Shepshed, Leicestershire
Historical Description
Shepshed (formerly Sheepshead or Sheepshed; Saxon, Schepehefsde), a village and a parish in Leicestershire. The village stands on an affluent of the river Soar, within the NE side of Chamwood Forest, 5 miles W of Loughborough, with a station on the Loughborough and Nuneaton branch of the L. & N.W.R. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Longhborough. The parish comprises 5425 acres; population of the civil parish, 4416; of the ecclesiastical, 4058. There is an urban district council consisting of twelve members. The surface is partly hilly, rising toward the mountainous ground of High Peak, and includes Beacon Hill and Bardon Hill, which command very extensive views. Framework-knitting, glove-making, needle-making, granite-working, and the manufacture of boots and shoes are carried on. From 1690 the manor belonged to the Phillipps of Garenden family, but passed in 1796, on the death of Lady Gordon, widow of Samuel Phillipps, the last of the Phillipps male line, to his cousin Thomas March, whose grandson in 1862 added the name of De Lisle to that of March-Phillipps. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough; net value, £219 with residence. The church is an ancient building of Charnwood Forest stone, in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, S porch, and a western tower with spire. It contains a brass of 1592, and several memorials to the Phillipps family. There are Baptist, Free Methodist, Primitive Methodist, Reformed Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, and Wesleyan chapels, and some small charities. The ecclesiastical parish of Oaks-in-Charnwood is noticed separately.
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 | Sheepshead St. Botolph | |
Hundred | West Goscote | |
Poor Law union | Loughborough |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Findmypast, in association with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, have the following parish records online for Shepshed:
Baptisms | Banns | Marriages | Burials |
---|---|---|---|
1538-1916 | 1754-1940 | 1538-1931 | 1538-1968 |
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Shepshed from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Sheepshead (St. Botolph))
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Leicestershire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Shepshed 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: