Great Glen
Great Glen disused station
Great Glen is located in Leicestershire
Great Glen
Great Glen
Location within Leicestershire
Population3,662 (2011)
OS grid referenceSP655975
Civil parish
  • Great Glen
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townLeicester
Postcode districtLE8
Dialling code0116
PoliceLeicestershire
FireLeicestershire
AmbulanceEast Midlands
UK Parliament

Great Glen (or Glenn) is a village and civil parish in the Harborough district, in Leicestershire, 2 miles south of Oadby. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 3,662.[1] Leicester city centre is about seven miles north west. 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.

Features and amenities

In 1751 a turnpike bridge was built over the River Sence as a part of the stagecoach route from Leicester to London. The pubs The Pug & Greyhound (The Old 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]

Only four of the village pubs remain open, to date:

  • The Yews
  • The Royal Oak
  • Fox Pond
  • The Pug & Greyhound (formerly The Greyhound).

The village park, The Recreation Ground on Bindleys Lane is the home of two of the village's sports clubs:

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 it houses many activities including Sunday morning and evening services, a Sparklers mums and toddlers group on Mondays, Fusion children's group on Sunday mornings and Confusion alternate Friday evenings for teenagers. 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

Stretton 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

Great 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.

The old public house, The Fox and Goose, is still visible on Church Lane but has been converted to a private residence.

References

  1. ↑ 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.
  2. ↑ "Leicester Grammar School relocation: Latest". leicestergrammar.org.uk. Archived from the original on 5 May 2007.
  3. ↑ "'Songs of Praise' 2005 school choirs contest winners". Press Office. BBC. 20 March 2005.
  4. ↑ "Great Glen Post Office". British Post Office. Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  5. ↑ "Co-op branch directory". The Co-operative (central England co-op stores). Archived from the original on 21 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  6. ↑ "Engelbert Humperdinck charms crowds of fans in Leicester". Leicester Mercury.
  7. ↑ Dugdale, J. (1819). The New British Traveller. Vol. III. John Cundee. p. 581. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021 – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ Roberts, A. Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals (Report). Middlesex University. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009.
  10. ↑ Bourne, Jill, ed. (1996). Anglo-Saxons landscapes in the East Midlands. Leicestershire Museums Arts and Records Service.
  11. ↑ Ekwall, E. (1960). The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. p. 198.
  12. ↑ 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
  13. ↑ 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.

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