Where are the Leicestershire Wolds? For those not local to the Leicestershire Wolds the following maps may help.   Leicestershire is a roughly heart-shaped county in the middle of England. The Wolds are in the 'cleft' of the heart.   The Leicestershire Wolds occupy an approximately circular plateau straddling the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border. West to east they extend for nearly fifteen miles and cover an area a little greater than a hundred square miles. Apart from Willoughby on the Wolds all the parishes are in Leicestershire. The surface geology is predominately glacial tills ('boulder clay'). The south-eastern parishes drain into the River Wreake, a tributary of the River Soar, while the western parishes drain more directly into the Soar (which forms the western-most boundary of Prestwold, Burton and Walton parishes). Reading clockwise from top right the parishes are: Old Dalby (OD) Grimston (Gr) Ragdale (Ra) Thrussington (Th) Seagrave (Se) Walton on the Wolds (Wa) Burton on the Wolds (Bu) Prestwold (Pr) Hoton (Ho) Wymeswold (Wy) Willoughby on the Wolds (Wi) Most of the parishes are configured like 'slices of pie', meeting at Six Hills. Until 1974 boundary changes Willoughby parish also extended to Six Hills. There are no hills at Six Hills – the name is a corruption of Seggs Hill, probably a reference to a since-levelled Anglo-Saxon moot mound or prehistoric burial mound. The Fosse Way (the Roman road running from Dorset to Lincoln via Cirencester and Leicester) bisects the Wolds parishes, heading north to Newark. Most of the parishes to the east have names with Scandinavian elements, suggesting considerable Viking settlement in the later ninth century. The parishes to the west mostly do not have Scandinavian elements (Willoughby is an exception) suggesting that the Fosse Way became a boundary during the Anglo-Saxon era. This is still the boundary between administrative districts (currently Charnwood Borough Council and Melton District Council; historically Goscote Hundred and Framland Hundred). A second, more minor, Roman road (running from Barrow on Soar to Eastwell) obliquely crosses the Fosse Way at Six Hills. The site of Vernemetum, a Roman small town, is further north, close to the tripoint of Willoughby, Wymeswold and Old Dalby parish boundaries. The Wolds Historical Organisation has members from the villages to the west of the Fosse Way. In the eastern half Thrussington currently has a long-established local history society and a heritage group formed in Old Dalby around 2020.

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