Brocks Hill History The Country Park used to be a mixed farm called - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Mike Bates (December 2017): History of Brocks Hill 12/12/2017 1

Brocks Hill History

Presentation ‐ Oadby and Wigston Fieldworkers

Mike Bates November 2017

Brocks Hill History

Since opening in 1999, Brocks Hill Country Park has received increasing interest as a place for informal recreation and now attracts over 150,000 visitors per year. It is also an extremely important greenspace for wildlife in Oadby and Wigston Borough. The Country Park used to be a mixed farm called Grange Farm with the land being influenced by farming practices for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Evidence of Bronze Age activities have been found within the area, as have medieval shards of pottery. Brocks Hill contains many features that were once widespread in the Leicestershire landscape, including medieval ridge and furrow fields, hay meadows, small ponds, mature trees and woodland compartments. The southern ditch and hedge boundary of the site forms part of the original boundary between Oadby and Wigston before they were combined into one Borough.

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Top of hill near 350 foot contour; Oadby Church is about 300ft.

Brocks Hill History

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the anglian and scandinavian settlement of leicestershire www.le.ac.uk/lahs/.../HoskinsAnglianPagesfromVolume18.pdf 2 Since this was written Mr. W. Coleman of Oadby has drawn my attention to the discovery of many skeletons in the gravels to the south of the church. According to Mr. Ernest Baker's Ms. History of Oadby "Thomas Ludlam and his fellow workers were digging gravel [in 1760] near Ridley's house, Brock's Hill, when they found a human skeleton about 3 ft. below the surface of the gravel, in removing which they discovered some small urns. In the same grave there was also appearances of ashes which lay in heaps". Thomas Ludlam declared later that he had found not less than eighty skeletons during the twenty‐two years he had been a labourer, besides many urns and ashes. "Mr. B'aker suggests that these remains date from a supposed battle in 920, but the presence of urns and ashes seems to indicate a peaceful burial. It is more likely that this is another cemetery so far unrecorded, and one of the largest in the county. Notes: Book ‘History of Oadby’, Ernest Baker, 1920 (copy in Oadby Library Ref 942.543).

Brocks Hill History

This information is contained in Nichols in more detail: Small heaps of ashes and urns, he likewise observed, were frequently found as the skeletons; in one place he found a smooth stone, shaped like a fiddle’s head, with a finger board. The urns here had a yellow ground, flowered with white; some few of a plain rusty brown, and but a little decayed.’

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Archaeology in Leicestershire and Rutland 2000 ‐ University

• f Leicester

Brocks Hill History

Note: high status individuals at Brocks Hill

Brocks Hill History

Leicestershire Notes Archaeology in Leicestershire 1955‐1956Oadby – finds on Brocks Hill (ie top of Rosemead Drive area) 1955/1956 and Skeletons of 1760 further information, Roman Road

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