Leicestershire

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**Leicestershire**

Geography
Status	Ceremonial & (smaller) Non-metropolitan county
Region	East Midlands
Area - Total - Admin. council - Admin. area	Ranked 28th 2,156 km² Ranked 26th 2,083 km²
Admin HQ	Glenfield
ISO 3166-2	GB-LEC
ONS code	31
NUTS 3	UKF22
Demographics
Population - Total (2005 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 21st 915,800 425 / km² Ranked 17th 627,800
Ethnicity	85.0% White 11.9% S.Asian 1.2% Afro-Carib.
Politics
Leicestershire County Council http://www.leics.gov.uk/
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Stephen Dorrell Alan Duncan Edward Garnier Patricia Hewitt Andy Reed Andrew Robathan Peter Soulsby David Taylor David Tredinnick Keith Vaz
Districts
Charnwood Melton Harborough Oadby and Wigston Blaby Hinckley and Bosworth North West Leicestershire Leicester (Unitary)

Leicestershire ( IPA: [ˈlɛstəʃə] (RP), IPA: [ˈlɛstəʃɪə] (locally)), abbreviation Leics., is a landlocked county in central England. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire. The county borders onto Lincolnshire, Rutland, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. The border with Warwickshire is Watling Street (the A5).

County Hall, situated in Glenfield, about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Leicester city centre, is the seat of Leicestershire County Council and the headquarters of the county authority. The City of Leicester is administered from offices in Leicester itself and the City Council meets at Leicester Town Hall.

The River Soar rises to the east of Hinckley, in the far south of the county, and flows northward through Leicester before emptying into the River Trent at the point where Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire meet. A large part of the northwest of the county, around Coalville, forms part of the new National Forest area extending into Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The highest point of the county is Bardon Hill at 278 m/912 ft, which is also a Marilyn.

As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the Foxglove as the county flower.

1 History
2 Demographics
3 Economy
4 Education
- 4.1 Average score at GCSE by council district (%)
5 Towns and villages
6 Places of interest
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] History

Leicestershire County Hall at Glenfield, built in 1967

Main article: History of Leicestershire.

Leicestershire was recorded in the Domesday Book in four wapentakes: Guthlaxton, Framland, Goscote and Gartree. These later became hundreds, with the division of Goscote into West Goscote and East Goscote, and the addition of Sparkenhoe hundred. In 1087, the first recorded use of the name was as Laegrecastrescir.

Leicestershire's external boundaries have changed little since the Domesday Survey. The Measham-Donisthorpe exclave of Derbyshire has been exchanged for the Netherseal area, and the urban expansion of Market Harborough has caused Little Bowden, previously in Northamptonshire to be annexed.

In 1974, the Local Government Act 1972 abolished the county borough status of Leicester city and the county status of neighbouring Rutland, converting both to administrative districts of Leicestershire. These actions were reversed on 1 April 1997, when Rutland and the City of Leicester became unitary authorities.

The symbol of the county council, and Leicester City FC, is the fox. Leicestershire is considered to be the birthplace of fox hunting as it is known today. Hugo Meynell, who lived in Quorn, is known as the father of fox hunting. Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough have associations with fox hunting, as has neighbouring Rutland.

[edit] Demographics

The population of Leicestershire (excluding the city of Leicester) is 609,579 (2001). The county covers an area of 2,084 km² (804 sq mi).

The largest population centre is Leicester, followed by Loughborough. Other major towns include Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Coalville, Hinckley, Market Harborough, Melton Mowbray, Oadby and Wigston.

[edit] Economy

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of the non-metropolitan county of Leicestershire and Rutland (it does not include the City of Leicester) at current basic prices published (pp.240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.

Year	Regional Gross Value Added^[1]	Agriculture^[2]	Industry^[3]	Services^[4]
1995	6,666	145	2,763	3,758
2000	7,813	112	2,861	4,840
2003	9,509	142	3,045	6,321

^ Components may not sum to totals due to rounding
^ includes hunting and forestry
^ includes energy and construction
^ includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured

Leicester and Leicestershire has had a traditional industry of knitwear, hosiery and footwear; in the latter it equalled Northamptonshire's idiosyncratic footwear history. The sheep on the county's coat of arms is recognition of this. The local industry only survived through protection of the Multi Fibre Arrangement, which came to an end in 2004. The headquarters of Freeman Hardy Willis - owned by the British Shoe Corporation (before 1996) used to be, and those of Shoefayre (based in South Wigston and owned by the Co-op) and Stead and Simpson (based in Syston, Charnwood) are still in Leicestershire. Shoe Zone (originally known as Benson Shoe) is based on Humberstone Road in the City of Leicester, and took over the Oliver Group in 2000, which included Timpson's former retail division and was actually based just inside the City of Leicester on the Braunstone Frith industrial estate - next to the old plant of the British Shoe Corporation. Staple diet of football supporters, Pukka Pies are based in Syston. The East Midlands Airport is one mile south of Castle Donington, next to the M1 in North West Leicestershire. The M1 is Leicestershire's other important transport hub. The start of the M6, and part of the A14 briefly intersect with the southern tip of Leicestershire. Many large UK retail companies have huge warehouses at the Magna Park complex near Lutterworth, close to the M1. The Midland Main Line provides important connections to Yorkshire and London, and the Birmingham - Stansted Line is essentially Leicestershire's east-west connection from Hinckley to Melton.

[edit] Education

Secondary schools in Leicestershire are completely comprehensive. The schools are segregated by age in some areas to ages 10-14 (middle schools), and 14 to 16 or 18 (upper schools). The schools, compared to other LEAs, have large numbers on the roll - the school sizes are often 2000 and more. For Melton and Blaby districts, although there is division by middle and upper schools, there is only one school for that whole district (for one particular age group); there is no choice of school. Charnwood has the largest school population - four times the size of the Melton district. In the East Midlands, Leicestershire is the third best LEA, after Rutland and Lincolnshire and produces results above average. The best performing school at GCSE, for achieving 5 grades at A-C including Maths and English, is the Beauchamp College in Oadby with 66%, followed by the De Lisle Catholic Science College in Loughborough with 61% and Lutterworth Grammar School with 60%. The England average is 45.8%. The worst performing school is the King Edward VII Science and Sport College in Coalville with 31%, followed by the Burleigh Community College in Loughborough with 36%. At A level, the De Lisle Catholic Science College performs the best, followed by Guthlaxton College in Wigston and the John Cleveland College in Hinckley. Leicstershire also holds the only military college in the whole of Great Britain; Situated in the village of Woodhouse near Loughborough, Welbeck College, or the DSFC (Defence Sixth Form College) as it is also known, prepares pupils for an officer's career in either the RAF, Army, Royal Navy or as a scientist in the Ministry of defence.