Belgrave Church – St Peter’s
Although today Belgrave is a suburb of the sprawling city of Leicester it once was a pleasant wealthy village situated to the north of Leicester. Rich merchants built large houses to escape the squalor of the nearby city and some of them remain and one is open to the public. The village was known as ‘Merdegrave’ during the Domesday Book where it was owned by Hugh de Grentemesnil. The ancient parish also contained the chapelries of Birstall and South Thumaston which eventually became seperate parishes in the 19th century. The church was...
read moreLoughborough Church – All Saints & Holy Trinity
Loughborough is our largest town in the north of the county and it expanded a great deal during the Industrial Revolution, from 1801 to 1831 the population doubled to 10,969. It is the administrative centre for Charnwwod district and has a population today of 59,000. Mentioned in the Domesday Book the village began life as a Saxon village and the town is probably named after a certain ‘Lehedes’ and the second part ‘borough’ means a fortified settlement or ‘burh’. So we have eventually Loghborough. Today it...
read moreSutton Cheney Church – St James
This pretty village has a population of around 550 and is 14 miles west of Leicester and very near to the Battle of Bosworth which occurred in 1485. There will be a section on the battle added to the site soon – in the meantime I have added a link to Bosworth Battlefield site further down. Before and after the Norman Conquest the major part of the manor (including a windmill) was owned by the Abbey of Croyland in Lincolnshire. A later rich tenant farmer named Chainell looked after the Abbeys land and this gave rise eventually to...
read moreCarlton Church – St Andrew
Carlton lies a couple of miles north of Market Bosworth and 16 miles west of Leicester. It is a small village and has a population of around 300 people. There is no mention of the village in the Domesday Book so this is probably a post Norman settlement. The parish registers go back to 1574. The church of St Andrew is a brick and stone building rebuilt in 1764 on a stone plinth after the earlier church burnt down. In 1867 Goddard & Son (I think I have ran into these before on my travels) renovated the church by altering the windows and...
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