The Borough Council bought 20.8 hectares of Billa Barra Hill in 1996, with substantial grant aid from The National Forest Company and Leicestershire County Council. The remainder of the land is in private ownership.
, surrounding a small hilltop plantation, dating from the late 1800's/early 1900's and a small quarry. Tree planting has taken place within the lower levels of the site, sourced from local stock and this has been done by a variety of local community groups, businesses and individuals through a sponsorship scheme run by the National Forest Company.
The grassland areas of Billa Barra Hill are managed under a Higher Level Stewardship agreement with Natural England. This agreement regulates the management of these areas in order to try and conserve and improve the diversity of the ground flora.
The name of the hill is thought to be a corruption of the word "barrow," meaning burial ground. This is thought to be linked to stories of a Saxon battle on the adjacent land with the dead buried on the hill. However, any physical evidence would have been destroyed at the on-set of quarrying.
Historically, quarrying took place at the site until the 1950's when one of the quarries was used as a landfill site. The rest of the site was grazed under licence in the late 1970's to early 1980's.
During the 1990's, Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council purchased the site with grant aid from the National Forest Company and Leicestershire County Council as part of the National Forest.
