On the village green at Old Dalby, there's a carved tree stump that used to be a Turkey oak. The tree was found to be diseased in 2019, felled in 2024, and its bole carved into a piece of public art that was placed back on the green last November. It's a village that holds onto things, even when they're technically dead.
The Crown Inn is the main event here. It's a traditional pub of considerable age that nearly wasn't — it fell into decline, the village campaigned to save it, got it registered as an Asset of Community Value, and it reopened in August 2015 after extensive refurbishment. Now run by RedCat Pub Company, it does bold, honest food: steaks, homemade pies, authentic pizzas, something called The Crown Burger, and vibrant vegetable dishes, all made with local ingredients. Food runs lunchtimes and evenings Monday to Friday, all day at weekends until six. The beer garden is described by visitors as beautiful and enormous. Dogs and muddy boots are welcome, which is useful given the walking country around here.
Old Dalby sits in the Leicestershire Wolds — the higher, open, rolling ground between Melton Mowbray and Nottingham. The village was formerly called Wold Dalby, or Dalby on the Wolds, which tells you everything about the landscape. You're on rural roads, with bus connections into Melton Mowbray.
The walks take you into that Wolds countryside, and one of the more unusual features is a set of ancient carp ponds that survive from when the Knights Hospitaller had a preceptory here. The Order of St John established their commandery at Dalby by 1206, on lands believed granted by Robert le Bossu, 2nd Earl of Leicester. The estates ran to around 1,440 acres — windmills at Dalby, watermills at Heather, dovecotes, orchards, fishponds, farmland. Steady income for a religious military order in rural Leicestershire. The preceptory was suppressed in the 1540s during the Dissolution, but the carp ponds remain, which is more than can be said for most medieval institutions.
St John the Baptist church is Grade II listed, originally Norman but rebuilt in 1835 by Thomas Winter in Perpendicular style. He used red sandstone ashlar rather than local ironstone, on the grounds that ironstone weathers badly. It has a west tower with four bells. Pevsner gave it a couple of pages.
The Domesday Book recorded Old Dalby in 1086 with 24 households, including 13 villagers and 2 freemen. That put it in the largest 40 per cent of settlements at the time. By 1931 the population was 315, and in 1936 the parish was abolished and merged into Broughton and Old Dalby, which is the kind of administrative indignity small places learn to absorb.
On the edge of the village, there's a railway test track established in 1970. It was originally built for testing Advanced Passenger Trains and has since been used for London Underground Jubilee Line rolling stock and Eurostar test runs. Some of the most significant trains in British railway history have done their first miles here, in a village of a few hundred people.
The Crown's beer garden fills up on summer evenings. People bring their dogs. The carved tree stump watches from the green.
