Its placename suggests an Anglo-Saxon settlement, possibly established by followers of a leader named Pacca or similar.

In this year Leofric, Earl of Mercia, endowed St. Mary's Abbey, Coventry, with the manor of Packington (and also other settlements in what is now Leicestershire).

It is unclear whether there was a church in Packington when Domesday Book was recorded, though mention of a priest suggests the possibility.

The oldest parts of the present Holy Rood Church are believed to date from the late eleventh century, or at the latest from the reign of King John (1199-1216).

Early modern times Following the dissolution, Packington passed into the hands of the Duke of Suffolk, who was subsequently executed for treason.

In 1563 it was granted to the Earl of Huntington, head of the Hastings family, who then resided at nearby Ashby Castle.

During the English Civil War the vicar, Thomas Pestell, was ejected from the church by Parliamentary troops and replaced by a Mr. Pegg.

Most of the manor was dedicated to farming, although one area along the road to Normanton, known as Coalpit Heath, was the scene of sporadic coal production and had been since at least the sixteenth century.

The Packington Round House was probably built in the late eighteenth century (the exact date is unknown) as part of the Hastings estate.

It was intended as a place to lock up offenders for short periods; it soon became a well-known local landmark and has remained so to the present day.

Later in the nineteenth century the manor passed to Charles Frederick Abney Hastings who married Edith, holder of a Scottish peerage as Countess of Loudoun.

The origins of this are obscure: it came to an end in 1884 when an Act of Parliament reformed local government; since then all of Packington has been in Leicestershire.

She decided to spend most of her time on her Scottish estate and arranged to sell off most of her holdings in Packington through auctions held in 1921 and 1922.

In 1938 a coalmine was opened along Spring Lane in an attempt to maximise production from the Coalpit Heath area.

This achieved limited success but was superseded by opencast mining from the early 1940s, carried out by Macalpines over approximately twenty years.

Despite the increase in its population over the last sixty years, Packington is still quintessentially an old English village retaining its original medieval road layout and many picturesque old buildings.