| Official Name: | Little Stretton |
| Static Image Name: | File:Little Stretton in Leicestershire - geograph.org.uk - 2316773.jpg |
| Static Image Caption: | Little Stretton (2011) |
| Civil Parish: | Little Stretton |
| Country: | England |
| Region: | East Midlands |
| Shire County: | Leicestershire |
| Shire District: | Harborough |
| Area Total Sq Mi: | 1.6802 |
| Area Total Km2: | 4.3517 |
| Population: | 92 |
| Population Ref: | (2011)[1] |
| Coordinates: | 52.5956°N -1.0137°W |
| Os Grid Reference: | SK669002 |
| London Distance Mi: | 84.5 |
| Post Town: | LEICESTER |
| Postcode Area: | LE |
| Postcode District: | LE2 |
| Dial Code: | 0116 |
| Constituency Westminster: | Harborough |
Little Stretton (otherwise Stretton Parva) is a small village and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire that lies approximately 5.53miles southeast of the city of Leicester. The parish includes the deserted medieval village of Great Stretton (or Stretton Magna, a Scheduled Ancient Monument that is located 0.7miles to the west of the village. The Gartree Road, a Roman Road, runs through the parish, adjacent to both Little and Great Stretton, and is the reason for those settlements' names (see: Stretton). According to the University of Nottingham English Place-names project, the settlement name Stretton means "strēt" (Anglian) for a Roman road; and "tūn" (Old English) for a settlement or an estate.[2] The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 92, with approximately 36 households.
Little Stretton is situated on the south side of the river Glen, between the villages of Houghton on the Hill 2.15miles to the north, Great Glen to the south 1.75miles, King's Norton 1.25miles to the east, and Oadby 2.81miles to the west. The soils are Slightly acid loamy and clayey, with more seasonally wet base-rich loamy and clayey soils beyond the village to the south and east, according to UK Soil Observatory results.[3] The bedrock geology of the settlement is Charmouth Mudstone, a sedimentary bedrock formed between 199.3 and 182.7 million years ago during the Jurassic period.[4]
Evidence for prehistoric activity is very limited. An archaeological assessment in 2011 listed an Iron Age enclosure to the south west of Manor Farm, and the presence of the ‘Gartree Road’ a Roman road only a few metres to the south west (probably the Via Devana to Ratae).[5]
The Domesday Book Survey of 1086 lists Little Stretton and Great Stretton as Stretton,[6] situated in the Hundred of Gartree, Leicestershire. It had an estimated population of 9.6 households (representing the heads of families, with an average 5 persons per household) and was considered to be a small settlement in 1086.[7] The poll tax returns of 1381 list 53 persons that were deemed eligible to pay.[8] Almost 200 years later in 1563, 19 families were recorded. The population in 1801 was 97, followed by an increase to 128 in 1821.[9]
In 1870–72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Stretton Parva as follows:
The neighbouring Stretton Magna at the same time held 7 households with a population of 42.
By the 1890s, "The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5" revealed a slight decline in population to 72.[10] By 1951 the census returned a count of 105 residents in Little Stretton.
The parish has two medieval churches, St Giles of Stratton Magna and St Clement and St John the Baptist of Stratton Parva. The church of Little Stretton, St Clement and St John the Baptist, has historically been a chapel of ease served from the ecclesiastical parish of St John the Baptist, King's Norton.
In 1919, the village gained a certain notoriety as the location of the Green Bicycle Case, the killing of Bella Wright.[11]