Place:Hinckley, Leicestershire, England

Watchers
NameHinckley
Alt namesHincheliesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 161
TypeTown, Urban district
Coordinates52.533°N 1.367°W
Located inLeicestershire, England
See alsoSparkenhoe Hundred, Leicestershire, Englandhundred in which the parish was included
Hinckley and Bosworth District, Leicestershire, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Hinckley is a market town in southwest Leicestershire, England. Since 1974 it has been administered by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. It was formerly an urban district. Hinckley is the second largest town in the administrative county of Leicestershire, after Loughborough. (The City of Leicester is a unitary authority--outside the administration of the county.)

Hinckley is situated near the larger town of Nuneaton in Warwickshire.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In 2000, archaeologists from Northampton Archaeology discovered evidence of Iron Age and Romano-British settlement on land near Coventry Road and Watling Street.

Hinckley has a recorded history going back to Anglo-Saxon times; the name Hinckley is Anglo-Saxon: "Hinck" is a personal name and "ley" is a meadow. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, Hinckley was quite a large village, and it grew over the following 200 years into a small market town—a market was first recorded there in 1311. There is evidence of an Anglo-Saxon church – the remnants of an Anglo-Saxon sundial being visible on the diagonal buttress on the south-east corner of the chancel.

17th century

In the 17th century, the town developed a hosiery industry, producing stockings and similar items. Hinckley played a prominent part in the English Civil War. Its proximity to several rival strongholds—the royalist garrisons at Caldicote, Ashby de la Zouch and Leicester, and those of the Parliamentarians at Tamworth and Coventry—and the presence of parties of troops or brigands occupying several fortified houses in nearby Warwickshire, led to frequent visits by the warring parties. The local townsfolk were forced to decide whether to declare their allegiances openly or attempt to remain neutral—with the risk of having to pay levies, ransoms, and fines to both sides. In March 1644, Hinckley was occupied by a group of Royalist troops, though they were soon driven out by a force of Parliamentarians, who took many prisoners.

The Civil War years were a particularly unsettled time for the clergy in and around Hinckley. Parsons with parliamentary leanings like Thomas Cleveland, the vicar of Hinckley, suffered sequestration by the Leicester County Committee, like some of his "malignant" neighbours accused of visiting royalist garrisons or preaching against Parliament.

The town was visited by both parliamentary and royalist troops from the rival garrisons, particularly parliamentary troops from Tamworth, Coventry and Astley Castle in Warwickshire. Troops from Coventry garrison were particularly active in the town, taking horses and "free quarter" and availing themselves of 'dyett and Beere', and taking some of the inhabitants hostage for ransom. Royalist troops raided the town to threaten those with parliamentary sympathies. The notorious Lord Hastings of Ashby de la Zouch is recorded to have "coursed about the country as far as Dunton and Lutterworth and took near upon a hundred of the clergymen and others, and carried them prisoners … threatening to hang all them that should take the Parliament's Covenant". Parliamentary newssheets record that on the night of 4 March 1644, Hastings's men brought in "26 honest countrymen from several towns" intending to take them to Ashby de la Zouch, along with a huge herd of cattle, oxen and horses from the country people and a minister named Warner. These prisoners were herded into Hinckley church and asked "in a jeering manner, 'Where are the Round-heads your brethren at Leicester? Why come they not to redeem you?'"


The Parliamentarians responded in a memorable "Skirmish or Great Victory for Parliament". Colonel Grey with 120 foot-soldiers and 30 troopers from Bagworth House rushed to Hinckley and retook the town, routed the Royalists, rescued the cattle and released their imprisoned countrymen. No doubt the inhabitants of the town were as relieved as any when Ashby finally surrendered, as Vicars records, "a great mercy and mighty preservation of the peace and tranquility of all those adjacent parts about it."


19th century

At the time of the first national census in 1801, Hinckley had a population of 5,158: twenty years later it had increased by about a thousand. The largest industry in the early 19th century was the making of hosiery and only Leicester had a larger output of stockings. In the district, it was estimated around 1830 that 6,000 persons were employed in this work.

Joseph Hansom built the first Hansom cab in Hinckley in 1835.

In 1899 a cottage hospital was built to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria two years earlier. Money was raised by the local townspeople and factory owners, notably John and Thomas Atkins who also had a hand in building many of the key buildings of Hinckley. The cornerstone was laid by Sir John Fowke Lancelot Rolleston.

This hospital was central to the people of Hinckley and supported by local workers who donated one penny a week for its upkeep until it was adopted by the NHS in 1948. Over the years it expanded to align with the town. The hospital now appears dilapidated in some areas and is threatened with closure, sale and demolition by West Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS Properties Ltd.

Recent

The hosiery industry remained important for much of the 20th century, and by 1939 the Hinckley and District Hosiery Union alone had 6,000 members.

The area was subject to new housing developments in the 1950s, 1960s and 1990s.

Research Tips


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Hinckley. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.