|
Although situated in the very centre of Roman England and within
walking distance of the intersection of the Fosse Way and Watling
Street at High Cross, it seems likely that Lutterworth was first
settled by the Anglo-Saxons. It was suggested by Sir Thomas Cave
in the eighteenth century that the name “Lutters Vortig”
means Luthers Farm and the original settlement is thought likely
to have been on or near the site of the present parish church. The
settlement, facing south and overlooking the fertile Swift Valley,
had prospered by the time of the Norman Conquest, enough to make
it a fitting reward for one of the Conqueror’s minor followers.
The Domesday Book of 1086 records that “Maino the Breton held
in Lutresurde 13 Carucates with 3 Ploughs in the demesne, 2 Servants
and a Maid Servant and here were 7 Villeins, 7 Bordars and 12 Socmen
with 4 Ploughs and 12 Acres of meadow”.
In 1268 the de Verduns founded the Hospital of St. John the Baptist
on the southern bank of the River Swift near the present motorway
junction. This was not a hospital in the modern sense but a hostel
where a priest and “six poor men” (who were inmates)
were established to provide hospitality for poor travellers. The
Hospital was dissolved by Henry VIII and all traces of it have long
since disappeared.
In the Fourteenth Century the manor of Lutterworth passed to another
of Leicestershire’s great landowning dynasties, the Ferrers
of Groby, and thence by marriage to the Grey family. Sir John Grey
was killed leading a Lancastrian charge at the second Battle of
St. Albans in 1461, leaving a widow and two young sons. The widow
Elizabeth Woodville, went on to marry the Yorkist King Edward IV,
thus becoming the mother of the Princes in the Tower and the grandmother
of Henry Vlll. Her eldest son by her first marriage, Thomas Grey,
was created Marquess of Dorset in 1475. As well as causing much
official displeasure by his illegal enclosure of common land in
the Lutterworth area, the first Marquess also began work on the
hunting lodge at Bradgate, in the north of the county which was
one of the wonders of early Tudor architecture. His grandson, the
third Marquess, married Henry Vlll’s niece Frances Brandon
and ultimately inherited her father’s title as Duke of Suffolk.
Their eldest daughter was Jane Grey, the tragic Nine Days Queen,
who was beheaded. In January 1554, six months after Jane’s
overthrow by the rightful Queen, Mary l, Suffolk reputedly decamped
from London to his manor house at Lutterworth on his way to try
and raise Leicester and Coventry to rebellion, for which treachery
he lost his head.
Despite its proximity to the battlefield at Naseby, Lutterworth
seems to have played only a peripheral role in the Civil War of
the next century. The church plate was looted by Lord Hastings’
royalist troops in January 1644 and the Rector, Dr. Tovey, was deprived
of his living for supporting the King’s cause. It was during
this period, however, that the last of Lutterworth’s great
landowning families, the Feildings, rose to prominence, becoming
Earls of Denbigh in 1622. The Earl of Denbigh was killed in battle,
fighting on the side of King Charles. His eldest son, Basil Feilding,
was one of Cromwell’s finest Generals and Cromwell allowed
Basil to keep the Earldom. When Charles II returned to the throne,
he also allowed Basil to keep it because his father had fought and
died for Charles I.
The link with the Feildings lives on through the “Denbigh
Arms” which was one of Lutterworth’s Georgian coaching
inns, together with the “Hind” and the “Greyhound”.
From roughly 1750 to 1850 the town was an important posting station
for stage coaches on the London to Chester turnpike. By 1840 a horse
drawn omnibus was transporting Lutterworthians to the nearest railway
station at Ullesthorpe, on the Midland Line from Leicester to Rugby
with connections to London and Birmingham. In 1899 the Great Central
Railway - “The Last Main Line to London” - linked Sheffield
and Leicester to the capital and Lutterworth gained a station of
its own to the east of the town.
Sadly both railway lines closed in the 1960s, although part of the
Great Central embankment remains as a public walkway and a pleasant
reminder of this particular chapter in the town’s long history.
Almost simultaneously the M1 reached Lutterworth and opened up the
future.
|
