Earl Shilton
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  Map sources for Earl Shilton at grid reference SP472980
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Earl Shilton is a large village or small town in Leicestershire, England, some 5 miles from Hinckley and about 10 miles (16 km) from Leicester, with a population of around 9,000 (as of 2005).
One of the parcels of land gifted to Hugh de Grandsmesnil by King William the Conqueror was the village of Scheltone, now known as Earl Shilton. The village measured some 500 acres (2 km²), standing on the top of a long, narrow ridge in the southwest of the county. Schulton or Scheltone is an ancient word, which means shelf. Shilton is therefore Scheltone or shelf-town. The village boasted 3 ploughs, with 1 serf and 4 sokemen. Sokemen were the highest class of free peasants, a lower aristocracy, and were thought to be the descendents of the Danes who settled in the East Midlands. The village also had a priest, 10 villeins and 5 bordars. Villeins and Bordars were below Sokemen and tied to the land. Villeins often held between 30 to 100 acres (100,000 to 400,000 m²), while Bordars were of a lower standing and usually had a smallholding.
Attached to the village of Sheltone were 12 acres (50,000 m²) of meadow and a mill of 16 pence (£0.07) value, with woodland 8 furlongs (1609 m) in length and 3 broad valued at 70 shillings (£3.50). Following the Norman invasion there must have been some inflation as during the time of Edward the Confessor Sheltone’s woodland was valued at 5 shillings (£0.25).
The ruins of a hunting lodge belonging to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, remain to this day beside the church of St Simon and St Jude at the 'top end' of Earl Shilton. The name of Earl Shilton was originally the "Earls' Hill Town" because of his association with the hunting lodge. Over the years it has slowly changed to "Earl Shilton". The Victorian church, designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter dates back to 1854; the previous mediaeval building was largely destroyed by fire and was rebuilt from a public subscription raised by the then incumbent, Rev. Ferdinand Tower. The church, which features a window by the renowned stained glass designer Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907), is attached to an older tower and steeple, which date back to the 13th/14th century.
The Leicestershire antiquary, John Nichols (printer) records that the lordship was once part of the Honour of Leicester with a long association with the earls of Leicester, hence its name. The castle, originally the hunting lodge of Simon de Montfort, survives as a mound in Hall Field and in the name “Castle-yard”.
In 1296 Shilton's “long and large” settlement comprising 32 virgates of land was held in fee along with several other local manors as part of the Honour of Leicester for a quarter of a knight’s fee.
Nichols also records that in the early 1600s the town was visited with bubonic plague with the greatest loss between 1611-1612, when 41 people died.
The freeholders, or principal landholders in 1630 were Richard Churchman, Richard Veasey, Samuel Wightman, and Sampson Goodall. After the Civil War Richard Churchman was listed among the gentry who in 1645 “compounded” for their estates with the Parliamentary Sequestration Committee, along with Thomas Crofts, another royalist. This meant he had to pay a fine to restrieve his estates.
The local curate William Holdsworth was accused of being a royalist or “malignant”. John Walker, who wrote about the Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion, records that Holdsworth was hauled before the County Committee in 1646 for “reviling” Parliament. His offences included ignoring the Directory set by Parliament to enforce puritan reforms, refusing sacraments to those not kneeling, allowing Sunday games and reading a royalist Protestation in the middle of a sermon. He was also accused of being “several times drunk” and using “old notes as new sermons” for the past twenty years. According to the charges, when the royalist soldiers besieging Leicester came to him for provisions “he gave them bread and cheese and said he would he could give them a fat ox”. Like their neighbours in the surrounding villages, the constables in Earl Shilton submitted their claims for losses and "free quarter" from the parliamentary garrisons, to the county committee. In June, 1646 Mr Goodall Sen. claimed that parliamentary soldiers from the Astley garrison took "a rapier, sword, belt and a snapsack" worth 8s.
Nichols also describes “a barbarous custom” practised in this village in 1776:
A woman having for some time laboured under the common disorder, her friends took it into their heads that she was bewitched by a poor old creature in the neighbourhood, who could scarcely crawl. To this miserable object the diseased, her husband, and son (a soldier), went, and threatened to destroy her if she did not instantly suffer blood to be drawn from her body, bless the woman, and remove her disorder. Hesitating a little, the son drew his sword, and, pointing it to her breast, swore he would plunge it into her heart if she did not immediately comply; which being consented to, they all returned home seemingly satisfied. But the patient not being relieved by a certain day, they raised a mob, seized the old woman, dragged her to a pond, cruelly plunged her into the water, and were proceeding to practise the barbarous experiments upon her that were usual in times of ignorance and superstition; when fortunately for her, she was rescued from their hands by the humanity of the neighbouring gentlemen.
Parliamentary enclosure in 1778 enclosed 1500 acres of the lordship from the parish of Kirkby Mallory. The Inclosure Act lists all of the landholders and fields in the parish, including a large common called Shilton Heath, Breach Meadow, and the Hall Field. The lord viscount Thomas Wentworth was the patron of the rectory of Kirby Mallory, and the Reverend Rowney Noel, rector.
The 1800 census Return to Parliament for Earl Shilton records 249 inhabited houses (8 uninhabited) 284 families, 655 males, and 632 females (total 1287) of which 118 were employed in agriculture, and 716 in trade or manufacturing.
That same year more than eight hundred pounds was raised by subscription for a windmill to grind grain.
Between the 19th and late 20th centuries, Earl Shilton was a busy industrial village consisting of numerous Shoe, Hosiery and Knitwear factories. At one point Earl Shilton produced boots for none other than Russia's Red Army, no less. Many of these businesses have now closed due to competition from the far east, but a very few still continue into the 21st century.
A famous visitor to the village, still talked about by its oldest residents, was Reverend Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, otherwise known as Woodbine Willy a First World War army padre.
Increasingly heavy traffic flow through the village has led to the planning of an Earl Shilton bypass, though as yet no work has transpired.It has been said that work will commence in 2007. Old photos of Earl Shilton can be found at http://earlshilton.photosite.com//
[edit] References
John Nichols, History and Antiquities of Leicestershire, Vol. IV, pp. 774-780; Gentleman's Magazine, xlvi (1776) A.G. Mathews, Walker Revised, p. 237.
