Drayton is a small village and civil parish in the Harborough district of south-east Leicestershire, bordering Northamptonshire and Rutland. It is situated 6.7 miles (11 km) northeast of Market Harborough and 5 miles (7.5 km) southwest of Uppingham on the north side of the Welland valley. Nearby villages are Bringhurst, Great Easton and Nevill Holt. The church of St James in Drayton is one of the smallest churches in England. History The village's name means 'farm/settlement used to carry portage' or 'farm/settlement used as a dragging place'. Drayton grew up around an oval green of which the present green is the north-western end. West of the green, Drayton House is a tall red-brick structure, built in 1851–52 for Bryan Ward, a tenant of the Rockingham estate. South of the road to Great Easton the present Manor House Farm, or College Farm, was built c. 1870–80, probably for a relative of Lord Sondes, whose arms it carries. Its cart shed, a dilapidated ironstone structure retaining several stone-mullioned windows, was once a large house carrying the inscription 'H.N. 1651 T.W.' on a stone now built into the wall of the field behind. This was probably the chief messuage of the manor belonging to Henry Nevill and occupied by his tenants, the Watson family. The older houses in the village are of ironstone and include a thatched cottage south of Drayton House in which part of a cruck blade has been re-used as a principal rafter. A mutilated cruck truss is visible in a derelict stone cottage north of the road to Easton. The former Plough Inn is a stone building, partly thatched, of which the older portions probably date from the 17th century. A stone cottage on the road to Easton has a tablet of 1791, a date at which ironstone was evidently still in general use. The village contains several 19th-century brick cottages, including a row dated 1870. There are two pairs of council houses on the Great Easton road built after the First World War and three pairs on the road to Nevill Holt, built in 1950. The village hall, given by Mr Webb of Drayton House, is a wooden structure which was opened in 1925. It was renovated in 2019 after falling into disrepair. The present civil parishes of Drayton and Great Easton were formerly part of the ancient parish of Bringhurst which possesses the mother church of St