Arbury Hall

Ancestral home of the Newdigate family, built on the site of the former Arbury Priory. One of Nuneaton’s most famous ‘sons’, author George Eliot – actually a famous daughter, Mary Anne Evans – was born on one of the estate farms, her father was the estate’s land agent. She used Arbury Hall as the model for Cheverel Manor in Scenes of Clerical Life, it is the setting for Mr Gilfil’s Love Story.

. In more modern times the film Angels and Insects was filmed here; and became the fictional Hoxley Manor in BBC’s The Land Girls.

The Newdigate baronetcy was created on 24 July 1677 and became extinct with the death of the 5th baronet in 1806. The family name is later noted as Newdigate-Newdegate.

The 300 acre estate has a system of private canals. Connected to the Coventry Canal, there are six distinct sections, and a seventh (The Griff Hollows Canal) not connected to the others. The entire system covers 6 miles and has 13 locks – one a Y-shaped feature is the Triple Lock, with two separate entrances leading to different branches. A few visible signs remain on the estate today.

Arbury Park in South Australia is named after Arbury Hall. A 17-room Georgian-style house constructed in 1935 for politician Sir Alexander Downer, close friend of Sir Francis Alexander Newdigate-Newdegate (1862-1936) MP for Tamworth, Nuneaton, and Governor of Tasmania and Western Australia, which is why he chose the name.