By Rev. F. C. Hipkins, M.A., F.S.A.
Very early in the annals of England the name of Repton appears. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle it is mentioned three times:—(1) A.D. 755, “In the same year Æthelbald, King of the Mercians, was slain at Seccandune (Seckington, Warwickshire), and his body lies at Hreopandune (Repton)”; (2) A.D. 874, “In this year the army of the Danes went from Lindsey to Hreopedune, and there took up their winter quarters”; (3) A.D. 875, “In this year the army departed from Hreopedune.”
Professor Skeat thinks that “the name signifies Hreopa’s down, i.e., Hreopa’s hill-fort. Hreopa being the name of some Anglo-Saxon warrior, not otherwise known.”
In Domesday Book the name is spelt Rapendun, and many variations as to the spelling of the name appear in mediæval and modern documents.
Repton: Parish Church and Priory Gateway.
Stebbing Shaw, in the Topographer (ii., 250), writes: “Here was, before A.D. 600, a noble monastery of religious men and women, under the government of an Abbess, after the Saxon Way, wherein several of the royal line were buried.”
Tradition says that this monastery was founded by St. David about the year 600, but as no records of the monastery have been discovered, we cannot tell with any precision when it was founded, or by whom. Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, was slain by Oswin, King of Northumbria, at the battle of Winwadfield in the year 656, and was succeeded by his brother Peada, who had been converted to Christianity by Alfred, brother of Oswin, and was baptized, with all his attendants, by Finan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, at Walton, in the year 632 (Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj.). King Peada is said to have brought into the midlands four priests, Adda, Betti, Cedda (brother of St. Chad), and Diuma, who was consecrated first bishop of the Middle Angles and Mercians. In the year 657 Peada was slain “in a very nefarious manner during the festival of Easter,” and was succeeded by his brother Wulphere.
Tanner, Notitia, f. 78; Leland, Collect, vol. ii., p. 157; Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. ii., pp. 280–2, agree that the monastery was founded before the year 660, so that either Peada or his brother Wulphere may have been the founder.