Shepshed, Leicestershire

Description
Shepshed (formerly Sheepshead or Sheepshed; Saxon, Schepehefsde), a village and a parish in Leicestershire. The village stands on an affluent of the river Soar, within the NE side of Chamwood Forest, 5 miles W of Loughborough, with a station on the Loughborough and Nuneaton branch of the L. & N.W.R. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Longhborough. The parish comprises 5425 acres; population of the civil parish, 4416; of the ecclesiastical, 4058. There is an urban district council consisting of twelve members. The surface is partly hilly, rising toward the mountainous ground of High Peak, and includes Beacon Hill and Bardon Hill, which command very extensive views. Framework-knitting, glove-making, needle-making, granite-working, and the manufacture of boots and shoes are carried on. From 1690 the manor belonged to the Phillipps of Garenden family, but passed in 1796, on the death of Lady Gordon, widow of Samuel Phillipps, the last of the Phillipps male line, to his cousin Thomas March, whose grandson in 1862 added the name of De Lisle to that of March-Phillipps. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough; net value, £219 with residence. The church is an ancient building of Charnwood Forest stone, in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, S porch, and a western tower with spire. It contains a brass of 1592, and several memorials to the Phillipps family. There are Baptist, Free Methodist, Primitive Methodist, Reformed Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, and Wesleyan chapels, and some small charities. The ecclesiastical parish of Oaks-in-Charnwood is noticed separately.