Queniborough is 'ridiculously picturesque,' a village to attract chocolate box designers and jigsaw makers, says writer and blogger Johnathan Calder, aka Lord Bonkers.
Here you find the English Disney Main Street, where there seems to be a byelaw requiring every pedestrian to be escorted by a dog. You stroll past centuries of architectural charm: cottages small and oversized and self-important, mansions, thatch and Swithland slate to a church with a mad lacy spindle of a spire – ridiculously high (162 feet!) It appears and reappears across the fields on walks around the village, lit up sometimes.
St Mary's Church, the Needle of the Wreake, is 13th and 14th century and Grade 1 listed. The spire is white stone decorated with crockets on all angles and admired by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner and everyone else. Inside it's bright and beautiful with a stunning carved wooden screen.
Two pubs face each other in the middle of the village – once there were seven: a popular gastropub and a traditional local.
The Britannia Inn is perfect for a Sunday roast and a Paneer Tikka Arancini and a Prawn & Crayfish Cocktail Margarita. The landlord, Kam, calls it 'rustic-smart and family friendly' and he welcomes dogs on leads. The dogs welcome the jar of biscuits on the bar.
100 years ago the landlord kept a tame bear in the garden. Her name was Fanny and she liked to escape and stroll round the village. More recently a friendly monkey sat on the bar, occasionally nipping customers, who were mollified with a free half pint.
The Horse and Groom is a friendly local with pool, skittles and music, karaoke and live, with gigs in the lounge of a garden where you can listen from a sofa on summer Sundays. Big Sunday lunch, famous homemade cheesecake, dog friendly.
A former pub crouches opposite: a massive 15th century white thatched cottage called 'The Thatched Cottage'.
Queniborough has a corner shop with a post office, a newsagent, hairdresser's and a coffee shop. Clarkes' the Butcher on Main Street is a mini Fortnum and Mason where Ian Clarke sells, or purveys, deli goods and his own Queniborough sausages and award-winning pork pies – grey here: uncured pork, not pink like in the rest of the country. He exports to the Far East. You'll find home-made ready meals – beef bourguignon and beef with dumplings, and special promotions of fancy breed cows and sheep, last admired grazing around the village.
Surrounding this idyll is a classic tapestry of arable fields, hedgerows and meandering waterways — a world away from Leicester, which is just over eight miles away – with lovely walks on the doorstep.
The 102-mile Leicestershire Round passes close by with waymarkers and well-maintained paths through a network of picturesque villages. Local footpaths lead to other villages with views of undulating farmland and, if you're lucky, foxes, hares, muntjac and roe deer. There are circular walks up to the Ridgemere, which is probably a pre-Roman roadway.
A Roman glass bottle and pottery fragments have been found around the brook and a copper coin and farmers unearthed some Saxon tools and jewellery. 'Queniborough' first appeared in the Domesday Book as Cuinburg (Queen's Burough): 'annual value to lord £4', with 28 villagers, seven smallholders, two plough teams belonging to Lord William, seven men's plough teams and a mill, value ten shillings.
In the Civil War it was Royalist – Prince Rupert holed up in the Old Hall in Coppice Lane (Grade 2 listed). Being Queniborough, there is a second Hall, a stuccoed brick manor built around 1820, where the lord of the manor lived.
Queniborough dabbled with Stilton cheese-making, but decided that its main occupation is 'grazing'. It likes be up-to-date and active though, so it has a park with a playground, a tennis court, an outdoor gym and a zip-wire.
Getting There
By Car: Easily accessed via the A46, turning onto the A607 north of Leicester.
By Rail: Syston railway station is two miles to the west, with connections to Leicester and stations towards Melton Mowbray.
Queniborough is a good base for exploring Charnwood Forest and the market towns of Melton Mowbray and Loughborough, all within a twenty-minute drive.
