LEI Country
Holly Hayes and Whitwick
We have used the Holly Hayes Wood for many years but the actual ownership of parts of the area is far from clear. We have been assisting 'The Friends of Holly Hayes Wood', a Community Group who aim to set-up a social enterprise to maintain and improve Holly Hayes Wood, Coalville Meadows and Forest Rock Wood.
Amongst their aims is to provide a long term solution to the ownership of the woodland which will obviously suit us.
The Whitwick Historical Society has a wealth of information on the site. Whitwick known as Witewic in the Doomsday Book was partially owned Hugh de Grandmesnil whose name crops up in many of our areas.
To ensure a plentiful supply of game for hunting purposes, the monarch and their nobles established reserves in areas of countryside that were considered to be on agriculturally inferior soil and often attached to a manor (in this case Whitwick Manor) and which often contained woodland. This was in fact a giant park, which covered Bardon Hill and which extended over the surrounding area to over 1260 acres.
By the 1400s however it had been reduced to a smaller area around the summit of Bardon Hill and a few outlying pockets. The first direct reference to Holly Hayes Wood (or Hawley Hayes) can be found on a list of the medieval woods of Charnwood Forest. The earliest recorded record for the wood is believed to be 1240AD.
Holly Hayes is an ancient enclosed area of the Old Charnwood Forest and was enclosed before the Enclosure Act of Whitwick 1805 when the wood is already shown as an Ancient Enclosure on the map and was attached to the award for enclosing Commons and Open Fields in Whitwick, Thringstone and Pegg's Green. It also suggests that the area now known as Forest Rock Wood (sometimes called Spring Hill Woods) was previously called Houghton Hill.
Ownership can be traced forward but gets more confusing when quarrying commenced in 1893. It would appear that the first quarry was dug at the site of Forest Rock Wood, reference to this name can be found during 1923, where the quarry was previously called Forest Rock Quarry. Some time later, circa 1929, a second quarry appears to have been commenced in Peldar Tor, which is the site of the existing quarry and is officially referred to as Springhill Quarry, Peldar Tor, Whitwick.
In 1911, the Coalville Times informs us that game birds had been stolen from Holly Hayes Wood, which then belonged to the Whitwick Granite Company. A William Berrington still lived there at this time and was still living here up to 1928. Various residents followed but actual ownership is less clear and still is today. We still use the area often in conjunction with the streets of Whitwick itself and sometimes from the Hermitage Leisure Centre.
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