A county that changed British history more than once—yet is barely remembered.
Leicestershire, in the heart of England, appears tranquil, its landscape dotted with green fields and market towns. Yet beneath its surface lies a history marked by conflict. From Roman legions and Viking invasions to the upheavals of the English Civil War, the ground here has witnessed battles and sieges that few remember today. Here are six sites where these pivotal, yet overlooked, events unfolded.
Quick Facts
- County: Leicestershire, East Midlands
- Period covered: AD 60 to 1648
- Best for: History walks, battlefield trails, castle ruins
- Leicester is about 100 miles north of London. Junction 21 of the M1 provides access to most sites.
- Time needed: Two to three days to visit all six comfortably
1. High Cross, near Sharnford: Where Boudica May Have Fought Her Last Battle
There is a battered stone monument standing at a crossroads in south-west Leicestershire, near the hamlet of Sharnford. It is easy to miss. Cars pass it on the A5 without a glance. But this spot, known as High Cross, was once the geographical centre of Roman Britain, the point where two of the most important military roads on the island met: Watling Street and the Fosse Way.
Romans called it Venonae. A fort arose early, around AD 44, and a settlement lasted until the fourth century. Finds include pottery, coins, and tile fragments across the fields.
High Cross’s importance lies in its potential as the site of Boudica’s last stand, around AD 60 or 61. After Boudica’s campaigns, Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus sought a defensible location to face the vastly larger British force. Some historians believe High Cross fits Tacitus’s description of the battle: a narrow defile, woodland at the rear, open ground ahead, and critical road junctions for reinforcements.
The Britons suffered a disaster in the confrontation. Tacitus wrote of 80,000 Britons killed. Afterwards, Boudica died, and Roman control prevailed for centuries.
Now, the High Cross monument stands mostly ignored. Its Latin inscription invites travellers seeking traces of the ancient Romans to pause.
Nobody stops to read it.
Where to Stay: Bosworth Hall Hotel and Spa in Market Bosworth is a seventeenth-century Grade II-listed mansion set in 11 acres of parkland, well placed for exploring sites in western Leicestershire.
Worth Knowing: High Cross is depicted on the coat of arms of Blaby District Council, the local authority. Two black diagonal lines on the shield represent the crossing of the Fosse Way and Watling Street at this exact point.
2. Leicester: The Viking Confrontation That Decided the Fate of England
In AD 940, King Edmund, grandson of Alfred the Great, inherited a fragile kingdom. He was eighteen years old. Within weeks, the Norse king Olaf Guthfrithson sailed from Dublin, seized York and began marching south, burning towns as he went. Tamworth fell. The Danelaw territories that Alfred’s descendants had spent decades reclaiming were slipping away.
The two armies met at Leicester. Edmund brought his forces to confront Olaf, and for a brief, tense period, the city was the fulcrum on which England’s future balanced. But there was no great battle. Instead, the archbishops of York and Canterbury intervened and brokered a treaty. The result was humiliating for Edmund. He was forced to cede the Five Boroughs, including Leicester itself, as well as Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, and Stamford, back to Viking control.
This event marked the worst reversal since Alfred’s time, occurring in Leicester’s streets without conflict. Historian Frank Stenton called it an ignominious surrender.
Edmund’s fortune shifted after Olaf’s death the following year. By 942, the English had retaken the Five Boroughs, which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commemorated with a poem. Yet, for a few months in 940, Leicester was where England almost ceased to exist as a unified kingdom.
There is no plaque. No marker. No heritage trail. The confrontation is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and then largely forgotten.
Where to Stay: Hotel Maiyango on St Nicholas Place is a boutique hotel in the centre of Leicester, a short walk from the cathedral where Richard III was reinterred and from the city’s old Roman and medieval heart.
Worth Knowing: Leicester was one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, the Viking-controlled region of England. Place names ending in “by” across Leicestershire, such as Queniborough and Gaddesby, are direct evidence of Scandinavian settlement.
3. The Newarke, Leicester: The Civil War Atrocity That Put a King on Trial
On the night of 31 May 1645, the army of King Charles I stormed Leicester. What followed was one of the worst atrocities of the English Civil War, and it happened not in some remote field but in the streets around what is now Leicester’s cultural quarter.
Leicester was held by Parliament but poorly defended. About 900 armed civilians joined the small garrison. When Prince Rupert’s Royalists breached the walls after midnight, the line between civilian and soldier vanished.
The fiercest resistance was at the Newarke, where townsfolk and garrison made a last stand. Despite the bravery of the Royalists, the Royalists took the town. Accounts describe killings during surrender and assaults. Authorities recorded 719 bodies buried.
Overloaded carts took Leicester’s valuables to Newark. The stench of bodies lingered long after the king’s departure.
The outrage at Leicester energised Parliament. Within two weeks, the New Model Army won decisively at Naseby. Years later, Leicester’s sack was cited at Charles I’s trial; four locals signed the king’s death warrant.
Remnants of the town wall behind Newarke Houses Museum still show musket holes from the siege. At St Mary de Castro, Civil War firing loops remain. Few notice these traces today.
Where to Stay: Hotel Maiyango on St Nicholas Place is minutes from the Newarke area and the surviving Civil War remains.
Worth Knowing: St Sunday’s Church on Woodgate, in Leicester’s north suburb, was deliberately burned down by the garrison before the siege to prevent Royalist snipers from using it. The church was never rebuilt.
4. Ashby de la Zouch Castle: The Royalist Stronghold They Blew Apart
Most visitors to Ashby de la Zouch Castle come for the Walter Scott connection. The 1819 novel Ivanhoe set a famous tournament scene here, and Regency tourists flocked to the ruins. But the real story of Ashby’s destruction is not medieval romance. It is Civil War politics at its most brutal.
In the 1640s, Henry Hastings made Ashby de la Zouch Castle a key Royalist base for the Midlands, linking northern and western holdings. He reinforced the castle, built tunnels, and added defences known as the Irish fort.
For years, Ashby held. The garrison launched raids across the region and helped relieve the siege of Newark. But by late 1644, the war was turning against the king, and Parliamentary forces based at nearby Coleorton tightened the noose. The castle finally surrendered in March 1646. It was counted as a great relief to every town and village in the area.
In 1648, renewed Royalist threats led Parliament to order the castle’s destruction. Bainbrigg set gunpowder charges, bringing down major towers and leaving the castle ruined.
Climbing the 98 steps to the shattered tower offers views across Leicestershire. The breach was the government’s doing, not an enemy’s.
The underground tunnel connecting the Kitchen Tower to the Great Tower, likely dug during the siege, can still be walked through. It is one of the few genuine secret passages in any English castle.
Where to Stay: The Three Swans Hotel in Market Harborough is a sixteenth-century coaching inn with 59 rooms, well placed as a base for touring the county’s sites. Charles I himself stayed here the night before the Battle of Naseby.
Worth Knowing: Ashby de la Zouch Castle is managed by English Heritage. It is generally open from Wednesday to Sunday from March to September. The tunnel is accessible during opening hours.
5. Bosworth Field, Sutton Cheney: The Battlefield That Was in the Wrong Place for 500 Years
On 22 August 1485, Henry Tudor defeated and killed Richard III in the field between Sutton Cheney and Stoke Golding in south-west Leicestershire. It was the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses and created the Tudor dynasty. Everyone knows that much.
What most people do not know is that, for over five centuries, historians, heritage centres and visitors have been looking at the wrong field.
The traditional site was Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney, where the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre was built and where generations of visitors stood solemnly imagining the charge that killed a king. Then, in 2010, a five-year archaeological survey led by Glenn Foard of the Battlefields Trust revealed that the actual site of the battle was roughly a mile to the south-west, in a flat, unremarkable stretch of farmland on either side of Fenn Lane.
The evidence was decisive. The survey recovered the largest collection of medieval cannonballs ever found on a European battlefield, scattered across a wide area around Fenn Lane. Most significantly, they found a tiny silver-gilt boar badge, the personal symbol of Richard III, in the marshy ground where contemporary accounts say the king was cut down fighting on foot after his horse became stuck in boggy terrain. The badge was gilded silver, meaning it was worn by someone of very high rank, almost certainly someone close to the king himself.
The heritage centre still stands on Ambion Hill and remains worth visiting. But the real battlefield is elsewhere, in fields that carry no markers and attract no crowds. Richard III’s own body was lost for over 500 years before being found beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. His battlefield was lost for even longer.
Where to Stay: Bosworth Hall Hotel and Spa in Market Bosworth sits just across the road from an 85-acre country park and is within walking distance of the battlefield trail.
Worth Knowing: The Battlefield Trail at the heritage centre is 2.2 kilometres long and features audio and visual information stations. The heritage centre displays the original boar badge and the recovered cannonballs.
6. Market Harborough: The Night Before England Changed Forever
On the evening of 13 June 1645, King Charles I sat in the town of Market Harborough, in the upper room of a coaching inn, and made the decision that would cost him everything.
His army had just sacked Leicester and was swollen with confidence and plunder. The New Model Army, Parliament’s newly formed professional force under Sir Thomas Fairfax, was marching north to find him. Charles had a choice: retreat, consolidate and wait for reinforcements, or stand and fight. His advisers were divided. Some urged caution. Others, emboldened by Leicester, wanted a decisive battle.
Charles chose to fight.
The Royalist forces, numbering roughly 9,000, took up a position on the ridge between Little Oxendon and East Farndon, a few miles south of Market Harborough. Facing them was a Parliamentary army of 14,000, many of them professional soldiers for the first time. On the morning of 14 June, on the fields just north of the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire, the two armies met.
It was over in hours. The Royalist infantry was destroyed. Over a thousand were killed and more than 4,500 captured. The king’s personal correspondence was seized, revealing his attempts to bring foreign Catholic forces into the war, which fatally damaged his reputation. Charles fled. He would never again command an army of such quality. Within a year, he was a prisoner. Within four, he was dead.
Market Harborough was where the last real Royalist confidence existed. The town has not forgotten entirely. The Three Swans Hotel on the High Street, a sixteenth-century coaching inn, is said to be where Charles spent his last night as a king with an army. The old square still feels like the kind of place where a man could convince himself that everything was going to be fine.
Where to Stay: The Three Swans Hotel on the High Street in Market Harborough. A 500-year-old coaching inn with elegant rooms, seasonal menus, and a very particular ghost.
Worth Knowing: Fairfax recaptured Leicester for Parliament on 18 June, just four days after Naseby. The speed of the reversal gives some measure of how completely the Royalist cause had collapsed.
Practical Tips
- The six sites can be visited by car over two to three days. Leicester itself covers three of the locations, with Ashby, Bosworth and Market Harborough requiring short drives into the county.
- The AllTrails app is the best way to navigate walking routes around Bosworth Field and the wider Leicestershire countryside.
- Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre is open daily and charges an entry fee. The country park and its trails are free.
- Ashby de la Zouch Castle is an English Heritage property. Members enter for free. Check seasonal opening hours before visiting.
- Leicester’s Civil War remains are scattered across the city centre and are free to visit at any time. The Newarke Houses Museum provides useful context.
- Market Harborough is a pleasant market town with independent shops and good food. It makes a comfortable base for exploring the southern half of the county.
Responsible Visiting
These are sites where people died, sometimes in very large numbers. The siege of Leicester in 1645 killed around a fifth of the town’s population. The battle at Naseby ended with mass graves. Bosworth Field saw a reigning king cut down in the mud. Walk these places quietly. Do not climb on castle walls or remove any objects from battlefield sites. Report any finds, especially metalwork, to the local finds liaison officer.
Reader Q&A
Is the actual site of Boudica’s last battle confirmed at High Cross? No. High Cross is one of several candidate sites, alongside Mancetter in Warwickshire and locations further south. The exact site has never been confirmed archaeologically. But the case for somewhere in this area of the Midlands, along or near Watling Street, is strong.
Can you walk the actual Bosworth battlefield? Yes. The Battlefield Trail at Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre is 2.2 kilometres and passes close to the area now identified as the true site of the fighting. The heritage centre displays the key finds from the archaeological survey.
Are the Civil War remains in Leicester easy to find? Some are. The musket holes in the town wall behind the Newarke Houses Museum are visible and signposted. The firing loops at St Mary de Castro require a little more searching. A good starting point is the Newarke Houses Museum itself, which has material on the siege.
Is Market Harborough worth visiting beyond the Civil War connection? Absolutely. It is one of the most attractive market towns in Leicestershire, with Georgian architecture, a fine high street and good walks along the River Welland. Foxton Locks, a flight of ten canal locks, is a short drive away and one of the finest canal heritage sites in England.
Are these sites suitable for children? The castle at Ashby and the Bosworth Heritage Centre are both excellent for families. The heritage centre has interactive displays and hands-on activities. Leicester’s city sites are better suited to older children and teenagers with an interest in history.
Where to Stay
For Leicester and its city-centre sites, Hotel Maiyango on St Nicholas Place is a boutique option in the city’s historic heart. For Bosworth Field and western Leicestershire, Bosworth Hall Hotel and Spa in Market Bosworth offers a historic setting within walking distance of the battlefield. For Market Harborough and the southern county, The Three Swans Hotel on the High Street is a coaching inn with 500 years of history and rooms where kings once slept.
