PMP2000 > Places > Charnwood History

ESTATES AND PARKS

GARENDON
DERIVATION OF NAME:
"GAERWALD'S DUN" (SETTLEMENT ON RISING GROUND)

PRESENT EXTENT:
The GARENDON ESTATE stretches across the north-western side of LOUGHBOROUGH. It's borders have been much reduced over time but it once included the settlements of GARENDON, DISHLEY, KNIGHT THORPE and THORPE ACRE. Much of the original estate was surrounded by a wall and ditch, some of which still survives. The western end of the estate - the "HIND LEYS" - has been cut off by the M1 motorway and two SHEPSHED secondary schools have been built here.

The southern border of the estate runs west-east along BURLEIGH BROOK in a line which roughly parallels ASHBY ROAD and ALAN MOSS ROAD. It follows the brook north until it meets the RIVER SOAR, which forms the north eastern boundary of the estate. The border then turns south west and follows a line just to the south of HATHERN, connecting up to HIND LEYS in an irregular line. The western border follows an "S" shape along the line of the M1, joining up with the southern border at the junction of the M1 and ASHBY ROAD.

GARENDON was originally part of the settlement of DISHLEY and is listed in Domesday Book as comprising 1,400-1,500 acres with a parish church and a population of about 130. This joint manor was held by a man called GODWIN and both DISHLEY and GARENDON had once been held by Queen Edith, widow of EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. Such royal connections meant that the inhabitants were exempt from the jurisdiction of the local sheriff and also gave them other legal benefits.

But the area suffered greatly during WILLIAM I's march across Leicestershire to put down the rebellion of 1068, and was left in a rather impoverished state. After the DOMESDAY survey of 1086, the manors changed hands several times and eventually came into the hands of ROBERT LE BOSSU, Earl of Leicester. One translation of "LE BOSSU" is "The Hunchback" which led to him also being known as "ROBERT CROOKBACK" - so there was more than one famous "Crookback" in Leicestershire!

GARENDON ABBEY:
In 1133, LE BOSSU granted GARENDON and DISHLEY to a group of French CISTERCIAN monks who were looking to build a new monastery. This was a daughter house of Waverley in Surrey and as well as GARENDON itself, LE BOSSU gave it lands in DISHLEY and SHEPSHED.

The effects of this on GARENDON and DISHLEY can be seen in this extract from LE BOSSU's land grant deeds of 1133:

"Let all, present and future, know that I... have given and granted to God and St Mary of Garendon... 5 carucates and 3 virgates of land at GARENDON, with all the meadows and pastures belonging to the same land, that they might have grazing..... and all customary rights in my woods of SHEPSHED and DISHLEY.... Furthermore I have given and granted them whatever I possessed at DISHLEY, except for the land of Roger, the brother of the chaplain, Osbert.."

The Abbey itself was built in an area of about 70 acres and any people still living in the new Abbey precinct were moved off the land. There were two main reasons for this. First, the Cistercian order favoured solitude above all else. Secondly, if the monks had allowed a settlement to remain on their land, they would lose their exemption from having to pay tithes.

The ABBEY OF ST MARY soon took over the whole life of the manors and by the end of the 12th century, the existing hamlets of DISHLEY and GARENDON had disappeared.

The Abbey Church has been described as "large and sumptuous". No plan exists of the original design but excavations have shown it to have been similar to that at WAVERLEY. There would have been many other buildings making up the whole of the Abbey complex, including cloisters, monk's dormitories, an infirmary, chapter house, parlour, warming house, kitchens and cellars.

In all, the Abbey was granted, leased, bought or exchanged almost 10,000 acres of land in Leicestershire and beyond. This included a coal mine; three quarries; four water mills; fishing rights in the Soar, Trent and Dee; urban property in London, Leicester, Norwich, Nottingham and Derby and 16 large farms or granges.

Within CHARNWOOD, the Abbey held property in DISHLEY, THORPE ACRE, HATHERN, PRESTWOLD, SHEPSHED, COTES, LOUGHBOROUGH, BURTON ON THE WOLDS, WYMESWOLD, MOUNTSORREL, COSSINGTON, SWITHLAND, CROPSTON, BRADGATE, ANSTEY and THURMASTON.

The Abbey also possessed considerable political influence and for a time the Abbot had a seat in Parliament. It seems strange that an order devoted to poverty and prayer should need such a profusion of worldly goods and possessions, but aristocratic families fell over themselves to donate. The Abbey, together with all the other monastic establishments in the country, thus amassed wealth and land at an amazing rate, a situation which was to lead to the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.

Things came to a head for GARENDON in 1536, when the Abbey was dissolved by order of THOMAS CROMWELL after allegations of "corruption and vice". While there may have been some truth in this, the real reasons for the dissolution were that HENRY VIII wanted to assert his new position as Head of the Church of England and, at the same time, transfer the wealth of the monasteries into his own coffers. The Abbey's historical connections with France may also have been a factor. CROMWELL's investigators at GARENDON were DR RICHARD LAYTON and DR THOMAS LEGH, neither of whom seemed to have taken on his task with an open mind. LAYTON is quoted as having arrived at the Abbey with convinced the monks were all "false, feigned, flattering, hypocritical knaves". The outcome of their "investigation" was never really in doubt and, shortly after their arrival in late spring 1536, GARENDON ABBEY was no more.

The Abbey church was demolished and the lands given to the EARLS OF RUTLAND who held them until 1632 when they passed as a dowry to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham.

In 1683, the estate was bought for £28,000 by lawyer AMBROSE PHILLIPS on behalf of JUDGE JEFFRIES. However, PHILLIPS, a lawyer and sergeant of Charles II, liked the place so much that he decided to keep it for himself. He ordered almost all the foundations of the Abbey to be dug up and the cellars and parts of other buildings became part of the new GARENDON HALL. He improved the 420 acre estate greatly by planting hundreds of trees and his grandson, also called AMBROSE, built several monuments in the grounds which still exist today.

The first of these was an 80 foot high obelisk. This was followed in 1735 by a reproduction of the "ARCH OF TITUS" in Rome and a "TEMPLE OF VENUS", inspired by the Temple of Sibyl at Tivoli. This was originally planned as a chapel but later housed an art gallery until the beginning of the war, when the paintings were removed for safe keeping.

The Hall itself was rebuilt in Palladian style by AMBROSE's brother SAMUEL and passed, by marriage, to the MARCH family. They adopted the name MARCH PHILLIPS and later added DE LISLE from a previous family marriage. One of the most famous visitors to the hall was BENJAMIN DISRAELI in 1844, who included descriptions of it in his novel "CONINGSBY", published the same year.

The 19th century saw the park established as a deer park and fallow deer were hunted all over the estate. The granite walls which enclosed the park at this time mostly still exists, as do a dovecote and a barn, all now listed buildings.

GARENDON also had virtually exclusive use of SNELL'S NOOK HALT on the CHARNWOOD FOREST RAILWAY. This tiny platform was almost exclusively used by the DE LISLE family and their guests. It was located at the point where the line crossed over the drive leading from a lodge Snell's Nook Lane to GARENDON HALL itself. The halt was very busy when the Leicestershire Yeomanry and the Territorial Army held training camps at GARENDON before the First World War. Over 17,000 passengers passed through the halt in 1911 on their way to such camps. Golfers on their way to Longcliffe Golf Course provided another major source of passengers. Although the platform is long gone and the bridge removed, the embankment can still be seen.

Also in the course of the 19th century, the family converted to Catholicism. This led them to desert the churches at SHEPSHED, HATHERN, THORPE ACRE and DISHLEY and to donate the land on which MOUNT ST BERNARD'S ABBEY was built by the CISTERCIANS in 1835. History repeating itself?

By the time of the Second World War, the family was no longer living at GARENDON HALL and it was used as a billet for soldiers. By the time the war ended, the constant wear and tear of housing thousands of troops meant that the house was no longer habitable. When the DE LISLE family sold land in the west of the estate for the building of the M1 motorway in 1964, they saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. In return for the motorway contractors agreeing to demolish the shell of the hall for nothing, they were given permission to use the rubble as hardcore for the foundations of the new motorway! The contractors agreed and the 3,500 tons of Palladian Hall are now regularly driven over by motorists on one of the busiest roads in Europe! The building of the motorway cut through HOME COVERT WOOD and isolated the Lodge at Cow Hill on the edge of SHEPSHED. There is another, older lodge by Snell's Nook Lane, Loughborough and a third on Loughborough Road, HATHERN. The most famous and impressive gate, the BAVARIAN GATE, is also known as the RED ARCH. This was built in 1838 by WILLIAM RAILTON and still stands at the intersection of paths between Hathern Lane, the Back Lane from LOUGHBOROUGH and Butthole Lane from SHEPSHED.

Before the Hall was demolished, members of the Loughborough Archaeological Society were invited to look around the doomed building. Among their discoveries were cellars with 13th century doorways and two stone lined wells, believed to have been part of the original monastery. Moulded sandstone blocks dating from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries were also discovered. Two Mediaeval barns had also survived, together with a basic drainage system under the monks' dormitory.

A later excavation, in 1968, found two stone coffins in the cloister walk outside the Chapter House and three more, dating from the 12th century, inside the Chapter House itself. This was the traditional burial place for Abbots.

In 1972, GERARD DE LISLE, announced plans to re-build GARENDON HALL on the same site so that he and his wife could return there to live. He also intended to recover all the treasures and artefacts sold by COLONEL EVERARD DE LISLE in the 1940s, which were now scattered all over the world. But the scheme never materialised and the future of GARENDON remains uncertain to this day.

Just one gateway of the old hall survives, designed by Inigo Jones and GARENDON is now a Grade II listed Park. The "SUSTRANS" Millennium cycleway between Inverness and Dover will pass right by the park on its way from SHEPSHED to LOUGHBOROUGH.

THE LEGEND OF GARENDON POOL:
This story is said to have taken place at GARENDON POOL, between LOUGHBOROUGH and SHEPSHED in 1645. It first appeared in a London publication entitled:

"THE MOST STRANGE AND WONDERFUL APPARITION OF BLOOD IN A POOL AT GARRATON (sic) IN LEICESTERSHIRE".

The story goes that farmers had begun to notice that cattle were avoiding the pool and refusing to drink from it. When they investigated further, the water in the pool was discovered to have turned pink.

Over the next four days, the colour deepened until the whole pool was dark red - the colour of blood. Not only that but it had become thicker and more viscous - the consistency of blood, so much so that the surface no longer rippled in the breeze.

The news quickly spread that Garendon Pool had turned to blood and people travelled from all over the region to see it. Some even dipped pieces of cloth in the "blood", which dyed them deep red, and kept them as good luck charms. Later, congealed lumps began appearing on the surface and sinking back down again.

This continued for four days, after which time the colour slowly disappeared and everything seemed to return to normal. In an effort to explain the mystery, the pool was drained and a layer of red "blood" lined to whole of the bottom of the pool. Throughout all of this strange event, the fish in the pool were completely unharmed.

The idea began to spread that the event was a sign of God's anger at the bloodshed of the Civil War, the four days of "blood" signifying the four years of bloodshed. But the fact that the water cleared again was taken to mean that peace would once again return.

What really caused the strange effects seen in the Pool has never satisfactorily been explained. More information about the motives of the person who originally published the story could throw a lot of light on the case!