Bisbrooke

Bisbrooke
St John the Baptist Church
Bisbrooke  Bisbrooke shown within Rutland
Area	1.8 sq mi (4.7 km2) [1]
Population	211 2001 Census[2]
- Density	117 /sq mi (45 /km2)
OS grid reference	SP886996
- London	79 miles (127 km) SSE
Unitary authority	Rutland
Shire county	Rutland
Ceremonial county	Rutland
Region	East Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	OAKHAM
Postcode district	LE15
Dialling code	01572
Police	Leicestershire
Fire	Leicestershire
Ambulance	East Midlands
EU Parliament	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Rutland and Melton
List of places UK England Rutland

Bisbrooke is a village and civil parish in the county of Rutland in the East Midlands of England. It is situated about two miles (3.2 km) east of Uppingham close to the A47. In 2001, it had a population of 219.

History

Bisbrooke, England in 1673

Bisbrooke was first recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 then spelt "Bitlesbroch". Over the centuries the spelling has gone through as many as 19 name changes including Bitelesbroke, Pysbroke and Butlisbroke before the present spelling was adopted. At the time of the Norman survey, about half of the land was owned by the King and the rest by Countess Judith of Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, in 1547 the land was granted by King Edward VI to Sir Richard Lee who soon afterwards settled it on Anthony Andrews. The land was still in the Andrews family nearly a century later with Bisbrooke or Pisbroke as it was then spelled, being owned by Anthony’s great, grandson Edward, Sheriff of Rutland. In the Civil War Edward supported the King but afterwards embraced the Parliamentarians’ cause. Fined for his earlier Royalist tendencies, he seemed to have been unable to meet his debts and his land was sold, the Bisbrooke estate being acquired during the Commonwealth by Sir George Manners. Thus most of Bisbrooke passed into the Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir Estate and was eventually auctioned in 1918.

Notable buildings

The parish church of St John the Baptist dates from 1871 in its present form, though the tower was only finished in 1914. It was listed Grade II in 1955.^[3] There are a number of fine gravestones,^[4] which pre-date the present building.

Although Bisbrooke no longer has a shop, it has had a pub - The Gate - since the 1850s. One story, probably fanciful, is that it is a farmhouse rather than a pub because it has been said that the architect was commissioned to design a pub for Bisbrooke and a farmhouse for a village in the Fens but the plans somehow got switched and Bisbrooke got the Lincolnshire farmhouse. The Gate was run by Ruby D’Arcy from 1968 to 2012 and many a schoolboy from Uppingham School (Stephen Fry, Rick Stein, Jonathan Agnew, David Whitaker and Johnny Vaughan among them) has slipped across the fields from Uppingham to relax, away from their masters’ watchful gaze. Although the pub had many owners, none is spoken of with greater affection than Ruby’s husband Peter. For many, Peter was the embodiment of Bisbrooke and when he died 1,500 mourners attended his funeral in Bisbrooke church.

Ruby D'Arcy serving at The Gate, Bisbrooke, 2008

Bisbrooke Hall is to the north of the A47 within the parish boundary but actually nearer to the village of Glaston. The Hall was substantially remodelled and extended by Lord Carbery around 1840.

In the 1950s, "small-holdings, orchards and vegetable patches jostle each other in the sheltered hollows of Bisbrooke” where “almost everyone grows and sells strawberries”; much of the fruit was sent for jam-making.

The village was too unremarkable to warrant an entry in Arthur Mee's The King's England volume.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bisbrooke.

• Village page on RutNet
• Bisbrooke Ostrich Farms
• A Childhood in Wartime Bisbrooke (WW2 People's War)