Place:Old Dalby, Leicestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Old Dalby is a village in the English county of Leicestershire. It is located to the north-west of Melton Mowbray. It was originally known as "Wold Dalby" or "Dalby on the Wolds". The population is included in the civil parish of Nether Broughton and Old Dalby which includes the settlement of Queensway.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Old Dalby was an ancient parish and a civil parish until 1936. Most of the parish land was used for grazing and Stilton cheese was made here. (Source:GENUKI)

Old Dalby is quite a distance from the similar sounding Great Dalby and its neighbouring parish of Little Dalby.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Old Dalby from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"DALBY-ON-THE-WOLDS, or Old Dalby, a parish in Melton-Mowbray [registration] district, Leicester[shire]; adjacent to the Fosse way and to the boundary with Notts, 4½ miles NNW of Asfordby [railway] station, and 6½ NW of Melton-Mowbray. Post town: Nether-Broughton, under Melton-Mowbray. Acres: 3,430. Real property: £3,536. Population: 359. Houses, 75. A preceptory of Knights Hospitallers was founded here in the time of Henry II., by Robert de Bossu, Earl of Leicester. There is a chalybeate spring. The living is a donative in the diocese of Peterborough. Value: £40. Patron: the Rev. W. G. Sawyer. The church was built in 1836, at a cost of £5, 000; and has a square tower. There is also, at Sixhills, a modern chapel of ease. Charities, £9."

Local Administration

The parish was part of Melton Mowbray Rural District from 1894 until 1935 when the rural district was abolished and replaced by the Melton and Belvoir Rural District which covered a larger area. A year after the introduction of the new rural district its parishes were reorganized and reduced in number from 68 to 25. In this change Old Dalby was merged with the neighbouring parish of Nether Broughton to become Broughton and Old Dalby.

In 1974 a new nationwide organization of local government was introduced in which rural and urban districts were replaced by "non-metropolitan" districts. In the northeast of Leicestershire this meant little save for the fact that the principal town of Melton Mowbray, formerly a separate urban district, was now governed by the same body (Melton District or Borough) as the rural area that surrounded it.

Research Tips

• The map on the place-page for Melton Mowbray Rural District illustrates the location of the various parishes and the geographical and administrative changes that occurred in 1936.
• From this Findmypast page you can browse the Leicestershire parishes which have parish register transcripts online.
• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Leicestershire parishes which have parish register transcripts online.
• For both of the above sites, a subscription is charged. Transcriptions of these records may also be available free of charge on the FamilySearch website.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Leicestershire.