British History related to Leicester / shire

[davieG]

On January 13, 1396, John of Gaunt married Katherine Swynford in Lincoln Cathedral. Half the peerage stayed home.

He was the richest man in England, uncle to King Richard II, and the son of Edward III. She was the widow of a minor Lincolnshire knight who had died fighting in Aquitaine. They had been lovers for roughly 25 years.

She had come into his household in the 1360s as a governess to his daughters. His second wife, Constance of Castile, was still very much alive at the time, and so was Katherine's own husband, Hugh Swynford. When Hugh died in 1371, the affair with Gaunt was already underway.

Four children followed. Three sons and a daughter, born while Constance held the title of Duchess of Lancaster and Katherine held the man. Gaunt gave them the surname Beaufort, after one of his French lordships, and raised them openly.

The scandal was loud. Chroniclers like Thomas Walsingham called Katherine a witch and a whore. Gaunt publicly renounced her in 1381 after the Peasants' Revolt, when his palace at the Savoy was burned to the ground and his unpopularity became politically dangerous.

The renunciation didn't take. They kept seeing each other quietly.

Constance of Castile died in 1394. Within two years, Gaunt did something nobody expected a prince of the blood to do. He married his mistress.

Richard II petitioned the Pope to legitimize the four Beaufort children. The papal bull arrived in September 1396, and Parliament confirmed it the following year. The children were now legally the sons and daughter of a prince, with full rights of inheritance, except for one later clause that barred them from the throne itself.

That clause turned out to be worth very little.

John Beaufort, the eldest, became Earl of Somerset. His great-granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort. Her son was Henry Tudor, who took the crown at Bosworth in 1485 and became Henry VII.

Every English and British monarch since has descended from Katherine Swynford. Henry VIII. Elizabeth I. Charles II. Victoria. Elizabeth II. Charles III.

Gaunt died in 1399, three years after the wedding. Katherine outlived him by four years and was buried beside him in Lincoln Cathedral, where their tombs sat together until the Reformation damaged them.

The mistress half the peerage wouldn't acknowledge became the ancestor of every monarch who followed.

 

 

AI

Connection to Leicester

Inheritance: He inherited Leicester Castle in 1361 through his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and it became his preferred residence among his many properties. [1]

Death: He died at Leicester Castle at the age of 58. His death prompted King Richard II to disinherit his son, Henry Bolingbroke, which led to Bolingbroke’s invasion and his accession as King Henry IV. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Local Landmarks:

John O’Gaunt’s Cellar: A medieval structure near the site of Leicester Castle's Great Hall.

The John O’Gaunt Pub: A former community pub built in 1956 on Somerset Avenue (the Stadium estate) that closed in 2018.

John O’Gaunt (Hamlet): A small locality in Leicestershire named after a former 19th-century railway station and local fox covert. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

[davieG]

Hedgerow & Home ·

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Put a dot on every place in England whose name ends in -by, and they don't spread out evenly. They pile up in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and fade to almost nothing south-west of Watling Street.

That's because -by is Old Norse. It meant a farmstead or a village, and the Viking settlers who took over the north and east in the late 800s named places the way they talked. Grimsby was Grímr's farm. Whitby, the white farm.

Derby, the farm with the deer. There are hundreds of them, and most sit where the old Danelaw was, on the Viking side of the line the Danes and the English agreed on.

They're not the only giveaway. A -thorpe was usually a smaller outlying farm, as in S****horpe. A -toft was a plot of land, as in Lowestoft. Up in the north-west you get -thwaite, a clearing, as in Braithwaite.

So if your town's on that map, its name probably goes back more than a thousand years, to the Viking settlers who farmed there.

#vikings #placenames #danelaw

 

 

 

[davieG]

Hedgerow & Home

 

The Romans never called it Watling Street. Or Ermine Street, or the Fosse Way. Those names came later, from the Anglo-Saxons and others, and for most of these roads nobody knows what the Romans actually called them.

What they did leave was about 2,000 miles of paved road. Building started almost as soon as they landed in AD 43, most of the network was done by around AD 180, and once London was rebuilt after Boudica's revolt, it became the hub everything ran out of.

A lot of it is still under the tarmac. Watling Street is much of the A5 and part of the A2. Ermine Street is the A10 out of London and the A15 north of Lincoln. The Fosse Way is the A37, the A429 and the A46. Stane Street to Chichester turns up in the A29 and the A285. Akeman Street is the A41 near Bicester, and Icknield Street is the A38 between Lichfield and Derby.

So if your daily drive is dead straight for a suspiciously long way, there's a fair chance someone laid it out nearly 2,000 years ago

 

 

 

Just to add where Watling Street crosses the Fosseway was known as the Highcross

 

Watling Street (now the A5) and the Fosse Way cross each other at High Cross in Leicestershire (historically known as the Roman settlement of Venonis or Venonae).
• Location: The intersection sits on a high plateau on the border between Leicestershire and Warwickshire, near Sharnford and Claybrooke Parva.
• Historical Significance: In Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain, this site served as a major central crossroads and the geographical center of Roman Britannia.
• Current Monument: A Grade II listed monument erected in 1712 marks the historic junction.

[Spudulike]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

Hedgerow & Home ·

Follow

 

Put a dot on every place in England whose name ends in -by, and they don't spread out evenly. They pile up in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and fade to almost nothing south-west of Watling Street.

That's because -by is Old Norse. It meant a farmstead or a village, and the Viking settlers who took over the north and east in the late 800s named places the way they talked. Grimsby was Grímr's farm. Whitby, the white farm.

Derby, the farm with the deer. There are hundreds of them, and most sit where the old Danelaw was, on the Viking side of the line the Danes and the English agreed on.

They're not the only giveaway. A -thorpe was usually a smaller outlying farm, as in S****horpe. A -toft was a plot of land, as in Lowestoft. Up in the north-west you get -thwaite, a clearing, as in Braithwaite.

So if your town's on that map, its name probably goes back more than a thousand years, to the Viking settlers who farmed there.

#vikings #placenames #danelaw

 

 

 

So I grew up on an old Norse farm (or village) in Oadby. Wonder what Oad was?

[davieG]

4 minutes ago, Spudulike said:

So I grew up on an old Norse farm (or village) in Oadby. Wonder what Oad was?

Who knows, Blaby were just bored with all those foreigners Bla Bla

[Stadt]

On 16/10/2026 at 12:08, davieG said:

Local Landmarks:

John O’Gaunt’s Cellar: A medieval structure near the site of Leicester Castle's Great Hall.

The John O’Gaunt Pub: A former community pub built in 1956 on Somerset Avenue (the Stadium estate) that closed in 2018.

John O’Gaunt (Hamlet): A small locality in Leicestershire named after a former 19th-century railway station and local fox covert. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

There is the John O'Gaunt viaduct too which is probably the most under-visited landmark in the county.

 

Nearby Burrough on the Hill is the site of an iron-age hill fort and absolutely worth walking around too, it's really evocative, the ramparts are impressive earthworks. Stag and Hounds does a lovely lunch too and its next door to the Parish Brewery who did at one stage hold the world record for strongest beer by abv.

[Stadt]

I picked this up in the second hand book shop on Silver St not realising it's about telling the national story but through the lens of Kibworth. Merton College have owned land there for almost 800 years so the records are possibly the most intact of almost anywhere in Britain (not far off in the world maybe?). It's really great, the TV series is worth a watch too.

 

[davieG]

59 minutes ago, Stadt said:

I picked this up in the second hand book shop on Silver St not realising it's about telling the national story but through the lens of Kibworth. Merton College have owned land there for almost 800 years so the records are possibly the most intact of almost anywhere in Britain (not far off in the world maybe?). It's really great, the TV series is worth a watch too.

 

I watched the TV series. 

[bovril]

On 16/10/2026 at 12:08, davieG said:

On January 13, 1396, John of Gaunt married Katherine Swynford in Lincoln Cathedral. Half the peerage stayed home.

He was the richest man in England, uncle to King Richard II, and the son of Edward III. She was the widow of a minor Lincolnshire knight who had died fighting in Aquitaine. They had been lovers for roughly 25 years.

She had come into his household in the 1360s as a governess to his daughters. His second wife, Constance of Castile, was still very much alive at the time, and so was Katherine's own husband, Hugh Swynford. When Hugh died in 1371, the affair with Gaunt was already underway.

Four children followed. Three sons and a daughter, born while Constance held the title of Duchess of Lancaster and Katherine held the man. Gaunt gave them the surname Beaufort, after one of his French lordships, and raised them openly.

The scandal was loud. Chroniclers like Thomas Walsingham called Katherine a witch and a whore. Gaunt publicly renounced her in 1381 after the Peasants' Revolt, when his palace at the Savoy was burned to the ground and his unpopularity became politically dangerous.

The renunciation didn't take. They kept seeing each other quietly.

Constance of Castile died in 1394. Within two years, Gaunt did something nobody expected a prince of the blood to do. He married his mistress.

Richard II petitioned the Pope to legitimize the four Beaufort children. The papal bull arrived in September 1396, and Parliament confirmed it the following year. The children were now legally the sons and daughter of a prince, with full rights of inheritance, except for one later clause that barred them from the throne itself.

That clause turned out to be worth very little.

John Beaufort, the eldest, became Earl of Somerset. His great-granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort. Her son was Henry Tudor, who took the crown at Bosworth in 1485 and became Henry VII.

Every English and British monarch since has descended from Katherine Swynford. Henry VIII. Elizabeth I. Charles II. Victoria. Elizabeth II. Charles III.

Gaunt died in 1399, three years after the wedding. Katherine outlived him by four years and was buried beside him in Lincoln Cathedral, where their tombs sat together until the Reformation damaged them.

The mistress half the peerage wouldn't acknowledge became the ancestor of every monarch who followed.

 

 

AI

Connection to Leicester

Inheritance: He inherited Leicester Castle in 1361 through his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and it became his preferred residence among his many properties. [1]

Death: He died at Leicester Castle at the age of 58. His death prompted King Richard II to disinherit his son, Henry Bolingbroke, which led to Bolingbroke’s invasion and his accession as King Henry IV. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Local Landmarks:

John O’Gaunt’s Cellar: A medieval structure near the site of Leicester Castle's Great Hall.

The John O’Gaunt Pub: A former community pub built in 1956 on Somerset Avenue (the Stadium estate) that closed in 2018.

John O’Gaunt (Hamlet): A small locality in Leicestershire named after a former 19th-century railway station and local fox covert. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Henry V's Mum is probably buried somewhere near Soar Point. 

[Foxdiamond]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Henry V's Mum is probably buried somewhere near Soar Point. 

More royalty under a Leicester carpark?

[bovril]

2 minutes ago, Foxdiamond said:

More royalty under a Leicester carpark?

Yeah we need to dig her up and hope it has a similar effect. Wolsey nearby too probably. Grab your spades!