Knockin Parish is small parish of just over 200 electorate. The Parish encompasses Knockin village, the hamlet of Osbaston, and the area round the telescope. And it also includes the land as far as the A5 at the Shotatton cross roads and many of the fields and homes in between.
The village is a medieval plantation style village which is characterised by plots for tenements with kitchen gardens placed on each side of a single road through the settlement.
The hamlet of Osbaston is the oldest part of the Parish for it is mentioned in the Domesday Book but Knockin village is also old - over 800 years - and grew up around its medieval castle built by Guy le Strange, son of the Duke of Bretagne, during the reign of Henry II . The name Knockin is said to originate from the Welsh word ''cnwccuyn' meaning a low rise or hillock. In the 1200s there was a market every Tuesday, an annual fair and village stocks - all on a green in the centre of the village. The local gallows through were at Knockin Heath!!
Little is recorded about Knockin between 1300 and 1800 apart from the movement of the Welsh cloth market to Knockin from Oswestry in 1585 because of severe plague in Oswestry.
In the seventeenth century ownership of the estate passed to Lord Bradford. Knockin was then one of the centres of the administration of the Bradford 4,500 estate. By the 19th century there were some 54 houses as well as farms and small holdings on the estate, and in 1834 Lord Bradford
opened a school for both boys and girls. During this period the estate employed either directly or indirectly almost all the village. While the original houses were made from stone quarried on the estate at Llanymynech later houses were constructed of locally made bricks.
In the late twentieth century, the village has lost the school: the estate offices; the estate nursery; the policeman; the forge and garage. New life has come to Knockin with many estate houses being sold to private owners and there has been a modicum of new developments. Currently the Parish population is in the region of 230.
This information was taken from Knockin. A Brief History by Heather Parish