Harby History

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Air Surveys :- Canal Survey, Incline Survey, Railway Survey

Books about Harby

Church magazines

Church Guide - pages being constructed

Church - official papers of the Bishops

Church sculpture

Churchyard Survey

Factfile of dates and happenings

Harby in old photographs including early maps

Harby Places

Nichols 1815  History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire

To find out more

Trade directories

Surrounding villages

The history of Harby, the families, opportunities for employment have been shared with surrounding villages. Some of these have websites with illustrations and history:-

Barkstone - www.leicestershirevillages.com/barkestone-le-vale/video-of-barkestone-le-vale.html

Eaton - www.elhg.co.uk/Eaton/Home.html

Langar - http://www.theparishcouncil.org/orange/home.html

Redmile - www.redmilearchive.freeuk.com/

HARBY NATURAL HISTORY

A website for the natural history of the villages of Harby, Hose and Long Clawson is being developed at  www.naturespot.org.uk/parish/clawson-hose-and-harby

HARBY PLACES

We are working to find the origins for the various street and place names of Harby.  If you have information or ideas to add please contact us leslie.cram@talk21.com

Boyers Orchard - we think the orchard where the council houses were built some 50 years ago was owned by Mr Boyer and the street is named after him.  There are gravestone of the Boyer family in the churchyard near the vestry.
Burden Lane
Burton Close
Colston Lane - leads to Colston Bassett
Dickman's Lane - named after Mr Dickman who lived there.
Gas Walk - various suggestions are put forward for how this footpath got its name. After the material it was made of - the residue from gas working, after the American term for petrol as it lead to a garage at what is now called the Old Forge, after the smell from people emptying out chamber pots before flush toilets and the sewage system were installed in the village. If the name has been passed down the centuries from the people coming from Germany or Scandinavia who made the initial settlement then we have Old Norse word  "Gá " or High German "Gasse", both meaning a walkway or passageway. The Wong (see below) is a name thought to date back to these early times.  Then if the name has anything to do with geese,  the Anglo Saxon origin of the word Goose is "Gös". We are indebted to John Dunn for these suggestions. However the name is not included in the early names of Harby discussed in the English Place-name Society account by Barrie Cox.   The census records use the name Step or Steppings Lane so there is no continuity of use of the name as there is with the Wong.   
Green Lane - because it is green and grassy

Greggs Lane - named after the family that lived in the nearby house 100 years ago. They are recorded in the census returns, latterly it was nurse Gregg who lived there.
Langar Lane - leads north to Langar
Main Street - the principal street in Harby
Nether Street - originally meaning the lower street
Pinfold Lane - every village had a pinfold a hundred years ago where stray cattle were put to be collected by their owners. The 1884 25 inches to a mile Ordnance Survey map shows the pinfold as a circular structure at the east end of Pinfold Lane. Click here to see.
Pinfold Place - named after the Pinfold.
Red Causeway - named after the red material making it up. It used to be called Step or Stepping Lane as recorded in many census returns.
School Lane - where the school is.

Steps or Stepping Lane - the combined Red Causeway and Gas Walk, the name used in early records.
Stathern Road - leads to Stathern. 

Thraves Terrace - named after the Thraves family.
Wallnut Paddock
Waltham Lane - leads to Waltham-on-the-Wolds
Watsons Lane - named after the famous Watson family of Harby, cheesemakers. 
The Wong - from an Old English word “wang” meaning ”a piece of meadowland, an open field” or the Old Norse “vangr” meaning “a garden, an infield”. Click here for an account.

PUBLICATIONS ABOUT HARBY

Anderson, John, 1976, Leicestershire Canals, bygones in camera. Privately printed.

British Geological Survey, 2002,  Melton Mowbray. England and Wales sheet 142, solid and drift geology. 1:50,000 series. Keyworth, British Geological survey.

Bourne, Jill, 1977, Place names of Leicestershire and Rutland. Leicestershire Libraries and Information Service. 

Burton, William, 1622 The description of Leicestershire. Page 127 Harby - tells who owns the land, describes the church, says that  in old deeds it is written Herdeby.

Carney, J N, K Ambrose and A Brandon 2002, Geology of the Melton Mowbray district. Keyworth, British Geological survey.

Chaworth Musters, 1890 A Cavalier Stronghold, a romance of the vale of Belvoir. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & CO, London; James Bell, Nottingham.  

Cobbet, William 1832 A geographical dictionary of England and Wales. 

Cox, Barrie  2002 The Place-names of Leicestershire, part two, Framland Hundred, Nottingham :  English Place-name Society.

Cram Leslie,  Martin Henig and Keith Ambrose 2005, A stone “celtic” human head from Harby, Leicestershire, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society. 79, 91- 97.

Cram, Leslie 2010 Harby: village life in the Vale of Belvoir. Harby: Harby History Group.

Dewey, Laurie, 1968, Northeast Corner, Belvoir High School, in Melton library 942.546. Domesday Herdebi, 122 Herdeby.

Evelyn, Mary, 1927, The Cheese of the Country , Health, a Journal of Popular and Industrial Medicine, volume 6, number 40, pages  170 to 178.

Freeman, Roger A, 1994. UK Airfields of the Ninth: Then and Now. London: After the Battle.

Gill, Josiah, 1909. The History of Wesleyan Methodism in Melton Mowbray and the Vicinity, 1769-1909. John Wartnaby Warner, Melton Mowbray.

Goodwin, Barry and Raymonde Glynne Owen, 1994, 207 squadron RAF Langar, 1942 - 1943.   

Halfpenny, Bruce Barrymore, 1991, Action Stations Volume 2:  Military Airfields of Lincolnshire and the East Midlands.  Patrick Stephens Ltd.

Hartley, Robert F 1987, The Mediaeval Earthworks of North-east Leicestershire. Archaeological Reports Series, Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service. 

Haycock, David Boyd  and Patrick Wallis (eds), 2005 Quackery and Commerce in Seventeenth-Century London: The Proprietary Medicine Business of Anthony Daffy, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London.

Henshaw, Alfred, 2003, The Great Northern Railway in the East Midlands: Nottingham - Grantham, Bottesford - Newardk, Melton Mowbray, the Leicester Line and Ironstone Branches, Railway Correspondence and Travel Society

Hewlett H B 1935, The Quarries.

Hickman, Trevor 1992, Around Melton Mowbray in old photographs, Stroud, Nonsuch Publishing. Pocket edition 2007.

Hickman, Trevor 1994 The Vale of Belvoir. Britain in old photographs, Alan Sutton. Second edition 2004.

Hickman, Trevor 1995, The History of Stilton cheese, Alan Sutton. 

Honeybone, Michael, 1987, The Vale of Belvoir. Barraccuda Books. 

King,  W 1806, Tract of country surrounding Belvoir Castle.  

Lawton, Pam and Marilyn Garner, 2000, Minutes in Time, the Story of Harby Women's Institute.

Liddle, Peter, 1982, Leicestershire Archaeology, the present state of knowledge. Volume 1, To the end of the Roman Period, Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service Archaeological Report no. 4.

Liddle, Peter, 1982, Leicestershire Archaeology, the present state of knowledge. Volume 2, Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval Periods, Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service Archaeological Report no. 5.

Marrows, Hugh, 2003, The romantic canal, alongside the Grantham. Grantham Canal Partnership.

Nichols, John, 1815, reprinted 19 ? History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire. Harby is mentioned in part ii pages 209-213, and 422, part iii page 534.

Palmer, Marilyn ed., 1983, Leicestershire Archaeology, the present state of knowledge. Volume 3 Industrial Archaeology, Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service Archaeological Report no. 6.

Pevsner, Nicholaus, revise Elizabeth Williamson 1984, The buildings of England, Leicestershire and Rutland second edition, page 174.Penguin Books.

Pitt W 1809, A general view of the agriculture of the county of Leicestershire.

Prior John 1779, Map of Leicestershire.

Stapleford, Rex, 2006, A history of Harby cricket club 1919 to 1964. Privately printed.

Throsby 1798, Leicestershire views and excursions.

Tonks, Eric 1961, The ironstone railway and tramways of the Midlands. London, Locomotive Publishing Co.

Tonks  Eric, 1992,  The Ironstone Quarries of the Midlands, history, operations and railways,Part  IX : Leicestershire. Runpast Publishing, Cheltenham.

Unigate Foods, Stilton from Harby.

White, William 1863, History, gazetteer and directory of the counties of Leicester and Rutland. Page 353 Harby - inhabitants 655.

To find out more.

It is easy to find out more yourself.  

Leicestershire County Council provides us with a Museums, Arts and Records Service, www.leics.gov.uk. 

The Museums and Archaeological Sites and Monuments Record can be contacted at County Hall, Glenfield, Leicester LE3 8TB, telephone 0116 232 3232, museums@leics.gov.uk.

The Leicestershire Record Office is at Long Street, Wigston Magna, Leicester LE18 2AH, telephone 0116 257 1080, email - recordoffice@leics.gov.uk. The special treasure there is a map of the village and all the fields around it made at the time of  the enclosures in 1793. With it are the written descriptions of who owns which land.  Click on the little picture to see more. There is also a copy of  large scale map of our village and all its fields even earlier, in 1790.

There are also other maps, the records of the Parish church and the Methodist church, records of Harby School going back to 1863, past copies of Harby News and Harby Journal, legal documents, and old photographs.

Remember to contact them first  to arrange a time if you are  going to visit.

There is also the Library, 0116 265 6988,  libraries@leics.gov.uk,  and the Carnegie Museum in Melton Mowbray, Thorpe End, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, LE13 1RB, telephone 01664 569946.     

Down in London is the Public Record Office at Kew. They hold the following documents on Harby :-

 and the website is  http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/ihr/nine.html.

Copyright © 2000 Harby Limited, All rights reserved.
Revised: February 26, 2013 .