These trade directories were the Yellow Pages of the day, listing the businesses and tradespeople in a village, along with details of the local gentry, landowners, charities and facilities. You can view these directories in full on the University of Leicester’s searchable database of historical directories. Some of these directories make reference to there having been a hospital for leprous persons in Cottingham in the time of King Henry III. However, according to Dr Peter Hill in his book Rockingham Forest Revisited, this is incorrect, with Cottingham having been mistaken for nearby Coton, a village just on the outskirts of Rockingham that has since disappeared. The 1914 Kelly’s Directory is the last reference we have to the villages being located in the Corby Hundred.
