Description: The name of Breedon on the Hill derives from the Celtic word 'Bre' meaning a hill, and an Old English word 'don', which also means a hill or fort. So this is, in effect, 'Hill hill on the hill'. It was fortified in Iron Age times, some three centuries BC. It remained in use until the middle of the first century AD, as evidenced by the various pottery and tools that were discovered during excavations in 1946 and which are now in a Leicester museum. In A.D. 676 an Anglo-Saxon Monastery was established on the hilltop, by Mercian King Aethelred, and for some 200 years this flourished as a centre of culture and crafts. It was from this building that the remarkable array of Anglo-saxon carved stonework was salvaged, which can be seen in the Church today. But in A.D. 874, the community was attacked by pagan Danish and Norse invaders and buildings looted and despoiled. The next major step came in A.D. 1122 with the arrival of a Prior and five Canons from Nostell Priory in Yorkshire, who established an Augustian Priory on the site and it is the Nave and North Aisle of this building which survive as the Parish Church; The Priory Church of St. Mary and St. Hardulph, of today, restored in later centuries, but still retaining much of its 12th century design and styling, mainly in the tower at the west end, with its clasping buttresses and flat intermediate buttresses. In the 13th century, a new, wide chancel was added to the east of the tower. Much of this remains today, although renewal in the 18th and 19th century has taken place. The hill of Breedon is a 122m upthrust of carboniferous limestone, rich in fossils. It contains dolomite, a yellow-pink stone, mixed in with the grey limestone, and has been stained red by surface clay, resulting in a striking appearance if approached from the north and east. It has been quarried for many years and as such, the church now stands on the top of an encroaching cliff, rather than a hill.