Belvoir Castle is one of the most photographed subjects in Leicestershire postcards. The current castle is a 19th-century Gothic Revival rebuild, completed for the Duke of Rutland after a fire tore through the previous building in 1816, and the Manners family have held the site for close to a thousand years. It sits almost exactly where Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire meet, overlooking the Vale of Belvoir, home to the village of Stathern.
Market Harborough has held a weekly market since 1204, and postcards of the town show a proper working market town, including the timber-framed Old Grammar School of 1614, built on wooden pillars to leave space for a butter market underneath. Castle Donington postcards picture Donington Hall, built in the 1790s for the Hastings family, Earls of Huntingdon; the Hall was requisitioned as a prisoner-of-war camp during the First World War, and in 1915 German airman Gunther Plüschow made the only successful escape from British captivity of either World War from its grounds.
Postcards in this collection span the early 1900s through to the mid-20th century, taking in everything from grand country houses to everyday market town photography. Postcards from Loughborough, Melton Mowbray, Ashby-de-la-Zouch and other Leicestershire towns and villages are added to this page as new stock arrives.
