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Bisbrooke Secreted among some of the narrowest lanes in Rutland is the village of Bisbrooke, with some fine examples of stone-built houses from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The village lies about 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Uppingham, south of the A47. Place-name scholars have two ideas about the origin of the name. Either it was named after a chap called Byttel. But personal names plus 'brook' are rare. So could it be the 'beetle brook' as Old English for 'beetles' was betlas? This fits well with the first surviving record, in Domesday Book, which has 'Bitlesbroch'. But presumably all brooks had water beetles. So what was distinctive about the ones here. By the sixteenth century it was being spelt 'Pisbrook'. It was in Wrangdike Hundred. 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 English Civil War Edward initially supported King Charles 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 was acquired during the Commonwealth by Sir George Manners (father of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland) and so most of Bisbrooke passed into the Duke of Rutland's Belvoir Estate. It was auctioned in 1918. Source In 2005 the BBC compiled Mary's account of A Childhood in Wartime Bisbrooke. 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'. Most of the fruit was sent for jam-making. Source According to oral history published in 1976: Bisbrooke had been famous for its market gardens and its soft fruit in particular. Gooseberries, currants and other fruits would be packed in wooden buckets and conveyed on horse-drawn carts to Kilpecks Jam Factory in Leicester. With the coming of the railway, one of the growers, Mr Barnatt, would set off for Manton station laden with fruit. Each Friday he would drive to Leicester to deliver and collect his money for the week's supply from the factory. This industry, remembered back to the earlyy 1800s, finally died out in 1940, owing in the main to high labour costs. Arthur Mee considered Bisbrooke too unremarkable to warrant an entry in his The King's England volume. It's current claim to fame is Bisbrooke Ostrich Farms. St John the Baptist's Church Unusually the communion vessels, made in the seventeenth century, are older than the building, which was rebuilt in 1871. Indeed the tower is even more recent, as that did not get erected until 1914. St John's in 2002. A limestone grave marker depicting a wagon drawn by four horses. It commemorates Nathanial Clark, a farmer who died in 1831 when he was thrown from his cart on the way home from Empingham. Erosion has made his name illegible. Sad because there a few gravestones depicting the trade of the person commemorated. Photograph taken 2002 Nathaniel and another farmer, Walter Williams, were fined two pounds each in 1812 'for refusing to go with their teams to carry the baggage of a party of the 10th Dragoons from Melton to Uppingham.' One can reasonanbly assume the Dragoons were not inclined to pay for such services. Victoria County History page for Bisbrooke. Back to top of this page     Back to home page   This website does not gather or store any visitor information. Copyright Bob Trubshaw 2026 No unauthorised copying or reproduction except if all following conditions apply a: Copy is complete (including this copyright statement). b: No changes are made. c: No charge is made. www.hoap.co.uk/rutland

Rutland's history home page what's new? glossary bibliography Rutland's geology Rutland's boundaries Rutland's rivers long, long ago prehistoric Rutland Roman Rutland long ago Anglo-Saxon Rutland Rutland's place-names waterborne transport around the sixth century Rutland's early churches Anglo-Saxon sculpture in Rutland The Matter of Rutland what the Normans did for Rutland Romanesque sculpture in Rutland Rutland in medieval times Rutland's scratch dials Rutland's medieval carvings Rutland's sepulchral effigies Rutland's saltways Rutland in Tudor times Dissolution in Rutland not that long ago Rutland in the 17th century pinfolds and pounds in Rutland dovecotes in Rutland Rutland in the 18th century turnpiking Rutland Rutland's springs and wells changes in Rutland's agriculture since 1800 seems like yesterday Rutland's dialect Rutland's folk customs travellers in Rutland watermills and windmills in Rutland breweries in Rutland gasworks in Rutland ironstone quarrying in Rutland Zeppelins over Rutland redundant telephone exchanges in Rutland Second World War in Rutland WWII airfields and pillboxes in Rutland the making of Rutland Water Rutland Weekend Television free online history resources Victoria County History: Rutland volume one Victoria County History: Rutland volume two free PDFs of Rutland Record issues 1 to 50 old OS maps Historic England Listed buildings database Sepulchral Effigies of Leicestershire and Rutland Open Domesday English Place-Name Society database Wikipedia list of places in Rutland (with links to village entries) Wikipedia list of people from Rutland researching and writing local history getting started free advice from 2005 asking curious questions (YouTube video) local history groups in and around Rutland Belton-in-Rutland History Society Cottesmore History and Archaeology Group Langham Village History Group Lyddington Manor History Society Rutland Local History and Record Society Uppingham Local History Study Group you may also be interested in free PDFs written by Bob Trubshaw Earliest Churches in Nottinghamshire How Anglo-Saxons Found Their Way Anglo-Saxon Leicestershire Conversations in Churchyards Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland Bob Trubshaw's YouTube channel Introduction to medieval carvings Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque carvings How Anglo-Saxons found their way Anglo-Saxon shrines at fords Meetings at triangles Rota's Land and Franni's Land Reading Romanesque fonts Church and manor The significances of square headdresses Early churches and waterborne trade Charnwood slate gravestones and C18th trade routes Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire Roman roads in north-east Leicestershire Salt ways in Leicestershire Why Melton Mowbray needed to called 'middle town' Evolving Anglo-Saxon agriculture Nottinghamshire's earliest churches Ploughs not piety? Economic regeneration in the C7th Were Anglo-Saxon weaving huts women-only places? Vale of Belvoir Chronicle Barrowby Until Now website Sepulchral Effigies of Leicestershire and Rutland