Woodhouse Eaves

Ancient Rock and a Hillside Village

The rock under Woodhouse Eaves is seven hundred million years old. This is not a figure of speech. The Precambrian volcanic outcrops that push through the heathland on Beacon Hill are among the oldest exposed geology in England, and the village sits on the slopes as if it arrived recently and decided to stay.

You notice the gradient first. Woodhouse Eaves is built on the side of a hill, four miles south of Loughborough, and the main road through the village has a purpose about it. The B5330 climbs from the Soar Valley into Charnwood Forest, and the houses, pubs, and St Paul's Church arrange themselves along the slope like they're keeping an eye on the lowlands.

Three Pubs, Few Shops

Three pubs for a village of 1,693 people is a decent ratio. The Curzon Arms is the oldest, over 350 years on Maplewell Road, named after the Curzon family who owned much of the land around here. It runs seasonal menus — duck pâté with thin toast, homemade pies, steaks — built around local suppliers, and dogs are welcome. The Old Bulls Head is the larger operation, closer to Beacon Hill, doing two courses for £21.95 or three for £25.95 at lunch, Sunday roasts, and breakfast. It has a real fire, a beer garden, and live music. The Wheatsheaf Inn is the one where the head chef, Liz, has run the kitchen for over twenty-five years, which tells you something about either the pub or Liz or both. Home-cooked food, eighteenth-century building, free Wi-Fi.

There are no notable shops to speak of. You'll need Loughborough for that.

Hill Walks and St Paul's

The walking, though, is the thing. Beacon Hill Country Park sits right above the village — 248 metres, the second highest point in Leicestershire, which admittedly is not a county famous for its altitude. The summit is open heathland and rocky outcrops, and on a clear day you can see Lincoln Cathedral. Swithland Woods, nearby, is ancient semi-natural woodland that fills with bluebells in spring. There's a decent eight-kilometre circular that takes in Quorn, Woodhouse, and stretches of the Great Central Railway heritage line.

St Paul's Church was designed by William Railton, who also designed Nelson's Column. He built it in 1837 for William Perry Herrick of Beaumanor Hall, in granite and Swithland slate. An almost identical church went up at Copt Oak at the same time, consecrated within days of each other, which suggests Herrick liked the design enough to order two.

Industry, Clean Air and Charnia

The village name means what it sounds like — the houses at the edge of the wood, the eaves of Charnwood Forest. Framework knitting was the main domestic industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, alongside quarrying Swithland slate. By the late 1800s, someone noticed the air was clean up here and the village reinvented itself as a health resort, with convalescent homes on the hillside.

In 1956, a fifteen-year-old girl called Tina Negus found a fossil in the rocks near here. Her teacher dismissed it. A year later Roger Mason found the same thing, and it turned out to be Charnia masoni — a 560-million-year-old organism and the first Precambrian fossil ever scientifically recognised. The genus is named after the forest.

Residents, Roads and Rail Links

Peter Shilton, England's most capped goalkeeper, lived here. Katie Boulter, the tennis player, is from the area. The village has no railway station — Loughborough is the nearest — and buses connect the two. But the walk down Breakback Road toward Nanpantan, with the Soar Valley opening up below you, is the kind of journey where arriving feels like the least interesting part.