Melton Mowbray
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Template:GBdot Melton Mowbray or Melton is a town in the borough of Melton north-east Leicestershire, England.
Melton Mowbray is best known for being the home of the Melton Mowbray pork pies, which are filled with sage-flecked, tiny chunks of pork, glistening in rich pork jelly, and encased in a freestanding, crisp, golden pastry crust.
In addition to its culinary fame for pork pies, Stilton cheese originated near Melton Mowbray, and is still made in the town today. Stilton cheese takes its name from the village of Stilton, 80 miles north of London, where it was marketed to travellers on the Great North Road, though no Stilton was ever made there.
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The town is also home to Melton cloth (first mentioned in 1823), which is the familiar tight-woven woollen cloth which is heavily milled, and a nap raised so as to form a short, dense, non-lustrous pile. Sailors' peacoats are traditionally made of Melton cloth, the universal workmans' donkey jackets of Britain and Ireland and in North America, loggers' "cruising jackets" and Mackinaws.
The phrase "painting the town red" is said to have originated in Melton when some young aristocrats up for the hunt went on a drunken spree in the 1800s and literally painted Melton town centre red.
Melton Mowbray has been a market town for over 1,000 years. Recorded as Leicestershire's only market in the 1086 Domesday Survey, it is the third oldest market in England. Tuesday has been market day ever since royal approval was given in 1324.
Melton Mowbray is home to a rare example of early town government. The Melton Mowbray Town Estate was founded at the time of the reformation, in 1549, when two townsfolk sold gold seqeuestered from the church and bought land to be held in trust for all inhabitants. The Town Estate provided early forms of education, the first street lighting, and today owns and operates the town's parks and sportsgrounds, and the town's market.
Melton shares a Member of Parliament (currently Alan Duncan from the Conservatives) with Rutland.
Its museum famously displays a dead two-headed calf.
There is also a Melton in Victoria, Australia.
The name "Melton" comes from the early English word "Middletune" (middle town). "Mowbray" is a Norman family name - the name of early Lords of the Manor.