Breedon on the Hill

The Hill, the Green and the Holly Bush

The first thing you see is the hill. A 400-foot lump of Carboniferous limestone with a church on top and a quarry eating into its eastern flank, it sits in otherwise flat country between the Trent and Soar valleys and looks, from certain angles, like something a committee designed by argument. The church won. The quarry got the other side.

At the base, the village clusters to the southwest. A stone lock-up stands on the green — circular, with a conical roof, Grade II listed, originally for detaining drunks. Next to it, an animal pound for straying livestock. Both are still intact. Both have been out of regular use for some time.

The Holly Bush Inn sits at the foot of the hill, off the green. It's a 16th-century timber-framed pub, black-and-white, Grade II listed, with low ceilings and beams that will remind taller visitors to mind their heads. Four cask ales, including Tollgate Ashby Pale as the regular. Monday is pie night. Wednesday is basket night. Sunday roasts run noon to three. Dogs are welcome anywhere not carpeted. TripAdvisor gives it 4.5 out of 5 from 197 reviews, which for a village pub is the equivalent of a standing ovation.

Main Street and Village Essentials

Up on Main Street, the Three Horseshoes is about 300 years old and started life as a farrier's serving local farms. The old stables are still visible in the courtyard. It's a gastropub now — food Thursday to Saturday evenings and Sunday lunch — with flagstone floors, exposed brickwork, and Greene King Abbot on the bar. There's a farm shop attached, and a chocolate workshop, which is not something you expect to type about a former farrier's but there it is.

The village still has a post office. For anything beyond stamps and milk, Melbourne is two miles north, or Ashby is five.

The Climb to Saxon Breedon

The walk up the hill is short — 0.9 miles circular — but steep enough to earn a drink afterwards. At the top, inside the remains of an Iron Age hillfort called The Bulwarks, sits the Priory Church of St Mary and St Hardulph. It holds the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon sculpture in England: 8th and 9th-century carvings of Celtic knotwork, lions, roosters, birds pecking vines. The Breedon Angel, probably the earliest carved representation of an angel in England, is locked in the tower. A replica is on display for those of us without keys.

The monastery was founded around 675 AD by King Aethelred of Mercia, likely on an older pagan site. Four saints are buried here. An Augustinian priory followed in 1120 and lasted until the Dissolution in 1539. The Shirley family monuments include a 1598 alabaster tomb of Sir George Shirley with a realistically carved skeleton at its base, which is the kind of detail that stays with you on the walk back down.

Longer Routes and Older Names

For longer legs, the Melbourne and Breedon circular covers 6.6 miles through woodland and past Melbourne Pool. The old Tonge and Breedon railway trackbed, closed in 1980, now carries National Cycle Route 6 through the parish.

The Domesday surveyors recorded the place as Bredona. By 1086, most of the land belonged to the de Ferrers family.

Connections Beyond the Hill

East Midlands Parkway station is seven miles away, thirteen minutes by car. East Midlands Airport is three miles. The Skylink bus runs to Derby and Nottingham around the clock, and a Route 2 service connects to Leicester three times daily, if you're not in a hurry.

Donington Park circuit is two miles down the road. On race weekends, the village can hear it.