The Flying Childers is named after a racehorse. Specifically, a racehorse foaled in 1714 that was never beaten, which is the sort of CV most pubs can only dream of. The pub itself came later — built in 1904 further along the road from the original, which had operated out of a row of cottages before being converted to housing. Inside, bare brick and dark wood, whitewashed walls, ornate mirrors. It looks like someone who reads interiors magazines got hold of a country pub and, unusually, knew when to stop.
The food is the main draw. A rotisserie menu sits alongside twenty-five daily specials, and the kitchen runs from British classics through to what they describe as modern European and global flavours. Homemade kebabs are a signature. Sunday roasts come with the full menu still available, which is generous. Dogs are welcome in the bar area, the beer garden has heating, and there's a children's play area out back. For a village of 369 people, this is a lot of pub.
It is, in fact, the only pub. Kirby Bellars has no shops to speak of. What it does have is a church substantially larger than a village this size has any right to.
St Peter's is Grade I listed, thirteenth-century ironstone, with a tall spire visible from across the flat vale of the River Wreake. The Augustinian priory that once stood here probably used it as their own chapel, which explains the scale — a four-bay nave, clerestories, chancel, the full set. Inside, there's an alabaster effigy of Sir Roger de Beler, who founded the priory in 1316. The north aisle was demolished in 1670, so the building used to be even bigger.
The priory itself is gone, dissolved in 1536 during the first wave of Henry VIII's programme. But the earthworks survive: a square moat roughly 100 metres to a side, arms 16 to 18 metres wide and up to 3 metres deep, covering an area of almost 200 metres square. It's a Scheduled Ancient Monument maintained by Historic England, and you can walk past it along Main Road in the Kirby Park area.
Walking is the thing here. The River Wreake flows through the parish on low-lying ground, and riverside paths follow it west toward Leicester. Priory Lakes, a wetland site managed by the Leicestershire Wildfowler's Association, offers a wildlife-viewing loop — good for a slow hour with binoculars.
The village sits on the A607, three kilometres west of Melton Mowbray, with bus connections along the same road. It's close enough to Melton to use it for anything Kirby Bellars doesn't provide, which is most things except a good dinner and a long walk.
The Domesday surveyors recorded it as Chirchebi in 1086. Geoffrey of la Guerche held two parcels containing 30 villagers, 100 freemen, and 27 smallholders, valued at £23 10s annually — placing it in the largest 40 per cent of settlements in the survey. The village was considerably bigger then. Enclosure in the early seventeenth century led to deliberate depopulation, and the parish never really recovered.
In 1821, someone found fossil elephant remains here. The Quorn Hunt kennels are on Gaddesby Lane, and the hunt has historically gathered at Park Farm around the eleventh of November each year.
The spire of St Peter's catches the light from a surprising distance across the flat farmland. It was built for a village that no longer exists at that scale, but it still works as a landmark — the kind of thing you navigate by without thinking about it.
