Things to do in Leicestershire

Situated four miles west of the city of Leicester, Kirby Muxloe castle is found within the village of the same name. Kirby Muxloe Castle was originally built of over 100,000 red fired bricks it was one of the earliest and last quadrangular brickwork castles to be built in England. Today the remains of the unfinished 15th century fortified mansion are surrounded by a moat lined with brick and comprise of just a rectangular gatehouse and the south west tower which have recently been conserved. The gatehouse is now only one storey high, however the black and red diamond brickwork patterning and carvings are still visible. The tower stands at almost its full height and also displays the same black and red diamond patterned brickwork and is complete with battlements. Facilities The castle remains are open to the public between May and August 10am until 5pm at weekends and bank holidays. There was a settlement on the site from the 9th century which continued to grow until the 14th century when a fortified manor house was built on the site by the Pakeman family. William, 1st Baron of Hastings; second cousin of Edward I, acquired the castle in 1480 after many years of leasing it and founded a brick castle on the site. He was given a license to crenellate the castle which he never realised as he was beheaded in the Tower of London in 1483 for treason. The family kept the castle and from time to time added roofs and floors to the towers; however in 1484 the castle was abandoned. Later the new owner Sir Robert Banaster removed much of the building material to build a farmhouse nearby. In 1911 the castle was placed under the guardianship of the Ministry of Works and now managed by English Heritage who have carried out extensive restoration work. Kirby Muxloe Castle Kirby Muxloe Castle Kirby Muxloe Castle

Ashby de la Zouch Castle is a ruined medieval fortification situated in the market town of Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire, central England. Managed by English Heritage, it stands as one of the more atmospheric and historically layered castle ruins in the East Midlands, drawing visitors who come both for its genuine historical weight and for its unexpectedly dramatic underground passages. The castle is notable not merely as an architectural curiosity but as a site that played a meaningful role in English history across several turbulent centuries, from the Wars of the Roses through the English Civil War. It is particularly associated with Mary Queen of Scots, who was held here during part of her long captivity in England, lending the place a melancholy romantic resonance that has appealed to writers and visitors alike for centuries. The site's origins lie in a Norman manor house, with the earliest recorded structure dating to the late eleventh century. The property passed through several hands before coming into the possession of William Lord Hastings in 1461, a powerful Yorkist nobleman and close ally of Edward IV. It was Hastings who transformed what had been a relatively modest fortified manor into something approaching a grand castle, adding the great tower that still dominates the ruins today. This Hastings Tower, rising to a considerable height even in its ruined state, was built in the 1470s and represents a late flowering of medieval castle architecture. Hastings himself met a dramatic end in 1483 when Richard III, then Lord Protector, had him summarily executed at the Tower of London without trial, a moment immortalised in Shakespeare's Richard III. The castle remained in the Hastings family for generations, and during the English Civil War it was held for the Royalist cause, withstanding a lengthy Parliamentary siege before eventually surrendering in 1646. After the war, Parliament ordered the castle to be slighted — deliberately damaged to prevent further military use — which accounts for the partial demolition that gives the ruins their current character, including the dramatically split Hastings Tower, which leans at a precarious angle as a direct result of that deliberate destruction. Physically, the castle rewards a slow, careful visit. Walking through the site, you move across grassy ground studded with substantial masonry remnants, the remains of a kitchen, a great hall range, and various domestic buildings arranged around what was once a courtyard. The Hastings Tower itself is the centrepiece, its sheared face exposing the interior floors and walls like a cross-section of medieval domestic architecture, the stonework streaked with centuries of weathering into warm ochres and greys. One of the most memorable features of any visit is the underground passage connecting the Hastings Tower to the nearby St Helen's Church, a tunnel that dates from the castle's active period and can still be explored today. Descending into it is a genuinely striking experience: the air is cool and still, the stonework close, and the sense of historical depth palpable in a way that open-air ruins sometimes cannot achieve. The site has a quiet, contemplative quality on ordinary weekday visits, with birdsong from the surrounding trees and the occasional distant sound of the town beyond the walls filtering through. The town of Ashby de la Zouch itself, which surrounds the castle, is a pleasant, well-preserved Leicestershire market town with an independent character and a reasonable selection of shops, cafes, and pubs clustered around the central streets. The castle grounds are adjacent to the town centre, making it easy to combine a visit with time spent exploring the town. The area is predominantly agricultural lowland, gently rolling and green, with the National Forest — a large-scale reforestation project covering parts of Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Derbyshire — beginning not far to the north and west. Nearby places of interest include Calke Abbey, a National Trust property roughly ten miles to the north-west, and the town of Coalville a few miles to the south-east, which tells a contrasting industrial story of the region's coal-mining heritage. For practical purposes, the castle is straightforward to visit. It lies right in the centre of the town and is accessible on foot from the Market Street area. Those arriving by car will find several public car parks nearby in the town centre. There is no direct railway station in Ashby de la Zouch itself, so visitors travelling by public transport will need to take a bus from nearby rail-connected towns such as Burton upon Trent or Loughborough. English Heritage members enter free of charge; non-members pay a modest admission fee. The site is generally open from late March through to the end of October, with reduced or no access during winter months, so checking English Heritage's current schedule before visiting is advisable. The grounds are reasonably accessible for most visitors, though the underground passage and some tower areas involve steps and uneven surfaces that may not be suitable for all. The castle is particularly atmospheric in the softer light of late afternoon, and visiting outside of school holidays gives the best chance of exploring the ruins in relative quiet. A literary footnote of some significance attaches to this place: Sir Walter Scott visited Ashby de la Zouch and used it as a setting in his enormously popular 1819 novel Ivanhoe, placing a grand jousting tournament in the vicinity and drawing on the castle's medieval character to colour his romantic vision of Saxon and Norman England. While the novel is fiction, Scott's vivid description brought the castle renewed fame during the nineteenth century and contributed to a lasting association between the place and the chivalric medieval imagination. This connection made the castle a place of literary pilgrimage for many Victorian readers, adding yet another layer to an already richly stratified history.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch is a historic market town in Leicestershire whose name alone announces its Norman-French origins, the de la Zouch family who gave the town its distinctive suffix having been among the Anglo-Norman lords who established themselves in the English Midlands following the Conquest. The town is best known today for its impressive castle ruins, which represent one of the finest surviving examples of a late medieval fortified manor house in the East Midlands and tell the story of the most powerful magnate family in fifteenth-century England. Ashby Castle was developed into its grandest form by William Lord Hastings, who was created Baron Hastings by Edward IV and became one of the most important figures in the Yorkist political establishment. The great Hastings Tower, the most impressive surviving element of the castle, was built by William in the 1470s and rises to a considerable height despite the demolition ordered by Parliament following the Civil War in the seventeenth century. Hastings met his end in one of the most abrupt and dramatic moments of the Wars of the Roses when Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had him summarily executed in 1483 during the council meeting in which Richard seized effective power in England, his death dramatised by Shakespeare as a consequence of his loyalty to Edward IV's family. The castle is managed by English Heritage and allows visitors to explore the ruins including the tower, the great hall and the domestic buildings that survive in various states of preservation. The combination of architectural interest and the vivid historical associations of the Hastings family makes it one of the more compelling castle ruins in the Midlands. Walter Scott set scenes from his novel Ivanhoe at a tournament ground near Ashby, giving the town a further fictional dimension in the romantic tradition. The town itself is a pleasant Midlands market town with a good range of independent shops and the Queen's Head Hotel, a building with its own historic character. The surrounding Leicestershire countryside provides gentle walking and cycling.

Lilbourne Motte and Bailey Castle is a medieval earthwork fortification located near the village of Lilbourne in Northamptonshire, close to the border with Warwickshire in central England. It represents one of the characteristic forms of Norman military architecture that proliferated across England following the Conquest of 1066, consisting of an earthen motte — a raised conical mound — alongside a enclosed bailey area where ancillary structures would once have stood. While no standing masonry remains, the earthworks themselves are remarkably well-preserved and constitute a scheduled ancient monument, affording visitors a tangible connection to the immediate post-Conquest period of English history when new lords were rapidly asserting control over the landscape through these quickly constructed defensive works. The castle almost certainly dates from the late eleventh or early twelfth century, erected in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest as part of the wave of motte and bailey constructions that spread across England during this period. The Lilbourne area was held by Norman lords who needed to consolidate their authority over newly granted lands, and the motte would have originally supported a timber tower, likely later replaced or reinforced in stone, though no significant masonry is known to have survived into the present era. The site sits within a broader landscape that was strategically important in the medieval period, positioned relatively close to Watling Street — the great Roman road that continued to serve as a major artery through the Midlands — making the castle's placement a deliberate act of territorial and communications control. The manor of Lilbourne itself has Anglo-Saxon origins and is referenced in the Domesday Book of 1086, providing documentary evidence of settlement continuity through the Conquest. In physical terms, the site is dominated by the motte itself, which rises noticeably above the surrounding flat agricultural land, giving even today a clear sense of why such elevated positions were prized for both defence and visibility. The earthworks are grassed over and have softened considerably with the passage of nearly a millennium, their originally sharp profiles worn into smoother, more organic contours by centuries of weathering and vegetation growth. Standing at the summit of the motte, one has an uninterrupted view across a wide, open countryside typical of this part of the East Midlands — flat to gently undulating fields stitched together by hedgerows, with the quality of light and the movement of wind across the grass giving the place a quiet, contemplative atmosphere. The sounds here are predominantly rural: birdsong, distant farm machinery, and the wind passing through the hedges, making it a genuinely peaceful spot that rewards thoughtful visitors. The surrounding landscape is quintessentially English Midlands countryside — productive agricultural land in the broad valley of the River Avon, which flows nearby. The village of Lilbourne itself is small and unassuming, a rural settlement of modest scale that has retained its agricultural character. The location near the Northamptonshire and Warwickshire border places it within easy reach of a number of other historically significant sites; the town of Rugby lies roughly five miles to the southwest, and the area is broadly situated within the rich historical corridor that runs through the heart of England. The proximity to the M1 motorway and the West Coast Main Line railway at Rugby makes the broader region accessible, though Lilbourne itself is very much off the beaten track. For visitors, the site is freely accessible as the earthworks are on public land, and no admission charge applies. The location is best approached by car, as public transport to Lilbourne village is limited. The nearest railway station is Rugby, from which the village can be reached by road. The site is suitable for walking, though the terrain is uneven and appropriate footwear is advisable, particularly in wet weather when the grass slopes of the motte can become slippery. There are no formal visitor facilities — no café, toilets, or interpretive signage of significance — so visitors should come self-sufficient and prepared for a quiet, unsupervised heritage experience. The best times to visit are late spring through early autumn when the ground is drier and the views across the surrounding landscape are clearest, though the site holds a certain atmospheric quality in all seasons. One of the quietly fascinating aspects of Lilbourne Motte and Bailey Castle is how it exemplifies the vast, largely unsung network of Norman earthwork fortifications that transformed the English landscape after 1066. Hundreds of such sites exist across England, many known only to local walkers and dedicated enthusiasts of medieval archaeology, and Lilbourne is very much one of these understated survivors. The fact that the earthworks have endured in recognisable form for nearly a thousand years, shaped by human hands in response to the political upheaval of the Conquest, lends the place a quiet profundity that belies its modest appearance. Its scheduled monument status ensures it enjoys legal protection, but it remains the kind of place that rewards those who seek it out precisely because it demands something of the imagination — there are no reconstructions or dramatised presentations here, only the grass-covered earth and the open sky.

Market Harborough in Leicestershire is an attractive market town on the River Welland whose combination of the medieval grammar school building with its remarkable open ground floor designed to shelter market traders, the handsome parish church of St Dionysius and the Georgian and Victorian commercial architecture creates one of the most rewarding and least visited market town experiences in the East Midlands. The town has strong associations with the Civil War, having been the staging point for Charles I's army before the decisive defeat at Naseby in 1645. The Old Grammar School of 1614, raised on timber pillars to allow the market to shelter beneath it, is one of the most unusual medieval educational buildings in England, its combination of educational and commercial functions in a single structure reflecting the medieval understanding that the two activities were complementary. The Canal Museum at Foxton Locks a few miles away provides an outstanding example of the narrowboat canal heritage of the East Midlands. The combination of the town heritage and the Foxton Locks visit creates a rewarding day in the Leicestershire countryside.