Monks Kirby / Chircheberie / Kirkby

There is one entry for Monks Kirby [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SP4683/monks-kirby/] [accessed 5 January 2015]; it mentions two priests, but no church in it, though there probably was at least one church here. The National Gazetteer of 1868 gives the dedication of the church here as St. Denis. The Victoria County History (Warwik, vol. 6, 1951) notes: "Kirkby, the original form of the name of the parish, implies the early existence of a church here. At the Norman Conquest Geoffrey de Wirce found the church in ruin and, as already mentioned, rebuilt it and gave it to the Abbey of St. Nicholas, Angers. It was appropriated to the Priory of Monks Kirby and in 1291 was valued at £21 6s. 8d. [...] The parish church of ST. EDITH [...] was rebuilt in the latter part of the 14th century and again towards the end of the 15th century, when the present arcades were built, the upper part of the tower rebuilt, and most of the windows replaced. [...] The tower [...] has a modern tiled floor with a modern octagonal stone font in the centre." [NB: we have no information on the font of the original pre-Conquest church here]. The hamlet of Copston Magna has a neo-Gothic church of the Victorian period, St. John's, with a font of the same period. The nearby hamlet of Pailton laso had a 19th-century church. Both were built as chapels-of-ease to Monks Kirby.