Qualla: Oadby

Oadby: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Tomlinson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before the town was called Oadby it had another name, in a language nobody now speaks. The original Anglian settlement here has been completely overwritten, its name lost to whatever happened in the ninth and tenth centuries when Danish invaders renamed half of Leicestershire. The Danes called this place Auðarbýr, meaning Auði's settlement, and that name has shortened through the centuries into Oadby. The only clue that something older lay beneath is a pagan Anglian cemetery discovered in 1760 on Brocks Hill, where the dead have been waiting much longer than the place name that now covers them.

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Image: John Tomlinson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oadby: The Conquered and the Conquerors

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. Oadby is one of seventy Danish settlements in Leicestershire whose names still end in -by, the Old Norse word for village. The Danes came to stay; the suffix is their fossil. King Alfred the Great's wars against the Danelaw concluded in 920, and tradition holds that one of the ba...

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Image: Duncan Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oadby: The Shoe Money Built Here

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mat Fascione, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of its history Oadby stayed small. Then, in the late nineteenth century, the factory owners of Leicester needed somewhere to live that wasn't Leicester. Oadby was four miles south-east of the city on the A6, close enough to commute, distant enough to feel suburban, and t...

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Image: Mat Fascione | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oadby: The Diversity of a Quiet Town

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mat Fascione, CC BY-SA 2.0. Today Oadby has around 23,849 residents in five wards. About a fifth are under seventeen and another fifth are over sixty-five, the demographic shape of a town where families settle and stay. Seventeen percent were born outside the British Isles. Between a fifth and a third come ...

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Image: Mat Fascione | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oadby: Racecourse, Botanical Garden, and a Bass Player

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mat Fascione, CC BY-SA 2.0. Leicester Racecourse straddles the northern boundary of Oadby on the road to Stoneygate, and the University of Leicester Botanical Garden lies in the town as well, an attractive set of grounds occupying former villa gardens. Leicester Tigers, one of England's premier rugby union ...

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Image: Mat Fascione | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oadby: A Town Built for Quiet Days

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mat Fascione, CC BY-SA 2.0. Brockshill Country Park, Ellis Park, Coombe Park, Rosemead Park, Uplands Park: Oadby is generous with its open spaces. Brockshill in particular is named for the hill where the Anglian burial ground was found in 1760, the layered past sitting comfortably under the present-day gras...

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Image: Mat Fascione | CC BY-SA 2.0