Lapley

Lapley is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lapley, Stretton and Wheaton Aston, in the South Staffordshire district, in the county of Staffordshire, England. It is some 3.5 miles WSW of Penkridge, 1.5 miles east of Wheaton Aston, 0.5 miles northeast of the Shropshire Union Canal, 1.5 miles north of Watling Street, and 6 miles SSW of Stafford. In 1961 the parish had a population of 840. On 1 April 1986 the parish was abolished and merged with Stretton to form "Lapley and Stretton", part also went to Penkridge.

==Lapley Priory== Lapley Priory was a community of Black Monks (Benedictines), endowed c.1061, in the time of Edward the Confessor, by Ælfgar, Lord of Mercia and Chester, in memory of his third son Burgheard who died in Reims while returning from a pilgrimage to Rome with Aldred Archbishop of York. It had been Burchard's dying wish to be buried at the Abbey of Saint-Remi and for his father to donate land in return. Accordingly, Alfgar bestowed land at Lapley and elsewhere in Staffordshire and Shropshire on Rheims Abbey, which established a satellite house at Lapley, probably in the mid-12th century. In due course, it was suppressed by Henry V, who suppressed all alien priories in 1415 during the wars with France, before the general monastic Dissolution of 1537-8. Its estates became the property of the college of Tong, in Shropshire. In the English civil wars, the Priory House was fortified and garrisoned, but in 1645 it was dismantled under a parliamentary order. Some remains of the abbey are still visible in the walls of an old house near the church.