Stanford Hall, Leicestershire

Stanford Park is a 20.4 hectares (50 acres) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Swinford in Leicestershire.The park has avenues of oak trees, together with other large trees in an area of pasture. It has the most diverse lichens in the county on the bark of mature trees and on old stonework, including fifteen species not recorded elsewhere in Leicestershire.The park is the grounds of Stanford Hall, a stately home which is open to the public.

Stanford-on-Avon is a village in the civil parish of Stanford in West Northamptonshire, England. It lies next to the River Avon, which here forms the county boundary between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. On the Leicestershire side of the river is Stanford Hall, a historic house. Stanford Reservoir is one mile north of the village. The population is included in the civil parish of Clay Coton. The hamlet's name means 'Stone ford' situated on the River Avon.In a field just north-east of the village there is a stone monument to Percy Pilcher, a 19th century aviation pioneer who died in a glider accident at the location of the monument in 1899.The village was formerly served by Yelvertoft and Stanford Park railway station on the former Rugby and Stamford Railway which closed in 1966. The station is now a private house.Stanford-on-Avon is now the only populated settlement within the civil parish of Stanford. The parish contains the remains of two deserted medieval villages of Downtown and Stanford.

Yelvertoft and Stanford Park railway station was a railway station serving the villages of Stanford-on-Avon and Yelvertoft in the English county of Northamptonshire and the stately home of Stanford Hall nearby in Leicestershire. It was opened as Stanford Hall on the Rugby and Stamford Railway in 1850. Parliamentary approval was gained in 1846 by the directors of the London and Birmingham Railway for a branch from Rugby to the Syston and Peterborough Railway near Stamford. In the same year the company became part of the London and North Western Railway. The section from Rugby to Market Harborough, which included Yelvertoft, opened in 1850. Originally single track, it was doubled at the end of 1878.At grouping in 1923 it became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway.

Westrill and Starmore is a civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. It has no settlement as such as it is one of the least populated parishes in Harborough District, comprising farmland surrounding the track from Stanford Park to Walcote village in the parish of Misterton with Walcote. The parish is located in the south of the county, on the border with Northamptonshire, between the parishes of Swinford and South Kilworth. The principal building in the parish is Stanford Hall, Leicestershire. To the south-east it faces the Northamptonshire parish of Stanford-on-Avon, across the River Avon. The parish is the location of a planning application for eleven wind turbines which is to be the subject of a public inquiry in July 2009.

Clay Coton is a village in West Northamptonshire in England. The population (including Elkington and Stanford-on-Avon) of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 271. The nearest large town is Rugby, Warwickshire, about 7 miles (11.3 km) away by road. The village is close to the M1 Motorway with its junction (known as Catthorpe Interchange with the M6 and A14 road which runs very close to the north. The village is dominated by the mediaeval former church of St. Andrew. Built in 1340, it was restored by Edmund Francis Law in 1866 but fell into disuse in the 1950s and was renovated as a private house in 2000. However, the surrounding graveyard still has public access.Until 2002, despite the small size of the village, it included a pub, called the 'Fox and Hounds'; it was later renamed the 'Fox'. The Fox was renowned for its folk music nights and cask ales. Like the church, it has now been converted to a private house.

Stanford Reservoir is a drinking water reservoir on the River Avon, England. It lies on the county boundary between Leicestershire and Northamptonshire near the village of Stanford-on-Avon. The reservoir was built between 1928 and 1930 by Rugby Urban District Council in order to supply the nearby town of Rugby with drinking water. It was created by building an earth and clay dam across the line of the original river, and flooding a small valley between the villages of South Kilworth and Stanford. At its north-eastern extremity, the river enters the reservoir via a settling pond and leaves at the other end via a spillway and a specially constructed channel below the dam. There is a by-pass channel along the northern perimeter, controlled by sluice gates, which allows the water level in the reservoir to be regulated and reduced for repair and maintenance works, and for the flow of water in the river below the dam to be maintained.The reservoir was enlarged between 1958 and 1959, and now covers an area of approximately 58 hectares (140 acres). The average width of the reservoir is around 300 metres (980 ft) and the overall length is approximately 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi). Following a 1 in 100 year flood risk assessment, the spillway was substantially reconstructed in 2017. The reservoir is still used for its original role, but is now a top-up for the much larger Draycote Water reservoir, some 15 miles (24 km) to the south-west which was created in the 1960s. It is now owned by the company Severn Trent Water.The site is considered important for bird species including tufted duck, wigeon, pochard and shoveller and five species of bats. The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire have a management agreement to look after wildlife aspects. The reservoir is open to public visits, but requires a permit.

Swinford is a nucleated village and civil parish in the Harborough district of the English county of Leicestershire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 586. It used to be on the former A427, which led under the M1, to Catthorpe. The parish church is All Saints, a 12th-century Norman rebuilding of an earlier Saxon church with a 14th-century square bell tower and a Grade II* listed building. The local pub is The Chequers on the High Street, formerly known as Chequer Inn. Its Anglo-Saxon name was "Suin Heaford" meaning "the head of the Suin" referring to a tributary of the River Avon. A wind farm was constructed north of the village at Swinford Corner and commenced operation in Autumn 2012. It consists of 11 turbines, each of 2 MW capacity and is operated by Vattenfall.

Greenhaven Woodland Burial Ground is a natural burial ground located in the village of Lilbourne, 5 miles (8 km) from the town of Rugby, England. It opened in 1994 and was the first privately owned natural burial ground in the country. Greenhaven is situated on 14 acres (57,000 m2) of former agricultural land and originally catered for approximately 7,000 plots, but as of 8 December 2008, roughly 5,000 of these remain.

South Kilworth is a village and civil parish in the southern part of Leicestershire, England, south of North Kilworth. The parish has a population of 430, according to the 2001 Census, and is part of the district of Harborough. The population had risen to 513 at the 2011 census.

The Catthorpe Interchange is a major intersection at the southern end of the M6, the western end of the A14 and junction 19 of the M1 near the village of Catthorpe in Leicestershire, England. It was developed in 1994 when the link to the A14 was added to the pre-existing M1/M6 junction by joining the M1, M6 and A14 to the country lane between Catthorpe and Swinford as part of the Trans European Road Network,.The interchange currently handles over 157,000 vehicles per day and as the previous layout was overloaded and had a poor safety record, improvements were required. Traffic attempting to avoid the interchange caused congestion and nuisance in nearby towns and villages. The Highways Agency acknowledged that the layout of the interchange resulted in a serious accident problem, inconvenience for those wishing to travel between villages in the area, and delays and congestion for both motorway and non-motorway traffic. In January 2014, the work on upgrading the junction to a new free-flowing layout began. The final phase, the local link road, was opened to traffic on 22 December 2016.

Yelvertoft is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire unitary authority in the county of Northamptonshire, England. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 821 people, reducing to 764 at the 2011 Census, increasing again to 804 at the 2021 census.Yelvertoft's main thoroughfare, called High Street, is approximately three quarters of a mile long, from the Parish Church of All Saints to the Village Hall. This linear street follows the course of an ancient Portway known as Salters Way.

Lilbourne railway station was a railway station serving Lilbourne and nearby Catthorpe in Leicestershire, England. It was on the Rugby and Stamford Railway between Clifton Mill and Yelvertoft and Stanford Park. In 1846, the directors of the London and Birmingham Railway gained Parliamentary powers for a branch from Rugby to the Syston and Peterborough Railway near Stamford. In the same year the company became part of the London and North Western Railway. The section from Rugby via Lilbourne to Market Harborough was opened in 1850. The line through Lilbourne was single track until it was doubled at the end of 1878.The 1923 grouping made the LNWR part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway. British Railways closed the station in 1966. All that remains is the trackbed and a platform.