Histories of Leicestershire: Reflections on Landscapes.

One of the few books in my childhood home was Hoskins ‘Leicestershire: An Illustrated Essay on the Landscape’ (Hodder & Stoughton, London: 1957). Hoskins was my first tutor in understanding what I saw on long cycle rides south and west of Leicester – most obviously, a landscape of parliamentary enclosure, the impact of the agricultural revolution. Beneath the landscape, geology, underpinning a palimpsest of settlement, lost villages, footpaths and tracks, industry and urbanisation.

It was long after I’d moved away from Leicestershire that I came back to visit and stood in the spot where Hoskins had taken his photo of Gumley Hall, built in 1764 and demolished in 1964:

The site in 2022; you can still make out the low earth banks either side of the lawn, and the trees are still in place.