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Kingstone in 1817

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Description from A Topographical History of Staffordshire by William Pitt (1817)

KINGSTONE (KINGSTON).

Kingston is a parish in the s.w. extremity of Totmanslow South, and the village is situated about three miles and a half from Uttoxeter. The parish contains 67 houses, 67 families ; 152 males, 183 females: total, 335 inhabitants.

The Church is a small ancient structure of stone, with a low square tower of brick. This fabric is in a neglected, if not in a ruinous state, and supported on the southern side by three buttresses of brick. The interior is plain: the pews of oak. There are no remarkable monuments in the church-yard, but such is the mischievous, and it might be added, the devilish disposition of boys, that they have recently defaced several of the inscriptions on the tomb-stones. This church is a donative in the gift of the Chetwynd family: the Rev. John Hilridge is the present curate.

The land in this parish is in general fertile, particularly in the vale through which the river Blithe flows in its course to Blitheford, and thence to the Trent. The upland is sound gravelly loam.

The country between Kingston and Gratwich is pleasant and well enclosed. The valley through which the Blithe winds is beautiful, and productive of abundance of corn and grass; but the meadows were much injured, and some of the hay spoiled, by the inundations of the river during the wet summer of 1816. There is a corn-mill about mid-way between the villages of Kingston and Gratwich.