Origins: Tun of Bulca’s people

Domesday: Count of Meulan held 4 hides and 1 virgate of land . Land for 8 ploughs. In demesne 1 plough and 2 slaves and 5 villans with 1 plough. 100 acres of meadow.

A large village which can probably be best summed up in the words of John Burton “in recent post war years the village has lost its uniqueness , and most of its buildings”. John has published an excellent book “Around Bulkington in old photographs with Ansty and Shilton” which gives some sense of what the village(s) were like up to the 1950s and what has been lost.

There are some cottages which could have been weaver’s cottages (an occupation that was a major employer in the early 1800s but ran into a heavy recession in the mid 1800s) but as the book shows many of the more splendid examples have been demolished. Essentially what remains is a 20th century commuter village for Coventry or Nuneaton.

My family were in Ryton for many years, a hamlet adjoining Bulkington, but this has been subsumed by Bulkington and largely suffered the same fate.

The Dunning family were in Ryton from at least 1830 to 1900 working as mainly weavers in the early years then switching to agricultural labourers and eventually some became farmers. Weaving continued up to the 1900s, my great great grandmother giving her occupation as silk weaver at the 1901 census.

If you have any information, especially pictures, of Ryton or the Dunning family who were big Methodists then I would love to hear from you:

For a description of the village in the late 1800s a Kellys Guide of 1880 is attached.

A look at what the 1851 census shows can be viewed here