Osgathorpe is a small village which lies in a fold of the hills in North West Leicestershire, England, and is about a quarter of a mile from the A512 Ashby to Loughborough Road. 

 

There is no evidence of any pre-historic, Roman or Anglo Saxon activity or a settlement in what we now know as Osgathorpe. However in the areas around Osgathorpe,  prehistoric flint tools found at Griffydam are thought to be 5,000 years old and may have been belonged to hunter gatherer tribes passing through the area, and Belton has a standing stone and possible Iron Age settlement off Forest Lane. 

 

The first evidence of a settlement dates back to the third foreign invasion of Britain towards the end of the first century – the Vikings.  The first raid on the UK took place in 793, and for many years these raids had the sole purpose of looting and plundering.  However, about 80 years later the raids turned into much larger expeditions with the purpose not just to raid, but to conquer and settle.  Their encroachment was so great, that after many skirmishes in 886 Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, made a treaty with Guthrun the Viking to partition England between the English and the Vikings.  The Viking territory was known as ‘Danelaw’ and the East Midlands was included in that territory.

 

The village of Osgathorpe probably first came into being towards the end of the first century AD.  At that time it was called Asgothorp, the name being a combination of the Old Danish male personal name of Asgot and the Norse word ‘ thorp’ meaning farm or settlement.   The Vikings continued to settle, prosper and integrate in Britain until the middle of the 11th Century, when another ‘foreign’ invasion took place, instigated by the toppling of King Harold by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  The new Norman King William’s Doomsday Book (1085/6) recorded ‘Osgodtorp’ as having 8 households.

 

The oldest extant building in the village is the church of St Mary the Virgin, dating back in some form to 1204.   It would originally have been a Catholic church at first under the ultimate authority of the Pope. But that all changed in 1534 during the reign of Henry V111 when he fell out with Pope Clement V11 over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and founded the Church of England with himself as its head.

 

It is not known which side Osgathorpe stood with in the Civil War between King Charles 1 and Cromwell, but nearby Ashby was certainly a Royalist stronghold.  It is also not known if the Great Plague of the 17th Century, which killed one fifth of the population of England, touched Osgathorpe.

 

Osgathorpe developed as an agricultural community with its own supporting village trades, schools and churches and by 2021 the civil parish population was 441.  

​

This website provides a history of the Places, People and Industry that have shaped our village over the centuries. We would welcome contributions, comments and suggestions to enhance the information that we currently have.