Lovely visit and walk around Bradgate Park today. Fantastic place, just six miles from the centre of Leicester, looking and feeling more like Connemara with the gorse and landscape. An unspoiled landscape produced by, and dating back to, the hunting shooting and fishing lifestyle of the Tudors but having been a 'parkland' since before 1240.
The house - Bradgate House - was built between 1481 and 1520 and is one of the first known examples of brickwork construction in England since Roman times. It was the home and birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, who I and most of you will have heard of; perhaps thinking of her as some substantial figure of the late medieval/early modern period of England?
In fact, by the time of her death aged just 16 in February 1554, Lady Jane Grey was renowned as an intellectual, one of the best educated women in Europe, a staunch and pious protestant. She had also been Queen of England for nine days and was beheaded as one of the first Protestant martyrs by the court of the Catholic daughter of Henry V111 Bloody Mary - Mary Tudor.
Sixteen? Wow.
Major landmark 'Old John' is a feature of the local skyline that can be seen for miles around.
A 'folly' built by Thomas Sketchley of Anstey as a mock ruin for George Grey, the 5th Earl of Stamford, Old John is said to commemorate the life of an old retainer who was killed by accident at a bonfire held in the same place. It's 'tankard' shape perhaps a nod to the fact that Old John enjoyed his ale!
There's a deer park, featuring white fallow deer
Anyway I love this stuff. I'll fetch my anorak.
Thanks for reading. ;)
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