A SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF 
LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
Ih 
LEICESTER IN ITS REGIONAL SETTING 
BY 
P. W. BRYAN, Ph.D., B.Sc. (Econ.), 
VICE-PRINCIPAL, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LEICESTER. 
Definition of ‘ District ’—Cultural and Natural Landscape—Satisfaction of Man’s 
Desires in the Leicester Region—General Topography and Geology—The 
Grasslands—Cultural Forms of—Water Supply of—Market Harborough 
Area—Hunting—Upland Grasslands—Cultural Forms of—Physical Setting 
of—Vale of Belvoir—Cheese-making—Wold Country—Melton Mowbray 
Area—Keuper Marl Grassland—Arable Land in the North-east—Iron Ore 
Workings—Ironworks at Asfordby—Leicestershire | Coalfield— Cultural 
Forms of—Physical Setting of—Charnwood Forest Area—Relief and 
Structure of—Formation of—Quarries of—Leicester—Site of—Roman 
Roads—Expansion of City—Different Areas in the City—Manufacturing 
Activities—Communications of the Region—Conclusion. 
THE region of which Leicester is the focal point exhibits, to a greater 
degree perhaps than any other area of the East Midlands, diversity in 
unity. The keynote of this diversity is found in the differing ways in 
which man has here adapted to serve his needs differing physical settings. 
The city of Leicester, functioning as the chief focal point—the principal 
collecting, distributing and organisation centre—for a series of districts 
located in the vicinity, is the chief unifying force operating in the area. 
Before examining these districts with a view to discovering their chief 
characteristics and their relationships to the city it may be well to define 
what we have in mind by the term ‘ district.’ It is here used to denote 
an area in which there is a combination or grouping of a series of more or 
less related phenomena which tend to repeat themselves throughout the 
area. It may beasked, What phenomena? It is assumed that the pheno- 
mena referred to are those connected with man’s utilisation of the physical 
setting in which he lives to satisfy his desires. ‘The phenomena therefore 
are of two main kinds—those which make up the physical setting or 
