Melton Mowbray Melton Mowbray Melton Mowbray () is a town in Leicestershire, England, northeast of Leicester, and southeast of Nottingham. The town is on the River Eye and the River Wreake and has a population of 25,554. The town is best known for its culinary speciality, the Melton Mowbray pork pie, and it is one of the six homes of Stilton cheese. Melton Mowbray is promoted as the "Rural Capital of Food". The name comes from the early English word Medeltone – meaning "Middletown surrounded by small hamlets" (and therefore has the same origin as Milton and Middleton). Mowbray is a Norman
Melton Mowbray Navigation per year in the 1830s. Cargoes benefited from the connection at Syston to the very successful Leicester Navigation. The Oakham canal had never been so profitable, paying dividends of around 3.8 per cent, and lack of water during the dry summer of 1844 resulted in it closing for five months. When the Midland Railway sought to build their Syston and Peterborough Railway, the Oakham company negotiated, and the railway bought the canal on 29 October 1847, with a view to closing it and using part of the bed for their line. The effect on the Melton Mowbray Navigation was dramatic.