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alking into Oakham’s old town centre, a blue plaque on a stone cottage caught my eye. It commemorated former resident Jeffrey Hudson (1619-1682), the ‘smallest man from the smallest county in England’. Hudson, I later leaned, was a metre-high court dwarf, decreed a ‘wonder of the age’ for his well-proportioned tiny size. So a bit like Rutland itself. Rutland is the country’s smallest historic county by some margin and, hovering in the landlocked midlands, one many outsiders struggle to place on map. But it’s a perfectly formed package of rural England and crams a fair amount into its limited borders, from Cotswold-like villages to one of the largest man-made reservoirs in Europe. As its motto declares: Multum in Parvo – much in little. It hasn’t long been this way. Although the county’s heritage stretches back centuries, it was incorporated into Leicestershire in the 1970s and only regained its unitary status in 1997 – so in 2022, Rutland marks the 25th anniversary of its modernage independence.
“It’s nice to be independent,” baker Richard Baines told me as I ate a slice of traditional Battenberg outside his Uppingham store. “Control – you have control. And it’s unique isn’t it?” Indeed, there is a uniqueness and quirk to this county. I drank honey-laced beer at the Grainstore tap room, a rare example of a traditional gravity-fed brewery. At Stoke Dry church I saw murals with a Native American-style headdress that, some believe, provide evidence of North America being discovered long before Columbus. I ate at the wonderful King’s Arms in Wing, where smoked Rutland Water trout and culled grey squirrel is often on the menu. I cycled around the Hambleton peninsula, which used to be a ridge amid fields but is now a headland poking into the reservoir. And at Oakham Castle I wondered why it’s been a thing, since at least 1470, for visiting nobles to gift enormous decorative horseshoes - a practice that happens nowhere else. No, Rutland is distinctly itself, and all the better for it. And its compact size makes it ideal for discovering over a weekend. ⊲
Ask a local
“Explore Rutland on foot. Start at Uppingham’s historic Market Place (where there’s a market every Friday, as there has been for centuries) and grab a snack from Uppingham Fine Food, my favourite independent shop. Stroll down the High Street and walk along a path called The Inhams to beautiful Bisbrooke – home to Wilma the village pig, an artisan bakery, a secret garden and a stunning church – before looping back to Uppingham.” Charlie Pallett, the Rutland Blogger, rutlandblog.co.uk
Alamy; Shutterstock; Elli Dean; Donald Talbot
REPRO OP
Small-but-perfectly formed, Rutland packs in pretty villages, heritage and one of Europe’s largest man-made reservoirs. Sarah Baxter explores England’s most-diminutive county
52.6705°N 0.7333°W
VERSION
Rutland
180 February/March 2022
BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN
