Place:Brooksby, Leicestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

"BROOKESBY, a parish in Melton-Mowbray [registration] district, Leicester; on the river Wreak, and on the Syston and Peterborough railway, 3 miles E of the Fosse way, and 5¾ WSW of Melton-Mowbray. It has a station on the railway; and its Post Town is Frisby, under Leicester. Acres: 861. Real property, with Hoby: £2,709. Population: 44. Houses: 7. Brookesby Hall was formerly the seat of the Villierses; and was the birthplace of the first Villiers Duke of Buckingham. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough. Value: £250. Patron: not reported. The church contains monuments of the Villierses."

Brooksby was an ancient or ecclesiastical parish prior to 1866 when it became a civil parish. Between 1894 and 1936 it was part of Melton Mowbray Rural District. In 1936 it was absorbed into the newly created parish of Hoby with Rotherby situated to the northwest of Melton Mowbray.

Wikipedia describes Brooksby is a "disused" village and the ancestral home of the Villiers family (holders of the title of Duke of Buckingham from 1623 until 1687).

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 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.