Charnwood Forest in 100 Treasures

This is one of the first detailed maps of Charnwood Forest, and was made prior to parliamentary enclosure. The map was created by Samual Wylde, the school master at Woodhouse Eaves, for the lord of Beaumanor, and reveals something of the Geopark’s medieval past. It shows the location and extent of medieval deer parks, and sites of medieval religious houses such as Ulverscroft and Charley. This document is kept at the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Sitting above the stove in the dining room in Stoneywell Cottage, the local stone fireplace lintel has been transformed into a coat rack by the addition of two horn hooks. This site is managed by the National Trust and can be visited, if booked ahead. See the National Trust website for more information.

This palastave axe/adze is one of 3 found in an area between Beacon Hill and Ives head and suggests a very local production site of this type of middle bronze age axe used for shrub clearing. Likely dating from 1500 BCE to 1100 BCE.

Produced in 1745, this Swithland Slate Milestone was made for the Market Harborough to Loughborough turnpike, and is the only surviving example from the Geopark. The milage of ‘106’ is still visible, noting the distance from Charing Cross in London.

This is an internationally-important 10th-century Viking coin hoard. Some of the coins are Islamic, minted in Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan. The Thurcaston Hoard helps scholars to understand more about the Vikings – their trading networks and partners and their developing monetary economy.

A late Bronze Age hoard, consisting of several spearheads, socketed axes and a bracelet. Described as a ‘Founder’s Hoard’, it was found in a pit in 1858. This hoard is one of a number of archaeological finds from Beacon Hill, and alongside the ancient earthworks, has led to the site being designated a Scheduled Monument by Historic England. These exhibits can be viewed in the Charnwood Museum.

This possibly Roman necklace was found near Rothley Temple, and is one of the only pieces of evidence for Roman settlement in Charnwood Forest.

This photograph provides us with a rare glimpse of the women who made internationally-award winning tiles in the Mosaic Tile Factory in Whitwick.

This Tudor button or badge, made from a lead-alloy, was discovered as part of a fieldschool archaeological excavation at Bradgate Park. Dating to around 1550, it depicts Adam, Eve, the apple tree, and a snake. This find is associated with a previously unknown first phase of Bradgate House, and shows that Bradgate Park was well connected to the wider world at this time.

The document from August 1398 gives a clear picture of a hunting party, those who took part, where they hunted, and how much it cost. The account shows the leading figures of landed society in Charnwood Forest, led by Lord de Ferrers, and including ‘various men of the country, both gentle and others‘ bonding together in pursuing and killing deer. The document is now in the Huntington Library, USA.

This document can be roughly dated to the 1370s, in the years following the Black Death. It provides a snapshot of the town of Loughborough as its residents seek to make a living in the aftermath of the devastating pandemic. It outlines the problems that the lord had in leasing land, houses and cottages, and reveals that local people were able to benefit from significantly lower rents as a result. Document housed in the Huntington Library, USA.

The logbook, housed in the National Archives, includes an extract from 1943 regarding a flight made by a Wellington Bomber. The crew included Rothley man Thomas Betts, and they were directed to take part in a co-ordinated attack on the German city of Mönchengladbach. Thomas Betts’ plane left Lincolnshire at 00:44 on 30th August and sadly records: ‘Missing. Nothing heard after take-off’. It is believed that Thomas’s plane may have been shot down by a German fighter pilot called Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer.

This book (1879) by Robert Brewin tells the life story of Rebecca Wakefield, who travelled to Kenya via Zanzibar with her husband, who was a missionary. It is a fascinating female-centric view of one woman’s experience as she encounters new places, people and cultures. Rebecca was born and raised in Mountsorrel.

This document provides an intimate portrait of the life of Henry Jaques, a yeoman living in Groby. The document records all of Henry’s possessions at the time of his death in 1621, and allows us to explore the possessions within a house at this time. This is a fascinating insight into an ordinary farmer who lived during the reign of Elizabeth I and James I.

Headstones made of the Cambrian Swithland Slate are common in Charnwood Forest’s churchyards. An early example is that of Thomas Nickelson, dated 1687 in St. Leonard’s churchyard, Swithland. It is perfectly imperfect, with the stonemason running out of room and improvising by using superscript, or letting words run onto the next line.

This arrowhead is one of the earliest found in Charnwood Forest, dating from the Bronze age around 2350-1500 BCE. It is the one of the earliest links in the chain of hunting across the region that extends into the modern period. It measures 24mm long, 20mm wide, and weighs 1.53 grams, and is now part of the Leicestershire County Collections.

This late nineteenth-century tile was made on the site of the Mosaic Tile Factory, on the edge of Whitwick at what was the pinnacle of tile production in Whitwick and Coalville. Tiles from Edward Smith & Co were made by a largely female workforce, and were internationally acclaimed, winning several prestigious awards. If you look carefully at this tile, you will see a series of intersecting lizards! While the factory lay just outside the Geopark, many of the women and men who worked there lived in Charnwood Forest.

This document is a parchment roll containing extracts of Groby Court Rolls dated 1275-1350. A particular treasure appears on the reverse of the document where a perambulation of Charnwood Forest appears. Charnwood Forest was not a Royal Forest and was not, therefore, subject to the usual perambulations which would have accompanied such a status, making this a particularly rare find.

This silver Viking pendant offers a vivid insight into the religious worldview of Charnwood Forest’s Viking residents. Discovered in 1991 in Thurcaston, it dates from 850-1100 CE, and is now on display at the Charnwood Museum.

Dating from 1158-1170, the initial part of the coin hoard was found by several people in 2012, with further finds in subsequent years. This is the UK’s second largest hoard of tealby coins – a silver penny issued during the reign of Henry II.

This early medieval harness fitting is in the shape of a Celtic cross, and was found near Newtown Linford. Made of copper alloy, it dates from between 400-850 CE. Whilst it is a practical object, it also tells us something about early religion.

Dating from 1277-1278, this document offers us a rare glimpse into the medieval manor house set within Beaumanor Park. A detailed section outlining repairs to buildings reveals that there was a grand manor house with a great hall. Mention of a drawbridge indicates that there was probably a moat. We also know that that there was a gatehouse with a knight’s chamber. The document goes on to outline special rents owed by tenants in the form of the components of arrows, strongly linking the area with its hunting history.

This rare survival of a garden account allows the reader to visualise the incredible garden of Robert Alfounder, Rector of Thurcaston in 1694. We know, for example, that the garden had a fig tree, and that the Rector grew 60 cabbages on an island. This special but diminutive document allows us to wander through this amazing garden in our minds and marvel at the flora! Now housed in the county Record Office.

This pioneering piece of engineering transported stone from Hill Hole to the railway at Bardon. Likely the first example of a powered single-wire-rope aerial transport system in the world, it only operated for a short period in 1869, and sadly no trace of it now exists.

These flint tools found at Bradgate Park indicate the site in the Little Matlock gorge was a Later Upper Palaeolithic hunting ground. Unearthed by footpath erosion and further investigated by ULAS and Ice Age Insights, these artefacts include Cheddar and Creswell points, piercers, and scrapers, suggesting a site for processing animal hides and other materials by hunter-gatherer groups about 15,000 years ago.

This chair was made in 1690. It was carved from the trunk of a single oak tree from the park around Beaumanor Hall. The tree measured 34 feet round. The painting of the buffalo head and the shield are both symbols of the Herrick family who lived at Beaumanor Hall. This chair is now part of the county collections and on display in Charnwood Museum.

Ulverscroft Priory contained numerous examples of late medieval floor tiles, with over sixty different designs found at the site, some of which are thought to have been locally manufactured in Charnwood Forest, as well as more broadly across the East Midlands. Examples can also be found in major collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum and also the British Museum. You can also see examples of Charnwood Forest’s medieval floor tiles at the Charnwood Museum.

Connected to the colliery disaster – still commemorated every year. The “Whitwick Hearse” was a specific horse-drawn hearse used by undertaker Mr. Brier in Whitwick, Leicestershire, after the tragic 1898 Whitwick Colliery disaster. The hearse was designed for horse-drawn operation and was a visible, though somber, part of the aftermath of the disaster, which saw the recovery of miners’ bodies following an underground fire.