Qualla: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

Ashby-de-la-Zouch: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is a 1946 song that insists you should "go to Ashby de la Zouch by the sea." Al Hoffman, Milton Drake, and Jerry Livingston wrote it for the Merry Macs, and it makes a fine joke because Ashby is almost exactly as far from the sea as it is possible to be in England. The town sits at the centre of the country, between Burton upon Trent and Coalville, surrounded by the National Forest, near the borders of three counties. The American jazz bassist Charles Mingus recorded a tune called "Ashby de la Zouch" the same year, possibly because his guitarist Irving Ashby was in the studio. None of this has much to do with the town itself, but it captures something true: Ashby is a place whose long-vowel French name and curious history have given it cultural reach far beyond its 16,491 inhabitants.

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Ashby-de-la-Zouch: Why the Funny Name

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ashby is Anglo-Danish, meaning "farm by the ash trees," recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 simply as Ashby. The Norman French addition came later, after the manor passed to the La Zouche family in the reign of Henry III. They held the place for over two centuries and left thei...

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Ashby-de-la-Zouch: The Spa Years

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1805 mineworkers at Moira Colliery, three miles west of town, struck a copious saline spring while working coal. The water was promptly recognised as therapeutic, and developers built the Moira Baths nearby with a hotel for travellers. Within a few years it was decided the spr...

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Ashby-de-la-Zouch: Ivanhoe Everywhere

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe, published in 1819, set its great archery and jousting tournament "in the lists at Ashby-de-la-Zouch." Scott set the action in 1194, used the place name freely without ever visiting it as far as anyone can tell, and changed the town forever. Ivanhoe b...

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Ashby-de-la-Zouch: The Loudoun Monument and the Modern Town

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Edith Rawdon-Hastings, 10th Countess of Loudoun, died in 1874. Her widowed husband Baron Donington commissioned Sir George Gilbert Scott to design a memorial in her honour, and in 1879 an octagonal monument based on the medieval Eleanor crosses was erected at the junction of Bath...

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