Meriden is a village which has historically been known as the geographical centre of England, even allegedly inspiring the word 'meridian'. It is located in an area of agricultural land now known as the 'Meriden Gap', in between the industrial cities of Birmingham and Coventry.

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The original Saxon settlement was called Alspath, meaning 'Ael's path' or 'Ael's way' in Old English. A Saxon church was in the area, dedicated to the martyr St. Edmund. Alspath was held by Lady Godiva, Countess of Mercia, in the 1060s and Gilbert de Segrave during the early 1200s. ​​In 1318, a license was granted to the de Kynton family for a weekly market to be held at their manor of Alspath, as well as an annual fair on the feast of St. Lawrence.

 

St. Laurence's Church in Meriden was established at some time in the 1180s on the hilltop site of the former Saxon church. About a mile southwest of the location is a well where St. Laurence was said to have baptised the first converts to Christianity in the parish. An octagonal font ornamented with quatrefoil panels was placed in the Church. During the reign of King Edward III (1327-1377) a village cross was placed on Meriden green, about a mile west from the Church.

 

John de Mowbray, 4th Baron Mowbray (and a grandson of King Henry III through his mother), inherited Alspath by right of his heiress wife Elizabeth in 1353. He later died while on crusade near to Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey. The manor was inherited by their 2 sons, firstly John de Mowbray, 1st Earl of Nottingham, 5th Baron Mowbray, 6th Baron Segrave, who died aged 17 and unmarried. It then passed secondly to the younger son Thomas de Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Thomas de Mowbray died in exile in 1400, and his son, also Thomas de Mowbray, was executed for high treason in 1405 after rebelling against Lancastrian King Henry IV. He was beheaded aged just 19 and his head was displayed for 2 months on a pike in York. 

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Alspath was seized by the crown in 1400 and was granted to Sir Thomas Rempston. In 1413, Alspath was returned to the de Mowbray's, possibly as part of King Henry V's policy of reconciling the families that had rebelled against his father. By 1452, John de Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, 4th Earl of Nottingham, 6th Earl of Norfolk, 9th Baron Mowbray, 10th Baron Segrave, granted the manor for life to his youngest sister, Isabel de Mowbray. Isabel's son by James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley, her second husband, was William de Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley. He inherited Alspath from his mother. 

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​In 1501, 'Alspath with Meriden' was passed to Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, by Isabel Harrison née Berkeley, and it was in the possession of the Stanleys until 1783. During this period, Sir John Walsh of Walsh Hall was buried at the east end of the north aisle of St. Laurence's Church in 1572 and gargoyles and griffins were carved on the tower and chancel arch. The Church was altered with the addition of a doorway with chamfered jambs and ogee arch in the 1500s, new windows in the early 1600s, the remaking of west window of the tower in the 1700s, and a new clock ordered by the churchwardens in 1763.​ Before the Civil War battle at Edgehill in 1642, 3,000 royalist troops camped on Meriden Heath. 

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Two alehouses in the village were recorded in the Hearth Tax Returns, 1662, but the ​establishment of the turnpiked London to Chester/Holyhead Road in 1724, upgraded in 1821, drew further development of Meriden to alongside this commercially profitable travel route. The road was known colloquially as 'Kingshighway' and is now the Holyhead Road. Meriden became a popular coaching stage in the Victorian era with many pubs, inns and amenities (such as a blacksmiths, postal office and wheelwrights) opening to cater to the demand. John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Meriden in 1870 as: 'having some good inns for the accommodation of travellers, and grown of late times to the credit of a village, utterly eclipsing its former name.'

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Wesleyanism became popular in Meriden, championed by schoolmaster John Allbut and with the establishment of a Methodist chapel on the main road. The Meriden Union workhouse was established in 1793, and served the population of several local parishes, including Great Packington. 

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St. Laurence's Church graveyard includes some notable individuals buried there during the Victorian period. General George Whichcote, veteran of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, lived locally at Meriden House from 1848 and was buried in the graveyard after his passing in 1891. A memorial stone records that Richard Taylor ‘died of smallpox’. ​Another grave is for the sister of popular Warwickshire writer Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Elliot. By 1893, the chantry chapel of the Church was being used as a vestry and organ chamber.