History Hub - Church Guide Overview

Church Guide Overview

St Peter's Church, Market Bosworth, January 2025, after the installation of the replacement weathercock

There has been a church in Market Bosworth since before Domesday, the survey (for reasons of taxation and raising revenue) that was undertaken at the behest of King William I, the Conqueror. It was not this current church, but another, a quarter of a mile away to the north, on St Anne's Hill, where the road and development of Harcourt Spinney now lies. Domesday lists both a priest and a deacon, giving a picture of somewhere which was even then quite posh.

The current iteration of the church building celebrated its seven hundredth anniversary in 2025, but there had been a church on this site for at least a century before that. The first recorded Rector was in 1222, William de Verdone, whose patron was Sir Nichols de Verdone. Rectors need churches, so we could be looking at a twelfth century origin for church buildings on the current site.

Saxon Origins of St Thomas and St Anne

Nothing is known of the original church at St Anne's Hill, although it is assumed to be at the site of the original settlement of Boseworde, as it is known in Domesday (The Market designation was only added after the Market Charter granted by King Edward I in 1285). The church at St Anne's would probably have followed the typical Saxon pattern which was a rectangular name with an apse at the eastern end, probably with a curved wall to the east. The evidence for a church being at the site was that when the road from Market Bosworth to Carlton was being improved, skeletal remains were found. The chapel of St Thomas and St Anne survived in some form until suppressed (forced closure) in 1548, in the reign of Edward VI, who was the son of Henry VIII. (citation needed)

What caused the town to move from St Anne's is unknown, but by the end of the twelfth century there must have been a church at the current site, which is nearly at the highest point of the hill on which the town sits. It could have been the availability of water by digging better wells that enabled the move. By the beginning of the twentieth century there were thirty fine pumps in the town, all on top of wells that were abut fifteen to twenty feet deep. Apart from land to stand on, the availability of water is a key factor in sustaining a settlement.

After the market was established it is thought to have been held at the wide place in the road now known as Park Street, the place opposite the Parish Hall.

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Church Guide Overview

Saxon Origins of St Thomas and St Anne

Bronze Age Barrow

Early Church Development – 12th-13th Centuries

Thatched Church and First Nave

Plastered and Painted?

Absent Mass Dial

The Fourteenth Century Church

Nave

North Aisle

Chancel and Sanctuary

South Aisle

Font

Tower

Exterior and Carvings

Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Bells

The Rise of Dixie

Civil War

Decline

Victorian Renovations

Mosaics

Churchyard