HUCKNALL-TORKARD, a parish in the northern
division of the wapentake of BROXTOW, county of
NOTTINGHAM, 63 miles (N. N. W.) from Nottingham,
containing 1940 inhabitants. The living is a discharged
vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Nottingham, and diocese
of York, rated in the king's books at £4. 18. !.,
endowed with £400 royal bounty, and £200 parliamentary
grant, and in the patronage of the Duke of Portland.
The church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, is an
ancient edifice, containing several monuments in.
memory of different members of the Byron family:
here lie the remains of the late celebrated poet, George
Gordon, Lord Byron j he died at Missolonghi, in Western
Greece, in 1824, and was interred here, on the 16t
of July in that year, in the family vault, which is
beneath the communion table, and contains twelve
leaden coffins: in the chancel is a neat mural monument,
with an appropriate inscription, to his memory,
placed there by his lordship's sister, the Hon. Augusta
Mary Leigh. In the church is a book wherein the
names of several hundred visitors to the poet's tomb
are entered. There is also a monument to his ancestor
Richard, Lord Byron, who, with the rest, of his family,
being seven brothers, faithfully served Charles I. during
the civil war, and sustained great losses and hardships
on account of his loyalty to that monarch; he
died in 1679. Here are places of worship for General
Baptists, and Primitive and Wesleyan Methodists. A
Sunday school is endowed with £13 per annum, being a
third portion of the proceeds of a bequest for charitable
purposes by John Byron, in 1571; a parochial schoolroom
was built by subscription in 1815. Frame-work
knitting is carried on to a great extent in the parish.
On the enclosure of the waste lands twenty-five acres
were allotted for the benefit of poor housekeepers, now
yielding the sum of £22. 10. per annum.