The Manor House was built in 1899 for the men who worked on the Great Central Railway, which makes its current life as an award-winning restaurant a reasonable promotion. The menu runs from beetroot and goats cheese flatbread to stone-baked pizzas to wholesome stews, and they've been buying from local suppliers for over twenty years — meat from Owen Taylor's in Alfreton, dairy from Long Clawson, sustainable seafood rotated seasonally. Sunday roasts run until five, which is civilised.
Quorn sits on the River Soar, three miles south of Loughborough, in the kind of rolling Charnwood countryside that looks good in any weather and exceptional in about three days of the year. The A6 bypass arrived in 1991 and took the through-traffic with it, leaving the village centre noticeably quieter than it has any historical right to be.
There are four pubs, which for a village this size suggests either a serious drinking culture or a serious sense of community. Possibly both. The White Hart Inn dates from 1690 and once had its own brew house. It now runs food pop-ups on Friday and Saturday evenings and does roast cobs on Sundays. The Blacksmith's Arms started life as a farmhouse, became an alehouse sometime between 1861 and 1876, and has a beer garden and an extensive range of international ales. The Royal Oak makes four. Both the Manor House and the White Hart are CAMRA listed.
St Bartholomew's Church is Grade I listed and built from Mountsorrel granite, which comes from just up the road. The nave and chancel date from between 1138 and 1153, when Ranulph, fourth Earl of Chester, gave the church at Barrow together with its chapel at Quorn to the Abbey of St Mary in Leicester. Pevsner noted the inner doorway as "retooled," which is Pevsner for not entirely original. The churchyard is quiet and scattered with gravestones in the way that suggests nobody's tried to tidy it into something presentable.
The village name comes from the Old English for "hill where millstones are obtained." Iron Age granite millstones and Roman building stone were quarried from Buddon Wood, just south of the village. It was officially Quorndon until 1889, when the Post Office got tired of mixing it up with Quarndon in Derbyshire.
The walks are good. A nine-kilometre circular follows Buddon Brook out to Swithland Reservoir through woodland and open countryside. Another route takes you along the heritage railway corridor toward Rothley, where you can watch steam trains pass at close range — the Great Central Railway is the only double-track main line heritage railway in the country. An eight-mile loop east takes in views across Swithland Reservoir and returns along the Grand Union Canal through Barrow upon Soar.
Hugo Meynell moved into Quorn Hall in 1753 and spent the next half-century breeding faster hounds and riding harder to them. He became known as the Father of Modern Foxhunting, which is either a title you'd want or one you wouldn't, depending on your position. The Quorn Hunt remains one of the most famous packs in the world. Future King Edward VIII once got off at Quorn and Woodhouse station specifically to go hunting. Three Royal Navy vessels were named after the hunt.
Gordon Banks, who won the World Cup in 1966 and made that save against Pelé in 1970, grew up in the area. Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian, lived here too.
Quorn doesn't appear in the Domesday Book at all — it was just open countryside within the manor of Barrow-upon-Soar. The village probably didn't exist until the early twelfth century. It's done reasonably well since.
