Bringhurst is a small 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the Harborough district of south-east

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warw ...

, England, bordering

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire ( ; abbreviated Northants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshi ...

and

Rutland Rutland is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Leicestershire to the north and west, Lincolnshire to the north-east, and Northamptonshire to the south-west. Oakham is the largest town and county town. Rutland has a ...

. Nearby places are Cottingham in Northants, Great Easton and Drayton in Leicestershire, and Caldecott in Rutland. The population is included in the civil parish of Great Easton.

History

The village antedates the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...

(1066 AD) and was one of the first Anglo-Saxon settlements of Britain. The land was given by

Æthelred of Mercia Æthelred (; died after 704) was king of Mercia from 675 until 704. He was the son of Penda of Mercia and came to the throne in 675, when his brother, Wulfhere of Mercia, died from an illness. Within a year of his accession he invaded Kent, ...

to the

Medeshamstede Medeshamstede () was the name of Peterborough in the Anglo-Saxon period. It was the site of a monastery founded around the middle of the 7th century, which was an important feature in the kingdom of Mercia from the outset. Little is known of i ...

Abbey around the year 700 AD. In addition, a confirmatory charter of

Edward the Confessor Edward the Confessor ( 1003 – 5 January 1066) was King of England from 1042 until his death in 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex. Edward was the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. He succeede ...

speaks of "the church of Bringhurst". Bringhurst is, according to W. G. Hoskins, one of the oldest village sites of the Anglo-Saxon period in the county. Bringhurst is one of the ancient Leicestershire villages not recorded in the Domesday Book (1086); however information about it is included in the entry for Great Easton indicating that Great Easton had acquired more importance than the older village on the hill-top. By the 13th century most villages in the county were growing in population but Bringhurst, being badly sited, probably was not. St Nicholas' Church, Bringhurst is 13th century in date; it is Grade II* listed. The older houses are made of local stone and either roofed with

thatch Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, Phragmites, water reed, Cyperaceae, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), Juncus, rushes, Calluna, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away fr ...

or Collyweston slate.

Toponymy

The name of the village predates its use as a

family name In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give ...

, the earliest mention of which is dated 1260. Earlier variations of the name, such as "Bruninghurst" were first recorded in 1188. Other variations include "Bringherst", "Brinkhurst", "Bringhast", and "Bringhaste". The

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

of Bringhurst comes from the

personal name A personal name, full name or prosoponym (from Ancient Greek ''prósōpon'' – person, and ''onoma'' –name) is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that on ...

"Bryni" derived from ''bryne'' (Old English), meaning "fire" or "flame", combined with the word "hurst" or ''hyrst'' meaning "wooded hill" in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

, related to

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

, and ''hurst'' or ''horst'' in

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

Primary school

Bringhurst Primary School is located around half a mile from Bringhurst village, by the road to Great Easton. There are 147 pupils on roll. The most recent (2012) Ofsted report stated "Bringhurst is a good school which places pupils' achievement and well-being at the centre of all it does." The school holds a Sport England Activemark and is a Football Association Charter Standard School. The school's strengths include creative writing, music and ICT, Science and RE. In 2010 long-standing road-safety fears were highlighted by a six-car crash outside the school gates.

References

{{authority control Villages in Leicestershire Civil parishes in Harborough District