The lounge of The Bull Inn on the High Street has a framed photograph of Stan Laurel pulling pints. This is not decorative whimsy. His sister Olga ran the place from 1948, and in 1952, Laurel and Hardy stayed for Christmas, served behind the bar, and entertained the regulars. The memorabilia has been there since.
Bottesford is the largest village in the Vale of Belvoir, built around the ford where the High Street crosses the River Devon — pronounced "Dee-von," for reasons Leicestershire has never felt the need to explain. The A52 bypass took the through-traffic away in 1989, and what's left is a village that works as a village: a Co-op, a post office inside the Village Store, a pharmacy, and a cluster of independent shops around Orchard Square.
There are two pubs. The Bull is the drinkers' one — three cask ales, pool table, darts, dominoes, a piano, and a function room that does live music. Dogs welcome. The Rutland Arms, fifty yards up the road, is the eating one. Punch Pubs put £130,000 into a refurbishment, and the menu runs from a signature smashed burger to pasta alfredo to ribeye steak to battered haddock. Sunday lunches are locally sourced. There's a revamped beer garden. Dogs are also welcome, which between the two pubs means you could walk a dog from one end of the High Street to the other and never be refused entry.
The Red Lion, which was Grade II listed and about 300 years old, closed in 2017 and is now someone's house. The Thatch, a Grade I listed building from 1621, operates as a restaurant with rooms — four of them — rather than a pub in any meaningful sense.
For walks, the Grantham Canal towpath starts at the edge of the village. The canal was completed in 1797, closed in 1936, and is now being restored, which gives the towpath the pleasant quality of going somewhere without any boats to worry about. Two parish walks loop out through the surrounding fields — one a gentle 1.7 miles, the other 4.6. If you want something more committed, the Belvoir Witches Challenge is a 23-to-25-mile circuit that takes in Belvoir Castle, Denton Reservoir, and a stretch of the canal.
The witches in question are commemorated inside St Mary the Virgin, whose spire reaches 210 feet — the second highest in Leicestershire and, unusually, 36 feet taller than the tower beneath it. The church holds eight tombs of the Earls of Rutland, the Manners family from Belvoir Castle. The sixth earl's tomb is the one people come for. Its inscription records that his two sons died "by wicked practises and sorcerye." Joan Flower and her daughters, dismissed servants from the castle, were arrested in 1618. Joan choked to death on bread she'd demanded as a test of her innocence. Her daughters were hanged at Lincoln. Simon Jenkins gave the church three stars.
The village has a railway station on the Nottingham-to-Grantham line, though it has been described as the least-used in the county. Nottingham is fifteen miles west. Grantham is seven miles east. The Domesday surveyors recorded 110 households and a lord called Leofric of Bottesford, which made it one of the larger settlements even then.
On a clear day from the canal towpath, you can see Belvoir Castle sitting on the ridge above the vale. The fields between are liassic clay — flat, hedged, and very quiet.
