River Sence
The River Sence is a river which flows in Leicestershire, England. The tributaries of the Sence, including the Saint and Tweed, fan out over much of western Leicestershire from Charnwood Forest and Coalville in the north-east to Hinckley and almost to Watling Street in the south and south-west. Its watershed almost coincides with Hinckley and Bosworth Borough of Leicestershire, which was formed in 1974 by amalgamation of Market Bosworth Rural District and Hinckley Urban District. It flows into the Anker, which in turn flows into the River Tame. It is part of the wider River Trent catchment, which covers much of central England. In 1881, Sebastian Evans wrote that the usual names for this river were Shenton Brook and Sibson Brook.
Confusions of the name Sence
It is also used of the Saint and its tributary from Stapleton. Antiquarian accounts of the Battle of Bosworth label the brook upstream of Shenton "Tweed". Recent Ordnance Maps 1:25 000 label only the "Tweed River" south-west of Stapleton and the 1:50 000 map gives it no name. The lower reaches from Shenton to Ratcliffe Culey are known locally as the Saint, as used below.River Sence in the strict sense
The Sence rises on Bardon Hill, crosses the A50 and gathers a group of three headwaters around Bardon and Stanton under Bardon. It flows westwards with a tributary stream from Coalville, past Hugglescote and Donington le Heath. It then turns south-west, receiving Blower's Brook and another tributary from Ravenstone, continuing between Heather and Ibstock, between Newton Burgoland and Odstone, through Shackerstone, between Bilstone and Congerstone, and between Sheepy Magna and Sheepy Parva. It joins the Anker on the boundary with Warwickshire between Sheepy, Ratcliffe Culey and Atherstone at the Mythe, an ancient chaplry of Sheepy. From Bardon village over a distance of about 20 km, it falls by about 100 m, a gradient of 1:200.Tributaries
Carlton Brook
Carlton Brook is fed by a group of streams around Bagworth and Nailstone. It runs between Carlton and Market Bosworth, and joins the Sence south of Congerstone.Tweed–Saint Brooks
The largest tributary of the Sence is the Saint, with a headwater called the Tweed rising near Barwell and on Barwell Lane. A branch from Hinckley joins the Tweed south-west of Stapleton, south of Harper's Hill. The Tweed runs west almost to Dadlington, whence it is canalized north-west to the confluence with Stapleton Brook. It then runs west along the foot of Ambion Hill. It gains a stream from between Higham on the Hill and Wykin running north and another from Lindley running north-east and turns north to Shenton, where it joins a smaller stream running west from Cadeby to become the Saint flowing westwards. A large stream from the north rises west of Market Bosworth and north-west of Hoo Hills, Wellsborough, passing the Bosworth hamlet of Far Coton to join the Saint on Upton Ridge. Thence the Saint continues west to Sibson and meanders to the Sence between Sheepy and Ratcliffe Culey. In general, its course from Barwell to Ratcliffe covers about 13 km, in which it falls about 50 m, a gradient of about 1:650, resulting in a slower flow than of the Sence, and a muddy, marshy and more meandering channel than the Sence. Only across the Upton–Linley north–south ridge between Shenton and Sibson is its flow faster.Watershed of the Sence and Saint
To the north-west, the watershed of the Sence adjoins that of Bramcote Brook and Frog Moor Stream, both running south-west into the Anker, and the Gillwiskaw, a stream running into the River Mease north of Gopsall. The boundary runs north-west from Orton on the Hill, through Norton juxta Twycross and Newton Burgoland, between Normanton le Heath and Heather, through Alton to Swannington.To the north-east along Charnwood Forest, headwaters adjoin Grace Dieu Brook and Black Brook running north-east towards the Soar.
To the east and south-east, the Sence adjoins various brooks running into the Soar running south and south-east: Slate Brook, Rothley Brook and Thurlaston Brook. The boundary runs south-west from Stanton under Bardon to Bagworth, where it turns south.
The watershed of the Saint–Tweed runs through Cadeby, Stapleton and Barwell to Hinckley. To the south, the boundary runs through Higham on the Hill and Lindley, where it turns north-west over Upton Ridge through Upton to Ratcliffe Culey. South of Hinckley, it adjoins Soar Brook, and two small tributaries of the Anker, Sketchley Brook and Harrow Brook. The area west of Upton Ridge between Fenny Drayton, Atterton and Witherley is reclaimed marsh draining into the Anker north of Witherley.
Geomorphology of the Sence Watershed
The watershed is formed primarily by the upthrust of Ordovician rocks north-east of the Ticknall–Thringstone Fault with Carboniferous measures to the south-west of the fault, including coal, clay and sandstone, which have been exploited in the 19th and 20th centuries as the Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield. Over much of the watershed, the Ordovician outcrop of Bardon Hill is prominent. Most of the Carboniferous measures of western Leicestershire are covered with red mudstones of the Triassic Mercia Mudstone Group. The outcrop of these rocks gives rise to a moderately undulating landscape characterised by mixed pasture and arable agricultural use that has developed on the neutral clay soils. The most prominent hills in the landscape are at Market Bosworth and Wellsborough. The higher land towards the north-east formed a plateau, in which the tributaries of the Sence have cut narrow valleys.The Saint–Tweed valley contained a major branch of the ‘Proto-Soar’ until the Pleistocene glaciation when the valley was blocked by sands and gravels around Cadeby and Stoke Golding. The lower parts of the Sence Valley and most of the Tweed–Saint Valley were filled with clays from Lake Harrison, which filled much of Leicestershire and Warwickshire towards the end of the Ice Age, when drainage was blocked by ice from Wales and the north. Water from south-west Leicestershire would have escaped from Congerstone, along the line of the Ashby de la Zouch Canal, then along the line of the Anker south-east past Nuneaton to the Fenny Compton Gap towards the Thames. From the Anker, it also escaped southwards through Nuneaton towards Coventry and the Avon. At a later stage, a smaller lake east of Upton remained with overflows southwards and through Fenny Drayton to the Anker as well as that towards the Sence, until it cut through Upton Ridge to form the Saint.
Upton Ridge and Wellsborough Hill give good views of the flood plain of the lower reaches. The middle reaches of both rivers are less visible in the landscape.
The coalfields were exploited from mines at Coalville, Snibston, Hugglescote, Ibstock, Nailstone, Bagworth and Ellistown. Brickworks and terracotta works were mainly around Ibstock and Heather.
Names related to the watercourses
Ambion is the name of a deserted village by a headwater of the Saint rising in Cadeby. It is recorded as Anabein, Anne Beame in the Hollinshead Chronicle, Anbein and Amyon by John Hutton. The name seems to derive from Old English Āna-bēam, a One-Beam bridge, probably the hamlet's means of crossing the stream towards Market Bosworth. It is claimed as the traditional site of the Battle of Bosworth.Barwell, Barwalle, Barewelle, sometimes pronounced ‘Barrull’. The first element is Old English bār, ‘boar’. Old English wella signifies a spring or stream In west Leicestershire, it seems to mean the stream issuing from a spring rather than the spring itself. The area of the headwaters of the Tweed would have been frequented by wild boar in Anglo-Saxon times. The other example of wella in the watershed is "Twitchell".
Brook Farm, west of Stoke Golding takes its name from the unnamed stream running north towards the Tweed at the foot of Ambion Hill.
King Dick's Hole is a deep part of the Anker at its confluence with the Sence. Since at least Victorian times, it has been a popular bathing place for the youth of Atherstone and Sheepy. Local tradition has it that it is where King Richard bathed before the battle. More likely ‘hole’ is a corruption of early English halgh; an area of flood plain enclosed by a meandering river. The name could originally have referred to the area where Richard stationed some of his troops while lodging the night at Mythe Hall.
Lovett or Lovett's Bridge, sometimes ‘Lovatt’ links Sheepy Parva across the Sence towards Orton on the Hill and Polesworth. Though there is now a footbridge, the ford there is at least 1000 years old. No association with a person so called has been found. Its relation to a branch of Redway towards Polesworth and to an ancient crossing of the Saint through Ratcliffe Culey suggests at least Iron Age origin. Nearby on that branch, Watery Lane, was an undatable Swithland slate courseway raised above flood level demolished by the Highways Authority around 1950. The River Ouzel in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire used to be called ‘Lovat’ and in Sussex is the River Lavant, both explained from Celtic British, perhaps here meaning either ‘smooth-flowing’.or ‘deep pool’.
Mythe derives from Old English gemyþe, ‘place where waters meet, confluence’, here the confluence of the Sence with the Anker. The name exists also for a settlement where the Avon joins the Severn north of Tewkesbury.
Ratcliffe, Redeclive, ‘road-cleave’. Ratcliffe Culey takes its name from the ford where the Hinckley–Mythe road was ‘cleaved’ by the Sence 100 m upstream of its confluence with the Anker.
Sandeford is mentioned as the place where Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth but its situation is lost. It might be where Fenn Lane crosses the Tweed or a tributary from Higham on the Hill or on the Redway where a stream ran into the marsh north of Fenny Drayton Both sites are rather marshy, so that a site on the River Saint at Miles Ford north-west of Shenton is more probable.
Sence and Saint probably share their origin with the British tribe Iceni in a word-root isc-, 'shine', iscent-, ‘shining’. In common with other rivers of the Midlands, a Celtic origin is more likely than Old English scenc, 'cup, drinking can. Either by coincidence or by association with the river name, All Saints is the dedication of the churches at Sheepy, Ratcliffe Culey and Nailstone in the Sence watershed. It is also the dedication of Ranton, Staffordshire, whose Priory owned Sheepy Manor until the Reformation.
Sheepy probably also derives its name from Celtic isc- with apa, ‘shining water’ rather than from Old English. sceap-ea, 'sheep river', or sceap-e.g., 'sheep island'.
Shenton, "Scenctun", Scentone derives its name from the river: scenc-tūn, ‘settlement on the Saint’.
Tweed derives from Celtic tueda, ‘powerful, swollen’ and tuea, ‘swell’. like the River Tweed in southern Scotland. It may describe the growth of the stream from Barwell to Shenton or the swelling marsh in rainy times..
Twitchell is a small stream running into the Sence at Sheepy Magna and the lane it adjoins. The origin of the name might be Twice-wella', a stream rising from two springs.