POLESWORTH, a parish in the Tamworth division of the hundred of HEMLINGFORD, county of WARWICK, 4 miles (E. S. E.) from Tamworth, containing 1834 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Coventry, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, rated in the king's books at £10, and in the patronage of the Crown. The church is dedicated to St. Edith. The Independents have recently erected a place of worship here. A Benedictine .nunnery, in honour of our Lady, was founded here about the beginning of the ninth century, by King Egbert, of which his daughter Editha was abbess, to whom, on her canonization, it was afterwards dedicated. Soon after the Conquest, the nuns were dispossessed of their lands, and retired to their cell at Oldbury; but, in the time of Stephen, they, returned hither, and from Henry III. had the grant of a weekly market and an annual fair; at the dissolution this house possessed a revenue of £ 109. 6. 6.: there are still considerable remains of the conventual buildings. The Coventry canal passes through the parish. Francis Nethersole, in 165 6, founded and liberally endowed a free school: the income is applied for teaching and apprenticing children of both sexes.