Leicestershire villages: H and I

Some brief notes about the twenty villages in the county beginning with ‘H’ and ‘I’.

101. Hallaton, north of Market Harborough. The Hallaton Treasure, including over 5,000 Iron Age and Roman coins, jewellery, and a first-century Roman cavalry helmet, was discovered near the village in 2000, in what archaeologists think was an open air shrine dating from about 50 BC.

102. Harby, north of Melton Mowbray near the Nottinghamshire border. The Grantham Canal, going west to east from the Trent to Grantham, goes just north of the village. Opened in 1797, it was profitable until the 1840s but declined when railways arrived and was closed in 1936. It is slowly being made renavigable.

103. Harston, west of Grantham. This area feels peaceful now, but iron ore was quarried round Harston from the 1880s to the 1970s. The ore was mostly taken by rail (originally a narrow-gauge tramway) north to the mainline at Muston. Few traces remain of the quarries or railways now.

104. Hathern, NW of Loughborough. The village has long been known as ‘Wicked Hathern’, which is now the name of its brewery. When Rev ETM Phillips became rector in 1808 he found his parishioners were prone to fighting and misbehaving in church; but he took a firm stand and behaviour apparently improved.

105. Heather (pronounced ‘Heether’), south-west of Coalville. In the Domesday book it is called Hadre, ‘The Heathland’. A large open-cast coalmine to the north-east of the village extracted some eight million tonnes of coal in the 1980s and 1990s, and is now Sence Valley Forest Park.

106. Hemington, in the far north-west of the county. Its church was abandoned by 1590, and the tower collapsed in 1986. To the north-east were the Hemington bridges over the Trent. The remains of the first bridge, built c1097 and found in 1993, are the most complete Saxo-Norman timber structure found in Britain.

107. Higham on the Hill, NW of Hinckley. Robert Burton (1577-1640), writer and clergyman, was born at nearby Lindley Hall (demolished 1925). His treatise, The Anatomy of Melancholy, a wide-ranging, erudite analysis of human emotion and thought, was later admired by Samuel Johnson and Laurence Stern.

109. Hoby, west of Melton Mowbray. In the 1640s, a Civil War-related dispute over who should be the rector at Hoby led to Lydia Rawson, wife of one of the claimants, and her many children living in the church tower at Rotherby, ‘with a blanket hung between them and the congregation’.¹

130. Holwell, north of Melton. The name of this small village comes from a chalybeate spring (one which contains salts of iron), the source of the River Smite. Iron ore was quarried and mined to the north and east of the village from the late C19th; the area is now a nature reserve.

110. Horninghold, in east Leicestershire. The Rev Humphrey Michel, Vicar here from 1676 until he died in 1722, kept an eccentric diary: as well as casually recording the ‘dowsing’ of witches, he grumbles that his servant, Mary Ellis, was ‘very idle, spoiled several vessels, lost my door key &c’.²

111. Hose, north of Melton Mowbray. The Domesday Book shows Hose had more Saxons and slaves, and fewer Vikings, than other villages in the area, and that it was more productive. The Black Death later took its toll: the list of vicars in the church shows that three died between 1348 and 1352.

112. Hoton, east of Loughborough, once had a windmill - one of about 150 in the county at their peak in the 1830s. A post mill, with a revolving wooden body so the sails could be turned to face the wind, it was destroyed by lightning in the early C20th. (The church at Hoton is now a private residence.)

113. Houghton on the Hill, east of Leicester. The landscape artist John Glover (1767-1849) was born here. He made his name in Lichfield, opened a gallery in London, and in 1831 moved to Tasmania, where he painted naturalistic and atmospheric scenes of nature, settler life and Aboriginal culture.³

114. Hugglescote, south of Coalville. The first written reference to the village, as Hukekscot, was in 1227. By 1279, the manor consisted of 760 acres, 10 free tenants, 9 serfs, a water mill, a fish pond, a pool called Sheepy, and nine gallows. The village still has a rare Edward VIII postbox.

115. Huncote, south-west of Leicester. A watermill was recorded in the Domesday Book, worth 10 shillings; milling only ceased in the early twentieth century. An historic ‘chapel of ease’ was in ruins by 1622 and the present church was built in 1898, but funds ran out and no tower was ever built.

116. Hungarton, east of Leicester. Three of the four medieval villages in the parish are now deserted, including Ingarsby, one of the best-preserved in England. There are also three great houses, including Quenby Hall, whose owner, Shukburgh Ashby, rebuilt the village in chequered brick in 1766-75.

117. Husbands Bosworth, west of Market Harborough. The source of the River Welland is to the south-east of the village. The 1,066 metre Husbands Bosworth tunnel on the Grand Union canal is to the north. John Cook (1608-60), who prosecuted Charles I and was Cromwell’s Solicitor General, was baptised here.

118. Ibstock, south of Coalville. William Laud, who was Rector here from 1617-26, became Archbishop of Canterbury and a key adviser to Charles I in the run-up to the Civil War; he was executed by Parliament in 1645. Ibstock Brick, founded as a colliery in 1825, still has its headquarters in the village.

119. Illston on the Hill, south-east of Leicester, is on the spur of a hill over 550ft high. Its name was spelt over 20 different ways in the Middle Ages (including Elvestone, Eluestun, Elueston, Nelvestone, Neluestone, Jelverston, Ilueston, Iluestona, Iluestone, Ylueston, Yluestona, Ylvyston, Ilveston, Ilvestona, Iluiston, Iluyston, Illeston, Yleston, Ileston, Ilston, Ylston, Illston, Ylson and Ilson⁴). It was once a chapelry divided between Carlton Curlieu and Noseley - in alternate years, each of the parish churches served the chapel.

133. Isley Walton, SW of East Midlands Airport. The Worshipful Company of Bowyers - established in the fourteenth century, when longbows became widely used, and central to English victories such as that at Agincourt - was bequeathed the Manor and Lordship of Isley Walton in 1629. It kept the estate until 1890.⁵

Previous instalments: ‘A’s, ‘B’s, ‘C’s, ‘D’s and ‘E’s and ‘F’s and ‘G’s.

Next instalment (‘K’s and ‘L’s) here.

1. This story is taken from a detailed history of Hoby here.

2. There is more on Michel, including a link to an extract from his diaries published in the C19th, on the Horninghold village website here.

3. More about John Glover and images of some of his paintings can be found here.

4. Source.

5. The church at Isley Walton appears to be generally inaccessible down a private driveway, so I have used the photo from this website (all the other photos here are my own.)