Currently all 3 villages in our parish have at least one place of worship and all 3 villages have lost at least one place of worship.
STANTON: Stanton under Bardon currently has a church, St. Mary and All Saints, and a non-conformist place of worship, ‘Without Walls’. The original place of worship in Stanton was an early mediaeval Chapel at the bottom of Main Street, at the T junction. According to the information available to the Leicestershire Museums Archaeological Fieldwork Group 2008, the chapel was noted in records for 1120 and appears to have gone out of use in the late 17th century. From the later chapel records in Lincoln Cathedral, one Josephus Hulse was appointed as preacher to Stanton in 1634. In 1662 he is noted as being the Rector of Stanton Chapel. In 1668 he was replaced by Samuel Freeman in the office of Vicar, who in turn was replaced by a Johannes Bold with the office of Deacon in 1701. According to Nichols, Thomas, son of a Mary Houson, was buried in Stanton Chapel on 28th April, 1682 – this seems to be the last entry.
The fate of the chapel after that date is not recorded, but being a stone building it would almost certainly have been “recycled” by the locals and no trace of it was remaining at the time of Nichols’ visit in the early 19th century (although there was still a ‘Chapel Warden’ in the village who attended the church in Newtown Linford due to Stanton’s then being within the Earl of Stamford’s “Peculiar” of Groby). Again, quoting Nichols, the 2 bells from the old Stanton Chapel were bought by one Thomas Boothby, and given to the church in Peckleton.
One possible reason for the chapel’s demise could have been the rise of non-conformity in our area (supported by local landowners) during the 17th and 18th centuries, and evidenced by the very well supported nonconformist Meeting House built at Bardon Hill in 1694 by John Hood Esq. of Bardon Park House – for architectural interest alone, this is well worth a visit.
BAGWORTH: Bagworth’s old chapel, dedicated to the Holy Rood (which is mediaeval English for The Cross), was demolished due to subsidence in the 1960’s and was replaced by a modern, new building on the same site by the Coal Board. The early chapel had been of Norman construction with some rare surviving Saxon features, and described by Nichols as being “very old”.
THORNTON: Thornton currently has St Peter’s Church and the Baptist Chapel in the Hollow, but also used to have a late-Victorian Wesleyan Chapel (on Main Street, more or less opposite the school), which is now gone – demolished circa 1976 to make way for new housing. In October 1925 the Revd Gordon Poole, Vicar of Quinton near Stratford-on Avon, noted in his diary that he had “..just visited the Wesleyan Chapel at Thornton in Leicestershire”. In the Chapel there was “… an organ which had originally been in Bow Church, Cheapside, from there it went to Market Bosworth, from there to the new church of St Hilda, Leicester, and now it is in the above-mentioned Wesleyan Church”. A well-travelled instrument indeed! I wonder what its ultimate fate was?
If anyone has any more information about Stanton Chapel, or the organ from the Wesleyan Chapel, please get in touch and let me know at: peterleadbetter123@btinternet.com
Sources:
The Medieval Earthworks of South-West Leicestershire, Hinckley & Bosworth, Leicestershire Museums Archaeological
Fieldwork Group 2008 Monograph No. 2.
The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, Volume IV, part II, John Nichols
The British Institute of Organ Studies, Vol 4, No. 4, October 1980
Researched and written by Peter Leadbetter
Thornton 