England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Shackerstone St Peter

The Parish

The parish of Shackerstone lies in western Leicestershire not too far from its border with Staffordshire. Shackerstone is located about 5 miles northwest of Market Bosworth. Shackerstone is a small and compact village situated at a "T"-junction of lanes close by where the Ashby de la Zouch canal crosses the River Sence, the village lies in a patchwork of lanes about 3 miles east of the A444 road which connects Burton Upon Trent with Nuneaton. Shackerstone would largely have earned its living from farming, the area would have had a mixed farming regime dominated by pastoral husbandry due to the heavy clay soils. The parish is drained by the River Sence which heads southwest to join the Anker, then the Teme before winding back north and east to reach the Trent and the North Sea through the Humber Estuary. Shackerstone is sited at at around 90 metres above the sea in a gently rolling landscape that is more or less at a similar height for several miles. Shackerstone parish was fairly small and covered just 1,100 acres, it would have supported a population of just over 500 parishioners. In Domesday times Shackerstone was a very small place indeed, held by one Robert the Bursar is could offer just a single plough and a small meadow.

The Church

St Peter's church sits at the heart of Shackerstone, just to the east of the main north to south running lane and accessed along Church Road. Sadly St Peter is a Victorian replacement for the mediaeval church which one stood here. The style is in the Perpendicular fashion but the building is clearly of little architectural interest as Pevsner dismisses it in just 4 lines of description. The site is enclosed by a brick wall with a tile topping and at the southeastern corner a wooden gateway grants access. Once inside the bordering trees, however, the site is fairly open with few impediments to photography.