Leicester Forest: Identification of the Site of Heathley Lodge

An extract from Leicester Forest by Levi Fox and Percy Russell (1948).

Among the Leicestershire archives is a lease dated 17th December, 1695, from John Smart and others to William Bradshaw of a messuage (house) and 52 acres in Leicester forest called Heath Lodge or Cater's Lodge. The land was divided into four parts called

1. Heathley, Heather, Scratlie
2. Pye close
3. Thurlstone Close
4. High Cross Close and part of the Shulton Lane

"The lodge within the forest of Leicester wherein Henry Cater dwelleth" was one of the buildings surveyed under a Duchy of Lancaster commission in 1578 (The National Archives: Duchy of Lancaster Special Commissions 273). The name again occurs in the 1705 schedule of Queen Catherine's dowry.

According to the Inclosure award of 1628, Boyer, Whiting and Bate were the three keepers. Boyer and Whiting bought their holdings; and the only other small parcel of land was of 24 acres near the High Cross sold to Edward Smart of Huncote.

The place-names attached to the fields nearby clearly indicate that the land attached to the lodge lay in the angle between the roads leading to Shilton and to Enderby.

Another document in the Leicestershire archives (42D31/243) is a lease for 99 years, dated 29th September, 1653, of a close called Ashby Shrubbs by the Stand - King's Stand - to the north-east and John Smart's close to the south-east. The name Ashby Shrubbs was therefore attached to the land on the opposite or Leicester side of the Enderby lane to the farmhouse; but the close and the farmhouse have long been part of the same property, and it seems likely the more distinctive name was given to the house (in place of Heath Lodge) when it was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Prior's map in 1777 calls the place "Shrubs".

(from Leicester Forest by Levi Fox and Percy Russell, published by Edgar Backus, Leicester for the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, now the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society (LAHS). Reproduced by kind permission of the LAHS, 2007.)