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Stoneygate is part of the City of Leicester, England.
Situated on the south-east side of the city some two miles from the centre, Stoneygate is a mainly residential suburb characterised by its large Victorian houses. It straddles the London Road which connects Leicester with the town of Market Harborough and was formerly the main route for horse-drawn carriages between Leicester and London. It gives its name to Stoneygate ward, which also includes parts of Evington Valley and Highfields, whilst the south-eastern parts of Stoneygate are counted in the Knighton ward of Leicester City Council.
The name 'Stoneygate' originates in Old English as "stone road", and Ordnance Survey maps show the former route of the Roman Gartree Road leading south-east from Leicester towards Little Stretton, Medbourne, Corby and eventually, Colchester.
Stoneygate's historical significance was recognised when it was designated a conservation area by Leicester City Council in 1978. The Stoneygate Conservation Area (which also includes properties in the adjacent suburb of Clarendon Park) is bounded by Victoria Park Road to the north, Queens Road to the west, Stoneygate Road to the east and Shirley Road to the south. A map is available on the Stoneygate Conservation Area Society website (see external links below).
There are many examples of well-preserved Victorian family homes in Stoneygate as well as slightly later Edwardian buildings and -in the southern section- homes built after the Great War of 1914–18 and influenced by more modern architectural styles, notably Art Deco. Particularly worthy of note are 'Brookfield' and 'The Firs' on London Road; two remaining examples of the oldest and grandest homes built by wealthy commercial families to imitate the country estates of the local gentry. There are no less than twelve Grade II listed residential properties. These include 'The White House' in North Avenue designed in a variation of the Arts & Crafts style by Ernest Gimson in 1898 and 22 Avenue Road, designed in the modernist style by Fello Atkinson and Brenda Walker of James Cubitt and Partners in 1953. The Stoneygate Conservation Area Society, a group of local volunteers with a current membership of 175 households, exists to inform the public about the Conservation Area, its history and proposed developments that will affect its future.
No 58 Stoneygate Road stands on the corner of Aber Road, and is a large three-storey red brick Victorian building in the gothic style. It was built in 1880 to plans by local architect William Beaumont Smith to relocate the 'Home for Penitent Females' from its previous premises at 16 Blue Boar Lane, Leicester. 'The Home', as it was known, was a charity run by a Committee of local philanthropists and religious leaders to provide welfare and reform for unmarried mothers (often referred to as 'fallen women'). It is assumed that the women's children would have been taken from their mothers and would be treated as orphans or adopted soon after birth. The charity would generate income by taking in washing which would be done by the inmates.
The original plans are dated 23 July 1880 and appear to have been submitted for approval on 21 August that year and include a section of building up to No. 60 Stoneygate Road, which was never completed. The main three-storey component provided a kitchen, dining room and matron's office on the ground floor, with two floors of dormitories, individual bedrooms and bathrooms above. In an 'L'shaped single storey projection to the rear was the laundry and associated out buildings. A coal yard, carriage house and stable were added in 1882, also to designs by Beaumont-Smith.
William Beaumont-Smith (WBS) appears to have begun his career working for Parsons & Dain who were quite a successful firm of local architects in the early Victorian period, William Parsons being responsible for some of Leicester's grand civic buildings including the Leicestershire and Rutland County Asylum (later part of the University of Leicester) and the Theatre Royal (now demolished). They were also responsible for early parts of the Leicester Royal Infirmary. By 1855 Parsons seems to have disappeared from the partnership and WBS has taken his place; the firm now being called Dain & Smith. They are recorded in local directories as practising from 21 St. Martins in Leicester and during this time WBS was resident in London Rd (Stockdale Terrace and 51 London Rd – next to the Hind Hotel, opposite the railway station).
By 1876 WBS was on his own, practising from Greyfriars Chambers, 7 Friar Lane, Leicester, where he continued to work until his death in 1899. He was also Leicestershire County Surveyor from this time until his death. His private residences may indicate his changing fortunes: in 1876–77 he was resident at No. 2 New Walk. By 1878 he was at 'Trentham Villa' in Granville Road and remained here until 1881. This suggests he was doing very well indeed – they were (and some remain) grand houses overlooking Victoria Park at the southern end of New Walk. However, by 1889 he had moved to 61 Evington Rd – still nice houses but nothing like as grand and Granville Rd. He remained in Evington Rd until the late 1890s – in 1899 he was living at a property was called 'Campsie', 11 Alexandra Road in Stoneygate.
By the 1930s No. 58 Stoneygate Road had become 'The Home School' and some alterations were made including the addition of the single storey recreation room adjoining No.60 and the conversion of part of the outbuildings to a chapel. In 1942 a further single storey building was added to the rear of the recreation room as an air raid shelter. In the late 1950s the building changed hands again, this time passing to the NHS for use as a new community-based rehabilitation facility for women (later mixed) with learning disabilities. The facility, known as the Stoneygate Hostel, formed part of the Glenfrith group of hospitals along with Stretton Hall hospital. The Hostel was closed by the NHS in the mid-1990s and the building was occupied by the Leicester Montessori Grammar School until it abruptly closed in July 2016. [1]
The Stoneygate Conservation Area was established in 1978 to protect the character and appearance of the suburb. [2] Described as 'Leicester’s best-surviving Victorian suburb', it covers 93 hectares (230 acres), much larger than Leicester's other conservation areas. [2] The earliest houses, along the London Road, were built from 1840 onwards, in what was then the parish of Knighton, outside the borough boundary. Initially these were built by and for prosperous Leicester industrialists. From 1865, speculative builders began a larger scale expansion, including the opening up of side roads. The substantial houses that were built during the 19th and early 20th centuries included many examples by the city’s best-known architects including Joseph Goddard, Stockdale Harrison, Redfern & Sawday, James Tait and Isaac Barradale. [2] In addition to the restrictions and safeguards afforded by the Conservation area as a whole, there are 13 buildings that are individually listed, which provides a higher degree of legal protection of the character and setting of the buildings concerned. [2]
Churches
Stanley Road
London Road
North Avenue
Springfield Road
Avenue Road
Ratcliffe Road
Statutory planning protection came too late for at least 30 of Stoneygate's 19th century mansions. These large buildings in extensive grounds proved too tempting a target for profit in the mid-20th century, when substantial blocks of flats or estates of houses could replace a single unwanted mansion. Several of the earliest houses in the suburb were lost in this way, including 'The Stoney Gate', a 17th-century farmhouse converted into a mansion in the 1820s, demolished in 1962. The Shrubbery (1845) was demolished to build the Stoneygate Court flats in 1934 and Elmsleigh Hall, built in 1874 for John Stafford, a Leicester cheese and provisions merchant, was demolished in 1935 to make way for Elmsleigh Avenue. [4]
Stoneygate is well-provided with its own local amenities. In addition to the medical practice on Springfield Road and the St John the Baptist Primary School on East Avenue, there are several private schools (including Montessori), nurseries and dental practices. Stoneygate also has a wide variety of fashionable shops and boutiques on Allendale Road and Francis Street. [5]
Leicester's London Road railway station is a fifteen-minute journey by bus, car or taxi.
Arriva Midlands operate Sapphire routes 31/31A/31E along the main London Road with buses up to every 10 minutes into Oadby and City Centre.
Centrebus operate the UHLHospital Hopper services connecting with Leicester Royal Infirmary, Glenfield Hospital and the Leicester General Hospital, it serves a stop on Stoughton Road.
Stoneygate gives its name to a Leicester City Council ward that also includes parts of Evington Valley and Highfields. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 20,390. [6] It is part of the Leicester South parliamentary constituency whose MP is currently Jon Ashworth (Labour).
Leicester is a city, unitary authority area, unparished area and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest city in the East Midlands with a population of 373,399 in 2022. The greater Leicester urban area had a population of 559,017 in 2021, making it the 11th most populous in England, and the 13th most populous in the United Kingdom. A 2023 report ranked Leicester 16th out of the 50 largest UK cities on a range of economic measures, and the first of seven East Midlands cities.
Evington is an area of Leicester, and electoral ward of the Leicester district, in the ceremonial county of Leicestershire, England. It used to be a small village centred on Main Street and the Anglican church of St Denys but was close enough to Leicester to become one of the outer suburbs in the 1930s. Today, the ward comprises the historical village of Evington, as well as the modern ex-council estates of Rowlatts Hill and Goodwood. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 11,133.
Belgrave is an area, suburb, electoral ward and administrative division of the city of Leicester, in the ceremonial county of Leicestershire, England. Belgrave is the location of and known for the National Space Centre, Space Park Leicester, the Golden Mile and Belgrave Hall.
Knighton is a residential suburban area of Leicester, England. It situated between Clarendon Park to the north, Stoneygate to the east, Oadby and Wigston to the south and the Saffron Lane estate to the west.
Commercial Road is a street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. It is 1.9 miles (3.1 km) long, running from Gardiner's Corner, through Stepney to the junction with Burdett Road in Limehouse at which point the route splits into the East India Dock Road and the West India Dock Road. It is an artery connecting the historic City of London with the more recently developed financial district at Canary Wharf, and part of the A13.
Highfields is an inner city area of Leicester, England. It is one of the highest areas in the city, on high ground southeast of the city centre. To the west the area is bounded by the Midland Main Line, to the south by London Road (A6), and to the east by East Park Road. To the north is Spinney Hills, though there is no clear boundary between the two areas, and Spinney Hills is often considered to be part of Highfields. The neighbourhood is within walking distance of the city centre of Leicester and offers many amenities for religious, social, cultural and commercial activities. The population is split between the Spinney Hills, Wycliffe and Stoneygate wards of the Leicester City Council.
North Evington is an area, suburb, electoral ward and administrative division of the city of Leicester, England.
Clarendon Park is an area in the south of the city of Leicester. It is bordered by Welford Road to the west, London Road to the east, Victoria Park to the north and Avenue Road/Avenue Road Extension to the south. It is part of Castle Ward and the constituency of Leicester South. There are two major shopping streets; Queens Road and Clarendon Park Road. These two roads intersect near the centre of Clarendon Park, with Queens Road running north–south, and Clarendon Park Road running east–west.
The A6030 is a small ring-road entirely within the built-up central area of Leicester, from its roundabout with the A563 near Hamilton, south to cross the A47 at Evington, past Leicester General Hospital and the Leicestershire Golf Club to meet the A6 again at Stoneygate near Oadby.
Ernest William Gimson was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputation is securely established as one of the most influential designers of the English Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Arthur Wakerley was a British architect, businessman and politician.
Roundhill Crescent is a late-19th-century housing development in Round Hill, an inner suburb of the English coastal city of Brighton and Hove. Partly developed in the 1860s with large terraced houses on a steeply sloping open hillside, the crescent—which "curves and changes height dramatically along its length"—was finished two decades later and now forms the centrepiece of the Round Hill conservation area. Smaller houses completed the composition in the 1880s, and England's first hospital for the treatment of mental illness was founded in the crescent in 1905. The five original sets of houses from the 1860s have been listed at Grade II by English Heritage for their architectural and historical importance, and the crescent occupies a prominent place on Brighton's skyline.
Humberstone and Hamilton is an electoral ward and administrative division of the City of Leicester, England. It comprises the north-eastern Leicester suburbs of Humberstone, Humberstone Garden City, Hamilton and Netherhall.
Stoneywell is a National Trust property in Ulverscroft, a dispersed settlement near Coalville in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. Stoneywell is the largest of a small group of cottages designed in the Arts and Crafts style by Ernest Gimson. It was built in collaboration with Detmar Blow in 1899 for Ernest's brother Sydney Gimson as a summer residence, and along with much original furniture, it remained in the Gimson family for over a century. As part of a highly influential vernacular movement, it has become well known within Arts and Crafts circles. In spring 2013 the National Trust announced that following a year-long appeal, it had been able to acquire the house with its Arts and Crafts contents, gardens and woodland. It was opened to the public in February 2015.
Beverley Ussher was articled to Melbourne architect Alfred Dunn. Dunn was English and had worked for architect Alexander Lauder in Barnstaple, Devon, where he worked with Arts and Crafts movement theorist and practitioner W.R. Lethaby. Through Dunn's English connections, when Ussher completed his architecture articles in Melbourne, he visited England and was introduced to architect Walter Butler. Later Ussher and Butler formed a partnership in Melbourne.
John Breedon Everard was an English civil engineer and architect strongly associated with works in Leicestershire, and co-founder of the firm Pick Everard.
William Keay (1869-1952) was an English civil engineer and architect particularly associated with works in Leicestershire.
ISKCON Leicester is a Hare Krishna temple located in central Leicester, in the East Midlands region of England. The temple is one of sixteen religious and cultural centers run by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in the United Kingdom. The temple follows the Krishnaism or Krishna-centric traditions of the Gaudiya Vaishnava denomination within Hinduism. Their philosophy is based on Sanskrit texts known as the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavat Purana. Unlike some forms of Hinduism, the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition is monotheistic and worship Krishna as the highest form of God and the source of all the avatars of God.
Stockdale Harrison FRIBA was an architect based in Leicester best known for Usher Hall, Edinburgh.
The Clarendon Park Congregational Church is a Congregational church in Leicester, Leicestershire, England. It is located on London Road in the Stoneygate district near Clarendon Park.