Distance: 7.4 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from Coleshill, a north Warwickshire market town via Maxstoke, site of impressive unusually well preserved medieval priory remains, to Meriden starts from Coleshill Parkway Station.
The Story
Route Notes
Getting Back
Maxstoke’s Massive Medieval Remains
Maxstoke is a tiny hamlet in northern Warwickshire roughly midway between the market town of Coleshill and Meriden which is in West Midlands county.
It is a tiny place with a population of 270 in the parish, but barely dozens in the village itself.
What makes Maxstoke remarkable is the fact that much of the village is dominated by uniquely well preserved remains of a late medieval priory. Maxstoke Priory was constructed from red Coventry sandstone in the 1330s, endowed by William de Clinton the baron of Maxstoke Castle and 1st Earl of Huntingdon. The 14th Century was towards the end of the monastic era in England. While the foundations that supported monastic orders remained powerful after the Black Death in the late 1340s the number of initiates dwindled. Rich and powerful people remained willing to donate lands and money to their continuance, but movements like Lollardy, drawing on the teachings of John Wycliffe who was priest at Lutterworth in the 1370s and 1380s, not too far from Maxstoke, increasingly influenced and responded to secular critiques of the monastic system.
These critiques took effect in 1536 when Maxstoke Priory became part of the first tranche of monastic establishments to be closed and their property nationalised under Henry VIII. The dissolution of the monasteries in England owed rather more to the secular needs of the crown than adherence to the new reformed branch of Protestantism. However, it was not a new concept, rather there had been a push within England since at least the late 14th Century when movements like Lollardy emerged for the dissolution of the monastery and the nationalisation of their property.
Remarkably, while much of the monastic remains at Maxstoke have collapsed or been demolished in the almost 500 years since the institution was closed, a large portion of it remains, and what is left gives an unusually vivid sense of its size and layout.
The monastery’s red sandstone wall remains enclosing Maxstoke farm. Behind it upright remains of the structure can still be seen, but an awful lot less than was the case in the 18th Century when an incredibly complete church and set of buildings was recorded (assuming the sketches were broadly true to life). Approaching the farm and following the road running along the wall through the village, many of the buildings in the farm look like they are of partially medieval origins. Halfway up the wall stands a gatehouse in good condition. While on site some of the ecclesiastical as well as secular buildings of the monastery still remain, however, they are not usually accessible to members of the public.
Maxstoke Priory is not the only historic medieval building in or around the hamlet. To the north of the village stands Maxstoke Castle, which is also generally inaccessible to the public, though easier to gain access to than the farm which has developed inside the remains of the priory. Maxstoke Castle is remarkable because it largely retains its late medieval curtain wall and has its moat intact. The castle keep was cleared away in favour of a partially wooden framed early modern, largely 18th and 19th Century house up against the castle’s northern wall. Like Maxstoke Priory, Maxstoke Castle was constructed on the orders of Willam de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntington.
The now quiet, remote seeming, area around Maxstoke was evidently a lure for the rich and powerful in the late middle ages and early modern period. The Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield had a palace at Maxstoke during this period too. It was here between 1512 and 1522 that at least some of the 74 Coventry citizens accused of being members of the underground Lollard religious movement, sparked by John Wycliffe’s work in the late 14th Century, were put on trial for heresy.
Were these people followers of Wycliffe? Probably not, or not in any coherent or organic way, not least because it was well over 100 years after Wycliffe’s time and a century since widespread suppression of Lollardy began in the 1400s. Rather prior to the reformation in England many religious dissenters or those whose views were critical of the established church or just unconventional were accused of Lollardy. However, perhaps due to Coventry’s situation in the 14th, 15th and early 16th Centuries as a vast city for the times, and probably England’s predominant industrial centre, it is little surprise that there were those who dissented in their religious views to a greater or lesser extent.
Key to the cases against the Coventry Lollards, known to history as the Coventry Martyrs, were the fact that upon their arrest the accused owned religious texts including portions of the bible written in English rather than Latin. Others were well known religious dissenters, in the case of Joan Washingby, the first to be executed for heresy, she had first come to the attention of the religious authorities 20 years prior.
The majority of the 74 arrested and questioned during these years abjured their beliefs and after offering penance were released back into the community. Nine of them including Joan Washingby, one other woman, and seven men, refused to recant and were put to death by burning in Coventry city centre. The final person to be burnt that decade, dying during 1522 was Robert Silkby, who appears to have been a Lollard librarian acquiring and lending out English language religious texts.
This early 16th Century persecution of religious dissenters was not the first wave of action by Coventry’s religious and civic authorities against Lollardy. Rather concerns about challenges to established church doctrine and practice were first raised in 1414 at the heart of the civil crackdown on the faith in the wake of John Oldcastle’s Revolt. Later in the 15th Century there was civil disorder in 1424 and 1431 blamed on Lollardy, with no less a civic figure than the wife of the mayor being tried by an ecclesiastical court and executed by burning in 1432. Lollardy was less frequently detected or suspected in the later 15th Century but there were still trials of dissenters by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in the 1450s and 1480s.
A coda to the bloody episode of the Coventry Martyrs is the execution of three Protestant reformers in 1555 during the brief restoration of Catholicism under Mary Tudor. However, by then the state religion had taken on many of the outwards signs of Lollardy. In the early 20th Century, long after the religious turmoil and struggles of the late middle ages and early modern period, a cross was erected in Coventry in memory of the Martyrs. However, a remarkably large amount of the details about them inscribed on the cross is incorrect.
Route Notes
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
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This walk from Coleshill, a north Warwickshire market town via Maxstoke, site of impressive unusually well preserved medieval priory remains, to Meriden starts from Coleshill Parkway Station.
Exit the station onto the side of the tracks which run west towards Birmingham and cross the station forecourt.
Walk straight ahead along the main road of an industrial estate on the northern edge of Coleshill.
Entering the residential part of the town, cross the River Cole and continue uphill into the historic heart of Coleshill.
Soon opposite Coleshill parish church’s steeple following a waymark turn left heading through a lychgate towards the church.
Turning right, head down past Coleshill churchyard and a lane heading towards the edge of the town.
Cross a road and pick up a lane on the far side before heading out into the fields, descending from the town towards the lane which runs towards Maxstoke.
Crossing a bridge you reach the edge of the fields and enter the lane turning right.
Visibility on the road is generally good, but vehicles travel fast along it so take care.
Soon after crossing the River Blythe you come to a quieter lane on the right. Turn right down this lane and follow it until you rejoin the busier road near the western edge of Maxstoke.
Approach Maxstoke and the former priory remains along the road and follow the road to the left heading uphill past the medieval remains.
Past Maxstoke parish church, turn right and continue along the road.
Take care as you walk because the road is quite busy, though most drivers were exercising reasonable care, and there are grass verges which provide refuge.
Soon you walk beneath the M6 motorway and past the Forest of Arden Hotel.
Beyond the hotel you continue along the road through the hilly terrain approaching Meriden.
On the edge of the village you pick up a pavement and walk across a road bridge over the busy A45, the main road between Birmingham and Coventry across the Meirden Gap.
Having crossed the A45 turn left and head down a flight of steps to an old lane which leads into the heart of the village.
You emerge from a suburban road into the centre of Meriden. Historically it was claimed that Meriden Cross in the centre of the village is the most central point of England.
From here the X1 bus stops offering frequent services to Coventry and to Birmingham via Birmingham Airport are nearby.
This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
At the time of writing in November 2025 the X1 bus ran every twenty minutes throughout the day between Coventry and Birmingham and vice versa via Meriden. The Birmingham bound bus runs via Birmingham International Airport and through the city’s eastern suburbs like Sheldon, Yardley and Hay Mills. Meriden is also served by the hourly, on weekdays and Saturdays no Sunday service, bus 82 between Coventry and Solihull. With the 232 running once on Wednesday and Friday afternoons only back to Coleshill.