Once a saddlers, then – during the last fifty years – a village shop, a cafe known as The Cake Hole, and now a restaurant. But which years did the changes happen? Who were the owners or managers?
There's more could be said...
As stated in the opening words of the home page of this site 'This web site is very much a personal project and reflects my enthusiasms.' If you've read at least part of this web site then you will be aware those enthusiams are greatest around the seventh to eleventh century and peter off rapidly towards present times.So there is a great deal more which could be said about Barrowby in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed quite a lot more has been published, especially in the 1979 booklet by L.R. Cryer. I have attempted to include a mention of most of the topics he included, usually without going into all the details he researched.
Urgent oral history
Since 1979 the village has continued to evolve. And there is now an older generation of residents who can share details about the who, when and sometimes why of the last forty or more years. But those sort of interviews need to be done in the next few years before illness and fading memories take their inevitable toll. The interviewers need to have a reasonably good knowledge of the village to be able to ask follow up questions and generally convert an informal chat into something which deserves to be called 'oral history'.
I am too new to the village to be the right person to conduct these interviews, although I could help with the 'technology' of recording. But I have done some interviewing and transcribing (back in the late 1980s) and can offer advice – here's something I published back in 2005 – the relevant pages are 8 to 15 (page 27 onwards according to your PDF viewer's way of counting).
Contributions welcome!
Apart from interviews there is scope for anyone with the inclination to reread Cryer's 1979 booklet (if you need a PDF version then please email me:– bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk) and add about the 1980s onwards for any topics you know about – or know people who do.
Over the last thirty-or-so years I have edited and published numerous books and articles about history and archaeology (and a fair few other topics!) written by other people. And this is the third website I have created about local history and archaeology. (If you're curious the others are for the Wolds Historical Organisation and about the Avebury area of Wiltshire.)
I am happy to work with anyone who would like their research about Barrowby added to this site. Please email me bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk to discuss, even if you're still in the early stages of researching or writing up.
In the meantime I'll be adding more about the Listed buildings and any new information I come across. Keep checking the What's new? page. Or email me to request updates. Please make clear you're interested in Barrowby as I also maintain several other email lists. Your email address will not be shared with anyone else.
If you think I've got something wrong – or can add additional information or photographs – then please email me:– bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk.
This website does not gather or store any visitor information.
Copyright Bob Trubshaw 2021–2022
No unauthorised copying
or reproduction except if all following conditions apply:
a: Copy is complete (including this copyright statement).
b: No changes are made.
c: No charge is made.
what's new?
Articles about Barrowby
Barrowby's location and geologysummary of prehistoric Barrowby
Anglo-Saxons
- summary of Anglo-Saxon Barrowby
- place-names
- Winnibriggs and Threo
- Domesday Book
- eleventh century water mills
- Kesteven moot site
Medieval
- summary of medieval Barrowby
- origins of All Saints church
- moated sites
- the decline of Casthorpe
- Newbo Abbey
- Barrowby's Rectory
- the Conduit to Grantham
- Sewstern Lane or The Drift
Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- summary of early modern Barrowby
- Dr Thomas Hurst
- Sir John Thorold
- John Manners, the Marquess of Granby
- Charnwood slates
- the toll bar
- Enclosure of Barrowby 1762
- village green a.k.a. Stevens Gutter
- Grantham Canal
Nineteenth century
- summary of nineteenth century Barrowby
- restoration of the parish church
- schools
- Methodist chapels
- Reading Room
- windmills
- pinfold
- Richard Hornsby
nineteenth and twentieth century population
Twentieth century
- summary of twentieth century Barrowby
- ironstone quarrying
- two World Wars
- Memorial Hall
- Barrowby's Listed buildings
- Barrowby's modern housing
guided walks in and around Barrowby
index of surnames in Cryer 1979
Articles and web links for nearby places
rare seventeenth fonts at Muston, Bottesford and Orston from Project Gargoyle Newsletter 2020
Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire
YouTube video
Harston's Anglo-Saxon carvings
The Grantham Canal
All you need to know – and more – from Wikipedia
Croxton Kerrial manor house excavations
photos and brief details from Leicester Mercury.
By 2021 the remains had been consolidated and there are annual open days.