Knighton Day
I have been walking through Knighton before, back in 2019, it wasn’t anywhere I ever really walked as a kid. Helen hasn’t been down here before. It seemed strange just how quickly we got here walking down Queens Road, but I only ever remember snarled up traffic when attempting to get into the city.
We come out onto Knighton Road and cross over, so we are opposite the Craddock Arms, we pass by, as we intend to go back for a pitstop in a bit.
Where the road turns and becomes Chapel Lane, there is the gatehouse to Knighton Hall.
Knighton Hall itself is closed off to the hoi polloi, being owned by Leicester University, and so there are only long-distance shots of it to be had.
We head down Church Lane, which is nowadays one way only coming up to Knighton Road and with a twenty mile an hour limit and traffic calming measures in never had when I lived in Leicester. Though I may well have been one of those dickheads using it as a rat run back in the day which led to such measures.
This area here would have been the old medieval village, long before it was consumed by the ever-expanding town, and then city of Leicester in Victorian and Edwardian times.
The oldest and loveliest buildings are almost hidden from sight behind tall trees and well-established hedges, giving only a glimpse of a couple of thatched roofs and wattled walls.
And then comes the church of St Mary Magdalen, one of the surviving medieval churches within the city limits.
We enter the grounds through the lych gate.
Coming at the church from this direction is the best way to approach it, and would be the recommendation for anyone paying it a visit.
The churchyard is well maintained, and the church looks like the bucolic medieval parish church template you see in a thousand villages all around the country.
And then you go around to the south side of the church and stop and stare and wonder the hell (yes, and appropriate word here) happened, as there is not a single shred of sympathy used when the extension / refurbishments were made in more recent times.
It is hard to think of many (if any) other churches with such an obvious carbuncle (or carbuncles) attached in such a manner.
It leaves me of the mind that either the architect used had an intense dislike for Knighton, or the incumbent vicar at the time was an odious toad who rubbed the architect up the wrong way to such an extent he just turned round and thought, fuck it, that’ll do.
I had mentioned the church to Helen after a previous visit, and shown her photos of it, but the photos don’t give the whole WTF impression that seeing it in person does.
Anyway, moving on. On the other side of Brinsmead Road is the Knighton Free Church, which is not the prettiest, but it was all designed and built that way.
We walk back up the peaceful tree lined Church Road and cross over and head into the Craddock Arms for a soft drink and some food. I had forgotten just how big it was, and that was before the extension to it to the north side of the old, thatched part of the building. We enter through the Victorian extension which seems deserted, and we wonder if it is even open, only to get through to the far side where it leads out into the garden, and on such a warm sunny day the garden is pretty much full. Half the space is taken up by teachers who are taking end of the school year refreshments having just sent all the kids off home for the last time in the current school year.
After vittles we are back of on our travels again, down past more of the old buildings of Knighton village along Chapel Lane and across the Welford Road and onto Knighton Lane East.
Sir Jonathan North school. My mum went here, walking to and from Dartford Road every day. Which is a longer trek than it seems at first glance. But there were no buses doing the inner circle style route back in the fifties. She says they were building the boys school next door when she was there, claiming they opened Lancaster Boys the August after she had left school in April 1959, and jokingly moans that she never saw any boys at all during her school years.
I had seen there was an information board outside the school a couple of years ago when driving past on the way back to the hotel near the King Power Stadium from the Cedars after a meal. So my wander along Chapel Lane and then Knighton Lane East to pass here is quite deliberate.
It is a nice leafy suburb to be walking through, wide roads big houses, and it is difficult to tell whereabouts you are as there isn’t any hint in any of the street names. Knighton Road, Knighton Fields Road East, Knighton Fields Road West, Knighton Lane East, Knighton Lane, Knighton Drive, Knighton Church Road, Knighton Grange Road, Knighton Junction Lane, Knighton Park Road, Knighton Rise, any of them, give us a hint. (Only Knighton Street isn’t anyway near the area.)
Just before we get to the railway, and go under the bridge into Aylestone or the Saff, depending on your point of view, I spot a footpath off to the side and another information board, this one to the Washbrook Nature area, somewhere I can’t claim to have heard of before. And trying to get a photo of the information board is difficult, the sun is at the wrong angle, coming high through tree’s branches and I can’t do anything about the light and shade on the board.
On the other side of the railway bridge is Whittier Road.
I remember this road from my driving lessons in the nineties. There was never a roundabout at this end back then. My instructor would use it as a good place to practise emergency stops. He did also try to use it for me to do a three-point turn. However he only did that the once after I put full lock on and turned around without the need to do any back-and-forth manoeuvring due to the width of the road.
We pass the new leisure centre. And I laugh as I write that as it has to be getting on for thirty years old at least by now, it was new when I left Leicester.
We cross over Saffron Lane and walk along Knighton Lane, and then up Denmark Road to come out on Grace Road amongst the old factory units hiding the cricket ground behind them.
It’s time to end the walking as we are meeting others in the Cricketers before the evening’s 20/20 game, which was the last part of the wanderings, but the first piece to be written.
Overall this was another good trip back to Leicester. I got plenty of photographs, some memories were corrected, and others were dredged to the surface after being buried for decades. There were some different roads trodden, and it is always interesting to see what has changed, sometimes making the old unrecognisable, occasionally making improvements, and sometimes making it all worse. It is always good to see those things that just haven’t changed.
As always, I’ve enjoyed the time back in Leicester, and having the chance to catch up with old friends. But with each trip back, the old want / possible need, to move back to Leicester for good is eroded a little more. It just wouldn’t be the same anymore.
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