Administrative Boundary of Leicestershire

About Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a county in the East Midlands of England. Covering approximately 2,083 square kilometres of rolling agricultural land, ancient woodland, and upland fringe, Leicestershire had a population of approximately 720,000 at the 2021 Census (excluding the unitary authorities of Leicester and Rutland). The county is most famous internationally as the site of the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 — the decisive engagement of the Wars of the Roses that ended the Plantagenet dynasty and inaugurated the Tudor age — and for the remarkable discovery of the remains of Richard III beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. It also contains Belvoir Castle, Charnwood Forest, and the ancient hunting country of the Leicestershire shires. Bosworth Field and the End of the Plantagenets The Battle of Bosworth Field — fought on 22 August 1485 at Bosworth, near Market Bosworth in west Leicestershire — was the decisive engagement of the Wars of the Roses and one of the most consequential battles in English history. Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, was killed in the battle — the last English king to die in battle — when the Stanley family switched sides in the midst of the fighting. Henry Tudor, the victorious claimant, was crowned on the battlefield as Henry VII, inaugurating the Tudor dynasty and the transition from medieval to early modern England. The site of the battle (confirmed by detailed archaeological survey in the 2010s to be slightly south of the traditional site, near Fenn Lane Farm) is now a heritage centre managed by Leicestershire County Council. Richard III's remains — lost for 527 years — were discovered in 2012 beneath a car park in Leicester that had been built over the site of the Grey Friars church where he was buried after the battle. DNA analysis confirmed the identification and the discovery received global media attention; his remains were reinterred with full honours in Leicester Cathedral in 2015. Belvoir Castle Belvoir Castle — pronounced "Beaver Castle" — is the principal seat of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland and one of the most dramatically sited country houses in England, its romantic neo-Gothic towers and battlements visible for miles across the Vale of Belvoir from its ridge above the Vale at the junction of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire. The present castle is the fourth on the site, largely rebuilt in neo-Gothic style after a fire in 1816 by architect James Wyatt's son Matthew Cotes Wyatt and the 5th Duke of Rutland; the state rooms contain an outstanding collection of paintings, tapestries, furniture, and armour. The fictional Belvoir Castle was the setting for the television series Downton Abbey (though the exterior shots used Highclere Castle in Hampshire). Charnwood Forest and Natural Heritage Charnwood Forest, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in northwest Leicestershire, is an upland area of ancient, heavily weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks — some of the oldest exposed rocks in England, dating to the Precambrian — and associated ancient woodland, heath, and scrub. The landscape of rocky tors, ancient oaks, bracken, and heathland is unlike any other in the East Midlands. Bradgate Park, within Charnwood Forest, is a medieval deer park and the ruins of Bradgate House — the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey (the "Nine Days' Queen" of England, 1553, executed in 1554 at the age of sixteen or seventeen) — set around a picturesque ruined manor house in a large natural parkland open to the public. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Leicestershire County Council is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the ONS Open Geography Portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports battlefield archaeology, castle estate mapping, ancient woodland conservation, Precambrian geology, and demographic analysis across the Leicestershire local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Leicestershire county