Melton
Mowbray
Extract from White's Leicester and
Rutland Directory 1877
MELTON MOWBRAY is in Framland Hundred, and gives name to a township, parish,
poor law, union, county court, petty sessional and
local board district, and the celebrated Melton Hunt. It is a polling place for
the northern division of the county, and has attained considerable celebrity for
its manufacture of pork pies, and is a pleasant and well-built market
town, pleasantly seated on the banks of the small river Eye, in a fertile open
vale, 15 miles N.E. of Leicester, 10 miles N.W. of Oakham,
16 miles S.W. of Grantham, and 105 miles N.N.W. of London. Melton Mowbray
parish, which comprises the townships of Burton Lazars, Freeby,
Melton Mowbray, Sysonby, and Welby,
in 1871 contained 5559 persons, living in 1123 houses, on 10,266 acres of land
of these, 5033 persons, 1020 houses, and about 3300 acres were in Melton
Mowbray township. The soil is generally a black sandy loam, inclining to clay,
and having a plentiful substratum of gravel. It had only 1766 inhabitants in
1801, but in 1831 they had increased to 3327, in 1841 to 3740, in 1851 to 4434,
and in 1861 to 4436. The return for 1871, given above, included a number of
persons visiting the steeple-chases, and also 126 paupers in the union
workhouse. The town is approached the Leicester road by
an elegant bridge of five arches, erected in 1834. The river Eye joins time
Wreak, near Melton, and they were made navigable, with the aid of artificial
cuts, from the town to the Soar Navigation, near Syston,
under Acts of Parliament passed in 1791 and 1800. This is called the Melton
Mowbray and Leicester Navigation . A railway is now
forming from Melton, to join the Midland Railway at Syston,
11 miles S.W. of the town. It was extended in 1847 to Stamford,
to join the line reaching from that town to Peterborough,
in connection with the Great Northern Railway, and the various lines traversing
the eastern counties. The Newark
and Market Harborough branch of the Great Northern Railway will pass through
the town, and will have a station here. The line which the Midland Company are making
from Melton to Nottingham will he opened about 1878. The TOWN ESTATE, derived chiefly
at the enclosure of the parish, under an act passed in 1760, produces about
£1000 a year, which is appropriated to paving, watching, lighting, and
improving the town, and the support of the bridges, fire-engines, and several
free schools, under the management of twelve feoffees,
and two town wardens chosen annually by the inhabitants. Owing to the scarcity
of flags, the footpaths are generally pitched with boulders, but the principal
streets are clean and commodious. The Town Wardens, for the time being, are the
lords of the manor of Melton Mowbray; but part of the soil belongs to Sir Wm.
Earle Welby, M.P., and Thos. B. B. Vanstitart, John Clayton, Horatio Behrens, and Hy. Smith, Esqrs.; Wymondham Grammar School, the Town Wardens, and Wm. J. Blake,
J. W. Norris, Robert Sikes, and Stephen Miller, Esqrs.
In ancient writings the manor is
called Medeltune, Meltone,
and afterwards Melton Mowbray, from its early lords. In the reign of
Edward the Confessor the lordship of Melton, originally of very great extent,
was held by Lewrie Fitz Lewin, and was the chief of 27 lordships which William the
Conqueror bestowed on Goisfrid de Wirce,
in whose time the town had a weekly market, and here were 7 hides, 1 carucate, and 1 bovate, with 4
ploughs and 4 bondmen, in the demesne; 20 villans, 14
bordars, and 2 priests, with 61/2 ploughs; a rent of
20s. from the market; two mills, 20 acres of meadow,
and a wood 40 perches 1ong and 40 wide. From Goisfrid
the honor or barony of Melton passed to Nigel de Albini, whose son, by order of Henry I., assumed the name
of Mowbray. Thomas de Mowbray, the 7th Baron Mowbray
by writ, and the 12th by tenure, was created Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal
in 1400. By his marriage with Anne, daughter of John, Duke of Norfolk, in 1477,
the manor and honor of Melton passed to Lord
Berkeley. In 1553 the manor was granted to Wm. Betts and Christopher Draper;
but it was restored to Lord Berkeley in 1579. John Withers held it in 1606, and
afterwards John Hudson, who sold it in 1688 to John Coke. By marriage with
Charlotte Coke it passed, in 1750, to Matthew Lamb, Esq., an ancestor of its
present, lord, Viscount Melbourne. Matthew Lamb, Esq., was an eminent conveyancer of Lincoln's
Inn, and was created a baronet in 1755. He is described
in the Act passed in 1760, for enclosing 2000 acres of common fields and
pastures in Melton, as lord of the honor and manor,
and proprietor of a considerable part of the soil He died 1768, and was
succeeded by his son, Sir Peniston Lamb, who was
created Baron Melbourne of Ireland in 1770, and Viscount in 1780; and in 1815
he was created an English peer by the title of Baron Melbourne, of Melbourne,
in the county of Derby. In 1828 he was succeeded by his son William, the second
Lord Melbourne, who was born in 1779, and was one of the most distinguished
statesmen of the present century. This nobleman died in 1848, and was succeeded
by his brother, Frederick James, the third and last Viscount, who died in 1853,
when his titles became extinct, and his estates descended to his sister,
formerly Countess Cowper, but afterwards Viscountess Palmerston; but the manor was sold in 1850 to the feofees of the town estate for the sum of £650. During the
civil wars a severe battle was fought near Melton, between Marmaduke
Langley, who commanded the Royalists, and a party of Parliamentary troops under
Colonel Rossiter, as noticed at page 274. About the
middle of the 17th century several tradesmens tokens
were issued in the town, whence Nichols infers that the place was then
distinguished for 'considerable traffic.' In 1653 and some other years of the
Commonwealth, the publication of banns was announced at the market cross and
the marriage ceremony was performed by two justices of the peace. Here was a
manor oven fourteen feet in diameter, the possessor of which, in the time of
Sir Matthew Lamb, endeavoured to compel all the inhabitants to bake their bread
in it; but the townspeople refused to comply, and established another oven of larger
dimensions. There was a small priory at Melton, valued at the dissolution at
the clear annual value of £85 15s. 5d., and
granted, with the advowson, to John Dudley, Earl of
Warwick. The advowson afterwards passed to Lord Howe,
who sold it to Peter Godfrey, Esq. The town has given birth to several eminent
men, among whom were the following:-viz., John de
Kirkby, Bishop of Ely, and Lord High Treasurer of England and Keeper of the
Great Seal in the latter part of the 13th century; Wm de Melton, Archbishop of
York, Lord High Treasurer, &c., who died in 1340; and John Henley, a
distinguished clergyman, wrote and descanted with great freedom on almost every
popular subject of the day, and obtained the appellation of Orator Henley. He
was the son of the vicar of Melton, and was born on August 3, 1692. After taking his degree, he was
for some time (1716-21) master of the Grammar School of his native town, and
while here commenced his 'Universal Grammar,' in which it is said he completed
ten languages, with a proper introduction to each. He went to London
in 1721, and became for a while a popular preacher. His arrogance and fulsome
praises of himself soon disgusted all his friends, and at length, in 1726, in a
fit of disappointment, he flung up the lectureship and benefice he had
obtained, and took a room near Lincoln's Inn fields, London, contiguous to the
great Catholic chapel, and called it 'The Little Catholic Chapel' By quaint and
occasionally witty advertisements and handbills he announced his lectures, and generally
attracted great audiences. The prices of admission were sixpence and one
shilling each person. A syllabus of his lectures was also given, containing a
long list of the various topics on which he proposed to descant during a whole
course. When Lord Chesterfield was secretary of state, Henley was arrested and
brought before the Privy Council; but, careless and unabashed, he there
indulged in his usual freedom of language, and was at length dismissed with a
reprimand. Among other public characters whom he attacked was Alexander Pope,
who retaliated in that severe satirical poem of his
called the 'Dunciad.' Henley
died in 1756, and his collection of MS. lectures, commonplace books, sermons,
&c., amounting to about 200 vols., was sold by
auction in 1759.
A number of skeletons and various
Anglo- Saxon antiquities, consisting of pottery, beads of various sizes and
materials, spear heads, &c., have been found on the high ground on the
north side of the town. The skeletons lay in rows three or four feet apart,
with their heads towards the west, and appeared to have belonged to tall and
powerful men. Other relics, consisting of a sword, or sword with portions of
the wooden scabbard remaining, knives, spear heads, girdle, urns, bosses or umbos of shields, &c., have also been found.
The town sent members to Parliament in 1337 and 1338, but it has long derived
its chief attraction and prosperity from being the centre rendezvous of the
MELTON HUNT, which is unquestionably the most celebrated in the kingdom, and
comprises an extensive range of fine sporting country in this and the adjacent
parts of the counties of Nottingham, Rutland, and Lincoln. The town is thronged
with nobility and during the fox-hunting season, which commences the first week
in November, and closes about the end of March with the Croxton
Park Races. The principal hounds hunted here are the Belvoir,
Quorn, Atherstons, and Cottesmore Packs. The Earl of Wilton, the
Earl of Wicklow, Lord Carrington, Lord Calthorpe, Sir
Frederick Johnstone, Colonel Markham, W. A. Chaplin,
Esq., Wm. Younger, Esq., have neat houses here. Egerton
Lodge, the Earl of Wilton's hunting seat, has a beautiful garden in front,
tastefully laid out in walks, grass-steps, and shrubs.
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