Burley, Rutland Genealogy

England   Rutland



Parish History
Burley-on-theHill or Burley Holy Cross is an Ancient parish in Rutland.

BURLEY (Holy Cross), a parish, in the union of Oakham, hundred of Alstoe, county of Rutland, 2 miles (N. E. by N.) from Oakham; containing 252 inhabitants. The manor came, by purchase, into the possession of Villiers, first duke of Buckingham, who greatly enlarged and embellished the mansion here, in which he successively entertained James I. and Charles I., with their respective courts. This stately edifice, on the breaking out of the civil war, was garrisoned by a small body of parliamentarian troops, who, unable to sustain an attack of the royalists, set fire to the house, which was burnt to the ground; the site is now occupied by an elegant modern mansion. The living is a vicarage, valued in the king's books at £10. 13. 1½.; net income, £350; patron and impropriator, G. Finch, Esq.

From: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 437-440. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50844 Date accessed: 11 May 2011.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Burley like this:

BURLEY, or Burley-on-the-Hill, a parish in Oakham district, Rutland; in the vale of Catmose, 2 miles NE of Oakham r. station. Post Town, Oakham. Acres, 3,390. Real property, £4,572. Pop., 237. Houses, 40. The manor belonged to the Segraves, the De Lisles, the Spencers, and others; passed to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; and belongs now to G. Finch, Esq. The Duke of Buckingham, in his mansion here, entertained James I. with Ben Jonson's mask of the Gypsies, and had the dwarf Geoflrey Hudson served up at table, in the presence of Charles I. and his queen, in a great pasty. The mansion was burnt in the civil wars; but the stables belonging to it are still standing. A Grecian edifice, built by Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, and now the residence of the Finch family, occupies the site of the Duke of Buckingham's mansion; is 196 feet long; commands a beautiful extensive view; and contains many family portraits and some masterpiece pictures. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough. Value, £350. Patron, G. Finch, Esq The church is pleasantly surrounded with trees. There is a free school.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
Deposited records are found at the Leicester and Rutland Record Office

Contact: The Record Office Telephone: 0116 2571080 Fax: 0116 2571120 E-mail: recordoffice@leics.gov.uk

Diocese of Peterborough : Burley Bap 1577 - 1983 Marr 1582 – 1981 (Banns to1980) Bur 1574 - 1996

Contributor: Include here information for parish registers, Bishop’s Transcripts and other types of church records, such as parish chest records. Add the contact information for the office holding the original records. Add links to the Family History Library Catalog showing the film numbers in their collection

Poor Law Unions
Oakham Poor Law Union, Rutland

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Rutland Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain