A History of Great Glen
Georgian and Victorian Glen
Ancient and Early Mediaeval History
A History of Great Glen taken from Great Glen Village Design Statement
(the picture numbers referred to in the text are from the slide show right)
Great Glen is one of Leicestershire's oldest settlements. Iron Age settlers gave the village the name Glen (meaning valley). This became extended to Glen Magna during the Middle Ages and was eventually anglicised to Great Glen.
Archaeology has revealed part of the Parish’s history. Recent construction work along the line of the new bypass exposed an Iron Age burial site and other remains. At least one villa was built at Glen during the Roman occupation. An Anglo-Saxon settlement was established after the legions left Britain in 409 AD and the earthworks at the top of Orchard Lane date to the 10th or 11th century. The 1086 Domesday Book entry for Glen records that the village was surrounded by plough lands and contained a corn mill, which survives as the oldest building in the village.
When Anglo-Saxon England converted to Christianity in the 7th century, a church was built at Glen. The church (right) is dedicated to St Cuthbert and lies close to what remains of the Anglo-Saxon village. In the early 12th century the original Saxon building was replaced with a Norman one. The church was rebuilt again in the early 14th century and extensively renovated in the Victorian era. (Picture 1)
The Middle Ages
In the 16th century the lordship of the manor of Glen Magna passed to Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey. Grey was beheaded for treason and his lands were seized by the Crown in 1554. The original manor house disappeared around the same time. Part of Carlton Lodge on Orchard Lane dates from this period and is thought to be the oldest surviving house in the village. (Picture 2)
The Seventeenth Century
In 1645, on the eve of the battle of Naseby, the Royalist Headquarters were stationed in Great Glen. The commander, Prince Rupert, reputedly stayed at The White House on London Road (picture 3). A notable timber-framed cruck cottage in High Street survives from the same time (picture 4).
After the Civil War, the lord of the manor built a new manor house in parkland between Great Glen and Great Stretton (Stretton Hall, seen restored, in picture 5).
In 1751 a turnpike bridge was built over the River Sence. This has since been widened and is still in use. About the same time, two coaching inns, The Old Greyhound and The Crown (picture 6, now a private house), were developed from original buildings to cater for travellers to London.
The Enclosure Acts of 1759 and 1760 accelerated the change from arable strip farming to animal husbandry. The original great fields were divided into smaller enclosures by hedges, the lines of which have been largely retained. The ridge and furrow of the mediaeval plough lands became ‘fossilised’ under grass and can still be seen clearly today.
The enclosures created a new class of yeoman farmers who built fine Georgian houses for themselves. These survive as farmhouses in the Parish countryside and as large houses in the village around or at The Green, The Nook, Orchard Lane and High Street.
Several notable buildings were constructed in the 19th century. A Wesleyan Chapel was built in the village in 1827 (picture 7). Charles William Packe, who became lord of the manor in 1845, built the Village Hall, a school (now demolished), two houses for school teachers and a number of workers' houses. (A book by Heather MacDermid explores the influence of the Packe family on the village (Halls, Houses and Hovels: the Packes in Great Glen).
In 1857 the railway came to Great Glen. The village’s attractive location not far from Leicester encouraged wealthy individuals such as the Duchess of Hamilton, Thomas Crick and Robert Kaye to build large houses here for themselves and cottages for their servants and estate workers. The almshouses and cottages built by Crick still stand.
Further limited development took place in the latter half of the 19th century, but the mass building of terraced housing that took place in Leicester and many other towns at that time did not occur in Great Glen.
The Old Quarter
Most of the buildings described above and the other pre-1900 buildings in the village are found on Main Street, High Street, Church Road, London Road, Orchard Lane and The Nook. This area is locally identified as the ‘Old Quarter’ of the village and constitutes a major part of the Distinctive Character of Great Glen. One of the most important Recommendations in this Village Design Statement is that the Old Quarter becomes part of a Great Glen Conservation Area. This idea is more fully explored in Section 5 of the Village Design Statement. [note this was never taken forward at the time by the District Council, however it is being further explored as part of the work being undertaken on the Neighbourhood Plan (Autumn 2015)]
Post-war development
By 1900 Great Glen consisted of clusters of cottages grouped around the Old Quarter and a few larger houses scattered round the surrounding countryside. Some large houses were built in Edwardian times and two or three cottages were built between 1914 and 1945. This pattern of low-density development continued in Great Glen until about 1950.
Since 1950, however, there has been unprecedented development in the Parish. In the twenty years from 1931 to 1951, the population of Great Glen increased by less than one hundred. In the next fifty years, it increased by nearly 2,300. (Based on UK Census data for 1931, 1951 and 2001)
In the same fifty years, successive housing estates built on greenfield sites in the north-eastern sector of the village, plus considerable infill within it, increased the number of households in the village from less than 300 to well over 1,300. The extent of post-war development is clear from this map: Map showing the development of Great Glen [note since the Village Design Statement was published in 2005 there has been further development in the village, significantly the Stretton Glen site which is currently being developed (Autumn 2015)]
Although the new estates left the Old Quarter of the village relatively untouched, they were built without using either local styles or materials and consequently stand in great contrast to the earlier houses which provided the village with much of its Distinctive Character. Many of the newer estates contain pleasant but undistinguished houses of a kind that can be found throughout the country. Others are built to a definite style and character, but one that is not usually found in Great Glen or indeed in Leicestershire. Only a few of them reflect the Distinctive Character of the area.
Since the 1980s, the trend for infill development within the village has grown considerably. Infill represents a particular threat to the Old Quarter, where listed buildings often stand in large gardens and are surrounded by open spaces. Unsympathetic development of these heritage sites contributes greatly to the loss of the village’s Distinctive Character. In recent years, infill has taken place on the Anglo-Saxon village site next to the Church, in the large gardens at Stretton Hall, at the rear of Glen Hall, in the Victorian farm garden at the corner of Ashby Rise and St. Thomas Road, along the London Road and in the grounds of an Edwardian villa on Oaks Road. A number of former industrial sites together with small parcels of agricultural land have also been filled in by housing.
Post-war development has not been confined to the village. In the Parish of Great Glen, the large executive-style development at Stretton Hall and the smaller one at Glen Rise are recognisable ‘satellite’ developments, in that they neither form part of the village nor have a village centre of their own. Residents of Stretton Hall are particularly isolated from the village and rely upon private transport to reach local amenities either in the village or in Oadby. These two satellite developments are of a kind considered contrary to sustainable development. (As defined in Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992 (the Rio Earth Summit).