Tur Langton
Parish Council
TUR LANGTON : HISTORY OF OUR VILLAGE
We have put together some useful articles on the history of our village along with some QI things and also some photos. Tur Langton does have a few claims to fame, notably the beautiful grade 2 star listed church, and the well King Charles I watered his horse after fleeing the battle of Naseby nearby, but mostly it’s just local bits of interesting
We would be very happy to hear from anyone who would like to add to these pages, photos, articles or anecdotes. We are hoping to add an oral history section as well. We would like to thank John Martin, historian for his help and support and for contributing to some of the articles.
Tur Langton appears in the Doomsday book of 1085-6. It was originally called Terlintone and is listed as such. The record reads as follows:
The Archbishop of York holds Terlington and Walkelin (holds it) of him. There are thirteen carucates of land with Langtone, which belongs thereto. In the demesne there are three ploughs, and four serfs, and two bondswomen ; and twenty villanes with four borders have six ploughs.
There are twenty acres of meadow. Wood, three furlongs in length and two in breadth. In the same vil Herbert holds of Walkelin three carucates of land, and has there one plough in the demesne ; and five villanes and two soke-men, with two bordars, have three ploughs. There are twelve acres of meadow. The whole was worth twenty shillings, now, sixty shillings.
(Notes :
A villaine is roughly translated to farm hand.
A carucate was used used both a a unit of assessment and a peasant landholding unit found in most of the Danelaw countries. It is derived from the word caruca, Latin for Plough. The standard doomsday plough team could notionally plough 120 acres in an agricultural year, the curucate was therefore a nominal 120 acres.
A demesne or domain was all the land retained and managed by a lord of the manor under the feudal system for his own use, occupation, or support.
A bordar was a feudal tenant holding a cottage and usually a few acres of land at the will of his lord and bound to menial service.)
The parish of Tur Langton was included in the small hundreds (an administrative division) in the Leicestershire Survey of 1130, and recognised as part of the church parish of Church Langton from 1220, but its name does not appear before the late 16th century. Various spellings appear before this date, Terlintone, Terlington and Tyrlynton were all used through the Middle Ages.
The name Tur Langton is derived from the Anglo Saxon word for an enclosure and it means long town.
One of the oldest buildings in the village is the chapel, first mentioned before 1162 and built by the Maunsell family who were Lords of the Manor. By 1832 despite being described as a ‘wretched structure’ it was still being supported by the villagers until the new church, St Andrews, was built in 1866, when the chapel was dismantled. Today just a small portion of the north wall and doorway can be seen in The Manor grounds.
Most of the houses on Main Street are of red brick or ironstone, many being built or rebuilt from 1700 onwards, some have beams with dates on the from before this. The Gartree hundreds court, which dealt with local justice and taxes was originally held under an oak tree, was moved in 1750 to the Bulls Head Inn, which is now new housing.
THE WELL WHERE KING CHARLES WATERED HIS HORSE
There is a natural mineral well in the eastern part of the village where it is claimed King Charles I watered his horse when fleeing from the nearby battle of Naseby in June 1645. This story is supported by the prominent royalist Richard Halford, high sheriff of Leicester and his son and heir Andrew living in the area and Charles staying at nearby Wistow, built by Richard, the night before the battle. It is possible they rode to battle down a cobbled road that went past the Manor.
THE MANOR - TUR LANGTON
The Manor is approached down a short avenue to the west of the village. It is now part of a thriving business centre with shops, coffee shop and business set in beautiful countryside. It is a grade 2 listed building which dates back to the early 1600s, replacing an earlier, much larger medieval house, probably built and lived in by the Maunsell family, lords of the Manor. The house today was originally built as an H plan, but only the central range (originally forming the great hall) and part of the north wing survive, the rest being demolished in the late 18th century by fire.
(Link to the Manor web page here)
QI THINGS ABOUT TUR LANGTON
In the Market Harborough advertiser and Midland Mail dated Friday January 28th 1933 a very small two line story:
“ electricity was switched on to Tur Langton for the first time this week”
Village Hall activities:
Please see our main Parish Council page on the history of our village hall, but it has been a long standing popular venue for the village to hold events particularly whist drives, in the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail, just a few examples are:
28th October 1935 - a whist drive raised £10 4s 2d for the Leicester Infirmary
On Friday May 6th 1941 the Youth Service Squad raised £11 14s 3d for “comfort for
the troops”
And again on the 20th December 1944 £26 was raised by a whist drive and bring and buy sale raising money for Dr Barnado’s Homes.
Along with the other Langtons, Tur Langton was famous for the summer fattening of beet cattle which were purchased from the western areas of Britain ( link here ). In the 1870s the Imperial Gazetter of England and Wales described Tur Langton as
“ ...a township, with a village, in Church Langton parish, Leicester; 2 miles E of N of Kibworth r. station, and 5 1/4 north of Market Harborough. Real property, £3,278. Pop.,337, Houses, 90. A church is here, as a chapel to Church Langton; is a small old building with a turret, and was about to be restored in 1864, at a cost of about £1000. There is also an independent chapel. Charles I., in his flight from the battle of Naseby watered his horse here, at a place still called King Charles’ Well”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tur_Langton#cite_note-7 Wilson, John Marius (1870–72). Gazetteer of England and Wales<http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/10983 (1st ed.). Edinburgh: A.Fullarton & Co. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
There were two windmills in Tur Langton in the 17th century, one belonging to the Sniths alias Moore family and one to the Halford family. (fn. 454)<
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol5/pp193-213#fnn454
A windmill was marked on the inclosure award map in 1792 in a small field on the east side of the road from Tur Langton to Church Langton. It appears to have fallen into disuse in the early 19th century. After 1850 Langton farmers ground their corn in the mill at Kibworth Harcourt.