Kibworth’s Track Record Over 4000 Years

© 2011 Ruth Tyers

An account of centuries of ingenuity and hard labour in creating

travel routes to, in and through Kibworth, Leicestershire

Prehistoric routes

Roman roads

Saxon, Viking & then Norman invaders

Highways

Canals

Railways

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Physical Map Brooks) flow to the Welland and out to the Wash. Note the locations above of Kibworth, and Market Harborough in relation to hills (land The physical reality of this watershed is best over 400 feet above sea level shown in brown) appreciated when travelling on the A6, leaving and streams and rivers (shown in blue). Kibworth Harcourt for Leicester. The land on either side of the road becomes only about two The watershed to the north east of Kibworth: fields wide before dropping over the horizons to western brooks (including Burton Brook) flow to left and right, so giving a strong sense of the rivers Soar, then Trent and to the North Sea; travelling along the watershed. eastern brooks (including Johnny’s and Langton

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Prehistoric Tracks ground there, overlooking Saddington reservoir. The remains are now in the keeping of Kibworth is on what is now termed the Jurassic Leicestershire County Council’s Museum Service. Way - a route running north east through Leicestershire, linking Wessex and Yorkshire People of Stone, Bronze and Iron ages were not through the Cotswolds and Northamptonshire literate, but they were certainly highly uplands. intelligent and skilled; great survivors in harsh climate and hostile environment. They were In prehistoric times, Stone, Bronze and Iron Age occupied in hunting, fishing, gathering and later people used these routes to exchange goods cultivating food, clearing woodland, building and ideas and meet for ritual festivals. Kibworth stone monuments, tool making and trading, is right there on track. potting, weaving and boat-building.

In 1975 there was found in the course of Navigating by sun, moon and stars, they repairing a land drain, and only ½ metre below observed the progression of these through the present ground, the burials of seven people. years, to forecast times and seasons. Cave- One, a man c30 years old, was buried in a painting, metal working, as well as planning crouched position, with a beaker pot and copper agriculture within bounded fields and animal awl - his tool of trade. This identified the group rearing - these were the skills of our prehistoric as of Beaker people, from the early Bronze Age. forbears who made and used these routes. This was on Hill Farm, Smeeton - on the highest

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Roman Roads documented finds show how Kibworth’s Roman occupation spanned some 300 years; he just Leicestershire is bounded by to missed the Roman Villa, located in Kibworth the south (running from London to Holyhead) Harcourt in 2009. and is crossed by the at High Cross (running from Cirencester to Lincoln). The trackways of map 2 (above) also apply to map 3 (on the next page). Settlements resulting forms our eastern boundary. from the invasions from Scandinavia and Europe are filling the map, and are named in the The Via Devana ran from Colchester to Leicester Domesday Book as existing in King Edward’s via Medbourne - we call it the Gartree Road. time, before the Norman Conquest. These were the main roads, with side roads running off them. Mr Aggas’ carefully

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Sea Invasions ground. Kibworth - ‘Chibord’ - they say our local pronunciation of ‘Kib’orth’ most approximates Invisible tracks, unseen and unwanted, made by to the Scandinavian. invaders from Europe: Saxons, Vikings and later the Normans. King Alfred’s solution to the devastation was to accommodate Scandinavian settlement and pay They came in waves and on the waves; down them ‘Danegeld’ for the sake of peace in the rest the Trent and Soar rivers from the North Sea, of the country. Watling Street was their and from the Wash down the Welland, up boundary - so Kibworth is part of the Danelaw. Langton Brook (among others), and dare I say Johnny’s Brook? The rivers were much deeper The last invaders were also of Viking stock - the in those days and Viking ships had only a shallow Normans from France. The very names de draught of 3 to 4 feet. Beauchamp and de Harcourt are of the first Lords of our respective Manors. Smeeton was Maybe they had to carry their ships over the last under William the Conqueror’s niece Judith, and bit as they made for higher ground on sand, administered by de Bucci for her. gravel and grit, while Saxons occupied lower

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Highways stretch of road from Loughborough to Market Harborough in 1726 - one of the first in the The King’s Highway was the title given to Main country. It was completed in 1729. Tolls were Street, Kibworth Harcourt, with its sometimes established so that the ever increasing expense fatal right-angled bends along which horse- of upkeep could be covered. drawn coaches travelled. In 1810 the route of the King’s Highway was Parishioners were obliged by law from 1555 to changed: Main Street in Kibworth Harcourt was spend four days a year repairing their roads, by passed and our present ‘A6’ established. under the supervision of surveyors appointed by the Churchwardens. Roads were made of loose By 1840 Kibworth was well on track for stone and gravel which sunk into the mud in bad passenger and postal services by road. weather despite the brushwood foundations. Communications were open even to London;

By the eighteen century it was maintained at hostelries, coaching inns and pubs and the terrible human cost, the labourers being local blacksmiths kept busy. men employed on a semi-permanent basis You could say we were on the Tourist Trail. But alongside women and children who had to break between our villages and neighbouring ones stones with hammers. there were still only mud tracks, for use on foot Our local Turnpike Trust, duly established by or by donkey cart. The proposed bridle ways Parliamentary Act at the request of local (and ‘drift’ roads) were not complete until c1881. landowners and interested parties, covered the

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Canals Debdale Wharf was the end of the canal (due to funds running out) until the last section to The devastating effect on ordinary people of the Harborough re-started in 1805 and was Enclosure Act in 1779 was mitigated somewhat completed in 1809. by the opportunities offered in Leicester’s industrial revolution - the hosiery trade in The original aim of the canal was to link the particular - and by the development of our next River Soar (made navigable in the late th track, the canal. 18 century) with the River Nene in Northamptonshire. They had to settle for a I quote: “By the 1790s an unemployed labourer route to Market Harborough, the Northants link with a large family received £2 in parish relief. having been completed by the Grand Union He could earn two shillings a day canal digging Canal via Foxton five years after the first while his 14-year old daughter earned about 4 waterway opened. shillings a week spinning for Leicester hosieries. There were rent and coal allowances.” The most essential skill, after the initial digging out of the canal, was the art of ‘puddling’ clay, Unlike the local road workers, the canals were so that the canal remained watertight. James dug mainly by gang labour. The ‘navvies’ (or Brindley proved its efficiency on the carpet of a navigators) were housed for a time in Smeeton Parliamentary Committee room - building up Terrace (what in 1776 was Smeeton’s layers of kneaded clay, he then poured water on workhouse), occupying the top floors. They to the clay. And it worked - the carpet remained lived there until work was completed in 1797. dry!

7 There were endless difficulties nonetheless - After surveying, the route was marked out and landowners’ objections to inadequate fenced off with quickset hedges planted along compensation for the land, expected water the boundaries. Digging out was by hand - the seepage, springs being cut off etc. What is digging and banking process known as ‘cut and more, the line of the canal crossed the fill’, spoil being removed from the canal bed watershed. using wheelbarrows and wood planks; the soil was then used to build up the bank on the lower The hill north of Saddington had to be tunnelled side of terraces. A local labourer earned for half a mile. Several contractors ran into 2 shillings a day, a contractor building the financial difficulties. The cutting on the Saddington tunnel 2 shillings and sixpence a day. Kibworth Beauchamp side collapsed once and re-alignment of the tunnel was necessary. The When the digging was completed, the sides and tunnel finally opened in April 1797, after a delay bed were lined with puddled clay - some 3 feet of two years. Then funds ran out and only after deep on the canal bed, and that lining the sides further funding did work recommence in 1805, was 9 to 10 inches thick. finally reaching Market Harborough in 1809. The compensation paid to Kibworth Beauchamp Near Saddington is a small reservoir, Grammar School for its land of £200, plus £50 constructed to maintain water levels. The donated from the Headmaster’s own pocket, nearby brook had to be channelled under the was used in 1837 to build the Navigation Inn canal to continue its way to feed the ‘lush (now Bridge Farm) where the Kibworth to pastures of Westerby’s cattle’. Wistow Road goes over the canal. It became a trading post for Swithland slate, coal, lime and The whole work was done with picks and grain for local distribution. Publican William shovels, wheelbarrows and gunpowder, Barnes from 1849 also distributed coal to the following nothing more than basic notes on customers’ doors from the barges; his paper which they modified as they went along successors were also coal merchants, until the according to the geological conditions. Inn closed in 1871.

Some of the work, especially the building of A second inn - Debdale Wharf Inn - acquired a bridges, would have been done by local people reputation for disorder, being a popular meeting but much would be carried out by teams of place for rival groups from the three adjoining mainly Irish navvies, brought in to do the parishes. It was finally closed in 1873. digging. Described by Sir John Palmer as ‘ruffians’, there was a serious disturbance at The setting up of a toll gate on the side road to Kibworth in 1795 when a group of navvies Debdale Wharf, with the charge of 3 old pence overpowered about 40 local ’fencibles’ - a kind in 1872 affected carters transporting goods of home guard formed to keep law and order at many times a day from the barges moored at home while the regular troops were fighting the wharf, causing many strong objections to aboard. They were finally quelled, with several the toll. The toll gate closed in 1878, and the arrests, on the arrival from Leicester of the town rest of the toll gates in the district by 1880. volunteers and a troop of the Yeoman Cavalry.

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Railways preaching in the ‘gully hole’ on Sunday evenings, since the new attraction had emptied their The land running along the valley of ‘Johnny’s chapels. Brook’ - named after Jack Waterfield, the landowner - was surveyed in 1845, but met with The first fatal accident occurred within the first strong opposition because of the summary way month, when a driver was crushed against one in which it was handled. Crops and hedges were of the wagons by about 20 tons of earth. He cut down in front of the present occupiers, and was buried in St Wilfrid’s churchyard (near a police force was needed to keep the peace. Michael Ingo who was killed by the express stage coach 20 years previously). As with the canal, so the railway was built by hard labour, without the benefit of mechanical In constructing the railway through Kibworth diggers. Not only had they to excavate cuttings there were nine accidents, many resulting in but also build up the embankment to carry the broken bones and one leg amputation. There track over New Road and the A6. was no consideration, it seems, for health and safety. It was achieved despite opposition from landowners and setbacks in the fortunes of the In February 1857 the earthworks were railway companies. complete, the track formed through all the cuttings, and bridge work almost completed; Construction eventually got underway in July there were only couplings on the permanent 1854 and drew large crowds of sightseers, way to finish. The station buildings were especially on Sundays. Local ministers tried complete and offices ready. By mid-April

9 employees were in place, and the coals brought In 1875 the parapets of the station bridge were up for the engines. raised from the height of only 3 feet after frequent complaints that the steam and smoke, nd On May 2 government inspectors passed over from trains passing underneath, frightened the the line, testing bridges etc ready to open to horses! th passengers on 7 May. Special trips were laid on, and at Kibworth hundreds of people On the 1 st January 1948 the LMS Railway assembled on the bridge near the station, and Company became part of British Railways. alongside the line, to cheer. Twenty years later, on January 1 st 1968, Kibworth Station closed as part of Dr Beeching’s The stage coaches between Market Harborough rationalisation of the railways. The track and Leicester ceased operation on the Saturday however is still in full use by both passenger and before the railway opening. freight trains.

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Finale On the railways, steam gave way to diesel locomotion (except when nostalgia drives us to Roads, canals and railways too numerous to restore steam trains for the smell of smoke and map here continued to develop throughout the sight of steam). On sea and lakes wind is now county. power-assisted, while on the canals a horse on the towpath is a rare sight. th Transport was revolutionised by the early 20 century. The muddy tracks and bridleways But Kibworth’s TRACKWAYS are in use as never between our villages were ‘made up’. ‘Shanks’ before. Our horizons have widened, our Pony’ took to the bicycle around 1868. Real resources become seemingly limitless and horse power gave way to gasoline-driven communications through the ‘media’ automations, and cars were common by 1920. overwhelming.

The first motorised fire engine in Leicester came We have an amazing track record, covering in 1906 and a coal lorry before the first World some 4000 years. War. What wouldn’t our local road labourers, and canal and railway navvies, have given for a What may the future bring? JCB or even a steam shovel?

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Further Reading Porter, P J: ‘Kibworth to Smeeton - A Stroll Down Memory Lane’, P J Porter, three editions I, II & Aggas, F B and Yates, O G: Two Interim Reports III, 2004, 2005 & 2008 on Romano-British Finds in Kibworth, 1967 & 1968 Porter, P J: ‘Kibworth and Smeeton’s Inns and Innkeepers, 1753-1968’, P J Porter, 2 nd edition Albert, W: ‘The Turnpike Road System in 2010 England 1663-1840’, OUP 1972 Strachan, A N, Youd, J, Rowell, R & Moore, K: Howell, C: ‘Land, Family & Inheritance in ‘Atlas of Leicestershire’ 2 nd edition 1986, Transition - Kibworth Harcourt 1280-1700’, CUP University of Leicester 1983

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