The Bell Inn is built from ironstone the colour of strong tea. It's Grade II listed, late 17th century, and the northern end used to be the village smithy — which explains the proportions, if not the roses. The garden out the back has won awards, and in summer it fills with the kind of quiet contentment that only lavender and a pint of real ale can produce.
East Langton is a small village four miles north of Market Harborough, set on the southern slope of a ridge that runs through the five Langton parishes. There are no shops. There is one pub. The pub is very good.
Head Chef Stefan runs a kitchen that takes itself seriously without making a fuss about it. Lunch is pizza, pasta, or salad. Dinner is another matter: Saddle of Venison with fondant potatoes and seasonal vegetables, or Lemon Sole in Caper Butter. The bar is dog-friendly, stocks local and international beers, and has the kind of unhurried atmosphere that suggests nobody here is in a rush to be anywhere else. CAMRA lists it. The reviews are consistent.
If you walk, the Leicestershire Round passes directly in front of the pub door, which is either good planning or evidence that long-distance footpaths were designed by people who understood priorities. You can pick up a circular route through Thorpe Langton and Church Langton without needing to consult a map for more than a minute or two. The longer option takes in all five Langton villages — Church Langton, East Langton, West Langton, Thorpe Langton, and Tur Langton — a circuit of ironstone cottages and rolling countryside with wide views south across the Welland Valley toward Northamptonshire.
The landscape is gently hilly, green, and built on ironstone that gives everything — buildings, walls, the pub — a warm amber tone. It's not dramatic country. It's the kind of landscape where you walk for an hour and realise you've been staring at the middle distance the whole time.
Church Langton, half a mile up the ridge, has the mother church for all five villages. St Peter's tower sits at about 400 feet and serves as a landmark across the valley — you can see it from the south long before you arrive. The organ inside was given by the Reverend William Hanbury, vicar for 25 years from 1753, a man described as both eccentric and philanthropic, which in an 18th-century clergyman usually meant he spent a lot of money on things other people hadn't asked for.
In Domesday, the whole place was recorded as Langtone, held by Hugh de Grandmesmill. The surveyors counted land for eight ploughs, three slaves, seventeen men, a priest, a knight, and a mill. Total value: forty shillings. Church Langton was the original Saxon settlement; East and West Langton grew up later as daughter villages when the open fields were divided.
In 2000, an Iron Age coin hoard of roughly 5,000 coins was found in the Welland Valley nearby — one of the most significant such discoveries in the country. Someone buried a fortune here two millennia ago and never came back for it.
Market Harborough is the nearest station, on the Midland Main Line to London St Pancras. The Bell Inn, improbably, is listed as an overnight motorhome stop. So you can park up, eat venison, walk the Leicestershire Round in the morning, and leave without having seen another tourist. Most villages would kill for less.
