Stays near Barwell, Leicestershire

Barwell is a village and civil parish in Leicestershire, near Hinckley, with 9,022 residents at the 2011 census. The name is said to mean the stream of the boar, after a boar that drank from a well by a brook and the village was once known as Borewell.

It stood on the lands of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who had fought alongside Canute. In 1043 Leofric and his wife Godiva founded a Benedictine abbey at Coventry and Barwell's history is bound up with that gift, as it is for several villages around Hinckley.

St Mary's Church was built in 1220 and a board inside lists every rector from William in 1209 to the present day. Barwell Methodist Church stands in Chapel Street. By 1086 the village had 14 villagers with a priest and three smallholders. A church census of 1564 counted 48 families.

Local legend tells of Captain Shenton, a Royalist officer who came home after the Battle of Worcester, sank his valuables in the moat around his house and hid from Parliament's soldiers in a wych elm, later called Captain Shenton's tree. He escaped and kept his estate.

The Queens Head is the oldest pub and the second oldest building in the village; its front was restored to its original style in the 1980s after years of Victorian black and white. The village has two football clubs, cricket teams and a large indoor bowls complex.

Sullivan Heights is about 14 miles by road from Barwell, Stoke Lodge and Stoke House about 15 miles and Humber Hub about 16 miles. For teams working around Hinckley, Sullivan Heights is the nearest house.