Some of the things said about Mountsorrel over the last 300 years

Diary of John Throsby 1677-1724

‘sometimes called Mount Sterile’

Supplementary volume to the Leicestershire Views containing a series of excursions in the year 1790 to the villages and places of note in the county  John Throsby

This is denominated a market town, standing on the Loughborough road; it consists chiefly of one long street, paved with large stones, unfavourable to drowsy passengers in carriages going through it.

Derby Mercury 1849

One of the most wonderful places in our wonderful neighbourhood is, doubtless, Mountsorrel. The appearance of the town itself, so often compared by tourists to Gibraltar-the rocky steeps that overhang it and the remains of the ancient Norman Castle which once frowned from those steeps over the valley of the  Soar-can scarcely fail to afford a matter of delight and surprise to anyone who visits this singular locality for a the first time.

Memorials of old Leicestershire’  1911 EA Henson

In 1793, Sir Joseph Danvers, the lord of the manor, removed it (the old market cross) to Swithland Park. He substituted for it a small circular market house supported by pillars, but this is now in a painful state of dirt and dilapidation.

The memoirs of Mrs Rebecca Wakefield, 1888  Robert Brewin

Its long, wide, clean street of varying granite and brick houses is bounded on the western side by rugged overhang­ing hills where, on the hot summer days, sleek red and white cattle hold undisturbed possession, as they look dreamily down upon the thatched and slated roofs and luxuriant gardens below; or rosy-faced children while away the long Saturday afternoons in stringing buttercups and daisies.

The Manchester and Glasgow Road Vol 1,1907  Charles Harper

Let no one, charmed with the name of Mountsorrel, come to the place with high expectations of finding a picturesqueness to match the romantic scenery of rugged rock looking down upon the pleasant valley of the Soar. It has been since 1845 the scene of quarry operations, and atrocious raw scars seam the mount on all sides and beneath it, and for close upon a mile along the road runs an abject townlet of the out-at-elbows, down-at-heel variety, with row upon row of mean cottages where many of the seven hundred quarrymen and their families dwell. That is modern Mountsorrel.

Highways and Byways in Leicestershire  J B Firth

Mountsorrel is a romantically named but singularly unattractive township.

Leicester Evening Mail, 1935

At first blush, our village with its long mean street may appear monotonous, and dreary even to the point of ugliness. Let us hasten to assure you that the dreariness and ugliness of Mountsorrel are mere optical illusions. Approach our village by the rivers entrance. Walk along the tow-path from Cossington and the astonishing secret beauty of Mountsorrel is revealed in the sun.