LEI Country

Belvoir Castle, Belvoir Estate West and Belvoir Woods

Location Plans

Castle and Belvoir Estate West car park - SK817337 - view in Multimap or Streetmap format.
Belvoir Woods (Stathern and Tofts Hill) car park - SK772312 - view in Multimap or Streetmap format.

History of Belvoir Castle
History of Belvoir Woods

Belvoir Castle

Belvoir, meaning beautiful view in French, dates back to Norman times. The English pronunciation 'Beaver' was built up over many centuries probably due to the inability of Anglo-Saxons to master the French tongue. Belvoir has been the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland for over one thousand years.

The present Castle is the fourth to have stood on the site since Norman times. The existing Castle was completed in the early 19th century after previous buildings suffered complete or partial destruction during the Wars of the Roses, the Civil War and a major fire in 1816. The grounds include the Rose and Statue Gardens which are elegantly laid out round a central fountain, where a statue collection is set back into a terrace in the hillside. There are superb specimen trees dating back hundreds of years and the area is an orienteers’ delight with a great range of terrain, water features, variety of plantings and very challenging slopes. We have mapped the grounds and used them for a badge event as far back as 1981 but had switched our orienteering to the extensive estate woodlands to the west of the castle due to logistical and cost implications. We have now used the combined areas for major events but it is open to question whether we can stage any events within the estate with the current pricing regime.

[back to top]

Belvoir Woods

These are extensive estate woodlands to the west of the Belvoir Castle and offer a good variety of features. The downside is that the area is a bit linear in that it runs along the top of an escarpment with mature woodlands along the top and down the often very steep slopes. The flatlands below the slope are extensive with a fairly complex path network but the blocks are often severely tangled with bramble and often extremely boggy underfoot.

This is a commercial shooting estate and we can only use it outside the shooting season. For major events this means from February 2nd to March 31st but we can stage smaller event until the end of June if we avoid the bird rearing and release areas.

The overall area takes in several diverse woodlands. To the east there is a mulberry plantation which we can cross by arrangement and Old Park Wood and to the north a mature area known as Church Thorns. Then there is the middle area where the rearing is done but which we can cross by agreed routes and then the area is dissected north-south by Wood Lane. To the west of this we have Barkestone Wood, then Plungar Wood and Stathern Wood all lying in the damp bottom lands below the escarpment.

On the top of the slopes of Wood Lane we have Terrace Hills and some parking which makes an ideal base for smaller events and east from here the escarpment itself is quite complex with varied landforms and provided attractive orienteering conditions all the way to the next vehicular track, Tofts Lane. West of this Combs Plantation is part of the estate and the surrounding meadows are managed as a country park under different ownership. It is open to question whether we can stage any events within the estate with the current pricing regime but this small country park may be useable for training events

[back to top]