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Willesley (St. Thomas)

WILLESLEY (St. Thomas), a parish, in the union of Ashby, hundred of Repton and Gresley, S. division of the county of Derby, locally in the W. division of the hundred of Goscote, county of Leicester, 2 miles (S. W. by S.) from Ashby; containing 53 inhabitants. The manor was given by Wulfric Spott to Burton Abbey, under which it was held in the 13th and 14th centuries by the family of Ingwardby, from whom it passed by marriage to the Abneys, who resided here for many generations. Thomas Abney (son of Sir Thomas, a justice of the common pleas), the last male of this family, died in 1791, leaving an only daughter, married to Captain, afterwards General, Hastings, who distinguished himself in the American war, and in 1806 was created a baronet; he died in 1823, at the age of 82, and was buried at Willesley. His title, and (among other property) the Wlllesley estate, passed to his son, Sir Charles Abney Hastings, the present baronet.

The parish comprises 910 acres, of which about 25 are woodland, and the remainder arable and pasture in nearly equal portions: the soil is various. The southwestern boundary of the parish is skirted by the Ashby and Coventry canal, whence a railway passes to the former town. The manor-house is a handsome structure in the form of the letter H, built about the time of Charles I., and situated in a park of undulated surface, embellished with plantations: the mansion has been enlarged and improved within the last six years. The living is a perpetual curacy, with a net income of £62: the patronage and impropriation belong to Sir C. Abney Hastings. The church, situated a short distance from the manor-house, is a very small plain edifice, with a tower at the west end; the walls are turreted, stuccoed on the outside, and much overgrown with ivy. The period of its erection is not known: the interior has been renovated within the last fifteen years.


Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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