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Great Glen (historically known as Great Glenn or Glenn Magna) is a village and civil parish in the Harborough district, in Leicestershire. It is 2 miles south of Oadby and about seven miles south east of Leicester old town. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 3,662.[1] Its name comes from the original Iron Age settlers who used the Celtic word glennos meaning valley, and comes from the fact that Great Glen lies in part of the valley of the River Sence. The 'great' part is to distinguish the village from Glen Parva.
Great Glen
| |
|---|---|
 Great Glen village green and Old Greyhound coaching inn | |
  Great Glen Location within Leicestershire | |
| Population | 3,662 (2011) |
| OS grid reference | SP655975 |
| Civil parish |
|
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Leicester |
| Postcode district | LE8 |
| Dialling code | 0116 |
| Police | Leicestershire |
| Fire | Leicestershire |
| Ambulance | East Midlands |
| UK Parliament | |
Features and amenities
editIn 1751 a turnpike bridge was built over the River Sence as a part of the stagecoach route from Leicester to London. The pubs The Old Greyhound (presently named the Italian Greyhound) and The Crown were originally coaching inns built soon after the new road opened. This road later became the A6 road, and a bypass around the village was opened in 2003. The Midland Main Line runs to the south of the A6, and formerly had a station to serve the village at the closest point.
Leicester Grammar School is constructed on the land of Mount Farm, Great Glen.[2]
There are two other schools in the village, the C of E St Cuthbert's primary school, which feeds to the local state schools in the neighbouring village of Kibworth and the town of Market Harborough. The independent school, The Stoneygate School, also has its site at Great Glen. Its pupils won Best Junior Choir at BBC Songs of Praise 2005 School Choirs Contest[3]
The village park, The Recreation Ground on Bindleys Lane is the home of two of the village's sports clubs:
- Glen Villa FC
- Great Glen Cricket Club.
There are two churches in the village. The medieval parish church is dedicated to Cuthbert and sits at the south western corner of the village. At the centre of the village on the Stretton Road/Oaks Road T-junction is Great Glen Methodist Church, a Grade II* listed building built in 1827. View the church at Google Maps
The village is serviced by a Post Office[4] and a Co-op store.[5]
The K6 Red telephone box on the village green is a listed building.
Footballer Trevor Benjamin used to live here, and Engelbert Humperdinck has a home in the village.[6]
Stretton Hall
editStretton Hall was built in the early 18th century, and though named after Stretton Magna it lies in Great Glen parish. It was built as the manor house of the lordship of Stretton, by, or for, the Hewett family: it was the English residence of Colonel William Hewett (1693–1766), friend of the famous Marquess of Granby, of the novelist Laurence Sterne, and of the eccentric John Hall-Stevenson and his "Club of Demoniacs". Hewett set acorns all over his estate to create a plantation of oaks, some of which were disposed to form a double colonnade like that in front of St Peter's in Rome.[7] These obtained a gold medal from the Society of Arts.[8]
Leicestershire and Rutland Joint Board for the Mentally Defective bought the hall in 1932 for conversion to a hospital. Under the NHS it was a residential hospital for learning disabled children and had 157 beds in 1979.[9] The hospital closed in the 1990s and a housing development has been built on part of the site.
History
editGreat Glen was the central place of an early Anglo-Saxon multiple estate.[10] The settlements that comprised this estate are: Great and Little Stretton, Wistow, Newton Harcourt, Fleckney and Kilby. These parishes comprise the minimal extent of the estate which broadly follow the River Sence, Glen itself possibly taking its name from an earlier British river-name Glen or from Glennos meaning valley.[11] It is possible that the estate extended further west along the river to Glen Parva where it joins the River Soar. It has not been possible to establish this securely. Glen (as at glenne, not Great Glen) enters the record for the first time in AD 849, when Alhhun, bishop of Worcester tarried there with nine of his clerics to issue a charter granting lands in Worcestershire to King Beorhtwulf of Mercia.[12]
The medieval manorial history of Glen is outlined by John Nichols in his History of Leicestershire.[13] In the 16th century, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, became the lord of the manor. After his execution for treason, his lands were seized by the crown.
Following the Battle of Naseby in 1645, during the English Civil War, Great Glen played host to a band of Cromwellian soldiers who were pursuing some of the (defeated) Royalist Cavalry. They were later joined by the rest of the army who camped overnight before moving onto Leicester. Some of these soldiers made camp in the church where they caused much damage (such as breaking all the windows), of which some evidence can still be seen today. There are five road names in the village that mark these events: Cromwell Road, Naseby Way, Ruperts Way, Edgehill Close and Halford Close.
In 1760 two elderly ladies of the village accused one another of witchcraft and were subjected to the ducking stool, which one passed and the other failed. A number of women were accused as locals grew increasingly concerned and mass hysteria spread. The only court proceedings to arise were fines for rioting as the crime of witchcraft had been removed from the statue books in the 1730s. It is generally considered to be the last of the counties witch hunts.[14]
The old public house, The Fox and Goose, is still visible on Church Lane but has been converted to a private residence.
References
edit- ^ Great Glen, Leicestershire, UK. Neighbourhood Statistics (Report). Civil Parish population. Office for National Statistics. 2011. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 13 June 2016.
- ^ "Leicester Grammar School relocation: Latest". leicestergrammar.org.uk. Archived from the original on 5 May 2007.
- ^ "'Songs of Praise' 2005 school choirs contest winners". Press Office. BBC. 20 March 2005.
- ^ "Great Glen Post Office". British Post Office. Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
- ^ "Co-op branch directory". The Co-operative (central England co-op stores). Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
- ^ "Engelbert Humperdinck charms crowds of fans in Leicester". Leicester Mercury.
- ^ Dugdale, J. (1819). The New British Traveller. Vol. III. John Cundee. p. 581. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021 – via Google Books.
- ^ Nichols, J. (1971) [1795]. History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester. Hathi Trust. Vol. II, Part 1 (reprint ed.). London, UK: S.R. Publishers with Leicestershire County Council. p. 6, note 3. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021.
- ^ Roberts, A. Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals (Report). Middlesex University. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009.
- ^ Bourne, Jill, ed. (1996). Anglo-Saxons landscapes in the East Midlands. Leicestershire Museums Arts and Records Service.
- ^ Ekwall, E. (1960). The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. p. 198.
- ^
Birch, W. de G., ed. (1885–1893) [849 AD]. Anglo-Saxon Charter (Report). Cartularium Saxonicum: A collection of charters relating to Anglo-Saxon history. Vol. II (of III). London, UK: Hathi Trust. pp. 40–41, no. 455, part 1. Archived from the original on 8 June 2021.
in loco qui nominatur aet Glenne
- ^ Nichols, J., ed. (c. 2021) [1798]. "Gartree Hundred: Glen". The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester. Special Collections (Report). Vol. 2 (Digitized ed.). London, UK: University of Leicester. pp. 180–185, 574–578. Archived from the original on 8 June 2021.
- ^ "Witchcraft in Leicestershire".
External links
edit
Media related to Great Glen at Wikimedia Commons