Ratby is a commuter village and

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 ...

in the

Hinckley and Bosworth Hinckley and Bosworth is a local government district with borough status in south-western Leicestershire, England, administered by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. Its only towns are Hinckley, Earl Shilton and Market Bosworth. Villages in ...

district of

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 ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is situated to the west of

Leicester Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands. The city l ...

, and just south of the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which lat ...

. (

Groby Groby (pronounced "GREW-bee") is a large English village in the county of Leicestershire, to the north west of the city of Leicester. The population at the time of the 2011 census was 6,796. Description The village has expanded vastly since ...

is on the northern side of the M1.) The population of the civil parish was measured in the 2011 census as 4,468. Other nearby places include Field Head,

Kirby Muxloe Kirby Muxloe is a large village and civil parish that forms part of the Blaby district of Leicestershire, England. Located to the west of Leicester, its proximity to the city has resulted in its inclusion in the Leicester Urban Area. The Le ...

, Glenfield and

Markfield Markfield is a large village in both the National Forest and Charnwood Forest and in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of Leicestershire, England. The settlement dates back to at least the time of the Norman conquest and is mentioned in th ...

. The proximity of Ratby to Leicester causes it to form part of the Leicester Urban Area.

Name

Ratby is one of three nearby settlements whose name preserves the

Brittonic Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to: *Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain *Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic *Britons (Celtic people) The Br ...

word for "ramparts" (cf.

Gaelic Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...

'' rath'' ), along with Ratcliffe-upon-Soar and the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

ruins at

, known as

Ratae Corieltauvorum Ratae Corieltauvorum or simply Ratae was a town in the Roman province of Britannia. Today it is known as Leicester, located in the English county of Leicestershire. Name ''Ratae'' is a latinate form of the Brittonic word for "ramparts" (cf. G ...

.Thompson, James
''The History of Leicester, from the Time of the Romans to the End of the Seventeenth Century'', Appendix A: Ratæ—Roman Leicester, pp. 443 ff
J. S. Crossley (Leicester), 1849. The

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

''-by'' () is

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

for a farmstead or settlement.

History

The oldest known human settlement in Ratby was at the Bury Camp on the edge of Ratby, an

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

encampment dating back approximately 3,000 years. Later, the Roman army adapted the camp for use as a temporary fort in around 50 AD. The next oldest structure is the historic Church of St Philip & St James, called Ratby Church, built in four stages from the 13th century to 15th century and restored by Nicholas Joyce in 1881. The church was appropriated to

Leicester Abbey The Abbey of Saint Mary de Pratis, more commonly known as Leicester Abbey, was an Augustinians, Augustinian religious house in the city of Leicester, in the East Midlands of England. The abbey was founded in the 12th century by the Robert de Be ...

in 1291 and afterwards to

Nuneaton Priory Nuneaton Priory was a medieval Benedictine monastic house in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. It was initially founded by Robert de Beaumont and Gervase Paganell in 1153 at Kintbury in Berkshire as a daughter house of Fontevraud Abbey in Franc ...

. There are also some cottages dating back several centuries. For most of its history, Ratby was a small

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

village with a few farms and the open 3-field plan until enclosure in the 18th century. From 1346 till the 19th century Ratby was in the hundred of

Sparkenhoe Sparkenhoe was a hundred of Leicestershire, England in the south-west of the county, covering Market Bosworth and Hinckley, broadly corresponding to the modern districts of Blaby and Hinckley and Bosworth. The meeting place of the Sparkenhoe Hund ...

. In the 1830s the inhabitants were mainly employed in frame-work knitting; the population at that time was 1025. The chief landowner was the

Earl of Stamford Earl of Stamford was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1628 for Henry Grey, 2nd Baron Grey of Groby. This Grey family descended through Lord John Grey, of Pirgo, Essex, younger son of Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, ...

and Warrington who was lord of the manor and patron of the vicarage. The parish was enclosed in 1770.Curtis (1831); p. 145 In the 20th century a war memorial called the "Angel of Peace" was constructed after the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and unveiled in 1920 by the wartime

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Haig. Chapel Lane, Ratby, January 2020

Facilities

Ratby has a number of facilities that support its status as a highly sought after area within

. Ratby Sports Club is home to the local football club and cricket teams. Ratby Primary School is also situated towards the village centre opposite the library. There are a total of three pubs in the village: the Bull's Head, the Plough Inn, and the Railway at the other end of the village. Other amenities are several hairdressers, a barber shop, a post office and village hall; an addition to these is the Convenience Store on Markfield Road; next to this is a Chinese take away, one of two in the village. A new Co-op store has recently opened, which moved from the original place in the centre of the village and was there for over one hundred years and is now opposite Chapel Lane and in the buildings once owned by the Geary bakery family and who started their business back in 1906 at Ratby. There is currently a review of the library by the county council. It is possible that the library will close if a volunteer group has not been found to run it. Ratby is only 1 mile from Junction 21a of the

and situated 5 miles from the city centre of

, with frequent Arriva Fox County bus services to and from the city. In addition to all of these facilities the village is home to Ratby Cooperative Brass Band. The band rehearse in their own room on Taverner Drive and are highly regarded in the brass band movement particularly for their excellent work with youth. The band has around 150 members. Ratby band was founded in its present form in 1906, although records suggest that a band existed in the village many years before that date. It is not the oldest brass band in England, the Stalybridge Old Band was founded in 1809.

Location

References

External links

Ratby Parish CouncilRatby Brass BandRatby Royals Football Club
in The Bradgate Team Parish
British Listed Buildings, ''Church of St Philip and St James, Ratby''
{{authority control Villages in Leicestershire Civil parishes in Leicestershire Hinckley and Bosworth