Goadby Marwood is a village and former

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

, now in the parish of Eaton, in the Melton district, in the north of the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...

. It is about north of

Melton Mowbray Melton Mowbray () is a town in Leicestershire, England, north-east of Leicester, and south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, known below Melton as the Wreake. The town had a population 27,670 in 2019. The town is sometimes promo ...

and a few miles from the

Vale of Belvoir The Vale of Belvoir ( ) covers adjacent areas of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, England. The name derives from the Norman-French for "beautiful view" and dates back to Norman times. Extent and geology The vale is a tract ...

. In 1931 the parish had a population of 144.

History

Most of the houses are built from locally mined

ironstone Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be con ...

and some, including

Goadby Hall Goadby Hall is a privately owned 17th-century country house located in Towns Lane, Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire. It is an historical Grade II* listed building. The house was substantially renovated in 1750, when a new south front was built in ...

, date from the 17th century. There is only one primary road into, and out of, the village. Goadby Marwood has no public house, shop or post office. The village's name means 'farm/settlement of Gauti'. In 1247, the village was held by Gaufridus Maureward. On 1 April 1936 the parish was abolished and merged with Eaton.

Wycomb villa

In the 1950s the remains of a

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas n ...

were discovered in a field on the ridge of a hill overlooking the village. Named the "Wycomb Villa" it was field-walked in 1979, 1981 and 1985 and numerous

tesserae A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive ''tessella'') is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus. Historical tesserae The oldest known tesserae ...

were found. In 2002 a resistivity survey showed the position of the villa walls. Excavations in 2003 and 2004 found pottery fragments, part of a

mortarium A mortarium (pl. "mortaria") was one of a class of Ancient Roman pottery kitchen vessels. They are "hemispherical or conical bowls, commonly with heavy flanges", and with coarse sand or grit embedded into the internal surface. They were used for p ...

, a number of wall foundations, and building debris. One room was found to have a

hypocaust A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...

, and a small area of complete mosaic was uncovered. The mosaic was tentatively dated to the fourth century, and other finds indicated that the site as a whole had been occupied from the late first century.

References

External links

Goadby Marwood Village websiteSome detailsHistory
{{authority control Villages in Leicestershire Former civil parishes in Leicestershire Borough of Melton