Qualla: Uppingham

Uppingham: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lorraine Cornwell, Public domain. Uppingham earned its name from the people who lived on the hill. In Old English they were the Yppingas, the upland people, and the town that grew up at the top of their ridge has been called some variant of Uppingham for more than a thousand years. It stands roughly four hundred feet above the surrounding farmland, on the south-eastern edge of Rutland, looking out across countryside that has not changed its essential character since the boundaries of the parish were fixed. The market that gave the town its purpose was granted by royal charter in 1281, when the lord of the manor was given the right to hold a weekly market every Friday. Almost seven hundred and fifty years later, the Friday market is still held in the same square, beneath the spire of St Peter and St Paul. In 2022, The Times named Uppingham the best place to live in the Midlands - 'a discerning market town with art, heart and smarts.' The phrase is reasonably accurate. The town is small, slightly self-conscious about its own attractiveness, and very serious about its art galleries.

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Image: Lorraine Cornwell | Public domain

Uppingham: The Ironstone Square

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poliphilo, CC0. Uppingham is built almost entirely of the warm orange-brown ironstone that comes from the surrounding quarries. The High Street widens into a market place lined with shops, pubs, the Falcon Hotel, the Methodist Chapel of 1819, and the substantial 14th-century parish church of St ...

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Image: Poliphilo | CC0

Uppingham: A Town That Made Its Own Workhouse

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kate Jewell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Uppingham Workhouse first appears in records in 1777, when it had space for forty inmates - the parish providing what amounted to last-resort housing for the destitute. After the New Poor Law of 1834, the system was reorganised, and in 1836 the Uppingham Poor Law Union built a mu...

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Image: Kate Jewell | CC BY-SA 2.0

Uppingham: The Dambusters' Practice Pond

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PeterSkuce, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three miles south of Uppingham, near the village of Eyebrook, lies a reservoir that looks unremarkable on any map. In May 1943, the Eyebrook Reservoir became one of the key practice sites for one of the most famous - and most controversial - bombing missions of the Second World W...

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Image: PeterSkuce | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uppingham: Art Galleries on a High Street

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eugene Birchall, CC BY-SA 2.0. For a town of fewer than five thousand people, Uppingham has an unusual concentration of art galleries. The most prominent is the Goldmark Gallery, which has been operating from the same High Street premises for over forty years and holds more than fifty thousand items in its sto...

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Image: Eugene Birchall | CC BY-SA 2.0

Uppingham: The Branch Line That Closed

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Immanuel Giel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Uppingham once had its own railway station, opened in 1894 at the end of a short branch line from Seaton, just inside the Rutland border. The station sat at the bottom end of Queen Street, on the southern edge of the town. Passenger services were withdrawn in 1960 - victims of th...

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Image: Immanuel Giel | CC BY-SA 4.0