Lower Catesby is a hamlet in the civil parish of Catesby, Northamptonshire, about southwest of Daventry. Lower Catesby is beside the nascent River Leam, which rises about to the south in the parish of Hellidon. The Jurassic Way long-distance footpath passes through Lower Catesby. The population of the hamlet is included in the civil parish of Hellidon.
The hamlets name means 'Katr's/Kati's farm/settlement'.
Archaeology
Roman coins of the Empress Faustina I (early 2nd century) and Emperor Maximian (late 3rd century) are said to have been found in Catesby Park near Lower Catesby before 1720.
Manor
The Domesday Book of 1086 records a manor of four hides at Catesby, and that one Sasfrid held it of William Peveral. In the 1230s Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury, committed his sisters Margaret and Alice to be nuns at the priory. An engraving made in about 1720 and drawings made in 1844 suggest a 16th-century house arranged 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. 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, 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, Pevsner and Cherry commented that the row "looks as if it were built as almshouses". Its porch incorporates a 13th-century Early English Gothic arch said to be from the priory.