Place:Barkestone, Leicestershire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

"BARKESTONE, a parish in the [registration] district of Bingham [Nottinghamshire] and county of Leicester; in the vale of Belvoir, and on the Nottingham and Grantham railway, 1¾ mile W of Bottesford station, and 17 E of Nottingham. It has a post office under Nottingham. Acres, 2,870. Real property: £2,950. Population: 411. Houses: 83. The property is divided among a few. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough. Value: £114. Patron: the Duke of Rutland. The church is excellent. A school has £25 from endowment, and other charities £40."

Barkestone in Leicestershire, England was an ancient parish and a civil parish until 1936. Its main village is named Barkestone-le-Vale (Source:Wikipedia). It was located in the Vale of Belvoir in the northeast corner of the county. In 1936 Barkestone was merged with its neighbouring parish of Redmile under the name Redmile.

Local Administration

The parish was part of Belvoir Rural District from 1894 until 1935 when the rural district was abolished and replaced by the Melton and Belvoir Rural District which covered a much 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 1974 a new 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 as the rural area that surrounded it.

Research Tips

Maps on the place-pages for Belvoir Rural District and Melton and Belvoir Rural District illustrate the location of the various parishes and the geographical and administrative changes that occurred in 1936.