River Sence

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For the river at Great Glen and Wigston, see River Sence, Wigston
The River Sence near Sheepy Magna

The River Sence is a river which flows through western Leicestershire to the county's border with Warwickshire, where it enters the River Anker.

Tributaries of the Sence include the Saint and Tweed, and fan out over much of western Leicestershire from Charnwood Forest and Coalville in the north-east to Hinckley and almost to Watling Street in the south and south-west. It is part of the wider River Trent basin, which covers much of the Midlands.

In 1881, Sebastian Evans wrote that the usual names for this river were Shenton Brook and Sibson Brook.[1]

Antiquarian accounts of the Battle of Bosworth[2][3] label the brook upstream of Shenton “Tweed”. Recent Ordnance Maps 1:25 000 (2000) label only the “Tweed River” south-west of Stapleton and the 1:50 000 (1990) map gives it no name. The lower reaches from Shenton to Ratcliffe Culey are known locally as the Saint, as used below.

Though its name is unusual, there is another river of the same name in the county: the River Sence, Wigston, south of Leicester.

Course

The Sence rises on Bardon Hill (SK461132), the county top. It crosses the A50 (SK453122) and gathers a group of three headwaters around Bardon (SK457123) and Stanton under Bardon. It flows westwards with a tributary stream from Coalville, past Hugglescote (SK424123) and Donington le Heath. It then turns south-west, receiving Blower’s Brook and another tributary from Ravenstone, continuing between Heather and Ibstock, between Newton Burgoland and Odstone, through Shackerstone, between Bilstone and Congerstone, and between Sheepy Magna and Sheepy Parva. It joins the Anker on the boundary with Warwickshire between Sheepy, Ratcliffe Culey and Atherstone at the Mythe, an ancient chaplry of Sheepy (SK315991).

From Bardon village, over a distance of about 12 miles, it falls by about 300 feet.

Tributaries

Odd names in and by the river

  • Ambion: a deserted village by a headwater of the Saint rising in Cadeby. It is recorded as Anabein around 1270), Anne Beame in the Hollinshead Chronicle (1576), Anbein (1622) and Amyon by John Hutton (1788).[4] The name seems to derive from Old English Āna-beam, a One-Beam bridge,[5] probably the hamlet’s means of crossing the stream towards Market Bosworth. It is claimed as the traditional site of the Battle of Bosworth.
  • King Dick’s Hole: a deep part of the Anker at its confluence with the Sence. Since at least Victorian times, it has been a popular bathing place for the youth of Atherstone and Sheepy. Local tradition has it that it is where King Richard III bathed before the Battle of Bosworth.[6] Ekwall proposes that ‘hole’ is a corruption of early English halh; an area of flood plain enclosed by a meandering river[7] although that its usually considered a northerm dialet word, and the deep spot is indeed a hole. Richard is known to stationed some of his troops nearby while lodging the night at Mythe Hall.[8]
  • Lovett or Lovett’s Bridge links Sheepy Parva across the Sence towards Orton on the Hill and Polesworth. Though there is now a footbridge but no known person called Lovatt: it may be from the Old British language. The ford here is at least 1000 years old,[9] and seems to link to a branch of Redway towards Polesworth and to an ancient crossing of the Saint suggests at least Iron Age origin.
  • Mythe, is at the confluence of the Sence with the Anker. from Old English gemyþe, ‘place where waters meet, confluence’, here.[10]
  • Ratcliffe, or Redeclive (1086) is ‘road-cleave’: Ratcliffe Culey takes its name from the ford where the Hinckley–Mythe road was ‘cleaved’ by the Sence 100 m upstream of its confluence with the Anker.
  • Sandeford is mentioned as the place where Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth but its situation is lost. It might be where Fenn Lane crosses the Tweed (407989) or a tributary from Higham on the Hill (391984)[11] or on the Redway where a stream ran into the marsh north of Fenny Drayton (352979)[12][13] Both sites are rather marshy, so that a site on the River Saint at Miles Ford north-west of Shenton (377010) is more probable.

Water mills

The river was exploited for water power and fishing in the 19th and 20th centuries, when there were at least eight water-driven corn mills on the Sence, which has an average gradient of about 1:200: Hugglescote Corn Mill; Ravenstone Mill; Ibstock Corn Mill; Help-Out Mill, Shackerstone; Congerstone Corn Mill; Temple Corn Mill; Sibson Corn Mill; Sheepy Corn Mill. Perhaps in earlier times, there was a mill at the moated site at Old Hall Farm and Brook Farm, Bardon. Early in the 19th century, the formerly moated site of Mythe Hall had a mill fed by water from the Sence and discharging into the Anker. The tributary from Bagworth to Shackerstone may have had mills at the moated sites of Pickering Grange and Ibstock Grange. On Carlton Brook between Carlton and Market Bosworth was Bosworth Mill.

Help-Out Mill fell out of use in the late 1960s. When Elijah T. Timms died in 1970, it ended a family association with the mill dating back to 1734. The name is believed to derive from the reliable water supply compared with mills on the branch streams. The overcast waterwheel was replaced by a water turbine in 1902.[14]

Temple Mill was first mentioned in 1279 and continued operating till after World War II.[15]

Sibson Mill is remarkable in being on the Sence, not its own Saint river, some distance from Sibson village.

Sheepy Mill is mentioned in the Domesday Book and was exploited by Ranton Priory until the Reformation. It was enlarged in the 19th Century by Charles Bonington Lowe and switched to steam power. After World War II, the mill installed a water turbine but switched to electrical power. It closed around 1970. For the first half of the 20th century under the name C. B. Lowe Ltd, it was a major employer in the village and a supplier of flour for a wide district. Its Sentinel steam lorries drew water from the river.

The Domesday Survey lists only three mills in the Sence watershed: at Alton, Congerstone and Sheepy.[16] The mill at Alton near Ravenstone was probably wind-driven.

Lakes

On the Sence are two small lakes between Heather and Ibstock, used for fishing in an area of former clay workings. Sheepy Lake was formerly fed from the river and supplied the mill in times of drought. It too is used for fishing and is now fed from ground water. Stapleton Brook has a lake east of Sutton Lane in Bosworth Park.

Fishing and wild life

The River Sence is fished for roach, chub, dace, perch, trout, bream tench and carp and was restocked with grayling in 2007.[17]

In the 12th Century, Richard de Harcourt of Great Sheepy (Leics.) gave Ranton Priory in Staffordshire 9 virgates of land with fishing rights and 2s. rent from his mill there. This property was the priory's most important temporal estate outside Staffordshire and remained so until the dissolution of the priory in 1537.[18] Ranton Priory probably enlarged the mill and dug out the reservoir called Sheepy Lake.

Legend has it that Richard III granted the freemen of Sheepy fishing rights in the Sence in thanks for their hospitality on the eve of the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field.[19] In practice, those rights remained with the owners of the Manor of Sheepy, though they sometimes turned a blind eye to villagers who exploited their claim. According to that legend, Richard stayed at Mythe Hall.

In recent years, the council took over clay workings and coal pits in the Sence Valley between Ravenstone, Ibstock and Heather and later transferred them to the Forestry Commission, which reclaimed the area as the Sence Valley Forest Park. It contains woodland, lakes linked to the River Sence, grassland and a wild flower meadow. An artificial nesting wall for sand martins has also been constructed alongside Horseshoe Lake. In this varied habitat, 150 species of bird have been recorded. The lakes provide habitat for heron, coot, tufted duck, pochard, wigeon and great-crested grebe. Kestrels nest each year and, though less evident in daytime, there are barn owls and short-eared owls. Birds of prey, marsh, hen and Montague's harrier, osprey, red-footed falcon, merlin, peregrine and buzzard have all been seen. The bird list for the park currently stands at 101 species. Long grassy areas have become home for many wild mammals including field vole, shrew, stoat, rabbit and fox. Water voles are present on streams feeding the river. Otters too are once again using the river. Among the species of bats are pipistrelle, Daubenton's bat and noctule.

Insects in summer include gatekeeper butterfly, meadow brown, speckled wood, small skipper, green-veined white, peacock butterfly and small tortoiseshell. Around the lakes, damselflies such as common blue, blue-tailed and azure as well as dragonflies such as the southern hawker and brown hawker are also fairly abundant.[20]

In the middle reaches of the Sence around Shackerstone, Bilstone and Congerstone, fishing rights belong to Gopsall, now falling under Crown Estate, which is working in cooperation with the Environment Agency and Gopsall Fishing Club to reverse bank erosion caused by cattle poaching, land drainage, dredging and tunnelling of the river and to divert otters away from the A444.[21][22]

Outside links

References

  1. ↑ Evans, Arthur Benoni (1881) Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs; edited, with additions by Sebastian Evans. London: Trübner & Co.; p. 47
  2. ↑ William Hutton (1788), The Battle of Bosworth Field
  3. ↑ John Pridden (1789), in John Nichols (1811), History and antiquities of Leicestershire
  4. ↑ Foss (1998), p.17, 21
  5. ↑ Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 4th edition, 1960. p. 9, 32 ISBN 0198691033
  6. ↑ Austin (2004), p.37
  7. ↑ Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 4th edition, 1960. p. 212 ISBN 0198691033
  8. ↑ Michael K. Jones (2002)
  9. ↑ Gillian Adams et al. [2000], p.19
  10. ↑ Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 4th edition, 1960. p. 335 ISBN 0198691033
  11. ↑ Peter Foss 1998, p.50
  12. ↑ Michael K. Jones (2002).
  13. ↑ John D. Austin (2004), p.44–44
  14. ↑ http://www.lihs.org.uk/past_visits_Help_Out_Mill.html
  15. ↑ Adams et al. [2000], p. 48
  16. ↑ Williams & Martin (1992), pp. 636–637
  17. ↑ http://www.anglersnet.co.uk
  18. ↑ Victoria History of Leicestershire
  19. ↑ Austin (2004), p.34–35
  20. ↑ "Explore Sence Valley". Forestry Commission. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/wildwoods.nsf/LUWebDocsByKey/EnglandDerbyshireTheNationalForestSenceValley. Retrieved 5 February 2013. 
  21. ↑ http://www.derby.ac.uk/news/conservation-accolade-for-derby-student
  22. ↑ http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/newscontent/92_gopsall_fishing_club.htm
  • Adams, Gillian; Bunney, Catherine; Faulks, Steve (2000). The Parish of Sheepy nineteen ninety nine. Leicester: De Montfort Press. 
  • Austin, John D. (2004). Merevale and Atherstone, 1485. White Hart Heritage Centre, Long Street, Atherstone, Warwickshire CV9 1AX: The Friends of Atherstone Heritage. ISBN 0-9538532-1-7. 
  • Douglas, Terry David (1975). The Pleistocene Geology and Geomorphology of Western Leicestershire. Leicester: University of Leicester. 
  • Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 4th edition, 1960. ISBN 0198691033
  • Foss, Peter (1998) [1990]. The Field of Redemore: the Battle of Bosworth, 1485 (2nd ed.). Newtown Linford, Leicestershire: Kairos Press. ISBN 1-871344-06-9. 
  • Mee, Arthur: The King's England: Leicestershire and Rutland (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • Nichols, John (1795–1815). The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester. London: J. Nichols. 
  • Place Names on Maps of Scotland and Wales. Southampton: Ordnance Survey. 1973 [1973]. 
  • Williams, Ann; Martin, G. H., eds (2002) [1992]. Domesday Book: a complete translation. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051535-6. 
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