18 January 2022

In the last couple of years, many of us have made more use of our local network of footpaths.  Perhaps that explains the good number of members and visitors who attended our meeting in January to hear from Vicky Allen, President of the Leicestershire & Rutland Bridleways Association, about the history of rights of way.

In ancient times, the easiest way to transport people and goods was by water – but as it didn’t always flow where you needed to go, roads of various kinds have always been necessary.  Some of those ancient routes may be the oldest man-made features to survive in the landscape.  The Romans famously built good, straight roads, which continued to be used long after the Roman occupation.  Their technology was not improved on until the scientific advances of Telford and Macadam in the 1800s.

In the right conditions, the early roads made it possible to travel quite rapidly: for example, Richard II was able to ride 70 miles along Watling Street in one night, with only a single change of horse.  However, in wet weather routes over Leicestershire clay could become “foundrous”, meaning bad enough to bring a horse to its knees.  In some cases, horses were better off following the bed of a brook, while lighter pedestrians would walk alongside.  Individual parishes were made responsible for maintaining the roads that passed through them but they often failed to comply.  Although the responsibility has now passed to county councils, parishes do still retain some rights of veto in highways matters.

Richard II’s journey shows that, in medieval times, even kings would travel on horseback, while peasants would go on foot and goods would be transported by packhorse.  There was also a network of drove roads across the country, along which herds of cattle and sheep would be driven from Wales, Scotland and the North of England to be sold in the South-East, grazing along the way.  Pub names such as the Durham Ox and the Black Bull might indicate a drove road, as might wide verges and clumps of Scots pines, which were planted to mark favourable stopping places.

County maps did not begin to show roads until about 1600 and, even then, the maps were for display by the gentry, not for practical route-finding.  Later in the century, writers such as Celia Fiennes made travelling fashionable and strip maps began to be published showing the routes between principal towns.  In the 1700s, turnpike trusts built better roads funded by tolls and it became practical to make journeys by carriage.  Surveying also improved and the military established the Ordnance Survey to plan the movement of guns (ordnance) in the threat of invasion.  At the end of the century, parliamentary enclosure transferred large areas of the countryside into private ownership and established the distinction between roads, bridleways and footpaths for the first time.

The 19^th century landscape movement, which led to the founding of organizations such as the National Trust, increased interest in preserving footpaths.  In 1850 the artist John Flower – who painted in both Thurcaston and Cropston – set up the Leicestershire Footpaths Association, which went on to publish comprehensive maps of paths in the county.  The new pastime of cycling gave rise to its own maps, with routes marked in different ways to show the quality of the surface.

Rights of way in the countryside (but not in cities) are now recorded in Definitive Maps.  A recent law has set a deadline of January 2026 for any new claims based on historic rights to be submitted and a huge number of them is expected.  However, after many years of campaigning to re-establish historic bridleways on the routes of footpaths, Vicky has concluded that the distinction should be abolished.  She advocates “greenways” that can be used by all non-motorized traffic, with the money saved in legal fees being used to educate users and landowners to share them responsibly.

16 November 2021

After completing the formal business of the AGM at our November meeting,
we rewarded ourselves with entertainment from the Leicestershire Guild of Storytelling, in the person of Kathy Chalk.  The Guild has been collecting and re-telling local stories for over 25 years.  Some of them are unique to Leicestershire and Rutland, while others are local versions of tales that are known around the world, from collections such as The One Thousand and One Nights.

Kathy first told us about the rector of Ratby, who fell out with the local squire over a matter of conscience and came to a soggy reckoning in Groby Pool.

Next, she recounted the history of our own Hugh Latimer, who progressed from being the son of a Thurcaston farmer to become a famous preacher and Bishop of Worcester.  However, he ended his days being burned at the stake in Oxford under the reforms of the Catholic queen Mary Tudor.

On a lighter note, there was Jack, who travelled from London to visit Leicester market and tried to take advantage – in more ways than one – of local girl Bella.  However, he got more than he bargained for when he returned a year later!  This story achieved national fame by being circulated in print as one of the “broadside ballads”.

Kathy’s final tale was of Dan Hugh: a monk in one of Leicester’s friaries, who was murdered three times in the same night and a pike was eventually hanged for the crime.  To find out why, you’ll have to seek out the Guild’s book Leicestershire & Rutland Folk Tales, which includes this story and many more.

19 October 2021

There is always a good turn-out when we can find truly local topics for our meetings and that was again the case in October, when two of our long-standing members updated us with their research into some of the most significant buildings in Thurcaston’s history.

First, we heard from Margaret Greiff about the largest house in the village, which has been known successively as the Mansion House, the Rectory and the Grange.  Strictly speaking, Thurcaston was never a manor in its own right but was a tenancy of the manor of Groby, with a requirement to pay rent in the form of a certain number of hens each year at Candlemas.  However, the tenant behaved as the lord of the manor in practice.  Margaret presented a case that the Mansion House was originally built soon after 1276, when John Falconer of Keyham married the heiress to the Thurcaston estate.  His name appears in legal documents connected with Thurcaston from that time and he might also have been responsible for improvements in the church that have been dated to the 13^th century, such as the addition of a tower and the north aisle.

The house probably became the Rectory in the mid-1400s, when the Falconer family lacked a male heir and the ownership of Thurcaston passed with one of their daughters to a family in Staffordshire.  In 1583, Elizabeth I’s spymaster Francis Walsingham bought the Thurcaston estate and gave it to the newly founded Emmanuel College in Cambridge.  We are fortunate that several of the rectors appointed by Emmanuel have left us descriptions of the Rectory.  For a long time, it remained a large, half-timbered hall of 8 bays, open to the roof, which would have been similar in size and appearance to Leicester Guildhall.  It was not until 1735 that the Rev. Arnald substantially rebuilt the property in brick, with many sash windows and the attractive curved frontage that it retains today.

By 1927, much of the glebe land attached to the Rectory had been sold and it became too expensive for the rector to maintain.  A new rectory was built further along Anstey Lane and the old Rectory was renamed the Grange.  It has since passed through a succession of private owners and Margaret showed us several photographs taken by Zoe Byford, who grew up there.

Next, Brenda Hooper told us the story of Thurcaston’s lost Manor House.  There is a well-known painting by the Leicester artist John Flower of “an old house at Thurcaston” but until recently it was not clear exactly where it was located.  Then Brenda and Margaret discovered a watercolour in the collection of Leicester Museums, which shows the same building from a different angle and makes clear that it stood just behind the church.  The house was large, with three gables, and an inscription on a beam recorded that it was built in 1568 by Nicholas Gravenor.  However, it can be seen from the Flower painting that in fact he must have added two new gables to an earlier building.  (The earlier building was potentially old enough to have been the birthplace of the protestant martyr Hugh Latimer in 1487.  The other contender is the house roughly opposite the Memorial Hall that is still known as Latimer House.)

Gravenor did not live in his new house for long, soon building and moving into an even grander house with a moat, at Maplewell.  There are occasional later references to the Manor House from records such as Hearth Tax returns and we know that from at least 1770 it belonged to the Hudson and Palmer families of Wanlip Hall.  For more than 100 years their tenants were farmers called Weston.  In 1852, lightning set fire to the roof of the house and the Leicester newspapers praised the people of Thurcaston and surrounding villagers for the way they worked together to save the building and its contents.  The house was eventually dismantled in the 1870s, when Archdale Palmer built a new “Thurcaston Manor” for his widowed mother on the other side of the church, which survives today.

22 September 2021

How should society support those of its members who are unable to support themselves?  With the news full of controversies around Universal Credit and issues of food and fuel poverty, the question is relevant today but it has a long history and was the subject of our September meeting.  Our experienced speaker was Mick Rawle, President of the Leicestershire & Rutland Family History Society, and he illustrated his talk with many original documents, including some drawn from the history of his own family.

Mick explained how the “Old” Poor Law was enacted in 1597 and continued in force with little amendment for nearly 250 years.  It required each parish to take responsibility for its own poor, to prevent the infirm from starving and to provide employment for those who were able to work.  Each parish appointed Overseers of the Poor, whose expenses were funded by a rate levied on the wealthier members of the community.  When someone fell into poverty, it became very important to establish which parish must take responsibility for them and there are many records of “settlement examinations” to answer that question.  Usually, a person was deemed to be settled in the last place where they had lived or worked for more than a year and they could be sent back there (with their family) to claim poor relief.  Considerable efforts were also made to obtain payments from the fathers of illegitimate children to avoid the children becoming a burden on the parish.  When the parish did have to care for children, they were often placed into long apprenticeships instead, for example from the age of 8 until 21.

Surviving Overseers’ account books show that at certain periods caring for the poor became a great expense for the community.  One such period was just after the Napoleonic Wars, when soldiers returned home looking for work at the same time as industry and agriculture were depressed because of the ending of the war effort.  An increasing share of the poor rate was being paid to lawyers to argue settlement cases and it became clear that the law needed to change.

In 1834 the “New” Poor Law established a different system, in which groups of parishes were joined into Poor Law Unions with a shared workhouse.  Thurcaston and Cropston were part of the Barrow Union and the workhouse was in Mount­sorrel.  While each parish still paid for its own poor, the larger workhouses were more efficient and better regulated.  Mick’s opinion was that, although designed to be places where citizens would want to avoid ending up, the workhouses did a lot of good in keeping people going until they could resume gainful employment.

It was good to be back together in the Memorial Hall – suitably distanced – after such a long break.

20 July 2021

For our July event we were once more able to meet in person to explore the neighbouring village of Swithland.  Our chair, Anne Horton, had prepared a “treasure trail” with a series of 20 questions that drew our attention to some of the many listed buildings and other interesting features of the village.

After a brief detour to see the station-that-might-have-been, we gathered in the churchyard, where Anne was very much at home, having been Rector of the parish for many years.  Many of the graves to be seen there are carved from the famous Swithland slate so they are extremely well preserved.  They range from the elaborate tomb of Sir John Danvers to two modest but very early headstones from 1673.  A campaign by parishioners successfully resulted in the medieval font being returned from Scotland and it now stands close to the East Door.

Anne also arranged for us to visit the historic Hall Farm, where we peeked inside one of the two 18^th century barns and admired its timber roof.

The remainder of the trail followed Main Street, where the village school and many of the old cottages were built or restored by the Danvers family of Swithland Hall.  A heraldic symbol of the family was the wyvern – a kind of dragon without hind legs – and its image can be seen in various places.  The Wyvern was also the original name of the village pub but through time it became corrupted to the Griffin Inn.  We ended our tour at the war memorial and the adjoining Memorial Hall, where a plaque was placed in the year 2000 to commemorate the many generations of local people who worked in the slate industry.

17  August 2021

You have probably seen the ruins of Grace Dieu Priory beside the A512 near Thringstone.  A cold and dull August evening did not deter 16 of our members and their guests from joining us on a guided walk to take a closer look at them.

Ann Petty from the Friends of Grace Dieu led us through pleasant woods to the gates of Grace Dieu Manor, was used until recently as a private school.  Ann had grown up in one of the houses on the estate so she was able to give us a personal insight into life there during the 1960s.  Our further route to the priory ruins passed the remains of the old Charnwood Forest Canal and Railway, which were built to connect the Leicestershire coalfields to Loughborough but they were never very profitable.

The Priory was founded by Rosa de Verdon in about the year 1240, when she returned to her home town of Belton after an unhappy marriage in Ireland.  It followed the standard plan of a simple church on the north side, with other buildings grouped around a cloister.  The Priory housed up to 16 Augustinian nuns, a number of servants and a male priest to conduct the many services that formed their daily routine.  Rosa herself might also have lived there; she was certainly buried at the Priory when she died a few years later and her fine tomb can still be seen in Belton church.  There is a standing stone in an adjacent field and many worked flints have also been found at the site so the location of the Priory was perhaps chosen because of its existing spiritual significance.

We get occasional glimpses of life at the Priory through church records, legal disputes and a rare set of account books for the years 1414-1418.  Its estates gradually grew as people left land to it in their wills but it never became very wealthy.  The Priory continued in use for 300 years until, like other religious houses, it was dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII.  John Beaumont was assigned to value the property for the Crown and the next day he bought it for the low price he had determined!  (Beaumont had form: later in life he was imprisoned for corruption on a grand scale in the position of Master of the Rolls.)  The Beaumonts converted the Priory into a family home and most of the ruins visible today date from that Tudor period but the broad arch of the medieval Chapter House remains the most distinctive feature.

The estate eventually came into the Phillipps family.  Their main residence was at Garendon and they allowed Grace Dieu to fall into ruin but a later member of the family, Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle, built himself a new manor house on the estate.  He was a prominent local Catholic, founding Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, and he built several chapels and other religious monuments in the woods around Grace Dieu.  After De Lisle moved back to Garendon, a long-term tenant of the Manor was Charles Booth, known for his maps of poverty in Victorian London, who was a generous benefactor to the local area and is buried at Thringstone.

If you would like to visit, the Friends of Grace Dieu offer tours at various times during the year or you can explore on your own by following the signed footpath from the car park of the Bull’s Head carvery at Thringstone.

16 February 2021

At our online meeting in February, we welcomed Mark Temple to tell us about the Vanishing Windmills of Leicestershire and Beyond.

While watermills already existed in the Saxon period, windmills were probably introduced to England after the Norman conquest. The first written reference to them dates from the 12th century and by the 14th century we have illustrations in books such as the Luttrell Psalter. Those early examples were all post mills, in which the whole structure was pivoted on a large, central post so that it could be turned to face the wind. This made them vulnerable to strong winds and a gale in 1895 destroyed or damaged 40 windmills in the Leicestershire area. The only example surviving in the county today is at Kibworth. The central post was usually supported by a trestle structure resting on four stone piers and sometimes, as at Markfield, the four stones in the shape of a cross are all that remains on the site of a former mill.

A later development was the tower mill, in which the sails were mounted at the top of a brick tower, where they could catch more wind. Only the cap with the sails needed to turn to face the wind so the millstones and other heavy equipment could be housed in a fixed building below. However, tower mills were more expensive to build and most Leicestershire windmills continued to be of the post mill type, perhaps because – unlike in Lincolnshire – we have no shortage of hills to put them on. Although 5- and 7-sailed windmills did exist, an even number of sails was preferred so that if one sail was lost, the opposite one could be removed to balance it and keep the mill in use.

Loughborough is known to have had four windmills. A “South Prospect of Leicester” from 1743 shows several of them in the area that is now Victoria Park and Highfields, as well as on the distant hills of Charnwood. A large number of village windmills survived into the age of photography and Mark showed us many examples from around the county. During the early 20th century flour began to be milled on a more industrial scale using other sources of power. Most windmills were either dismantled or allowed to decay so there are no working examples in the county today.

The most famous windmill in this area was at Woodhouse Eaves, which remained a popular tourist destination long after it had fallen out of use, until destroyed by a fire in 1945. Its stone base survives and a viewing platform has been added.

Also near to us, Hough’s Mill near Swannington is undergoing restoration and will re-open to visitors as soon as that becomes possible.

As far as the members of our Society are aware, there was never a windmill in either of our villages but documents do refer to one somewhere in Swithland. The names of the former furlongs Windmill Lane in Cropston (1775) and Windmill Flat in Thurcaston (1608) suggest that the Swithland mill might have been located not far from our border.

18 May 2021

15  June 2021

It was lovely to meet other members in person on a beautiful June evening, when the Society’s Peter Smith led a walk exploring the changing landscape between Thurcaston and Beaumont Leys.

The layout of roads we see today dates from 1799, when Enclosure completely changed the way the land around Thurcaston was farmed.  The Enclosure Commissioners took the strips of land held in communally worked, open fields and re-arranged them into privately owned blocks.  At the same, they specified where roads, footpaths and other rights of way should run.  We do not have any detailed maps from before that time but a small scale map published in Nichols’ History of Leicestershire and the Enclosure Award itself give us some clues.

The village was clustered round All Saints’ Church, with an area of common land or “waste” where Rectory Lane now is.  Roads radiated out from here to neighbouring villages.  In a field next to the church, a “hollow way” has been worn by the passage of feet and hooves on the path to Coffin Bridge, which was the route used by residents of Cropston to attend the church or bring their dead for burial.

Near Park View Riding Stables we crossed a section of the old parish boundary, marked by a wide, double hedge.  The boundary was later moved to run along the backs of the houses in Thurcaston.  The fields in between now fall within Leicester City and the City Council’s draft Local Plan proposes that 600 houses could be built there in the next 15 years.

The A46 Western Bypass was carved through the area in 1995.  Beyond it, we entered Castle Hill Park, where Leicester University is currently running an archaeology summer school to excavate the site that the Knights Hospitaller occupied from 1240 to 1482.

The system of paying annual tithes to the church was abolished at Enclosure.  In compensation, the Rector was allocated additional “glebe” land along the west side of Leicester Road to support his income.  A small pool at the back of the modern Glebelands estate is the source of the Thistle Brook, which runs through Thurcaston, crossing Leicester Road at the mini roundabout.  The pool also marks the corner of the old parish boundaries with Beaumont Leys and Birstall.

Alongside the Thistle Brook is a strip of land that was undeveloped until very recently.  It marks the line of the Old Leicester Road and a public footpath still follows it.  The landscape is ever-changing and we had to detour around the latest phase of the Ashton Green development before we could rejoin the footpath to pass under the A46 and across rough fields to Rectory Lane.  Here, beside the path and now overgrown, there is another hollow way to remind us how many other people have walked this route in the past.

19 January 2021

The speaker at our January meeting was Jo Mungovin whose talk on Joseph Merrick “the Elephant Man” was very informative. Those of us who had been brought up to believe that Joseph was a ‘freak’ whose life revolved around him being exhibited at Penny shows were soon to be told the true story.

Joseph‘s grandfather moved to Leicester in 1837. Later his son Joseph married Mary Jane. During her pregnancy Mary Jane attended a May Fair where, rumour has it, she was frightened by an elephant which affected the foetus she was carrying. People actually believed that the various afflictions which Joseph suffered were the result of this frightening encounter.

The resulting baby, our Elephant Man, was born with many physical defects. Young Joseph‘s father was ambitious and soon moved with his wife and young family into a different house. His father owned two shops and was a successful man.

There was no indication that young Joseph was bullied or teased; many children had physical difficulties at that time. His major trauma was his mother’s death when he was seven years old. His father’s subsequent remarriage did not help. Joseph‘s fingers were thick; he could not do fiddly factory jobs and was beaten at home if he failed to earn money. Finally Joseph moved to his uncle’s house for two years but when he was 17 he took himself into the infirmary workhouse to join its 1200 residents. He spent four years there, doing dirty and demeaning jobs and eating very poor food. During that time he developed a huge growth in his mouth which required an operation.

Finally, he contacted Sam Torr, a music hall proprietor who agreed to use Joseph as an exhibit at one of his Penny Shows. Later, he went to Nottingham and then to London where he was befriended by Tom Norman. Tom exhibited him for money but also showed him kindness. Joseph supplemented his income by writing his own pamphlet which he sold. In the mid 19 century there was no legislation to stop exhibits of fat ladies, giants, dwarves etc. At this time Joseph was described as being “a poor fellow, deformed head, skin thick and crinkly, hanging in folds”.

Later Dr Frederick Treves who worked at the Royal London hospital, began to take an interest in Joseph.  The doctor had a scientific obsession with the freaks on display at the shows. He persuaded Joseph to attend sessions at the hospital where he was part of medical demonstrations. Joseph finally refused to continue and Dr Treves closed down the Penny Shows.

From 1885 onwards Joseph’s life began to change. His new manager designed a new hat and a facial hood for him so that he could appear in public without ridicule. He was even exhibited at the world fair on the continent where at times over 400 indigenous people were on show. However, the manager of the foreign tour stole the money Joseph had managed to save and abandoned him.  Joseph returned, penniless to the London Hospital. He was given clothes and his own lodging in Bedstead Square. He was well cared for and doctors visited him daily. They even discussed how he would look preserved in alcohol!

In 1887, after opening the new hospital building, the Prince and Princess of Wales met him and subsequently sent him food and visited him. He made money by weaving baskets ; had three holidays in the country and even wrote letters about his life experiences. His confidence increased but, by 1889, his health was failing. He had bronchitis, a weak heart and a growth in his mouth was increasing. He attended Mass twice on April 6^th 1890 and, early on April 7th, when visited, he seemed in good health. Sadly at 3:30 pm he was found dead as a result of asphyxiation. He was 27 years old.

His body was handed over to Dr Treves at the Royal London Hospital. The flesh was removed and his bones were bleached.

In May 2019 Joseph’s final resting place was finally discovered in an unmarked grave at the City of London Cemetery.  Later, a plaque was placed there including the dates 1862-1890. There is a replica of his skeleton, his hat and his hood, plus a letter, and a model of the church he had made from cardboard, on show at the Royal London Museum. No DNA could be retrieved from Joseph’s bones and there is still no medical diagnosis of his condition.

Jo described a human, not a freak, determined to be independent despite all the severe difficulties imposed by his physical condition.

If this story intrigues and interests you, please see Jo Mungovin’s book “Joseph:  The Life, Times and Places of The Elephant Man”, which includes Joseph’s 22 years in Leicester.

18 February 2020

Our presenter at the meeting in February was Sandra Moore, a local lady whose information is always imparted with enthusiasm and humour. This time, dressed in a ‘pinny’ and turban and under the name of “May Clement”, Sandra recounted one woman’s experiences and memories of the Second World War.

Her stories: of children being evacuated, of couples parting at railway stations as their loved ones went away, of people’s houses being demolished by bombs and of the times spent in air-raid shelters (where both laughter and fear were part of everyday life), were amusing, informative and, at times, very sad.

She described food rationing from the point of view of the ordinary housewife whose pre-war cleaning job and been supplemented by a job in the munitions factory.   Descriptions of long waits in queues, desperate to purchase the rapidly disappearing meat or sausages, were followed by accounts of families trying, in comical ways, to retain normality, as festive occasions had to be catered for.   “May Clement” recalled eating odd meats (whale?) and equally strange “vegetables” gathered from hedgerows as attempts were made to eke out food supplies.

Each story brought back memories to those people in our audience, whether they remembered the war (and some did!) or whether the account reminded them of stories their own parents had told them years ago. The pre-recorded sound effects, alongside the somewhat unexpected thunder and lightning outside the Memorial Hall, added to the atmosphere.

Sandra’s presentation and role play were, as usual, most realistic. We enjoyed here ability to entertain and enlighten us in such an interesting way.

21 January 2020

2020 marks the 20^th anniversary of the founding of the Thurcaston and Cropston Local History Society. We celebrated this anniversary with a glass of bubbly at the beginning of this first meeting of 2020, which was also our first meeting in our new venue, Thurcaston Memorial Hall. (Membership has increased so much over the years that we needed to change our venue!) With the increased space, we were able to make use of our display boards, focussing on two Saxon artefacts, discovered locally by the late Mr Brian Kimberley and donated by him to the care of the Society. It was good to have space to see them and to find out all about them.

Our meeting focussed on Saint Guthlac, Warrior and Hermit. Speaker Douglas Clinton introduced us to this ‘local’ saint via his timeline and his family tree. Guthlac (c. 674 - 714) was the son of a nobleman in the English kingdom of Mercia. His sister Pega is also venerated as a Saint. As a young man, Guthlac fought in the army of Æthelred of Mercia, fighting the British on the borders of Wales. At the age of 24, he became a monk at Repton Monastery, Derbyshire. Two years later he sought to live the life of a hermit, moving to the island of Croyland, now Crowland, on St Bartholomew's Day AD 699. Crowland then was an uninhabited island, accessible only by boat, and deep in the wild and desolate marshland separating Mercia and East Anglia. Here Guthlac built a shelter, cut into the side of a burial-mound, in which he lived austerely for the rest of his life. We are told he was tormented by demons, but consoled by visions of angels. His reputation for sanctity and for performing miraculous healings spread far afield and continued to grow after his death. (For much of our knowledge of Guthlac, we are indebted to Saint Felix, his life-long friend, whose biography of Guthlac was written c. 735.)

Guthlac’s sister Pega became an anchorite, and, according to a thirteenth-century writer, initially lived near Guthlac at Crowland. On one occasion, apparently, the devil took her form and tried to persuade Guthlac to break his vow never to eat before sunset. To prevent further attempts of this nature, Guthlac ordered Pega to leave the island. She did, and they never met again. She became a solitary in the neighbourhood of Crowland, and Peakirk, Pega's Church, is named for her. The Feast Day of St. Guthlac is April 11th. He is often depicted with St. Bartholomew, his patron, who gave him a scourge with which to do penance and to defeat the demons.

Several Leicestershire and Lincolnshire churches are dedicated to St Guthlac, most recently the church of St Guthlac in Knighton, Leicester. Knighton lies at the northernmost edge of Guthlaxton, an ancient hundred of Leicestershire. At the time of the Domesday Book, Guthlaxton was one of Leicestershire's four wapentakes, an Anglo-Saxon administrative district. It covered a large area, including Market Bosworth, Hinckley, Lutterworth and Wigston Magna. The wapentake’s original meeting place was at ‘Guthlac’s stone’, which was apparently sited next to the Fosse Way.

Our speaker raised a lot of interest and fielded quite a few questions.