Thorpe Arnold is a village in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county of Leicestershire

Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...

. Situated on the top of a hill close to the town of Melton Mowbray

Melton Mowbray

Melton Mowbray is a town in the Melton borough of Leicestershire, England. It is to the northeast of Leicester, and southeast of Nottingham...

, Thorpe Arnold is a small farming village with roots going back to before its first recorded mention in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 of 1086. At this time, the village and surrounding lands were in the possession of Hugo de Gentlemaisnell, whose successors were the Earls of Leicester

Earl of Leicester

The title Earl of Leicester was created in the 12th century in the Peerage of England , and is currently a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, created in 1837.-Early creations:...

. Thorpe (or Torp) was eventually settled on an Earl of Leicester’s steward named Ernauld de Bosco, four further generations of his family took the name Ernauld and this, it is widely believed, it how Thorpe Arnold got its name.

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