In 1820 the game of rugby was played rather like soccer, but players were allowed to catch the ball and kick it out of their hands. William Webb Ellis, a schoolboy at Rugby School in 1823, broke the rule one day while playing on the School’s main playing field, The Close, by taking the ball in his arms and running forward with it, thus initiating the distinctive feature of what we now know as rugby. The game is still played on The Close today

Rugby School is one of England’s oldest and most prestigious public schools and Thomas Hughes’s semi-autobiographical book Tom Brown’s Schooldays was based on his time there. In 2004 Stephen Fry starred in a dramatisation of the novel and a substantial part of the filming was on location here

Most of the buildings in the Town Centre are Victorian or early 20th Century but a few much older buildings older than this still survive along with some more modern developments. The main shopping area in the town itself are in the streets around The Clock Tower which was built in 1887 in honour of Queen Victoria’s jubilee. The town centre has an indoor shopping centre called Rugby Central Shopping Centre which opened in 1979 (previously named The Clock Tower. In recent years several out-of-town retail centres have opened and expanded to the north of the town including Elliots Field Retail Park, Junction 1 Retail Park and Technology Drive