Higham on the Hill, Leicestershire
Historical Description
Higham-on-the-Hill, a village and a parish in Leicestershire, pleasantly situated NE of Watling Street, with a station on the Ashby and Nuneaton branch of the M. and L. & N.W. Joint railways, 2½ miles NE from Nuneaton. There is a post office under Nuneaton; money order and telegraph office, Stoke Golding. The parish contains also the manor of Lindley. Acreage, 2651; population, 553. The Higham manor belongs to the Fisher family. Lindley Hall was occupied by John Hardwick, who led the Earl of Richmond to Bosworth field; was the residence of William Burton, the first historian of Leicestershire; and is now the seat of the Eyre family. Higham Grange is also another chief residence. Several Roman coins, ancient rings, and many silver coins of Henry III. were found, in the early part of the 17th century, near Watling Street. There is a fine spring in the village street, at which Richmond's soldiers refreshed themselves after the battle. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peter* borough; gross yearly value, £500. The church is modern, and has an ancient Norman tower. There are some small charities.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Leicestershire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Higham-on-the-Hill St. Peter | |
Hundred | Sparkenhoe |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1707, but the earlier records are defective, many vacancies occurring.
Findmypast, in association with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, have the following parish records online for Higham on the Hill:
Baptisms | Banns | Marriages | Burials |
---|---|---|---|
1790-1906 | 1823-1937 | 1754-1931 | 1790-1897 |
Churches
Church of England
St. Peter (parish church)
The church of St. Peter, originally erected In the 11th or early in the 12th century, is a building of stone, now chiefly in the Early Decorated style, consisting of chancel, nave, south aisle, south porch and a western tower containing 6 bells, three of which are dated respectively 1563, 1589 and 1629; two more were added in 1872 and the sixth in 1924, and the clock in 1873: the tower, the only remaining portion of the old church, is a good specimen of Early Norman: the rest of the fabric was pulled down in 1790 and the monuments destroyed: the nave only was then rebuilt in the style of that period: in 1856 a south aisle of four bays was added in the Early Decorated style, and in 1871 a chancel in the same style, with a stained east window, was erected to the memory of the Rev. John Fisher, a former rector, and the nave remodelled: there are memorial windows to Sophia Frances Fisher, d. 1879, to Mary Harington Kempson, d. 1868, Ada Mary Ashton, d. 1870, Emily Fisher, 1st wife, and Brevet Maj. Arthur Fisher, son of John Fisher esq. and another erected in 1907 by Dr. F. H. Craddock; a tablet was erected in 1919 as a memorial to the men of the parish who fell in the Great War, 1914-18: the church plate includes a chalice with lid dated 1608 and the inscription, "For the towne of Hyhom": the church affords 360 sittings.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Higham on the Hill from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Higham-on-the-Hill (St. Peter))
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Leicestershire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Higham on the Hill are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Leicestershire newspapers online: