Claybrooke Magna

A Brewery Behind the Pub

The Pig in Muck has its own brewery. This is the sort of detail that tells you most of what you need to know about Claybrooke Magna — a village where things happen quietly but with a certain ambition. The pub was called the Bulls Head until 1997, when someone decided the village needed a different kind of name. The Pig Pub Brewery went in behind the building in 2013, and the cask-conditioned ales now serve here and at a sister pub in Leicester city centre.

The food is the main draw. Kev Featherstone runs the kitchen, and the carvery — served Sundays and Wednesdays — has built a reputation that extends well beyond the parish. Lamb, beef, gammon, turkey, Yorkshire puddings, cauliflower broccoli cheese, roast potatoes. People use the phrase "one of the best carveries in the area" without apparent irony. The rest of the menu covers steak and ale pie with what reviewers consistently single out for its gravy, a salt and pepper smash burger, gammon steak with two eggs and onion rings, and a Chicken Supreme. Wednesday is also Grill Night. There's a lunchtime two-for-twenty offer. Treacle pudding with custard or sticky toffee pudding to finish.

Real Ale and the Clay-Bottomed Brook

CAMRA lists it as a real ale destination.

The village itself sits in low, flat Leicestershire countryside between the rivers Soar and Avon, with a clay-bottomed brook running through it — the brook that gave Claybrooke its name. The village shop and post office have closed, which is the familiar story. But Claybrooke Mill, a Grade II listed watermill dating from 1763 and extended in 1840, is still standing. Seven buildings in the village carry Grade II listings, including Manor Farmhouse, Dairy Farmhouse, and the mill house.

Roman Roads and a Grand Chancel

High Cross, where Watling Street and the Fosse Way intersect, is about 1.1 miles west of Claybrooke Magna in a straight line; the walking route is longer. These were the two most important roads in Roman Britain, and the fort where they crossed — Venonis — has been described as the geographic centre of Roman Britain. The A5 still follows the line of Watling Street. The Fosse Way survives as a footpath and bridleway through open, flat ground. It is a walk with more historical weight per step than almost anything else in the Midlands.

The church isn't in Claybrooke Magna. St Peter's sits in the smaller adjacent village of Claybrooke Parva, serving both parishes plus Ullesthorpe and Wibtoft. It is Grade I listed, with Anglo-Saxon foundations and a first recorded incumbent from around 1220. The chancel dates from about 1340 and is unexpectedly grand — three large-light windows with flowing tracery, the kind of thing you'd expect in a much larger building. The nave roof has wood carvings of a green man, monsters, and devils. Pevsner gave it two pages.

Domesday Roots and Road Connections

The Domesday surveyors found the place in 1086, listed within the wapentake of Guthlaxton, managed by a lord named Fulco under Robert de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Leicester.

Road access is straightforward. The village sits between junctions 20 and 21 of the M1, with the A5 and A426 nearby. Lutterworth is the nearest town. There's no railway.

A Quiet Wednesday Evening

On a Wednesday evening, the pub fills up for Grill Night, the brewery out back is doing whatever breweries do in the quiet hours, and the brook that named this place is still finding its way through the clay.