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 recorded as 1730 in the census of 1801. The main cargoes were coal, supplemented by barley, oats and wheat, granite, lime, wool and manure. Coal traffic amounted to 16,781 tons in 1797, although of this, 77 per cent was carried up the canal, and the rest was carried down the canal, so it appears that coal was resold to the Leicester market when prices fluctuated. The Oakham Canal, when it opened in 1802, was never a success financially, but generated extra traffic for the Melton Mowbray Navigation, with around half of the coal passing up the canal continuing on to