The following email and videos are courtesy of Dave Postles (originally posted to H-ALBION and then forwarded to my Tudor list and sent to me directly by kb)
Bradgate House and Lady Jane Grey
The house is paradigmatic of a late-medieval courtyard house, constructed c.1490-1505 by Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, grandfather of Lady Jane Grey who was born in this house. Brick, but with stone quoins, from local Triassic clay with diaper work in vitrified brick. It was left to decay from 1739, the parkland and house bought in 1928 by Charles Bennion and entrusted to the City of Leicester.
The parkland is partly located in a small gorge. The pre-Cambrian rock which is the bedrock is the oldest in Britain. It was overlaid by Triassic clay. The R. Lin eroded the clay, encountering below the pre-Cambrian rock, cut a smaller channel, creating the small gorge – what geomorphologists call superimposed drainage. Despite its smallness, the Lin here represents all the elements of the cycle of erosion in this superimposed drainage system.
The vill of Bradgate was removed outside the park to the new site of Newtown Linford, a linear or street village along the edge of the park. Several cruck or raised cruck cottages are dispersed in this ‘new’ village.
The southern extension of the park was deer park, with the park pale still discernible on the boundary with the adjacent parish of Anstey.
The video clips are designed to illustrate all these features.
1 The small gorge at the Linford entry to the park
2 The deer park on the south bank of the Lin
5 The end of the gorge, opening out of the park and house in the distance
6 One of the many exposed outcrops of pre-Cambrian rock
[Copyleft – i.e. copyright-free]
Be sure to check out his other videos!
[July 1 – corrected quoted email to read “Thomas Grey … grandfather of Lady Jane Grey”]
