Rugby has the nearest railway station on the West Coast Main Line, with trains to London Euston and several other parts of the country.

The manor was briefly confiscated after the attainder and execution of William Catesby, one of Richard III's counsellors, after the defeat at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, but was later returned to his son, George.

The manor's central location was convenient to the houses of the Catesbys' many friends and relations, which supposedly made Ashby St Ledgers a type of 'Command Centre' during the planning of the Gunpowder Plot.

In the room above the Gatehouse, with its privacy from the main house and clear view of the surrounding area, Robert Catesby, his servant Thomas Bates and the other conspirators are said to have planned a great deal of the Gunpowder Plot.

[10] In 1703, Esther I'Anson (Sir Bryan's elder brother John's great-granddaughter) sold the manor to Joseph Ashley, a London draper.

Their daughter, Elizabeth, married Joseph Pocklington in 1835, and the manor remained in their family until 1903, when it was sold to Ivor Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne,[7][9] who had previously rented it for hunting.

It passed through a series of owners, including the British Airways Pension Fund, who separated the manor house from the rest of the estate.

[7] The original medieval manor house was gradually replaced by later buildings, starting with a new range probably erected by the Catesbys in the early Tudor period.

After being widowed in 1828, Mary Senhouse took up residence in the manor and expanded it in Jacobean revival style; a lifesize oil painting on the cellar door of a "Herculean" figure brandishing a club dates to this period and presumably alludes to the Guy Fawkes association of the house.