KidBruv's home patch.

Village History



There are just a few houses now in Great Stretton - across the Gartree Road from the much restored but even more neglected 12th. Century Church of St Giles.
In ancient writings Great Stretton (Stretton Magna)was referred to as Strettone (the town on the straight-way), and sometimes Bishop’s Stretton since Robert Eyrick, Bishop of Lichfield, was born here in 1322). It is situated about 2 miles North across farm-land from my (KidBruvCarl) home and 2 miles to the North-East of Great Glen, in which parish it is now only a hamlet bounded by Great Glen village, Stretton Parva (Little Stretton) hamlet , Stoughton, Oadby and Houghton villages. The Roman road Via Devana, is very visible in part of this lordship, going through Leicester and on to Markfield Mill.
Stretton, together with Great Glen and Little Stretton is mentioned in Domesday as a parcel of the royal manor of Bugedone containing nine ploughlands and ten acres of meadow.
Great Stretton Church is remote and tiny with a Norman doorway. By 1937, it had been restored for occasional services, and has kept the traceried font at which Robert de Stretton was baptised about 1322, many years before he went from here to become chaplain to the Black Prince. He was not a great scholar but the prince, thinking little of learning but much of his chaplain, made him Bishop of Lichfield (which office he held until his death in 1385). Before Robert died he founded a chantry here, earning himself a memorable place among his Great Strettonian forebears.
The disappearance of the village of Great Stretton happened long before 1798 when Nichols published his survey called ‘The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester’. At that time it consisted of only two farmhouses, besides the hall and the church. The disappearance may be attributed to the early enclosure of its open fields and their conversion in large part to pastures for sheep and cattle.
There is a large moated area about 200 yds south of the parish church. This consists of an island about 44 yds in length from east to west and 35 yds in width from north to south, surrounded by a deep moat which is now dry. Between here and the church was a large pond which supplied the moat, and below the moat was a smaller pond which would drain it if required. Mr. Tailby, who visited the site in 1796 and reported on it to Nichols, surmised that this was where the chantry chapel founded by Robert de Stretton stood, but this is known to have been in the parish church. The site appears to be that of a small medieval hall-house, but there are no certain documentary references to it at any time, and no trace of any structural remains upon it. The house no longer existed in 1670 but was probably the site of the family home of the descendants of Eyryk The Red, (another of our illustrious but distant ancestors) some of whom were King’s Foresters of the Beaumanor and Charnwood forests from the time of the Norman Conquest.