The Battle of Saxby
Not everybody welcomed the new railway line. Plans for the new railway line were met with opposition and led to an infamous standoff between a local landowner and the railway surveyors.
A view of Stapleford House, the home of Lord Harborough. A pencil drawing by F.L Griggs.
An aerial photograph showing 'Lord Harborough's Curve'.
In mid-November 1844, railway surveyors were making their way slowly through the Leicestershire countryside. George Stephenson had sketched out his preferred route for the Syston & Peterborough Railway and now they were taking the levels.
Four miles east of Melton, near the village of Saxby, they reached the estate of Lord Harborough, whose ancestral home of Stapleford Hall stood nearby. His Lordship hated the very idea of railways and had put up signs warning the surveyors to keep off his land.
The railway men attempted to avoid causing offence by following the towpath of the Oakham Canal, but this added insult to injury, as Lord Harborough was a shareholder in the canal, which faced ruin if the railway was built. His servants and estate workers set about removing the surveyors by force, leading to four days of fighting between the two sides.
The surveyors did manage to complete their plans, but sporadic incidents occurred again the following year, and the railway company modified their line to pass further away from Stapleford Park. This involved making a sharper bend in the line than George Stephenson had proposed, a bend which was known as "Lord Harborough's Curve".
Eventually, in 1892, the railway was realigned with a gentler bend so that the trains could run faster and more safely, but the abandoned earthworks of Lord Harborough's Curve can still be clearly seen in the fields south of Saxby.