[1] The manor is recorded in the Domesday Book where it is listed as Holehale, one of the lands of Robert de Stafford.

"[2][3] Waga, whose name is preserved in the nearby village of Wootton Wawen, was one of the witness's to Earl Leofric's, husband of Lady Godiva, foundation of the monastery at Coventry during the first year of the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042/3).

An inventory taken in 1652 shows that it was then an ordinary farmhouse, and a member of the Knight family appeared in the 1682 Heralds' Visitation of Warwick.

When his son married in 1750 he commissioned the Italian architect Joseph Bonomi the Elder to build an imposing extension, which thereafter became the main house.

His wife Henrietta, Lady Luxborough, made the house the hub of a literary circle after her husband banished her to Barrells following a romantic indiscretion.

[1] Nationally it is part of Stratford-on-Avon parliamentary constituency, whose current MP is Nadhim Zahawi of the Conservative Party.

Situated on a hill to the north of the village is the old parish church of St Marys which is locally referred to as the Chapel.

The modern church of St Mary is down in the village and was constructed in 1875 at a cost of £5,000 to an odd idiosyncratic design by John Pollard Seddon in the Early English style[12] by the three Newton brothers of Barrells Hall and Glencripesdale Estate in memory of their parents Mary & William Newton.

It has ancient oak status according to the Woodland Trust and with a girth of over seven metres, it certainly makes an impressive sight at the roadside.