Muston, Leicestershire

Muston

Muston village
Muston
 Muston shown within Leicestershire
Population 339 (2011 Census)
OS grid referenceLatitude : 54.2167. Longitude : -0.3167
    London  116 miles (187 km) 
Civil parishBottesford
DistrictMelton
Shire countyLeicestershire
RegionEast Midlands
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post town Nottingham
Postcode district NG13
Police Leicestershire
Fire Leicestershire
Ambulance East Midlands
EU Parliament East Midlands
UK ParliamentRutland and Melton
List of places
UK
England
Leicestershire

Coordinates: 52°55′59″N 0°46′08″W / 52.933°N 0.769°W / 52.933; -0.769

Muston (pronounced Musson) is a village in north Leicestershire, 18.6 miles east of Nottingham, 12.5 miles north of Melton Mowbray and five miles west of Grantham on the A52. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 339.[1] It lies on the Leicestershire/Lincolnshire county border, two miles east of Bottesford, of which it forms part of the civil parish. The River Devon (pronounced Deevon) flows through the village.

Facilities

The parish church is dedicated to St John the Baptist. It is in the Belvoir Group of parishes, based in Bottesford, and under the Diocese of Leicester.[2]

Muston Meadows is a nearby 41-hectare grassland nature reserve featuring 33 types of grass and over 100 other species of flowering plant. The reserve is notable for its colony of over 10,000 Green-winged Orchids.[3] The 14th century cross on the village green is a Grade II* listed structure. [4] The Viking Way, a long-distance footpath between Humberside and Rutland, passes half a mile to the east of the village.

The village lies on the Bingham–Bottesford–Grantham bus route, which runs about once an hour in the daytime on weekdays. The local pub, the Muston Gap, occupies a Grade II listed building dating back to the 18th century.[5] It stands on the A52, 110 yards (100 metres) from the Nottingham–Grantham railway line, where the nearest station is Bottesford 1.8 miles away (3 km). Muston also has a café (the Old Forge Tea Rooms), bed and breakfast facilities (Glebe House, a Grade II listed building,[6] and Chantry Cottage),[7] a children's play area,[8] and a village hall (Old School Muston).[9]

14th century stone cross

Muston of old

Muston belonged to the ancient hundred or wapentake of Framland.[10] Muston Gorse wharf on the Grantham Canal was the terminus of the private Belvoir Tramway to Belvoir Castle, which opened in 1793. Some detailed, amply illustrated information on Muston and its past appears on the Bottesford Living History website.[11]

John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72): "MUSTON... stands on the River Devon, adjacent to the boundary with Lincolnshire, near the Grantham Canal, 1½ mile E S E of Bottesford railway station, and 5½ W by N of Grantham; and has a post-office under Nottingham. The parish comprises 1,623 acres. Real property, £2,694. Pop., 360. Houses, 74. The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to the Duke of Rutland. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough. Value, £400.* Patron, the Lord Chancellor. The church is a handsome structure; and consists of nave, aisles, chancel and two porches, with central tower and spire. There are (sic) a Wesleyan chapel and a national school."[12]

Famous people

The poet George Crabbe (1754–1832) moved to Muston Rectory (later Glebe House)[13] from a curacy at Stathern in 1789, having previously been chaplain to the Duke of Rutland from 1782 to 1784.[14] He was a resident incumbent of Muston and of nearby West Allington, Lincolnshire until 1792,[15] but then an absentee until 1805. He remained resident for most of the period up to 1814, when he became rector of Trowbridge, Wiltshire. His Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir was a pioneering study of the district.[16]

Property in Muston was owned by Nathaniel Hallowes (1582–1661) of Derby, an English politician who sat in the English House of Commons from 1640 to 1653 and again in 1659. He was an active Parliamentarian during the English Civil War.[17]

References

  1. "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
  2. The other churches in the group are Barkestone-le-Vale, St Peter and St Paul; St Mary the Virgin's Church, Bottesford; All Saints' Church, Harby; St Helen's Church, Plungar; St Peter's Church, Redmile : St Guthlac's Church, Stathern; St Michael & All Angels' Church, Hose; and St Remigius's Church, Long Clawson.
  3. Leicestershire's nature reserves. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  4. "Name: VILLAGE CROSS List entry Number: 1075068". English Heritage. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  5. British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  6. Glebe House website. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  7. Chantry Cottage site. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  8. Fields in Trust. Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  9. RCC (Leicestershire & Rutland) Retrieved 11 December 2014.
  10. Rootsweb map.
  11. Discovering Muston. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  12. Vision of Britain. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  13. Retrieved 19 September 2010.
  14. Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  15. [George Crabbe]: The Life of George Crabbe by his Son (London: Cresset Press, 1947), pp. x, 118–19 and 128–30; The Poetical Works of George Crabbe. Edited by A. J. and R. M. Carlyle (London: Oxford University Press, 1908). Introduction, pp. xvi–xvii. Further detail on the Bottesford History Group website: Retrieved 19 September 2010.
  16. Bibliotheca Topographia Britannica, VIII, Antiquities in Leicestershire, 1790. Reproduced on the Harby website. Retrieved 31 March 2011:
  17. Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.

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