A fine-looking and well-kempt town with a whiff of wealth about it and a smattering of your fancier retailers. Bob is reliably informed not everywhere has a Jigsaw™ so Market Harborough might be a little bit that kind of place.

You'll have to watch your Green Cross Codes, though, at the confusingly kerbless area around the Square where a bewildering one-way system adds to the busyness.

Is that a classic buttercross across from the traffic, designed to keep the dairy dry on the day of the market in question?

Not so, it would seem, rather a very early, 17th-century grammar school and an exclusive one judging by the size of the classrooms? Initially intended to educate poorer boys of the parish, it was soon highjacked by fee-paying toffs.

That was the case for over 200 years until the latest incarnation of the local seat of learning, which still bears the name of the benefactor Robert Smyth, reverted after the war progressing through the standard Grammar\Comprehensive\Academy rebranding.

It was recently responsible for a Rugby World Cup-winning captain and a Great British Bake Off victor but, regardless of any of that, O-Levels are so much easier than they used to be, right codgers?

Further education is provided at the Harborough Museum, which occupies the former Symington's Factory, which is where they manufactured, get this, women's corsets.

Not just any old corsets, followers of fashion will be familiar with the famous liberty bodice, no less. The factory flourished from its Victorian origins until 1980 when a different type of tight squeeze, this time economic, saw the inevitable happen although an equally entrepreneurial family member would last a lot longer.

Pea flour isn't normally top of one's shopping list but the powdered ingredient is considered to be the precursor to instant soup and fuelled the British military for a century, yum, yum.

Both operations were the town's main employers and while production may now have moved elsewhere, they're still going strong if you fancy a bit of Chicken Tonight™.

Can you Adam and Eve it is the name of the street on which the former factory sits and leads to an area of shopping and a repurposed Pizza Express™ that, sorry Harborough, could just about be anywhere.

Not that there's an awful lot of mooching to be done, the heart of the town doesn't extend much beyond the emergency services on Abbey Street.

That's a joke, kind of, although some slightly adventurous dining can be had on St. Mary's Road if a repurposed Pizza Express™ isn't exactly your preference.

That means after the frequently floody River Welland, Market Harborough would appear to be done.

We did drive in past a wharf but that's miles, well, nearly a mile, away and turns out to be a different body of water. The end of the line of the Grand Union Canal, Market Harborough branch, no less, when pea flour was in short supply in Birmingham and London.

Hang on, there's an informative sign in this small memorial garden and might shed more light on the place. Something about the English Civil War or something?

Like you didn't know already.

Charles I was a paid-up member of the Divine Right of Kings club, which basically meant he thought he could do what the heck he wanted. Peeing off Parliament, Protestants and the general population with random taxations and his Catholic connections, things eventually boiled over into a full-blown civil war in 1642.

Three years of ding-dongs proved indecisive until Charles' army assembled in thw Harborough area the night prior to the Battle of nearby Naseby. The King's forces were defeated but Charles escaped, evading capture for three more years before he was handed to Oliver Cromwell who himself had briefly called Harborough home.

A second, smaller civil war hardly helped the case for the defence and Charles finally lost his head in 1649 although they did stitch it back on, him being a king and all.

Not that Cromwell was particularly popular, neither, his puritanical stance made peasants celebrate Christmas like there was a lockdown on.

He lasted only nine years as Lord Protector and his less-than-effective son of a successor caused rumblings in the republic leading to the restoration of the monarchy with Charlie II assuming his dad's mantle.

The people then started to party like it was 1699 and while there may have been a bit more to it, if Wikipedia™ is to be believed, that's SlyBob's understanding of one of the most important periods of English History.

With both sides spending time in Harborough before and after the battle, it's not as though they're still banging on about it, though, oh yes they are! Information boards pepper the place and every old building or site claims Charles I stayed over prior to the fight.

It's unlikely he popped into the apt King's Head for a nightcap, however, nor the Nag's Head next door, neither, and he won't have napped at the Three Swans.

The Dun Cow, on the other hand, is a possibility where the early evening clientele are best described as, erm, lively. If this was a Friday night in 1645, the whole thing could've kicked off because Charles spilt someone's pint!