Spreading out

Early records show Holyland (+variants) families in Leicestershire, London and Cheshire, but in this post I’ll deal solely with the geographical spread of the Leicestershire families.

For over a hundred years after the start of the Desford church registers, there seems to have been little movement. Some of the Holyland men married in other parishes, even other counties, but brought their wives back to the village and raised their families there. 

The first significant settlement outside Desford seems to have been in the late 1600s, with the appearance of a family just across the border in the north of Warwickshire. However, there was also movement within Leicestershire around this time.  Two wills from the 1720s/30s show the existence of a Holyland family with adult children, living in Botcheston. Botcheston is a small village barely 2 miles from Desford, and it seems inconceivable that these Holylands would not be part of the Desford clan; however, it has not (yet) been possible to link them into the family tree. I cannot be sure of the parents’ marriage, there are no identifiable baptisms for most of their children, and the whereabouts of the family graves is a mystery. Fortunately the will left by the mother of this family, Elizabeth, who died in 1732, names her husband and lists her adult children by name and in order, so it has been possible to identify them and follow their descendants.

Descendants of both the Desford line and that which moved to Botcheston subsequently spread widely across Leicestershire and further afield. It’s possible to discern some features which run within each family; the Desford men were more likely to work as butcher, bakers, etc, whilst the men from the Botcheston line were more often farmers, blacksmiths, or joined the army. Whilst some of the Botcheston clan stayed there, other members of this family moved to Thurlaston, then to Earl Shilton before spreading more widely; the Desford families moved into different Leicestershire villages, initially Market Bosworth. The first name Christopher recurs across generations in the Desford line; the Botcheston line used the names Francis and Job recurringly.

Young men from both the Desford and Botcheston (Earl Shilton) family groups went to London as apprentices in the 1700s. Many (but not all) of the Holylands subsequently born in London and therearounds therefore descended from these Leicestershire families.

With changing socioeconomics in the 1800s, families moved further afield; many of those moving to other parts of the country were involved with the railways, or with heavier industry eg steel. The 1800s also brought the first emigrants, both from choice (to the USA) and by compulsion (transportation to Australia). Further movement occurred in the 1900s, and of course in that century there were Holyland deaths on battlefields in many parts of the world.

The diagram below shows those counties into which the Leicestershire Holylands (or variant) spread. The colour of the highlight signifies the first century in which such a birth or death has been noted in that county.

                                                 Cumberland

                 Isle of Man                                                        North Yorkshire

                                                     Lancashire              West Yorkshire

                                                       Manchester

                                                                                           South Yorkshire

                                               Cheshire

                                                                                  Derbyshire   Nottinghamshire

                                                              Staffordshire    

                                                                                   LEICESTERSHIRE  Rutland  

                                                 Worcestershire    Warwickshire  Northamptonshire

                                                                                                           Bedfordshire                                                                                                                                                             

                                            Gloucestershire                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Essex

                                                                                             Berkshire      London

                                                                                                                                   Kent

                                                                                           Hampshire           Sussex

                                                              Dorset

                              Devon

Green = Birth/baptism/death first noted in 16th century; grey 17^th, red 18^th, blue 19^th, yellow 20^th.

Nonetheless, the Holyland name is still concentrated nowadays most heavily in Leicestershire, and there are Holyland graves in around 40 churchyards across both town and county, as well as in the large civic burial grounds.  

In my next post I’ll look briefly at those Holyland men who went to London as apprentices in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Comments? Questions? Please get in touch!