73 - Charnwood : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

Charnwood rises abruptly out of the Leicestershire Vales NCA to the south and the Melbourne Parklands NCA to the north. To the west, it rises less steeply from the Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield NCA. To the east, the Charnwood NCA is shaped by the flood plain of the Soar, which runs through the narrow Trent Valley Washlands NCA, beyond which rises the Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire Wolds NCA.

Clear and fast-flowing streams that rise in Charnwood drain north-westwards and eastwards towards the River Soar, and south-eastwards to the River Sence. They eventually drain into the Trent Basin, providing links with the Trent Valley Washlands, and then out to the North Sea via the Humber Estuary. Four reservoirs (Blackbrook, Cropston, Thornton and Swithland) supply water to surrounding areas and provide important opportunities for walking and birdwatching.

The National Forest is creating new woodland within both this and adjoining NCAs, and is providing strong woodland linkage with neighbouring Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield and Melbourne Parklands NCAs. Some 58 per cent of Charnwood lies within The National Forest: the area represents 20 per cent of it.

There are expansive views to the surrounding lowland plain and distant horizons from the more elevated open areas of Charnwood. On clear days it is possible to see the Shropshire Hills, the Cotswolds, distant Lincoln Cathedral and the Boston Stump from both Beacon Hill and Bardon Hill. In contrast, at lower elevations, views are contained by the intricate pattern of woodlands and farmland, which convey a secluded and intimate character.

Three working quarries lie within the NCA, supplying stone both locally and nationally. The M1 cuts almost midway through Charnwood, providing a strong functional link between the south and the north.

The Charnwood today

Charnwood includes a unique and distinctive area of elevated land, with rugged, rocky outcrops that rise above the surrounding lowland plain. These rocks are unique in the East Midlands and rare internationally as well. The elevated core of the area follows a broadly north-west-south-east orientated spine. The area has been established as having one of the best Precambrian fossil assemblages in the world. The Precambrian rocks have been folded to form a series of outcrops, interrupted by faulting, and partially obscured by later Mercia Mudstone strata. The southern edge of the area is intruded by igneous rocks, notably the pink South Charnwood diorites found around Markfield and the granodiorite found around Mountsorrel. Charnwood has a unique geology. The Precambrian rocks, which heavily influence the character of the area, characteristically surface as isolated outcrops. The older rocks give rise to the thin, infertile soils that support the heathland at the heart of Charnwood. The mudstones and superficial deposits of the valleys and lowland areas give rise to deeper, more fertile soils.

On the lower land surrounding the elevated core, Charnwood has a wooded character of mixed deciduous and coniferous woodlands, including ancient wet woodlands. The western part of Charnwood Forest lies within The National Forest, so woodland cover is likely to increase over time – but not to the detriment of the unique Charnwood landscape character. Pockets of ancient woodland remain, such as at Buddon Wood and Swithland Wood. The country parks are characterised by large, ancient, pollarded oaks.

The predominantly pastoral agricultural land is divided up by a regular field pattern of medium to large fields, with low, clipped hedgerows and stone walls. The planned appearance of the landscape is emphasised by straight, wide-verged enclosure roads. The variety of semi-natural habitats in Charnwood is derived from its acidic soils and geology, resulting in heathland and acid grassland. Heather is a particularly important habitat for rare invertebrates such as the Charnwood spider. Nationally important birds such as the nightjar also rely on this habitat. Many of these areas are now encroached by bracken and scrub.

Fast, clear, well-oxygenated streams support an abundance of wildlife, including rare species such as crayfish and brook lamprey. The Charnwood caddis fly is found in both Burleigh Brook and Wood Brook, but nowhere else in the country.

Swithland, Blackbrook Thornton and Cropston reservoirs are large and important water and recreation resources for the surrounding urban areas, and important for breeding and wintering wildfowl. Swithland Reservoir supports a nationally important population of shoveler. Groby Pool may originally have been constructed as a medieval millpond.

Beacon Hill Country Park is on the site of an ancient hill fort, and Bradgate Country Park contains the substantial ruins of a 15th-century brick mansion (the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey) and Old John Tower, a folly or prospect tower built in 1784 by the 5th Earl of Stamford. The circular stone tower replaced a former wooden windmill, and stands on Bradgate Park’s tallest hill – and one of Leicestershire’s highest points – some 210 m above sea level. The tower offers views across the area, and of the red and fallow deer that still graze the park. Several other mansions are set within parkland, including Roecliffe Manor and Beaumanor Hall. Remains of medieval monastic buildings like Ulverscroft Priory contribute to the area’s heritage, as do the isolated churches, like that at Copt Oak, which were built in the 1830s as a result of the Enclosure Acts.

The area also offers a network of rights of way totalling 257 km, at a density of nearly 1.5 km per km2, with a small proportion of open access land covering 88 ha (or 0.5 per cent of the NCA). In addition, further recreation opportunities are being offered through some of the reservoirs, such as Thornton, and through The National Forest. The abandoned quarries are of geological and nature conservation interest, with some being used for activities such as rock climbing.

The ancient settlement pattern is still apparent. A number of small, linear villages, such as Newtown Linford, lie at the heart of Charnwood Forest, and larger settlements ring the central elevated core of the landscape. These larger settlements are now surrounded by extensive modern housing developments. Charnwood is surrounded by several large settlements on its peripheries, which include Shepshed, Loughborough, Coalville and Leicester.

Older dwellings are built of local dark stone, either Charnwood Stone or the pink/purple Mountsorrel Granodiorite. Swithland Slate, with its colouring of blue-grey tinged with green, is a locally distinctive roofing material. There is a mixture of timber-framed and stone buildings. Swithland Slate and thatch are used for roofing in many villages, including new developments.

The tranquil, rural character of the area is sometimes interrupted by urbanising infrastructure, including transmission lines along the Rothley Brook, prominent adjacent telecommunications masts, localised wind turbines, and the A50 and M1.

The landscape through time

The Precambrian rocks, which heavily influence the character of the area, characteristically surface as isolated outcrops. The Charnian rocks comprise volcaniclastic sediments (mainly tuffs) that were produced in an island arc setting, with volcanoes forming a series of islands. Two volcanic centres have been identified, at Bardon Hill and Whitwick. A modern analogue for this is the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. The Precambrian rocks have been folded to form a series of outcrops forming a broadly north-west-south-east orientated spine, interrupted by faulting, and largely obscured by later Mercia Mudstone strata and superficial deposits. The southern edge of the area is intruded by igneous rocks, the coarse-grained, pinkish granitic rocks found around Markfield (originally known as Markfieldite but now called the South Charnwood Diorites). They were intruded in the latest Precambrian times. Following the discovery, in 1957, of the Charnian fossils Charnia masoni and Charniodiscus concentricus, more recent discoveries have established Charnwood Forest as having one of the best Precambrian fossil assemblages in the world. These soft-bodied creatures represent some of the oldest multicellular organisms so far known to science.

The Cambrian-age Swithland Slate crops out in Swithland Wood and around Groby. These former marine mudstones were metamorphosed to slate during earth movements at the end of the Silurian period. They were once extensively worked for roofing slate and headstones, which can be seen in many local buildings and churches within 50 miles of Charnwood Forest. The industry rapidly declined in the mid-19th century due to cheap imports of Welsh slate. The younger igneous intrusion of Ordovician age (495 to 443 million years ago) forms the intrusion at Mountsorrel. (This is worked for aggregate: Buddon Wood, one of the largest quarries in Europe, produces around five million tonnes of aggregate a year. The floor of the quarry is currently 110 m below sea level, and is expected to reach 150 m below sea level by the end of its working life.) In the Silurian period, earth movements pushed the rocks up into a major mountain range that formed Charnwood Forest. Major quarrying activity in this NCA started in the 19th century and continues today.

In the north-west of Charnwood Forest, at Grace Dieu, Osgathorpe and Barrow Hill, there are four inliers of the Carboniferous Peak Limestone Group. These shallow marine limestones have largely been altered to the mineral dolomite, forming dolostones, and have been worked in the past for lime, building stone and aggregate. In the north of the NCA, the Triassic Bromsgrove Sandstone, including the Shepshed Sandstone (a member of the Sherwood Sandstone Group), crops out. This has been extensively worked as a building stone in neighbouring NCAs, but not in Charnwood Forest.

The Mercia Mudstone Group is the principal bedrock in the NCA. It is a redbrown mudstone that overlies the Precambrian rocks with a marked unconformity that can be seen in many of the quarries. This represents a time gap of around 300 million years; it is very irregular, owing to marked erosion in Carboniferous to Early Triassic times, with many wadis forming. The Mercia Mudstone Group is the deposit of a dist desert and includes interbedded thin beds of greenish-grey siltstone that were deposited by flash floods following periodic heavy rainstorms.

Superficial deposits extensively cover much of the Charnwood Forest landscape area. They comprise tills of Anglian age (around 440,000 years old) and more recent head and alluvium. The head deposits are extensive and are formed by a downslope movement of the surface deposits, much of which was precipitated by the permafrost conditions at the end of the Devensian glaciation around 12,000 years ago. This ice sheet did not cross Charnwood Forest.

There is evidence of occupation of Charnwood and exploitation of the natural resources since Neolithic times. The exceptionally hard stone provided the resources for making hand-axes and other finds dating from this period. The discovery of a late bronze-age hoard provides further evidence of prehistoric occupation, although this is likely to have been limited to localised focal points. An iron-age hill fort dating from 600 BC to 43 AD is located at Beacon Hill, one of the highest points in Charnwood Forest, and is attributable to the Coritani tribe, which occupied this area at the time of the Roman invasion.

Use of the area’s resources continued in the Roman period, with quarrying of both the local Mountsorrel granodiorite and Swithland Slate for roofing. There is evidence of these materials in local Roman remains, including the military outpost of Ratae Corieltauvorum, the site now occupied by the city of Leicester. Anglo Saxons also continued to exploit these resources.

The forested character of the area is recorded in Domesday Book, identified as the woodland tract of Hereswode. The area remained generally uninhabited, with only one small settlement recorded at Charley. It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that the woodland began to be cleared and settled. As new villages were created, principally in the lower and more fertile valleys, each took substantial areas of land out of Charnwood Forest for agricultural use. A secluded location and cheaply available land for cultivation favoured the establishment of monastic settlements in the medieval period. These included Garendon Abbey and Ulverscroft Priory. A number of medieval hunting parks were established around the core of the forested upland area, making use of land that was too poor for agriculture. Examples include Groby, Bradgate, Quorndon, Beaumanor and Bardon. A number of larger priories (such as Grace Dieu priory), country houses and associated parklands were established towards the end of the medieval period.

Bradgate House was built between 1499 and 1520, and was home to the illfated Lady Jane Grey, queen of England for just nine days in 1553.

From 1600 to the early 19th century there was very little change or colonisation, and the area remained largely unenclosed. By this stage, the woodland cover that once extended across much of the area was depleted, and many of the hunting parks had also gone, leaving large areas of moorland, heathland and pasture. A relative newcomer to Charnwood Forest was Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, established in the 1830s.

The combination of the effects of early 19th century enclosure and the establishment of commercial quarrying of granite brought significant changes to the landscape. The Enclosure Act was the final stage in the gradual piecemeal enclosure of the forest lands. The remaining unenclosed woodland, moorland, heathland and open farmland was divided up into many privately owned farming units marked out using hedges or stone walls, and there was a rationalisation of the roads and trackways within the forested areas.

Major quarrying activity started in the 19th century and continues today, with three main quarries currently operating at Bardon Hill, Cliffe Hill and Mountsorrel. Several other quarries are mothballed, and there are many abandoned pits. Mountsorrel initially quarried for granite setts, but soon focused on roadstone aggregate. The rivers Soar and Wreake, and the Charnwood Forest Canal (now defunct), enabled the aggregates to be transported countrywide. Swithland Slate was quarried commercially from the mid-18th century. Competition from roofing tiles and Welsh slate quarries forced the decline of the Swithland Slate industry at the end of the 19th century. The quarrying activity has left a significant industrial heritage footprint on the landscape, as have the effects of the industrial revolution, with the construction of Swithland, Cropston, Blackbrook and Thornton reservoirs, and the introduction of railways with branch lines to serve the quarries. Other quarries once existed in the Carboniferous Limestone, working for lime, building stone and aggregate, possibly with some production of mortar. Lime production dates back to medieval times at Grace Dieu. Small quarries also opened for the making of bricks.

In recent years the lack of appropriate grazing, and the process of agricultural improvement and intensification, have led to a decline in the extent and quality of heathland. The characteristic drystone walls are falling into a state of disrepair in many places, although these (and heathland management) are occasionally being improved through stewardship agreements. Many woodlands have been invaded by rhododendron and sycamore, which has diminished their nature conservation interest.

Large-scale modern development is having an impact on the intrinsic rural landscape character, by creating visual intrusion and increasing the risk of the coalescence of outlying villages. This trend looks set to continue, with more homes likely to be built in and around Leicester, Coalville and Loughborough. In inner Charnwood, population change and increasing affluence have led to minor suburbanising influences, through farm-building conversions and the enclosure of large gardens by railings. The National Forest, which covers 58 per cent of the Charnwood NCA, was established with great public support just over 20 years ago, to show the benefits of woodlands near to where people live and work. There is an overall aim of blending new and maturing woodland within a wide variety of landscapes.