Description
Uppingham, a small market-town and a parish in Rutland, situated on an eminence 6 miles S from Oakham, 12 WSW from Stamford, and 90 by road from London. The town has railway communication with the Stamford, Peterborough, and Market Harborough section of the L. & N.W.R., by means of a short branch line opened in 1894 to Seaton station, and is 3 1/2 miles S from Manton and Uppingham station on the Leicester and Peterborough and Nottingham and Kettering branches of the M.R. It consists chiefly of one long street with a market-place opening from it, at one side of which is the church, is well lighted and paved, and has a good supply of water. It is the head of a union and county court district, has a well attended weekly market on Wednesday, and fairs for cattle on the second Wednesday in March and July. The chief glory of the town, however, is its famous grammar school, the foundation of which was laid in 1584 by Robert Johnson, Archdeacon of Leicester, who also founded the school at Oakham. The original plan of the schools was designed on a liberal scale, and provided for the sending of certain of the scholars to the universities. The endowments also, which provide for certain poor pensioners, called the Bedehouse people, amount to about £3000 a year, and are administered by a body of governors who, under the provisions of schemes prepared by the Endowed Schools Commissioners in 1875, allot certain proportions of the net income to the two schools. The school buildings are of a very superior character, and the excellent management of the Uppingham school has given it a national reputation. There are two banks in the town, a head post office, and an institute founded in 1861 with a library and reading-room. There are manors belonging to the Earl of Gainsborough and the rector. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough; gross value, £750 with residence, in the gift of the Bishop of Peterborough. The church, which was well restored and enlarged in 1861, is a building of stone, partly ancient and partly modern, in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, N and S porches, and an embattled western tower, surmounted by a lofty spire. Bishop Jeremy Taylor was once rector of the parish. There are Baptist, Congregational, and Wesleyan chapels. The charities, apart from Archdeacon Johnson's, are small. The workhouse, which stands on the Leicester Road at the west end of the town, is a building of stone, capable of holding 140 inmates. Area of the parish, 1463 acres; population of the civil parish, 2559; of the ecclesiastical, with Beaumont Chase, 2575. There is a parish council of fifteen members and a chairman. Beaumont Chase, formerly an extra-parochial tract, 1 1/4 mile from Uppingham, is now a parish in the Uppingham union. Acreage, 463; population, 16.
We have transcribed the Rutland pages from Kelly's Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland, 1929, and you can view the entry for Uppingham which contains further infomation and lists of residents etc.
