Contact us if you'd like to get involved!
About Us
After over 20 years of active group action we have now reached the stage when the membership is too old to continue in this way and we have been unsuccessful in getting younger and fitter people to take over.
We will continue to run this website as an archive of our projects since 2000 and hope to update it with articles etc. from the wider community about heritage matters, both environmental and historical, concerning Great Bowden Parish and the surrounding area.
Our History
The group was formed in 2000, during the Village Festival weekend. Our objective was to be a heritage supporting action group involved in projects, events and research, rather than just attending meetings with speakers. We maintained this objective, supplemented by occasional speakers and training sessions with experts. We always did as much as we could ourselves and then called in experts to verify our findings and increase our knowledge when necessary.
We began by looking at our natural heritage; the hedges, fields, farming and wildlife in the village. By 2005 the “archaeology bug” struck after a large quantity of Iron Age and Roman pottery from The Ridgeway was handed in at one of our “Finds Collecting Days” and for the next 12 years the group ran field walking surveys and small scale excavations. Over 100 pits have been dug in and close to the village. Reports from all these activities are archived on this website and also on Leicestershire’s Historical Environment Record and the national Archaeology Data Service. We also shared our findings with the local community by holding an annul exhibition in the Village Hall and treated our members to an annual winter feast and summer outing.
​
Details and reports of our numerous research projects and findings can be found under the heading “What we do” and subsections, Fields, Routes and Borders, Archaeology and Fieldwork, Natural Heritage and Historical Research.
​
