logo
motto
map

  • Come and meet some of the people of Charnwood - life is as interesting and as diverse as they make and have made it. It is the people of an area who make places - over 160,000 people daily make Charnwood what it is! Here are some of their stories.

  • Charnwood is a place where people act creatively to construct, innovate, discover and share their fascination with producing things. Come and see a few of the things local people have got up to. Celebrate with us the fantastic connections between people.

  • From some of the oldest rocks in Britain to the beauty of the Soar Valley and the tranquility of Charnwood Forest, we live in a special place. We also have a variety of urban places and the ability to influence them for the better.

People

Charnwood is a place of many artists. Come and meet a few of them here. We have an excellent art college as part of Loughborough University but also the diversity of many self taught artists in the community. These are some of their year 2000 snapshots.

CHARNWOOD BOROUGH - AN OVERVIEW

A third claimant is "GWERN", an old British name for ALDER, of which there was supposedly once a profusion here. Whatever the truth, "CHARNWOOD" and "CHARLEY" come from the same root, with the suffix "-LEY" denoting open land, rather than forest.

CHARNWOOD as a Borough came into being in as a result of a major change in local administration. The LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT of 1972 revolutionised the way local councils were organised, with the result that from April 1st 1974, 1,400 existing councils were reduced to 422 new councils plus six metropolitan counties. The old counties, county boroughs, urban districts and rural districts were replaced by counties and districts operating under separate councils. County wide issues such as education came under the remit of the new County Councils with more local issues being dealt with by parish councils as before.

In Leicestershire, twenty administrative districts were replaced by eight new districts plus Rutland. It was then up to each of the new districts to apply for either city or borough status.
CHARNWOOD DISTRICT became CHARNWOOD BOROUGH and comprised the old BARROW ON SOAR Rural District, SHEPSHED Urban District and LOUGHBOROUGH Municipal Borough, giving it a population second only to LEICESTER. The New Borough Council had 58 members all of which, with the exception of LOUGHBOROUGH, were based on existing parishes

The boundaries of the new Borough were almost immediately criticised for their arbitrary nature. They relate to the boundary changes of pre-1939 and are purely administrative, having no clear physical, social or economic basis. Unlike many Boroughs created by the 1972 Act, CHARNWOOD is somewhat lopsided with the main urban centres of LOUGHBOROUGH and SHEPSHED off to one side in the North West. In essence, CHARNWOOD BOROUGH is made up from five distinct areas.

The urban area around SHEPSHED and LOUGHBOROUGH. The period of greatest development here was in the 18th and 19th centuries with the spread of industrialisation.