There is a mile-long canal tunnel running directly beneath Husbands Bosworth, which most of the thousand or so people living above it probably don't think about very often. The village sits at a crossroads in South Leicestershire where the A5199 meets the A4304, thirteen miles south of Leicester, with the M1 at Junction 20 a short drive along the latter. It's a large village by rural standards — around ninety businesses, a post office and general store, a doctor's surgery with its own dispensary, a hairdresser, an estate agent. You could live here without needing to leave very often.
The Bell Inn on Kilworth Road is a family-run pub that has, by most accounts, been significantly improved by its current operators Sean and Dan. The interiors have been redecorated, the beer garden rebuilt to the point where reviewers use the word "fantastic," and the kitchen turns out home-made pies — steak and ale, steak and Stilton, chicken and mushroom — alongside fish and chips and burgers. Portions are described as generous. Dogs are welcome, and not in the grudging way some pubs manage: there are blankets and treats provided. Four televisions show Sky and TNT Sports. There is a pool table and a dartboard.
The second pub is The Wharf House Hotel, which sits on the Welford Arm of the Grand Union Canal and serves the narrowboat community that passes through. Two marinas operate within the parish — Welford Marina and North Kilworth Marina — so there's a steady population of people in waterproof clothing.
The Welford Arm itself makes for a good walk. It's a navigable feeder branch, about one and three-quarter miles long, originally built to supply water from the Welford, Sulby, and Naseby reservoirs to the canal's twenty-mile summit level. The towpath is flat, quiet, and good for watching herons pretend you're not there. Beyond the canal, footpaths cross open farmland towards North Kilworth and Welford through the kind of gently rolling South Leicestershire landscape that doesn't make it onto postcards but is pleasant to walk through on a Tuesday afternoon.
All Saints Church dates from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, with a mid-fourteenth-century tower and an octagonal spire. It has five bells and six stained memorial windows. The steeple was struck by lightning in 1755, which must have been something. Church records go back to 1500.
The village's most consequential resident was John Cook, baptised at All Saints on 18 September 1608, who grew up to become Solicitor General and lead prosecutor in the trial of King Charles I. He was executed as a regicide in 1660, which is the sort of career arc the village doesn't put on the signs.
In 1086 the Domesday surveyors recorded five separate holdings here, totalling roughly twenty-four carucates across some forty-six households. The name itself comes from an Old English personal name, with the prefix "Husbands" — meaning farmers — added in the late sixteenth century to stop people confusing it with Market Bosworth.
RAF Husbands Bosworth opened in 1943 and trained Wellington Bomber crews for night operations. After the war, the camp housed over five hundred displaced Polish families, complete with their own church, school, and recreation room, until 1956. The airfield is still in use: the Coventry Gliding Club has operated from it since 1965, and the National Police Air Service flies a Eurocopter EC135 out of there, covering the Midlands and East Anglia. So on a clear day you might see both gliders and a police helicopter, which is a combination you don't get everywhere.
Market Harborough station, on the Midland Main Line, is the nearest railway connection. Buses run to Leicester and Market Harborough.
