Out & about in Wysall

Chances are you may have passed through our village before. If so, thanks for taking the time to check out our new website and welcome back to the village. If it's your first visit, you'll quickly discover the appeal of the area.

Acknowledged as one of Nottinghamshire's prettiest villages, picturesque Wysall remains unspoilt with scenery & history to inspire. Our attractive surrounding countryside stretches as far as the eye can see, giving captivating views. The village itself oozes history and charm, ancient and modern, at every turn.

Welcome to Wysall & Thorpe in the Glebe.

Wysall Images .:|:. Villagers' Images .:|:. Back in Time

A breath of fresh air

Why not pull on your walking boots and enjoy a gentle jaunt to make the most of the surrounding glorious unspoilt countryside and miles of quiet, country lanes for cycling & pottering along, or leave the roads behind altogether and take to the paths across the fields.

Back to Nature

Keyworth Meadow | keyworthmeadow

This is a small traditionally managed pasture with brook, pools and marsh area. It is reached by a 15 minute walk down the Lings Lane track from the Wysall Road as it enters Keyworth.
The site, owned by Keyworth Parish Council, was designated a local Nature Reserve in 1992 and has an interesting list of birds, butterflies and meadow flowers.

Bunny Old Wood | www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/nottinghamshire

This is an ancient coppiced woodland going back to Domesday Book times. It is a Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve situated between the Bradmore Wysall Road and the A60 at Bunny. It has a varied collection of trees and shrubs supporting 20 species of butterfly and 50 bird species. There are way marked paths through the wood, a bridleway and a way marked route across the fields from Wysall to the wood. The wood is well known locally for its bluebells. Nature Trail Guides are available for the Wildlife Trust on 0115 958 8242.

Wysall Images - Get a better view

Alternatively, sample the views from the comfort of your own PC, with our specially commissioned gallery of bespoke local photography. With 40 beautiful images to check out, this gallery gives you the opportunity to see new views of our village or simply to see familiar views in a new way.

Simply click on the photo thumbnails below:

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The great outdoors

Whatever the season, wherever the viewpoint, these photographs depict what we already know - our village is a great place to live in. First impressions count and whichever way you approach, Wysall & Thorpe in the Glebe welcome you. Be inspired by the bright & beautiful views from around the village.

Village Map

The Plough at Wysall

The friendly family run village inn offers service that is friendly, warm and enthusiastic. Open seven days a week - between 10.30 am and 11.00 pm Monday to Saturday and 12.00 pm to 10.30 pm Sunday, with quality lunchtime food served daily between12.00 and 2.15pm To visit the plough website www.ploughatwysall.co.uk or click here

Villagers Images - Capture the moment

Why not share your local photographs with wysall.com, simply email your 8 favourite images to villagersimages@wysall.com.

Thanks to our first contributor, Scott Coggan for the images below.

Look forward to receiving your favorites soon - happy snapping!

Please note, the editor reserses the right to refuse publication of images deemed to be inappropriate

Images taken by: Harry Stockwell
Images of Wysall

Images taken by: Gareth Morgan
The church from April Cottage mid winter

Images taken by: Scott Coggan - May 2009
The Paddocks behind Tuckwood Court, Wysall

Images taken by: Gareth Morgan- 22nd December 2010
Wysall by night

Thanks to Gareth Morgan for sending this interesting collection of local images reflecting the magical look of our village during the recent snowy weather.

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Back in time

The website takes a look back in time for the parish council by displaying here the minutes of its very first meeting way back in the year 1952, the year that our present Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne. To view the minutes CLICK HERE

Films from the 60's and 70's featuring Wysall

A film evening was held at Wysall Village Hall on 11th May 2011, featuring footage of our village from bygone eras. The films were acquired by a gentleman in Leicestershire named Alan Leary and feature Wysall in the 1960's and 1970's – showing the school, the church, a wedding and a large house.

What goes around comes around. Steeped in history and heritage, Wysall is located in the broad valley of the Kingston Brook and for most of its history has been a self-contained agricultural village, accessible only by minor roads. It did not share in the growth of framework knitting in some neighbouring villages during the 19th. Century.

The Parish Church, with tower and steeple, is mainly 14th Century, with Norman stonework in the north wall. A Wesleyan chapel was built in 1825 and replaced in 1871 by the present Methodist church. A National school was also built in 1871, but this has now closed.

The trees looking towards the Church end	The Gap - North end Main Street
The Gap, Wysall	Wysall School children
Post Office	General Stores
Photo includes Mrs Young & Mrs Fowler	Cross Hill Wysall
Best Kept village Plaque	Aerial View of Wysall
The Boot Inn Wymeswold Rd, Pear Tree Farm	Wymeswold Road 1930’s

Why not dip into our library of archived materials to discover more of Wysall's intriguing past, which paved the way for its modern day appeal? Or if you have any interesting features or photographs for inclusion let us know.

• A 'Down Your Way' feature in Notts Guardian Journal 29 September 1970 charted early Wysall history and successes in Notts 'best kept village' competitions. To find out more click here.

• A further 'Down Your Way' feature in Notts Guardian Journal 25 January 1972 looked at the history of local churches, chapels and other focal buildings. To find out more click here.

• Nottingham Evening Post 11 August 2004 feature on Wysall's claim to be one of only three 'thankful villages' in the county. To find our more click here.

Not forgetting the equally intriguing history of Thorpe in the Glebe - if you have any interesting Thorpe features (in electronic format only please) or photographs for inclusion let us know.

• Former resident Susan Atkinson has kindly contributed her own interpretation of the history of Thorpe. To read her historical summary of Thorpe in the Glebe through the ages click here.
  

'Down Your Way' - September 29 1970

Referred to in the Doomsday book as Wisoc, Wysall like most 1000+ year old settlements is built around the focal point of its church Holy Trinity which dates back to the 13th century and still dominates the village despite the stumpiness of its 600+ year old spire.

It was the church's finely trimmed lawns and flowerbeds, which helped Wysall to win 'best kept' village of its size in Notts, four times out of five in the mid-sixties.

So accustomed did Wysall become to victory that the villagers were upset when relegated to second place by Flintham in 1965, criticised by judges for allowing a tree - their prize for winning the previous year - to die. Wysall residents were so incensed at the loss that a coachload of 40 of them went to see for themselves what Flintham was like!

Wysall soon topped the polls again but withdrew from the competition in 1965 for a happier reason - to give other Notts villages a chance!

With fewer than 300 inhabitants, Wysall 'is the sort of place where everybody knows everybodys else's business' said 74 year old retired farmer Mr James Baldock, who lived at Wysall all his life and says he will never live anywhere else.

'Live long and die happy is our moto' commented Mr Baldock, reflected in these pictures of local residents.

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'Down Your Way' - 25 January 1972

A village record dated 1884 states that the parish contained 379 inhabitants and had 1360 acres, principally belonging to 5 landowners. It also gives detail of when the land was enclosed in 1800 and mentions the princely sum of £6 paid to the village schoolmaster for teaching poor children in the parish.

Around 1900, despite the strong Low Church upbringing of many of its residents Wysall had 3 public houses. Now just the Plough remains, which apparently dates back as a hostelry to 1790. The building was built around two cottages which date back further still.

The Methodist chapel was built in 1881 for £500 and residents raised the money within a year. This building, unfortunately no longer used for worship, replaced an earlier chapel that had been built in 1825.

There was also a time recalled, when members of the local village Singers' Society turned up drunk at church for evening service. A document drawn up in 1774 states they would forfeit 1d each time they were drunk when reporting there.

Negotiations were in place in 1970 for the purchase of the old village school from Southwell Diocesan Education Board for £500 to be turned into a village hall.

The Post Office and Village Shop on Main Street is believed to date back from the 1500's. At the time of this article, renovation works had revealed the stairs were in the middle of two tree branches (possibly originals) and the house was made of horsehair, rushes and horse dung, with tree branches used for rafters.

It is not really known how Wysall got its name but it was called Wisoc in the Doomsday Book and was once called Wyser.

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Nottingham Evening Post - 11 August 2004

Following the 90th anniversary of the start of the first world war in 2004 researchers were trying to determine which English villages can claim the unusual title of a 'thankful village' - those villages which welcomed back every single man they sent to war between 1914 and 1918.

Famous Notts writer Arthur Mee, in his book on the county first published in 1938, included Wysall writing '17 men went out to war and came home again: it is one of three thankful villages in the county'. (The other 2 thankful Notts villages were Cromwell and Wigsley).

Wysall has no roll of honour, but every man was presented with a silver inkstand on which was engraved his name and the words 'with gratitude from Wysall for answer in Duty's call in the Great War'.

However more recently a question mark has been raised over Wysall's qualification. One of the brave soldiers' Private William Oliver Orridge, a member of the 7th Battalion Leicestershire Regiments when he was killed in the Cambrai area of Northern France on June 17 1917 was born in Wysall (date of birth unclear) but the crucial question is whether he was living in the village when he went off to war?

Historian Norman Thorpe has complied a list of every thankful village in the country. His website www.hellfire-corner.co.uk lists 32 villages definitely qualifying and a second list, including Wysall, which lost locally born men who may not have lived in the village at the time they were killed.

Footnote: It has finally been agreed that Wysall does have thankfull village status and the commemorative plaque is in the church to prove it

Thorpe in the Glebe across the ages

Thorpe in the Glebe is probably the most extensive of Nottinghamshire's deserted medieval villages. Its name is derived from the Danish word 'torp', which was a subsidiary settlement or farmstead dependent on a larger village, though there is evidence that the area was populated much earlier, with finds of flint tools and Roman pottery.

However, by the time the Domesday Book was compiled, Thorpe in the Glebe was waste, probably a result of the activities of William the Conqueror's army in 1068 as they marched north to deal with the rebellion by Earl Morcar. From the entry in the Domesday Book it appears that the village was then known as Thorpe Regis or, more probably, King's Thorpe. There is no population recorded, so it appears that the area was deserted at this time and subsequently resettled.

William Rufus granted Thorpe in the Glebe (plus several other manors) to the Earl of Chester in about 1093-5. He installed the knightly family of the Bochards (or Bozzarts - an alternative spelling) as tenants and the village became known as Thorpe Bochard (or Bochart), Thorpe Buzzard or Bochardisthorpe. The Bochard family holds the manor through various re-arrangements of the manors of Thorpe and Wysall until the direct male line fails in the 13th century, when the state passes through Margaret Bochard to John Seagrave in Leicestershire. The Darleys, already resident at Wysall, became the tenants of the Seagraves at Thorpe and eventually bought out their interest about 1300. Tax records of this time show that Thorpe was a small and not very wealthy parish.

It is in the 14th century that Thorpe started to be called Thorpe in the Glebe or Thorpe in the Clottes rather than Thorpe in the Glebe. This may be due to the demise of the Bochard family but is unusual as other similar names have lasted much longer and have not depended on the continuance of one family alone. However, this is also the time the medieval warm period ended and England's climate became colder and wetter. This would have made it far more difficult to grow crops in the heavy clay soil of Thorpe in the Glebe. The word 'Glebe' in this instance is derived from the Latin word 'gleba' meaning clot of earth.

Then came the Black Death of 1349 and, while there are no exact figures of deaths in this area, the national average was about 40% of the population. There were further outbreaks of plague in the succeeding 30 years, which impeded population recovery until about 1470. This was important as villages required sufficient able-bodied males to carry out the agricultural routine, especially on heavy clay land, with the margin between sufficiency and insufficiency being far less in small villages than large ones.

To make matters worse, the then Lord of the Manor, John de Darley, died sometime between 1348 and 1352, possibly from the Black Death and the land was divided between Nicholas Darley (who appears to have inherited the manor house, which was possibly in the site of Church Site Farm) and John's daughter, Margaret, who married Robert Armstrong some time after her father's death. John's widow, Maud, who appears to have had a life interest in the manor though in 13788 Robert and Margaret were given possession of their half of the manor though it appears they were actually living at Wysall or Costock.

By 1442, their descendant, Hugh Armstrong had decided to convert the land to sheep rearing (few men are needed to look after a large flock of sheep). It was leased to William Repon of Willoughby on the Wolds for 20 years at a rent of 46s 8d per annum. The Armstrongs also gradually obtained the whole of Thorpe in the Glebe. In 1491, Gabriel Armstrong enclosed 90 customary acres (about 135 modern acres) and, while this action is often credited with the depopulation of the village, there is no evidence of any displacement of population being caused by it.
During Gabriel Armstrong's tenure Thorpe ceased to be rented out and the Armstrongs ran it as flockmasters themselves.

The village itself appears to have been abandoned by 1500 and was described as a ruin in 1534, though the church lasted some while longer. The church tower was still standing in 1810 but by 1844 only a heap of grass-covered ruins remained, upon which every new vicar read himself in at his induction. The last vicar to do this was Rev R.H.J. Hoskins in 1868.

Thorpe in the Glebe was a late settlement, on difficult soil and with a small population even by the standards of its immediate neighbours. The manorial structure of it was such that at only one point of its history did it have a dominant resident family and there was no one strong enough to steer it through the various changes of the late 14th and 15th centuries, so it failed and became depopulated and enclosed, leaving only the present day ruins in its place.

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