Bilstone


Bilstone is a small village in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of Leicestershire, England. It is approximately west from the county town and city of Leicester, and east from Twycross and the A444 road. The village forms part of the civil parish of Shackerstone. The population is included in the civil parish of Market Bosworth.
A half mile to the south, on Gibbet Lane, was a gibbet post. It dated from 1800, but had disappeared by 1988. The post was close to a contemporary murder. At the west of the village is a Grade II listed early 19th-century farmhouse. At the north of the village on Mill Lane is a disused 18th-century watermill, with adjoined 19th-century buildings. The mill was operational in the 1950s; today its machinery doesn't exist.
Bilstone is listed in the Domesday Book as in the Guthlaxton Hundred of Leicestershire, with two ploughlands, three households and three freemen. In 1066 Countess Godiva was Lord, she remaining as such in 1086, also becoming Tenant-in-chief to William I.
In 1870 Bilston was in the parish of Norton Juxta Twycross with a population of 116 and 25 houses.
John Grundy, Sr., land surveyor and civil engineer, was born in Bilstone c. 1696.