Once Uppingham was fixed and a day’s walk beckoned, I started planning. An obvious route with historical interest was clear; the Gartree Road. I bought OS 1:25,000 Explorer Maps 233 (Leicester and Hinckley) and 234 (Rutland Water) and made a start at my desk.
One thing is immediately obvious and striking just from looking at the map – both administrative and physical evidence of the Gartree Road abruptly ends at Glooston, although it continues on the OS map, confidently marked as ‘Roman Road – course of’, before picking up at Medbourne. There appears to be a gap. This seemed strange, in comparison with (for example) the Fosse Way at Claybrooke and Sharnford, where there is still administrative (a parish boundary) and physical (a bridleway) evidence of the road in the landscape.
Before I did the walk, I checked the index of the TLAHS for any reference to the Gartree Road to see if much had been written about the route. I came across an article from 2012 (Volume 86, pp220-21) that deepened, rather than solved, the mystery of missing road. Hallaton Field Work Group carried out a magnetometry survey along the ‘Roman Road – course of’ line, but couldn’t find anything. If, as the HFWG said, ‘old ordnance survey maps show the road … running south east across the fields south of Glooston Village towards Medbourne’ why did the geophysical survey fail to find any evidence of the route? Where exactly is the Gartree Road? If it’s not where the Ordnance Survey say it is, where is it?
HFWG Report – Download here:
HFWG Survey Map – Download here:
A Walk Through Leicestershire 