Place:Great Bowden, Leicestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Great Bowden is a village and civil parish in the Harborough District of southeast Leicestershire, England. It is a northeast suburb of Market Harborough. The population was measured at the 2011 UK census as 1,017. It is the site of Great Bowden Hall.

Originally Market Harborough was a township and chapelry of Great Bowden, but Market Harborough was large enough by 1894 to be made an urban district which included Great and Little Bowden.

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

"BOWDEN (Great), or Bowden-Magna, a village and a parish in Market-Harborough [registration] district, Leicester. The village stands on the Union canal, the river Welland, and the Northwestern railway, 1 mile NE of Market Harborough; and has a post office, of the name of Great Bowden, under Rugby.

"The parish includes also the town and chapelry of Market-Harborough. Acres: 3,120. Real property: £9,681. Population: 3,697. Houses: 777. The property is subdivided. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough. Value: £86. Patron: Christ's Church College, Oxford. The church is good; and there are charities £47. The [perpetual] curacy of Market-Harborough is a separate benefice."

Research Tips

• The map on the place-page for Market Harborough Rural District illustrates the location of the various parishes.
• Victoria County History - Leicestershire - Vol 5, pp38-49 - Parish: Great Bowden. (London, 1964) British History Online. University of London.
• 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.