Leicestershire Villages: M, N and O
Something about each of the 26 Leicestershire villages beginning with M, N and O. Links to previous instalments at the bottom of the pages.
148. Markfield, north-west of Leicester. John Wesley (1703-91), one of the founders of Methodism, preached here at least 13 times, sometimes moving to the village green when crowds got too big for the church. South Charnwood Diorite, an igneous rock quarried in the area, was once known as ‘Markfieldite’.
(Here is the a plaque in Markfield marking Wesley’s association. Joseph Benson, my great-great-great-great grandfather, was a friend and associates of Wesley’s.)
149. Measham, west Leicestershire. Sir Frank Dyson (1868-1939), Astronomer Royal, who used an eclipse to help prove Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and created the BBC’s ‘pips’, was born here. Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, used to stay nearby and visit; Queen Street is named after her.
150. Medbourne, north-east of Market Harborough. Each Easter Monday, Medbourne plays the ancient game of Bottle Kicking against nearby Hallaton. There are parades, a hare pie is distributed, then villagers try to get three wooden barrels (the bottles) across their stream. Hallaton won in 2024.
151. Moira, south-west of Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The village developed around a blast furnace built in 1806 by the Earl of Moira to make iron. It closed in 1811 as local coal was unsuitable (and is now a museum), but coal mining continued until the 1980s. There’s no church so here’s a tree by the Ashby Canal.
152. Mountsorrel, north of Leicester. William Marshall (1147-1219), an adviser to four kings, besieged Mountsorrel Castle for a month in 1217 in support of the young Henry III. Quarrying for strong, pink Mountsorrel granite began in the C18th, and the quarry here is now one of the largest in Europe.
153. Mowsley, west of Market Harborough, means ‘wood or clearing infested with mice’ (and rhymes with ‘mouse’). In the first third of the C20th Mowsley had an isolation hospital used to treat smallpox, and later tuberculosis patients. The village hall is a building originally built for the hospital.
154. Muston (pronounced ‘Musson’) in the Vale of Belvoir. Poet and clergyman George Crabbe (1754-1832) had two spells at Muston Rectory, during which he worked on ‘The Borough’, which inspired Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Peter Grimes’. Crabbe was succeeded as rector by Henry Byron, Lord Byron’s uncle.
155. Nailstone, south of Coalville. In the 1745 Jacobite rising, Bonnie Prince Charlie is said to have visited friends in Nailstone, and there decided to retreat. The church has a monument to Thomas Corbett, Sergeant of the Pantry to four Tudor monarchs, who had 21 children and died (in 1586) aged 94.
156. Nanpantan, south-west of Loughborough. The name is thought to come from ‘Pantain’, Anglo-Saxon for enclosure. The church’s War Memorial is a single block of Charnwood granite. Nearby Whittle Hill was known for ‘hone’ stones, used to sharpen knives; its quarry, opened in 1837, shut in the early C20th.
157. Narborough, south-west of Leicester. Narborough railway station was closed and nearly demolished in 1968, but after a council campaign it was reopened in 1970. Empire Stone was the village’s largest employer until closing in 1994; it produced concrete cladding, including for the MI6 building in London.
158. Nether Broughton, north-west of Melton Mowbray. Neighbouring Upper Broughton is in Nottinghamshire. William Boultbee Sleath (1763-1842), Headmaster of Repton School from 1800-30, was born here. He was admired as a teacher and a researcher of Anglo-Saxon history. His portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery.
159. Newbold Verdon, west of Leicester. The church was rebuilt in 1898 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, and the tower was added in 1960. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), a poet who pioneered inoculation against smallpox having seen its use in Turkey, briefly lived in Newbold Verdon Hall.
160. Newton Burgoland, south-west of Coalville. There is no church, but the Belper Arms is the oldest pub in the county, dating from 1290. John Compton (1876-1957), who installed hundreds of pipe organs in churches and cinemas across England, including the one at Odeon Leicester Square, was born here.
161. Newton Harcourt, south-east of Leicester. St Luke’s Church is divided from most of the village by the Grand Union canal and the mainline railway to Leicester. The weathervane has bulletholes from the time (in the C19th) when it jammed, and Sir Henry Halford of Wistow Hall shot at it to make it spin.
162. Newtown Linford, north-west of Leicester. Nearby was Bradgate House, a red-brick Tudor mansion completed in 1520, whose ruins can still be seen. It was the home of the Grey family for over 200 years, and was the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey, who reigned as Queen for nine days in July 1553.
163. Normanton le Heath, west of Coalville. The Longmoor opencast coalmine east of the village extracted over 700,000 tonnes of coal in 2007-10. The site is now the 460-acre Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood: 300,000 native broadleaf trees (such as oak and beech) were planted between 2012 and 2015.
164. North Kilworth, east of Lutterworth. St Andrew’s Church has a Spanish oak pulpit, known as the Armada Pulpit, of unknown origin; and a memorial to Admiral Man Dobson (1755-1847), who served under Nelson as an Admiral, and later took charge of naval press gangs in Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars.
165. Norton-juxta-Twycross, in west Leicestershire. In 951AD, as Northton, it got a Royal Charter from the Saxon King Eldred. In the C16th it was known as Hogges Norton, perhaps inspiring the fictional village ‘Hogsnorton’, featured on 1940s radio shows by comedian Gillie Potter. Twycross Zoo is nearby.
166. Noseley, north of Market Harborough. Noseley Hall has been in the Hazlerigg family since 1419. The Hall’s chapel is now used as a church. Sir Arthur Haselrig (1601-61), MP for Leicestershire in the 1640s, was one of five MPs Charles I tried to arrest in 1642. He died in the Tower of London.
167. Oaks in Charnwood, south of Shepshed. Nearby Mount St Bernard Abbey, founded in 1835 and designed by Pugin, was the first new monastery in England since the Reformation. It is England’s only Cistercian (Trappist) monastery, and brews and sells Trappist ale, called ‘Tynt Meadow’.
168. Oakthorpe, west Leicestershire, once in the Derbyshire exclave. A deep coal shaft was sunk in 1787, though there had been mining for centuries before that. Later the mine was part of Donisthorpe Colliery. A coal seam near the surface caught fire in 1985, causing serious damage to property.
169. Old Dalby, north-west of Melton Mowbray. Its name is a corruption of ‘Wold Dalby’, as the village is in the Leicestershire Wolds. The Knights Hospitallers established a preceptory (monastery) here in the C12th; listed earthworks containing the remains of its buildings are to the south of the village.
170. Orton on the Hill, west Leicestershire. Rev William Paul (1678-1716), vicar here from 1709, was hanged for supporting the 1715 Jacobite uprising: he went to Preston to meet the rebels and pray for the Old Pretender as King. In 1950 the church spire, once 120ft high, was deemed unsafe & truncated.
171. Osbaston, west of Leicester, known as ‘Sbermestun’ in the Domesday Book. Poet Francis Noel Clarke Mundy (1739-1815) was born at Osbaston Hall, son of Leicestershire MP Wrightson Mundy. His best-known poem is ‘Needwood Forest’ (1776), which mourns the impending destruction of the forest.
172. Osgathorpe, west of Shepshed. The ill-fated and uneconomic 7½-mile Charnwood Forest Canal, completed in 1794, went south of the village. It never recovered from the disaster on 20 February 1799 when the dam at the Blackbrook Reservoir, built to supply the canal, burst, emptying 500 million gallons of water in 11 minutes.
173. Owston (pronounced Ooston), east Leicestershire. A small Augustinian Abbey was founded here in c1161. Its buildings were mostly destroyed after dissolution in 1536, though part (it is not clear what) was turned into St Andrew’s Church. The Abbey gatehouse was only demolished in the late C18th.
One of my early poems was about a walk from Owston.
Previous instalments: ‘A’s, ‘B’s, ‘C’s, ‘D’s and ‘E’s, ‘F’s and ‘G’s, ‘H’s and ‘I’s and ‘K’s and ‘L’s. Next: ‘P’s, ‘Q’s and ‘R’s.