94 - Leicestershire Vales : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

Leicestershire Vales National Character Area (NCA) consists of low-lying clay vales and river valleys and shares many characteristics with Northamptonshire Vales NCA to the south-east. The town of Market Harborough nestles between the Northamptonshire and Leicestershire Vales NCAs and the A4303 runs along the border. To the north-east lies the higher ground of High Leicestershire NCA, and further north lie Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield NCA and Charnwood NCA, which rise quite steeply from the low-lying land north-west of Leicester. To the north-west of the NCA there is a more gradual transition to the flat, glacial till-dominated edge of the Mease/Sence Lowlands NCA, while to the south-west there is an equally gradual transition to Dunsmore and Feldon NCA and Arden NCA. The Northamptonshire Uplands and Northamptonshire Vales NCAs are to the south.

The area is split geologically into two areas, with the western half underlain by the Mercia Mudstone Group and the eastern half by the Lias Group. The latter continues into the neighbouring Northamptonshire Vales NCA.

The main rivers are the Soar, Sence, Swift and Welland. The River Swift runs out of the area in the south-west into the neighbouring Dunsmore and Feldon NCA. The Soar is fed by the Wreake in the north-west, and the River Sence flows into the area in the south-east. The slightly higher ground around Market Harborough separates the Soar and Welland catchments. Saddington Reservoir provides water for the Grand Union Canal, the ‘Leicester Line’ of which runs north from Norton Junction in the Northamptonshire Uplands NCA to Leicester, where it joins the River Soar to provide a link to the River Trent and to the Trent and Mersey Canal.

Expansive views into the area are afforded from the fringes of the elevated clay wolds, with the large settlements of Leicester, Hinckley and Market Harborough dominating the views.

The M1 cuts through the middle of the NCA, linking London with the North, and the M69 links the NCA with Dunsmore and Feldon, and Arden in Warwickshire. The A5, historically known as the Roman road of Watling Street, and the Fosse Way (the Bath to Lincoln road) are strategic routes through the area, linking London with Holyhead in Wales and linking Bath to Lincoln. Rail routes run north-south through Leicester, going south to Kettering, Bedford, Luton and London; and north to Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds. Junctions north of Leicester station go east to Peterborough and Cambridge and west to Nuneaton and Birmingham.

The area also includes part of the 160-kilometre Leicestershire Round trail, which links several NCAs including Charnwood and High Leicestershire, and National Cycle Routes 6 (London to the Lake District) and 63 (Burton upon Trent to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire).

The Leicestershire Vales today

This is a large, relatively open and uniform landscape composed of low-lying clay vales interrupted by varied river valleys. Its sense of place comes less from its overall landform and more from its visually dominant settlements and views of the surrounding higher ground, particularly to the north of Leicester. The north-eastern corner of the area is dominated by the city of Leicester. Other large- to medium-sized settlements include Market Harborough, Lutterworth and Hinckley, with many attractive small towns and villages, and buildings and features of historic interest in between. In the north of the area there is a predominance of built settlements and a general associated lack of tranquillity. This contrasts strongly with a distinctly rural and tranquil feel the landscape in the south of the area, where a mixture of arable and pastoral farmland pervades. Country houses, historic designed parkland, waterside trees and meadows are common throughout.

The western part of this large and complex area is underlain by the Mercia Mudstone Group. To the east, the Lias Group mudstones crop out, with common interbedded limestones in the Blue Lias Formation forming a belt up to 5 km wide at the base. Between Market Harborough and Husbands Bosworth, ironstones of the Marlstone Rock Formation form pronounced topographic ridges, locally capped by the Whitby Mudstone Formation.

The older, Ordovician age South Leicestershire Diorites form a line of hills from Enderby to Sapcote. These hard igneous rocks have been quarried for road and building stone. The whole area is covered by extensive glacial deposits, mainly of till but also with significant areas of sand and gravel and glaciolacustrine clays which begin to thin out to the south-east around Market Harborough.

The area is dominated by the river valleys of the Soar, Swift and Sence and their tributaries, with riverside meadows and waterside trees and shrubs common elements. The Soar Valley is dominated by urban development spreading and encroaching from Leicester. Tree cover is often low and localised, and fields are generally large to medium sized. In this open landscape, urban and suburban infrastructure and associated features such as pylons can be conspicuous. To the south of the valley, the hedgerow and woodland cover increases and the urban influences diminish. A wide range of wildlife can be found in the flood plain wetlands, including otter and water vole and birds such as snipe, redshank and sand martin. Wetlands are also an important habitat for a wide range of invertebrate species; in particular, the Soar Valley contains known sites for a number of nationally rare beetles. Wetland habitat is associated with a few locally scarce plants; however, many watercourses are fringed by common, tall reed-like plants such as common club-rush, grey club-rush and reedmace. Many larger, open waterbodies can be found along the river valleys as a result of gravel extraction. These lakes and wetlands are important for wildfowl. Sites such as Watermead Country Park, on the northern side of Leicester, were initially farmland and then worked for gravel extraction before the disused gravel pits were restored and transformed into lakeside parks and wetlands.

Large woodlands are not a characteristic, but a wooded character derives from the many, usually small, woods, fox coverts and spinneys confined mainly to valley sides, on ridges and on more undulating land. Tree cover throughout the area has been substantially affected by Dutch elm disease and ash canker. Ash die-back has the potential to cause further change. A few larger wooded areas do exist, principally in parkland estates. Ancient woodland is scattered and fragmented but its distribution provides clues to the boundaries and margins of medieval and later open field townships. Mature trees, found across the area and often associated with ancient woodland, are an important habitat for many species. They provide roosting sites for seven species of bat, including Daubenton’s, whiskered and Natterer’s, as well as birds such as the stock dove, green woodpecker, redstart and barn owl. Mature trees are also particularly important for beetles and lichen species. The relatively low level of woodland in the area makes the remaining mature trees more prominent and influential in the landscape. Other important habitats include a number of small but mature broadleaved woodlands and spinneys, significant areas of grassland such as the neutral grassland in Goss Meadows and Kirby Frith Local Nature Reserves, and the grassland around Aylestone and Birstall. There are seven Local Nature Reserves in the city of Leicester, many linked by the rivers and the canal flowing through the centre of the urban area.

The landscape contains a considerable variation in field pattern, although the initial impression is of a landscape dominated by enclosure of former medieval open fields. This took the form of both regular geometric patterns – with straight hedgerows and roads among which sit planned farmsteads – and sizeable areas of less regular, non-Parliamentary enclosure dating from the 16th century, which often preserve the curved boundaries of medieval strip fields. There is considerable variety in the distribution, condition and density of hedgerows and hedgerow tree cover. Hedgerows tend to be low and closely trimmed, and hedgerow trees are often in poor condition. There are substantial waterside trees and meadows, but generally the flatter areas are given over to arable, where hedgerows can be particularly low, broken and intermittent. The most common hedgerow shrub is hawthorn, but older hedgerows contain a wide variety of species that are often characteristic of woodland, including field maple, dogwood and buckthorn. Characteristic hedgerow butterfly species include brimstone, purple and white-letter hairstreaks and holly blue. Ridge-and-furrow earthworks, significant in a national context, survive under pasture and, even more importantly, open field patterns survive at Gumley, Saddington and Mowsley (Laughton Hills).

This is an area of mixed farming where, on the slopes of the many minor valleys, on more undulating ground generally and close to settlements, pasture in small fields tends to predominate. Arable land is found on the broader, flat river terraces, and there has been a noticeable recent expansion of arable cultivation within this NCA. Seeds from arable weeds are an important food source for manyspecies of farmland bird such as grey partridge, corn bunting and skylark. Arable farming also supports butterflies such as the small skipper, gatekeeper and ringlet.

Timber frame was the most common form of building material for domestic and farm buildings before the 18th century, and survives encased in later stone and brick rebuilding. In the town centres – and to some extent in the frequent small towns and villages in the south-eastern part of the area – the older buildings and walls are constructed in an attractive range of local stones. Brick predominates and varies in colour from orange to deep red, with limestone and use of render adding variety, both in the older village cores and in the more regimented terraces of Leicester and Hinckley. The tradition of using brick as a building material in the area has resulted in many fine and prominent red brick buildings in the landscape. There are many large villages, but the frequent small ones show less 20th-century influence. This is particularly true in the south-east, where an older character of fine stone churches and mellow brick is present. As is the case in the neighbouring Northamptonshire Vales NCA, even when the landscape is not influenced by recent development, settlements are never very far apart and are prominent due to the imposing spired churches that punctuate the skyline.

Lutterworth and Market Harborough have retained the character of older market towns and they are linked to the rural areas by a dense network of minor roads. The area is rich in heritage assets, particularly late medieval buildings, such as Kirby Muxloe Castle, and groups of estate cottages, estate villages and planned farmsteads near the large country houses. There is a high survival of earlier timber-frame buildings in the west of the NCA, an area more notable for variety than uniformity, and also at Market Harborough. The NCA hosts the nationally important battlefield of Bosworth Field, where the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses was fought in 1485.

In recent times there has been a relatively high rate of change from a more remote, rural character to an urban one. Pressure for development in the Leicestershire Vales is locally concentrated, such as the wind turbines around Lutterworth and at road junctions along the M69, around Hinckley and at Great Glen, as well as on the fringes of Leicester. Together with the presence and use of major transport routes, notably the M1 and M69 motorways and other major roads such as the A6 and A5, widespread development is challenging the rural and unspoilt character of much of the area and is further urbanising the road corridors.

The landscape through time

The geology of much of the western half of Leicestershire is dominated by the red mudstones of the Triassic-age Mercia Mudstone Group. These rocks were formed from wind-blown dust that settled into shallow saline lakes and mudflats within an extensive alluvial plain, with deposits up to 300 m thick. It was periodically inundated by flash floods that deposited thin beds of siltstone and sandstone. The Mercia Mudstone Group is quarried for brick making in Leicestershire. The older, Ordovician-age South Leicestershire Diorites form a line of low hills from Enderby to Sapcote; these hard, igneous rocks have been quarried for road and building stones. In the south-east of the area, between Leicester and Market Harborough, Triassic rocks are overlain by Jurassic-age limestones and clays. Deposits of glacial till (clay) are widespread throughout the NCA, covering much of the bedrock, along with areas of glacial sand and gravel which have been worked for aggregate.

The river valleys were a focus of settlement from at least Neolithic times and had become extensively settled by the Bronze Age. The gravel terraces of the Soar were thick with bronze-age occupation and ritual sites, and the valleys have been settled ever since. The surrounding land, however, was less densely occupied in prehistory, particularly in Leicestershire west of the Soar.

By the Iron Age, much of the better land had been cleared and there was major settlement in the valleys. Dense occupation of the Soar Valley continued into Roman times, with a major Roman centre established at Leicester (Ratae) on the site of an earlier iron-age ramparted settlement.

The Roman roads of the Fosse Way (linking the early ‘outpost’ garrisons at Exeter and Lincoln and forming an early frontier in Roman-occupied Britain), Gartree Road and Watling Street form features that are still prominent in the landscape. Romano-British settlement was dense, with villas and hamlets associated with centres such as Leicester.

Anglo-Saxons took over a landscape that was substantially cleared of woodland, except furthest from the river valleys. The ‘-tons’ and ‘-hams’ still dominate the place names, and a number of parish boundaries originate from ‘Saxon’ estate boundaries. Away from the river valleys, settlement was less dense. A scattering of Scandinavian settlements became established in the 9th century, particularly in the thick boulder clay of Leicestershire, west of the Soar. Leicester developed in this period as a significant Viking settlement. Important towns such as Market Harborough and Lutterworth also owe their origin to the pre-conquest period. As the population expanded and the land was re-organised, frequent nucleated villages developed, surrounded by open fields. Significant areas of ridge and furrow remain from these open fields.

On 22nd August 1485, the Battle of Bosworth was fought in the Leicestershire Vales. This was the last significant battle in the Wars of the Roses, the civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York that raged across England in the latter half of the 15th century. The battle was won by the Lancastrians and their leader Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, by his victory became the first English monarch of the Tudor dynasty. His opponent, Richard III, the last king of the House of York, was killed in the battle. Richard’s grave was found during an archaeological investigation in 2012 in a Leicester City Council car park, the former site of Grey Friars church.

From the 15th century onwards there was piecemeal enclosure, but much of the landscape remained unenclosed until much later. The landscape contains a considerable variety of field systems, largely, but not exclusively, related to the process of regular enclosure undertaken in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

There are many surviving ridge-and-furrow earthworks under pasture and, even more importantly, nationally significant open field patterns survive in the townships of Gumley, Saddington and Mowsley (Laughton Hills). With the exception of the parts of forests that extend into the area from neighbouring higher ground and seasonal wetlands, the medieval open field system was extensive across this area. Significant enclosure had certainly taken place before 1750, but many open fields remained and the dominant settlement type continued to be the linear village, with farms concentrated within it. Extensive enclosure, some achieved by private agreement but much formalised through Parliamentary acts, took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries. As it had in the 15th and 16th centuries, enclosure usually meant the conversion of ploughland to pasture. Fossilised cultivation strips, preserved from the last episode of ploughing, were once widespread across the pastoral landscapes of this area. Modern arable practice has dramatically altered this picture, and now most of the remaining areas of ridge and furrow are highly fragmented and vulnerable. Sizeable ridge-and-furrow earthworks occur in some parishes and are key historic features.

Agricultural production developed in relation to the expanding markets of the nearby industrial towns and was heavily biased towards livestock for meat and dairy. Wealthier farms were newly created among the surveyed fields and lanes, many with combination barns serving cattle courts. The poorer inheritors of the enclosed landscape clustered in the old village farmsteads, which gradually declined. As a result, the area contains a much-modified, but still highly significant, survival of 18th-century and earlier farm buildings within the villages, most of which are threshing barns.

Landscaped parks surrounding grand houses were developed between the 17th and 19th centuries when many of the area’s fine manor houses, such as Bosworth Hall, were constructed and villages were rebuilt, occasionally in local stone. The 18th and 19th centuries saw the rapid growth of Leicester as a red brick-dominated residential and manufacturing centre in which the textiles and footwear industries played a major part. These industries transformed settlements in the eastern part of the area, spurred by the development of the Leicester Arm of the Grand Union Canal and the Ashby Canal and later the railways. Visible reminders of the canal system can be found at Foxton Locks, which is the largest flight of staircase locks on the English canal system. Alongside the locks is the Foxton Inclined Plane, built in 1900 as a solution to operational restrictions imposed by the lock flight. It remained in full-time operation for only ten years and was dismantled in 1928. Gravel extraction has also left marks on the landscape, although many sites – such as Watermead Country Park – have now been transformed into wetlands, providing recreational and biodiversity benefits.

Leicester continued to expand through the 20th century, absorbing many of the surrounding villages. Pressure for further growth continues and the impact of modern development is clearly evident along the main transport routes and periphery of major settlements, where ‘out of town’ retail and industrial parks are a common and widely visible feature. Transport infrastructure developments – the M1 widening, the A14/M1/M6 junction, the M1/M69 junction and the park and ride at junction 21 of the M1 – are having a visual impact which is further urbanising the M1 corridor. More recently a Sustainable Urban Extension has been agreed at Lubbesthorpe, near junction 21 of the M1. This will provide a mixed-use development for up to 4,250 dwellings and related land uses, including schools, open space and 21 ha of employment development.