Keele Research Repository

Venerated at Polesworth (Warws.) in the late Anglo-Saxon period, the identity of St Edith remains uncertain, with medieval chroniclers suggesting various candidates, but she is likely to have been a seventh-century Mercian princess, perhaps also connected with a church near Louth (Lincs.). Buried at Polesworth, where miracles were still recorded in the thirteenth century, and perhaps with relics in the collegiate church at nearby Tamworth, her cult was very localised with only a few outliers elsewhere in the midlands, probably linked to the Marmion family, lords of Tamworth castle and the founders in the mid twelfth century of female religious house at Polesworth.