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LEI Country

Bradgate Park, Swithland Woods and The Brand

Roecliffe Manor has also been used for orienteering in the past but is presently unavailable


Location Plans



Bradgate Park

Bradgate Park is mapped for our purposes with the nearby Swithland Wood also managed by the Trust responsible for Bradgate itself. Also included on the map are the Brand and part of the woodlands between the Brand and Roecliffe Manor.


There is actually evidence of man's activities in the area from as far back as Palaeolithic times and it is steeped in history.


Bradgate Park was privately owned until 1928, when it was purchased from the Grey family and generously donated in Trust by Mr Charles Bennion to be preserved in perpetuity in its natural state for the quiet enjoyment of the people of Leicestershire and visitors to the County. Subsequently, in 1931 Swithland Wood was gifted by the Leicester Rotary Club. Over the years, various other areas of conservation and amenity woodland and agricultural land on the edge of the Country Park have been donated or purchased and the estate now extends to some 1261 acres (510 hectares) of which 984 is an SSSI and as such we have to use it sensitively. We are only allowed into Bradgate during the summer months and parts of Swithland are off limits to us.


Bradgate itself covers 340 hectares and is known to have belonged to the de Ferrers family of Groby in the thirteenth century and later by the Greys, most notable of who was Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen for nine days following the death of Edward VI. She was ultimately imprisoned in the Tower of London charged with treason and beheaded in 1554. Lady Jane (1537-1554), elder daughter of Henry Grey (later Duke of Suffolk) and his wife Lady Frances Brandon, was born and spent her early childhood at Bradgate House. There are a range of other important historical connections including the Grey family, influential nobles in mediaeval and Tudor England who married into the Royal family.


Bradgate Country Park is Leicestershire's most popular country park with about 900,000 visitors each year.


The folly at the top of the hill is called Old John and was built in 1786 beside an old horse racing course and stables. This building is believed to have been erected by the fifth Earl of Stamford, in memory of John, a retainer, who was killed accidentally there. It resembles a large beer mug apparently something old John was used to handling. Nearby can also be found, the Prince Albert's Own Leicestershire Yeomanry Regiment Memorial.


The park is between Cropston and Newtown Linford, a village grandly named "New town by the ford over the River Lin". It may well have been new in the thirteenth century. Bradgate is part of the ancient Charnwood Forest and is now on the eastern edge of the new National Forest. The Country Park is made up of Bradgate Park itself, is a mediaeval deer park of relatively unspoilt countryside with grassy covered slopes running off one of the highest hills in Leicestershire, with walled copses, areas of bracken and rocky outcrops, and the pretty valley of the River Lin running into Cropston Reservoir. Apart from the creation of the reservoir it is probably little changed and largely unimproved over the centuries, with parts looking much as it would have done in the Middle Ages.


It was created as a hunting park from the Charnwood Forest well over 750 years ago. No record exists of when it was enclosed, but it was certainly before 1240. The River Lyn deserves a mention itself. A normally modest steam it does have a large catchment area and can come down in considerable spate. It is always fairly fast flowing and largely unpolluted and well oxygenated and supports a remarkable aquatic and bird ecology. It flows between alders over a rocky bed with occasional deep pools and is home to brown trout, bullhead, minnows, brook lamprey and crayfish. Throughout history it has served man well. It has supplied the necessary water to a monastery and Bradgate House, has filled numerous fishponds, flooded water meadows, powered three mills, neen dammed to create a lake and used to fill a moated site lost now under the waters of Swithland Reservoir.


The park is famous for its herd of fallow and red deer but is also the home of many species having been largely undisturbed for centuries until the sheer weight of visitors in recent years has started to have an impact. Bradgate Park hosts numerous ancient trees including many oaks and this in turn provides an ideal habitat for insects etc and indeed they have over 500 species of beetle. The herds of deer, about 340 in number at the last count, wander at will within the park - one of the finest herds of parkland deer in the country. Deer have been kept at Bradgate, in this fine example of ancient parkland, since the 13th century and to protect them from stress they have areas of the park reserved to them where they can escape from human presence when the park gets to busy.


Bradgate Park contains nationally important geological exposures (some are over 700 million years old and rank as some of the oldest in England). It also contains some of the last important fragments of wet and grass heathland in Leicestershire, wonderful veteran trees and other special habitats, with a diverse range of flora and fauna including rare plant species and is also a valued site for a wide range of birds, vertebrates and invertebrates.


In addition it is home to moles, common shrews, pigmy shrews, bats, voles, mice, rabbits, foxes, adders, stoats, weasels and badgers. Throughout the estate there are 350 veteran trees - some over 500 years old and growing at the time of Lady Jane Grey and many others over 300 years old. Throughout the seasons, it is possible to find up to 106 species of bird, 20 species of mammal, 4 species of amphibians, 8 species of fish, a host of plant species, trees and shrubs as well as lichens, fungi and a host of invertebrate species with many of the flora and fauna regarded as locally rare.


Within the estate there are 36 miles of paths tracks and roads etc, 40 miles of ditches, streams and river, 6 miles of hedges, 17 miles of stone walls and seven miles of other fencing. There are 9 lakes or ponds of one sort or another.


The park includes the ruins of Bradgate House, one of the first unfortified brick built country houses in England, begun in about 1499 and completed over a considerable span of years. The mansion house continued to be occupied until the death of the Second Earl of Stamford in 1719.


For our purposes the park is a bit open with the only areas of woodland, as opposed to parkland, being enclosed in small walled copses closed to the public. Bracken does provide some cover in late summer but efforts are continually made to try to reduce the amount of bracken in the park.


Swithland woods nearby however is heavily wooded and by running between the two areas we can provide good variety for longer courses.


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Swithland Woods and The Brand

This lies just east of Bradgate Park and between the villages of Woodhouse Eaves and Swithland. 137 acres of woodland were bought by the Rotary Club of Leicester in 1931 and donated to the people of the county and it is now managed by the Bradgate Park Trust. The woods contain two flooded disused quarries (with an inscription on the side recording the Rotary Club's donation) and Swithland slate is a traditional local roofing material. One is now used occasionally for scuba diving and is some 58 metres (190 feet) deep.


Swithland Woods consist of some 146 acres of ancient woodland, being a remnant of the original Charnwood Forest Oak Wood. Swithland Wood is one of the few woodland areas in Leicestershire of national nature importance (being on acid loamy soils) and a significantly important area of ancient woodland in the East Midlands. It contains some of the best remaining examples of oak, small leaved lime and alder woodland in the county and as such is an ecologically rich woodland habitat. It also includes holly trees, some coniferous plantation, wildflower meadows, woodland glades, marshes and rock outcrops & knolls making it one of our more diverse landscapes. The area is poorly drained giving numerous damp parts but despite this there are really no streams in the wood. Several ditch systems run into larger ditches with some appearance of natural watercourses but these often dry up.


It has a very important, rich and varied range of flora and fauna including a diverse butterfly, moth and bird population. The area is popular in spring for its wood anemones, bluebells and other spring flowering bulbs which cover large areas of the woodland floor.


Whilst not obvious it also sits on the remains of ridge and furrow, the ploughed land of our medieval ancestors.


The very name of Swithland is an historic anomaly. The medieval village of Swithland was named after the area of cleared land around it and its name means 'land cleared by burning'. A wood therefore cannot by definition be called Swithland as it is yet to be cleared.


The Brand is an unbelievable place. Home to the Martin family who allow us to use it in conjunction with Swithland Wood, it is like something out of Tolkien.


Apparently an example of Victorian gardening gone mad it includes massive cliff faces and lakes all man made with streams diverted through rock faces. Add to this that most of it has been left to nature's devices for many years, it is a real challenge to navigation and a mapper's nightmare. It is imprinted on the brain of any orienteer who has ventured in, but as far as we know everyone came out safely. This is despite occasions when looking down off one of the hills with no apparent way out, snake like movements were to be seen through the bracken. These were in fact the gentle movements at the top of eight foot high bracken reflecting the passage of desperate orienteers deep below and trying to get out.


Martins Wood by Beacon Hill was acquired with help from the Friends of Charnwood and named to remember their President, Sir Andrew Martin who lived at the Brand, a former Lord-Lieutenant of Leicestershire.


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