of England parish church of SS Edmund and Mary, which was designed by Gillet of Leicester and completed in 1862. The present church includes a Decorated Gothic sedilia and piscina dating from about 1300, almost certainly carved for the priory church when it was rebuilt in about 1301. The present church also includes Jacobean woodwork from its 17th-century predecessor: a communion rail with barley-twist balusters, and a pulpit and tester. In 1863 the Catesby House was demolished and a new one was built above lower Catesby, about half-way up the hill to Upper Catesby. The new Catesby House is Jacobethan and incorporates items from previous buildings at Lower Catesby: 16th-century linenfold panelling said to come from the priory, and 17th-century panelling, doorcases and a stair with barley-sugar balusters, all from the old Catesby House. In 1894 Catesby House was enlarged and a vestry and west porch were added to the church. A long, rectangular formal pond survives from the gardens of the old Catesby House. There are earthworks, many of them rectilinear, indicating house or priory walls and further formal ponds. It is not entirely clear which walls are from the house and which are from the priory. Village The hamlet of Lower Catesby is a shrunken village. The modern hamlet has only a handful of houses, all of which are 17th-century or later. It is surrounded by numerous earthen features showing where cottages and the main village street had been. Most of the fields around the former village still have clear ridge and furrow marks from the ploughing of the medieval arable farming with an open field system divided into narrow strips. Just north of the church is a row of four early 17th-century cottages. Pevsner and Cherry commented that the row "looks as if it were built as almshouses". Stone House in Upper Catesby, about east of the ruins of Upper Catesby church, is early 18th-century. Its porch incorporates a 13th-century Early