Family History

Would you like to get involved in your village history by providing some content for the website? If you have any information that you would like to add to these pages then please contact us on admin@leicestershirevillages.com and we’ll help you get started.

Influential People in South Wigston

Old parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials.

Parish Records - St Thomas Baptisms nb: set up churches menu

The Records Office in Long Street, Wigston Magna, offers registered users access to browse online local parish and national census records via Ancestry.co.uk, or view microfilmed rolls/sheets of original records. Parish records began about 1565 and census years covered are from 1841 (the first national census) to 1901, with the exception of the 1881, which is available free on various websites. The 1911 census records will not be available until 2011 and access to them has still to be determined (Ancestry membership/Local Record Office etc?). Whilst here, enquire about old maps showing the streets of families you are interested in.

Gravestones, Tombs and Memorial Inscriptions

This is an on-going project to record the inscriptions on all forms of gravestone, tomb and memorial plaques located inside churches, churchyards and graveyards in the nearby town of Wigston Magna, where there are All Saints, St Wistan's/St Wolstan's, the Congregational and (2!) Methodist churches and a large graveyard on the Newton Harcourt Road, where probably many of the non-conformist burials took place. Other burials may be located in the huge Leicester City Welford Road cemetary (already recorded and available on CD), a few miles away. (South Wigston has four churches but does not seem to have any gravestones at all! (probably due to the rapidly expanding victorian suburb having limited space available). This is an especially urgent project, as many of the softer stone gravestones are already becoming eroded and undecipherable and those at All Saints and the Congregational church have been moved (local council decision) to form a surrounding wall, often burying half of the details and over decades, they have been further obscured by ancient ivy etc.