8 miles from Swarkestone Parish

Ashby Castle forms the backdrop to the famous jousting scenes in Sir Walter Scott's classic novel of 1819, Ivanhoe. Now a ruin, the castle began as a manor house in the 12th century.

16 miles from Swarkestone Parish

The vast and immensely impressive ruins of a palatial medieval manor house, with a huge undercrofted Great Hall and a defensible High Tower 22 metres (72 feet) tall.

18 miles from Swarkestone Parish

The picturesque moated remains - including the fine gatehouse and a complete corner tower - of this brick-built fortified mansion have recently been extensively conserved by English Heritage.

20 miles from Swarkestone Parish

A length of Roman bath-house wall over 9 metres (30 feet) high, near a museum displaying the archaeology of Leicester and its region.

20 miles from Swarkestone Parish

The impressive remains of an abbey of Cistercian 'white monks', including towering fragments of its 13th-century church, infirmary and 14th-century abbot's lodging.

22 miles from Swarkestone Parish

The remodelled family home of Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest and most remarkable women of Elizabethan England, stands beside the New Hall she raised later in the 1590s.