Rothley ( ) is a village and civil parish within the Borough of Charnwood in Leicestershire, England. Situated around west of the River Soar and north of Leicester, it had a population of 3,612 inhabitants . The population measured at the 2011 census was 3,897. Rothley centres on two greens, Cross Green and the Town Green, both of which are accessed by a road that leads from the crossroads. The crossroads lies on the old route of the A6 road, which now bypasses the village. Rothley is one of Leicestershire's most affluent areas based on number of houses worth more than £1 million – especially in some streets such as The Ridgeway, identified in the Sunday Times as the most expensive place to live in the East Midlands. Most children of primary schooling age attend Rothley (Church of England) Primary School. The main shopping street in the village is Woodgate. Rothley has four churches, Rothley Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, Sacred Heart RC, and the main parish church St Mary & St John's Church of England. Rothley has close links with its neighbouring village, Mountsorrel, which is to the north. History Rothley has been inhabited since Saxon times, as evidenced by the ancient Saxon cross in the church graveyard in the village. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book where it is listed as "Rodolei" amongst the lands belonging to the king, William I. The land includes of meadow, a mill and considerable woodlands. This manor also controlled surrounding pieces of land in a large number of villages including Asfordby, Seagrave and Sileby. Its name may have come from Anglo-Saxon Roþlēah = "meadow in a clearing". In the Middle Ages, Rothley was home to a manor of the Knights Templar, known as Rothley Temple, but now the Rothley Court Hotel, which passed to the Babington family after the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. The Babington family held the manor for almost 300 years until the death in 1837 of Thomas Babington. Married to Jean Macaulay, the daughter of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Thomas Babington was MP for Leicester from 1800–1818, and a leading Anglican evangelical. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge alongside William Wilberforce, the two worked closely together on social improvement and famously on the bills to abolish the slave trade. Wilberforce and Babington spent much time at the Rothley retreat working on the text of