L A 1957

Leicester Advertiser, Saturday, October 12 1957 page 12

HOW OUR VILLAGES GOT THEIR NAMES . . . No. 54 HARBY

THREE WEEKS TO 40 YEARS

THE eight or nine miles of road from Melton to Harby run up hill and down, but it is mostly a climb, for Harby stands near the loftiest part of the Wolds escarpment. From a field before its pretty church there is in view a great stretch of the Vale of Belvoir, a scene that brings to mind the pattern of a patchwork quilt. The sun picks out the greens of the fields, the darker shades of woodlands, some still golden stubble and the red squares which the plough has just made; and in the middle of this coloured quilt there is now a centre-piece that would astonish Robert de Todeni, if he could see his estate now.

The terra-cotta tinted patches are the workshops of A. V. Roe and Co., Ltd., aeronautical engineers at Langar-cum-Barnstone; not far away Canadian Air Force planes, their wings glittering, are at rest on a service station, and nearby is Plungar's small oil field. In de Todeni's time there was no pretty quilt spread over the Vale, no hedges and no controlled woodland. The most marked change following the enclosures was the appearance of hedged fields, not so very small in this north east end of the county, except by comparison with the open fields of several hundred acres. The enclosure Commissioners mostly mapped out squarish fields of from five to 15 acres.

Harby was spelt Herdebi in the Domesday Survey and Herdeby in 1242. The name came from the translation of a Scandinavian word " hjoro." a herd or flock. Harby was one of many manors William. The Conqueror gave to his standard bearer, Robert de Todeni. Robert also had Hose. Long Clawson, Statthern, Barkestone. Redmile and Bottesford at this end of the county. And they were not all, for he died possessed of 80 manors.

Harby's parish church of St. Mary was built in 1485. in the reign of Henry VII, and was probably an off-shoot of the much earlier monastic establishment at Stathern. There is still in the church a traceried 14th century font and some small amount of ornamental stonework pointing to the existence of a still earlier church about which there is very little record.

Buried Records

The clock on the tower came in the nature of a wedding present. When the Duke and Duchess of St., Albans were married at Harby on May 29, 1839, they gave the church the clock to mark the occasion.

A Mr. E. W. Guilford of Nottingham made the abstracts from the Harby registers for Phillimores' and Bloggs' volumes of Leicestershire Parish Records, and he had to start at the unusually late date of 1700. Harby's earlier records were long missing even before Nichols' time. The story of their fate is that the skins of parchment on which they were written had been unstitched from their binding to be wrapped round the body of Anne Adcock, and so buried in 1776 by her grandson, John Adcock, "a man of eccentric character."

(The details are to be found for grave L256 in the churchyard survey, click here.)

One other version is that it was the husband who buried the parchments with his wife; and yet another account states that "the clerk of those days who had charge of the registers wrapped his wife's dead body in them because of an old superstition that, if a body was wrapped in parchment (the registers were of parchment), it would keep evil spirits away."

In the earliest existing register the first entry reads: William Fatheringham and Alice Allen of Long Claxton (Clawson). This appears against the date 1700, and another early one is: "John Major of Harby. Rector, and Mary Trussel of Belvoir, September 29. 1704." Yet another records the marriage of William Adcock and Ann Whittle.It was Ann who took with her to the grave all the pre-1700 records of the baptisms, marriages and burials of the fathers of the village. Robert de Todeni has already been mentioned. At Harby he had 17 carucates, and probably some of that was in Plungar, which is not named in the Domesday Survey.

Under the open field system the fields at Harby were known as (1) Beck, (2) Sike and (3) Long. The enclosure was complete by 1790. Over 16 acres of Long field were allotted to the churchwardens. A field alongside the church is today known by the name Wong, an odd name which may have come from a corruption of long. The field was once glebe and was sold.

Down The Ages

After de Todeni Harby had various tenants - in - chief, whose names need not be laboured here until we come to John West, holding the manor in 1412, and Sir Reginald West, Lord Delaware in 1427. Edward IV granted lands at Harby to William Hastings in 1481.

Gracedieu Priory had a share in the lands, and William Brabazon had half of the Manor of Harby in 1552. The whole was held by Andrew Collins in 1642, and it was his family who sold out to the Earl of Rutland. That would be John the 8th Earl, whose third and only surviving son John, succeeded him in 1679, was Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, and became the 1st Duke of Rutland in 1703.

The Society of Friends had an early footing in Harby. When in 1669 Archbishop Sheldon started his inquiry into the growth of Nonconformity, the Harby churchwardens provided a return which stated: "One conventicle of Quakers, about 20 in number . . . William Smith, a stranger, Eliza Hooton, a stranger, Leviston Patrick, a stranger, be their teachers. They usually meet at ye dwelling house of Chr. Levis, husbandman."

An early directory stated that "about 50 persons emigrated from this township (Harby) to Australia within two years." But it didn't give any date for this. although it apparently happened some time after 1839 and was probably due to the lure of a new country rather than to any difficulties resulting from enclosure.

Canal Business

White's directory of 1863 gives an insight into the way life moved in Harby then. "The Post Office at Henry Lamin's," it stated. "Letters arrive from Waltham at a quarter to 12 morning and are dispatched at a quarter to three afternoon." Samuel Gregg was listed as a boat owner (the Grantham canal is nearby), and Henry Bonser and Samuel Furmidge were wharfingers. Corn millers were Henry Bonser, Robert Drake and John Lamin. There were two windmills in Harby then and one just outside the village between Hose and Harby. They were probably all tower mills on the Lincolnshire pattern with an ogee or pepper-pot style of cap. Harby's last mill was worked by both sail and oil, and was run by Walter Stubbs. It was wrecked in a gale shortly before the war and taken down a few years ago.

The directory of 1863 gave the Rev. Manners Octavius Norman as the rector then. As the name might suggest, the Rev. Mr. Norman was related to the Richard Norman who married Lady Elizabeth Manners. The Rev. Mr. Norman gave considerable help to the restoration of his church, and he built a fine house for his curate. It is now called The Limes and is the house of Mr. and Mrs. H. R. Hewitt. Lines from tine Lord's Prayer are chiselled over its doorway.

There is still a blacksmith's shop in the village. It had remained in the hands of the same family for generations, even when one owner was in Alaska, 4,000 miles awav. It was then being worked by Mr. Martin Stead, and he is still there, the owner now being Mrs. Dewey.

The Poplars, one of the oldest houses in Harby, is still owned by Mr. Frank Orson, who now lives in Texas. He farmed there up till the time of the 1914-18 war. Orson is one of the older names in the village. In the Methodist Chapel, which was built in 1847, there is a tablet recording that William Orson, of Old Dalby, preached the first sermon on the day of its opening. When the centenary was being celebrated, Mr. William T. Orson, of Old Dalby, was invited to Harby to take the chair. Mr. James Wright, aged 82, who lives in School House, is one of the oldest members of this chapel. He is chapel steward, has been a Sunday school teacher for 50 years, and is "beloved of all the village for his thought and attention in visiting the older people and the sick." The words quoted came from the rector of St. Mary's the Rev. A. C. Holden, who has been eight years at Harby. Before that Mr. and Mrs. Holden were for 20 years at Oaks in Charnwood. Mr. Matthew Towers regards himself as a fully naturalised Harby man now. He came from Cropston Kerrial in 1901 to work at the railway, and he served St. Mary's as a church warden for 24 years.

On the village Green there is a memorial cross that has for its base the stump of an ancient cross that once stood in the churchyard. On this memorial are the names of the men of the village and the farms who went to war 1914-18 and did not return.

An Eye On Figures

The school which is beside the Green was built in 1860 at a cost of £1,000. To this school there once came Alfred Warman Edwards. He was then a young man engaged for three weeks as a temporary teacher, but he stayed for 40 years to become headmaster.

The headmaster now is Mr. Eric Lane, and Miss E. M. Buxton has taught at the school for 44 years and played the church organ far the same length of time. She has a total service of 50 years with the Leicestershire Education Authority. A village schoolmaster generally makes a study of parish birth-rate figures. Harby had two peculiarly blank years not long ago, but now Mr. Lane knows that there will be a generation coming along to fill his classes.

Twenty-four more council houses, including four flats, are going up to add to Harby's 16 prewar and 16 other postwar council homes. A youth club is about to be started in the village. There are, however, many more girls than boys about the parish, so those interested in community efforts say.

The Women's Institute is a strong group, presided over by Mrs. M. A. Watson. It has 101 members, and the Mothers' Union in charge of Mrs. Holden is also fully supported. The men of the village not engaged in agriculture find work at A. V. Roe and Co., at the ironstone, and some are employed at the Canadian camp and at Old Dalby.

The Cheese Travels

In the village there are two dairy companies engaged in cheese making, the Wilts United Dairies and the Harby Farmers' Dairy. Harby Stilton goes, as far away as America, Australia and the Gold Coast.

It is something of a distinction to have a postal address that is also your own surname. Mr. Joseph Dickman. of Dickman's Lane, is aged 82. He lives in the cottage that his father and grand¬father lived in before him and next door to Mr. Dickman is what may be now the oldest cottage in Harby. It goes back to the time of mud walls, is still sound and is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Reeves.

(The Illustrations to this article are to be seen in the Harby in Old photographs 0539 to 0549 click here.)