CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE WEST END, LEICESTER

FROM 1881

Sharon North

MANUFACTURING PASTS

www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts

Sharon North, University of Leicester

This essay is part of the Manufacturing Pasts collection of open-access learning

materials, available for download at

http://www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts

Front page photo: Bruanstone Gate Leicester c. 1983 by chrisdpyrah, Flickr

1953 Ordnance Survey: Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland

on MyLeicestershire.org

Opposite: Westcotes Latimer St. Leicester 1988 by chrisdpyrah, Flickr

CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE WEST END, LEICESTER

FROM 1881

Prior to 1881 there was little development along the Narbor-ough Road, south of Braunstone Gate. The following essay de-scribes the development of the area from 1860 to 1900, sets this against local and national contexts and tests this against the ‘sub-urbanisation’ theme covered on the ‘Victorian Cities’ module.

F.M.L. Thompson wrote in ‘The Rise of Suburbia’;

‘The nineteenth-century surburban dream was a middle-class dream; the nineteenth-century surburban reality was a social patchwork’ (Thompson 1982).

His article gives an overview of contemporaneous research on suburbs. In it he describes the complex layers that determine how and what sort of suburb is created. Thompson twists and turns through the accepted theories of surburbanisation, draw-ing on examples to demonstrate that there is no single explana-tion for the creation of suburbs. He suggests that each suburb is a unique creation attributable to a differing mix of common fea-tures and occurrences. Furthermore he goes on to dispel the ac-cepted myth of a suburb as a single class entity;

1953 ORDNANCE MAP FEATURING WEST BRIDGE OVER RIVER SOAR

from myleicestershire.org

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Change and development in the West End, Leicester

from 1881

’The creation of a single class suburb was an illusion. In part this conclusion is an effect of the boundaries which are cho-sen to define the area of an individual suburb’ (Thompson 1982)

This article began to answer some of the questions I had struggled with when researching the development of the West End in Leicester. In the early days of my research the social mix of the area and the pattern its development had taken confused me. Based on previous reading I perceived that there would be clear and obvious reasons for the develop-ment of this suburb, neatly replicating the ‘five important in-fluences’ described by H. J. Dyos in ‘Victorian Suburb’. I also had a mental image of a single class suburb of the type de-scribed by Rodger in ‘Slums and suburbs’, an idyllic setting of ‘semi-detached villas and enclosed gardens’ that ‘inocu-lated its middle-class residents against the harsh realities of downtown life’.

I have attempted to work through theories presented by both Dyos (in his work on the development of Camberwell 1961) and Thompson (in his overview of research on suburbs in 1982) and blend this with the evidence I have found in my re-search to piece together the economic, social, geographical and political elements at play that have created the West End suburb. Taking a lead from Thompson, I have, for the pur-pose of the following narrative, defined the boundaries of this suburb myself, to include the an area formerly known as the Westcotes Estates. It is bounded by the Hinckley Road to the north, Narborough Road to the east, the Burton-

Leicester Railway Line to the south and Fosse Road to the west.

The ‘conditions of development’ described by Dyos are demographic (population growth); increasing ability and will-ingness of people to increase their journey to work and for businesses to move into the suburbs; the availability of capital to finance the suburbs; the quest for social exclusiveness, and finally; the force of local circumstances affecting develop-ment and land ownership (Dyos 1961).

The ‘suburb’ I have focussed on is on the west side of the River Soar and the ‘local circumstances’ which apply are those which explain why development of the area in question started later than in other parts of the city. Expansion of the city of Leicester outside the historic city boundaries was not really an issue until 1840. Up to this time urban density sim-ply increased with infilling (Pritchard 1976). In 1841 the population of Leicester was just under 50,000. This is signifi-cant as Thompson notes;

‘..by mid-century it is likely that every place with more than 50,000 inhabitants thought of itself as possessing some sub-urbs’ (Thompson 1982).

When from 1840 the city needed to expand it was held back by the river to the west. Access was limited although Braun-stone Gate had been a feature on maps since 1722 as an en-trance to the city. By the mid nineteenth century this area supported a number of residential properties, shops and workshops. Simmons described its hinterland thus;

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‘….the Bow Bridge Mills in the 1820s, West Bridge Mills about 1848; and in the fifties a few houses followed along the Hinckley Road and Watts Causeway, renamed King Richards Road. But the total area built up was small’. (Simmons 1974)

The river crossing at West Bridge was described as ‘inconven-ient, unsafe and a contributing cause of periodic flooding’ (El-liot 1979) prior to its improvement in 1841. The more intrac-table problem of flooding brought not only its share of mis-ery to local residents but contributed to death and disease in

the city. The flood prevention scheme began in 1876 and saw the widening and deepening of the river, cutting of a new mile long channel and rebuilding of West Bridge once more

in 1891 (Simmons 1974). Along with the new sewerage sys-tem, this represented a great leap forward in terms of im-proved health and sanitation of the city. For the area west of the river it loosened the stranglehold of poor access enabling factories and commercial enterprises to open up along the Soar Valley. These were close to distribution routes provided by the canal and the Swannington railway that had opened in 1832 to bring coal to the area around the mills and wharves further to the northeast. The improvements were to pave the way for the opening of Great Central Railway in the valley creating employment but requiring the clearance of much working class housing in the area.

There were other factors that held back development and ex-pansion into this area, particularly concerning land owner-ship. In the mid nineteenth century the land to the north of King Richards Road was owned by Danet’s Hall estate. This was sold in 1861 and bought by the Leicester Freehold Land Society (Simmons 1974). However, lack of local controls and regulations lead to plans for the ‘respectable’ development of the estate land soon to be thwarted;

‘The ample gardens thus provided for were soon, however, crammed in many cases with an intervening row of cottages, with no road frontage, and approached only through passage-ways built into rows of houses facing onto the street’ (Elliot 1979 p117).

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Wooden lifting bridge which carried the Leicester and Swanning Railway over West Bridge. Photo c1980s by Ned Trifle on Flickr

The Westcotes Estate had formerly been the home of the Ruding family but was bought in 1843 by Joseph Harris, a so-licitor from Worthington. The William and Mary mansion house, ‘Westcotes’, situated close to the junction of Hinckley Road, Narborough Road and Braunstone Gate was the only significant building on the estate at this time. These being the ‘local circumstances’, the issue to be addressed is what impact Dyos’s four other ‘important influences’ had on the develop-ment of this area over the next 60 years?

Dyos describes population growth as ‘the first and most fun-damental stimulus to suburban development’. Dyos was de-scribing circumstances peculiar to London, which can be-cause of its size and organically different setting be described as sui generis. Provincial towns and cities across the country were, however, experiencing similar growth, albeit at differ-ing times and for differing reasons. In Leicester this growth has been well documented. The population increased rapidly in the period from 1861 to 1901 and in percentage terms most markedly at the beginning of this period in the 1860s (Simmons 1974). This was largely due to the rapid expansion of the boot and shoe industry and industrialisation of hosiery manufacture. Many immigrants to the city came from the sur-rounding countryside and specifically from Northampton and Coventry. Pritchard shows in his study of the spatial structure of the city that in the 1870s the area immediately to the north of Westcotes Estate was expanding rapidly in terms of new housing and that there was also a relatively large pro-portion of immigrants to the city in this area. Some of this growth could no doubt attributed to the development of the

Danet’s Hall estate land. Census records from 1881 of Braun-stone Gate provide evidence of this expansion with 41 per-

cent (152 of 374) residents in the street recorded as being born outside the city. 25 per cent of residents were employed directly in the shoe, hosiery and worsted yarntrades. How-ever, to what extent this expansion can be described as subur-ban is debatable. It seems more appropriate to use Thomp-son’s description;

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Braunstone Gate, 9 March 2003. Photo by Colin Hyde on myleicestershire.org

‘..lateral expansion by simple accretion at the town edges of buildings and street patterns that reproduced and continued with the character of the established town, in new quarters with mixed residential, commercial, and industrial functions, and with intermixed residents from different social classes’ (Thompson 1982).

As noted previously, Leicester had reached the threshold point at which a city needs to break out into suburbs back in 1841. In the 1860s, Stoneygate on the other side of the city was already emerging as a:

‘..truly suburban location, physically distinct from the main mass of the city’ (Pritchard 1976).

At this point in time development of the Westcotes Estate had hardly begun. In 1867, West Leigh was built at the south east corner of the estate (on the Narborough Road and close to the railway line) for Archibald Turner, owner of the elastic web factory on King Richards Road. In the mid 1870s Sub-stantial new homes were built for the expanding Harris fam-ily - Westcotes Grange and Lodge and a few years later, Syke-field, on higher ground further away from the Narborough Road. This indicates that this family, three generations of so-licitors and two of clergymen, were making plans to stay along with many newer immigrants to the city from both the middle and working classes.

In Camberwell, Dyos noted that the second stimulus to subur-ban development ‘..came,as it did elsewhere from improved transport facilities’ (Dyos 1961).

Alongside ‘West Leigh’, the first group of houses appeared in the 1870s at the southern end of the estate. These are de-scribed by the City Council, in the Supplementary Planning Guidance for Ashleigh Road Conservation area as;

‘..built for the rising middle classes’ with ‘robustly detailed fa-cades reflecting their owners’ wealth and aspirations’. There is no record of omnibus services along the Narborough Road until close to the end of the century. Residents of these prop-erties would have had to make their own way to work by pri-vate or hired carriage. Indeed the Planning Guidance goes on further to note that there is evidence of ‘provision of some coach houses and stables’. The walk into the city centre would have been approximately a mile past fields and or-chards along the Narborough Road (an old roman road). The outskirts of the city were nearer by about half a mile at Hinckley Road and Braunstone Gate. Working class residents here could walk to work in the local mills and factories at Bow Bridge and near the Swannington Station. The presence of this residential housing created demand for local retail fa-cilities at the time concentrated along Braunstone Gate. Premises featured in the 1881 census and Kellys’ directories include greengrocers, dressmakers, bakers, confectioners, fish-mongers, butchers and even a bicycle agent. This would have in itself created a source of employment and have reduced the need for local residents to travel into the city for retail pur-poses. For those with jobs and business to attend to in the city this was, at less than a mile away, within walking distance. Horse drawn omnibus services began running along the Hinckley Road on their way to Fosse Road in the 1880s. How-

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ever this form of mass transport (if it can be called mass transport) did not feature on Narborough Road until the very end of the nineteenth century (Kellys Directories). While transport may have had an impact in Dyos’s Camberwell, it appears not to be the case here. Thompsons’ explanation would appear to have more prevalence;

‘New transport ventures are rather more likely to be designed to cater for an established traffic than to create an entirely new one, even though once operating they have great poten-tial for stimulating large increases’ (Thompson 1982).

From Kelly’s directories it can be seen that there are at the same time a number of services running from the Clock Tower to other parts of the city. There were plenty of compa-nies already in operation who could run their services into the West End when they perceived it was profitable to do so.

If improved transport did facilitate the development of this ‘suburb’ then it was by attracting business to the area rather than transporting people to and from their place of work. It has been noted that improvements to West Bridge and the River Soar improved access but also provided new locations for factories and warehouses.

There is a parallel here with Dyos’ observations in Camber-well;

‘It is more than probable for example, that one contribution of the Grand Surrey Canal to the suburban development was to confer special advantages on the factories, timber yards, coal wharves, and miscellaneous businesses which congre-

gated its banks, and that their need to workers led to the populating of the neighbourhood’ (Dyos 1961).

The occupation data from the Braunstone Gate census re-turn of 1881 would appear to support this theory, with a high percentage of residents involved in the hosiery and shoe trades which were expanding in this area. The ‘Age of build-ings’ map produced by the City Council Urban Design team shows that from the time of the completion of flood preven-tion scheme and widening of West Bridge, factories and ware-houses were being built along the River Soar.

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Bow Bridge, 2005. Photo by Alun Salt on Flickr

In conclusion it is difficult to be clear about the impact that transport had, as Dyos states;

‘..it is seldom possible to identify with certainty the precise contribution of such transport facilities to the development of particular neighbourhoods because there is no way of dis-criminating accurately between contemporaneous influences on suburban development which were not recorded at the time in some reliable statistical form’ (Dyos 1961).

Dyos describes the rate of development of suburbs as being ‘powerfully influenced by the availability of capital with which to finance the process’. This theory is based on simple economics; houses will only be built when there is available capital to supply them at a profit and the demand to buy them. If a major programme of commercial building is needed, with the potential of a higher profit, then it will be at the expense of house building. The pattern of house building in the West End suburb follows three distinct phases. From mid 1860s to the end of 1870s, house building is limited to a small number of upper middle and middle class houses for the Harris family, Archibald Turner at West Leigh and a smattering of Houses in Westleigh Road. Westcotes Drive was developed with middle class houses very slowly from the mid 1880s to after the turn of the century. The next signifi-cant period of house building in the area is from 1885 to 1895 with terraces of flat fronted houses opening onto streets which themselves open onto Hinckley Road at the very north-ern end of the estate. From 1900, Upperton Road and ter-races of bay fronted houses, between here and Westcotes

Drive are built. This follows the fluctuations in new house building in Leicester noted by Pritchard;

‘In the early 1870s, there was a high level of activity, followed by a slump in the 1880s, a recovery to a very high peak in the year around the turn of the century, again followed by a re-cession which continued through the First World War’ (Prit-chard 1976)

Pritchard’s research also shows the number of empty houses in each year over the period as a means of demonstrating the relationship between supply and demand. This appears to in-dicate that supply exceeded demand. Working class tenants might therefore have had the option of moving out of less sat-isfactory accommodation in the centre. It is likely that the equilibrium of the housing market shifted resulting in re-duced rents and higher incomes due to the economy boom-ing. This would have influenced supply (due to availability of capital) and changed the nature of property demand. Prit-chard remarks that, ‘the peak year for new construction was 1898-9’, and only from this point did the rate of empty houses begin to rise. In effect to this point, supply, estimated by Pritchard to be at a 20% increase from 1896 to 1900, more than kept up with increased demand (Pritchard 1976). Despite apparent oversupply, housing must still have repre-sented a good investment of capital. It must be assumed there was plenty of new money in Leicester made by entre-preneurs in the hosiery boot and shoe and engineering indus-tries. It was an economically vibrant city with the corpora-tion putting money into public works and its residents were

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largely enjoying steady employment. There was also a higher than national average number of women also in work contrib-uting to household incomes (Pritchard 1976).

In addition, mechanisms were being put in place to mobilise the capital that was available. Pritchard notes that;

‘What became much more common in the last years of the century were partnerships and companies’ (Pritchard 1976).

By 1900 in the West End Joseph, William and Henry Harris, grandsons of Joseph Harris had set up a limited company known as the ‘Westcotes Estate’ and had sold land for build-ing in small plots. William Harris has been credited with ‘planning, developing and improving a large part of the West End of the City’ (martyrs.org 2002). There were also lots of small building firms ready and willing to take on the work. It is known of Leicester building firms that;

‘in the second half of the nineteenth century, 70 per cent of house building was in projects of five or fewer units.’ (Rodger 1993).

This is borne out by walking the streets of the West End and looking at the detail on the houses. Even in apparently homo-geneous streets there are often subtle differences between small groups of houses. Houses in Westleigh and Ashleigh Roads are built in pairs, threes or fours. In the rapidly built terraces of the ‘Martyrs’ (Cranmer, Tyndall etc) there are longer runs of houses clearly erected by the same firm but they never extend to the whole street. The building industry was buoyant and there was lots of competition, ‘The number

of men employed in the building trades more than doubled in 1861-1881’ (Simmons 1974) and Kellys’ and Wrights direc-tories of the time have column inches of builders and crafts-men in their lists. The availability of capital is clearly signifi-cant here, as is equally the ability of the economy to respond by having the organisations in place to mobilise the capital, plan the development and build the houses.

What motivated the Harris family to sell their estate is un-known. What seems evident is that with their history of phil-anthropic works and close links with the church (endowing the Westcotes library in 1899, the Church of the Martyrs in 1890 and its vicarage some years later), they took an active interest in the sale and development of their estate. Dyos notes that;

‘In the course of the nineteenth century,too, more and more manuals and handbooks were being written by surveyors and barristers to indicate the pitfalls and the opportunities of sub-urban estate development’. (Dyos 1961).

There would have been plenty of advice and information available to the Harris’s, in the social circles they kept, to en-sure they made the most prudent and socially responsible use of land they inherited from their grandfather. Some of them were solicitors and indeed, Henry Harris was the Chairman of Directors of the first Garden City at Letchworth. It has to be assumed that profit was one of their motives. Yelling de-scribes how in Leeds, it was more profitable at the time to sell freehold plots directly to developers;

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‘The Brown Estate trustees selling freehold plots directly to builders achieved higher prices over the period 1883-1902 of £992 per acre’, while ‘Estates which sold land for subdivision to developers in the same period achieved rather less than half this price’ (Yelling 2000).

There is evidence from the conveyance of land at Ashleigh Road in 1900 that similar freehold transactions are taking place on the Westcotes Estates land. There are indicators that the Harris’s had significant influence; Street names reflect their faith (e.g. Martyrs streets; Luther, Tyndall, Cranmer) and their family connections (e.g. Barclay). Conveyances have restrictive covenants covering buildings, fences and the laying of sewerage pipes. The sale of beer and liquor is also restricted (there is only one public house in streets behind the main roads in the area today). The Harris’s are responsible for the provision of a number of public buildings either through giving land (Shaftesbury Road Board School and Westcotes Library) or contributing to building costs (Church of the Martyrs and Vicarage). What is less evident is how they decided what type of housing should be built in which part of the estate and how they assessed the nature of the market at the time.

Dyos observes that the fourth condition for the expansion of suburbs was the ‘widespread acceptance of the convention of the single family dwelling and of the quest for social exclu-siveness’ Dyos (1961). In some parts of Leicester the trend to move out of the cramped, dirty and disease ridden city cen-tre into private and secluded houses on the edge of the city,

for instance up New walk and into Stoneygate, has already happened by 1860. It is likely that here the ‘conventions’ to which Dyos refers, are being established. In addition the Cen-sus Commissioners note in 1872;

‘There is a small extension beyond the municipal limits, but this is mainly by the erection of villa-residences, occupied by the employers of labour’ (from Parliamentary Papers of 1872 in Simmons 1974).

There was such a case on the West-cotes Estates with was the building of West Leigh for Ar-chibald Turner. This was a substan-tial house, set in large gardens, just off the Narborough Road, facing away from the city to-wards the Burton railway line some 200 metres away . Archibald Turner was an elastic web manufacturer who owned a factory at

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Livingstone Street, 2003. Photo by Colin Hyde on myleicestershire.org

Bow Bridge. Where had Turner lived before? Was he escap-ing the city centre? Was he, in moving to West Leigh, simply aspiring to a grander style of living to match his new found wealth? And was this a more logical location rather than strid-ing out across the city each day to what were becoming the fashionable suburbs of Stoneygate, to stay relatively close to his mill? Thompson argues that the upper classes did not need to move to the suburbs because they already had both town houses and country houses and that it was the middle classes with their increasing wealth ‘in pursuit of the illusion of bringing the country and gentrification into the urban set-ting’ who set the trend for surburban living (Thompson 1982). Was Turner back in 1867 such a trend setter?

The relationship or patronage he enjoyed with the Harris family to secure this plot is unknown. It is also curious that he chose to build with the presence of the railway embankment nearby which would have surely obscured his view of the open countryside. This would not only have spoiled his enjoy-ment but based on Kelletts’ observations have created a bar-rier to further development and impeded expansion of the area. It would appear that this house did not entirely satisfy his aspirations because within ten years the Turner family moved to Richmond House on Glenfield Road. By 1881 around West Leigh a handful of large middle class houses and been built on Westleigh Road. The census shows that there are in total 13 households with 80 residents. The build-ing of West Leigh appears to have been a catalyst for further development of the area. Whether driven by population growth, the need to invest capital or in the case of the Harris

family, to liquidate some assets is not clear at this juncture? What seems clear is that the development was not as a re-sponse to improved transport facilities since some houses have stables and therefore likely to have carriages for their own use. It is likely however that the increase in commercial activity in the area had some impact. Almost half the families are involved in the boot and shoe industry, mostly as owners. Some were managers or foremen and it is probable that the people living here are not far from their factories or places of work. Evidence from the 1881 census demonstrates that this small area is populated by people with a wide range of in-comes and with varied social backgrounds. Half of the house-holds have a domestic servant or groom at a time when 1 in 6 families had domestic help of some description. There is a builder in residence with a workforce of 50 and a florist/gardener in Westleigh Gardens. There are ‘lodgers’ in a cou-ple of the households where the head of household appears to be in a white-collar job. As Thompson notes;

‘The great provincial cities were still hard put to it to sustain more than one smart suburbs at a time and, as the case of Leeds shows, the limited size of the market made mixed char-acter suburban development not uncommon’ (Thompson 1982).

The speed and nature of development of these streets would bear this out. West Leigh itself was occupied by two middle class families, that of a leather merchant and a boot manufac-turer (1881 census), an indication perhaps that there is a lim-ited market at this time for a dwelling of such a size. Develop-

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ment is slow by modern standards as illustrated by Westleigh Road which has houses dating from 1870 through to 1901. Here we can see that newly acquired wealth and rising in-comes are influencing the aspirations of a growing new mid-dle class in their choice of well built, large family houses but does the quest for ‘social exclusivity’ have any influence here as Dyos suggest?

Thompson argues that it may not and proposes that to some extent it was living in the suburbs that created the convention of social exclusiveness by ‘emphasising the attractions and vir-tues of privacy’ rather than rather than the suburbs being the answer to the quest for it (Thompson 1982).

‘There is great intellectual attraction in this ideological expla-nation of the launching of modern suburbia, since it grounds a new form of middle class housing demand firmly in a set of ideas and ideals whose own origins have roots in changes in the economy and developments in religion, bypasses any enquiry into changes in real incomes and effective demand and yet makes it possible to regard a shift in the character of demand as the decisive suburbanising force’ (Thompson 1982).

This theory could be applied to the development of the West-cotes Estate. Although Thompson cedes that some people did leave the city centres because they were in their minds becom-ing undesirable places to live, he also points to the fact that many suburb dwellers came from outside the city. This is cer-tainly the case from the census records of Westleigh Road. Fewer than half the families are local with some families com-

ing from South Wales, London and Hampshire. Thompson suggests that those people coming in from the countryside were (in choosing suburbs to live in) clinging to some ‘small reminder of country life’. He doubts also whether they would have been aware of the existence of the ‘conventions of so-cial exclusivity’ to which Dyos refers. Only once established here would these residents have developed their own accep-tance of the ‘conventions’. .Following Thompsons’ argument once suburban living was seen as commercially viable then it became ‘a self sustaining activity’. Changes in retail activity in Braunstone Gate in 1899 bear some indication of this ele-ment of self-sustainability in the West End. The range of shops has extended to include gas fitters, drapers, painters, musical instrument makers and umbrella makers. The sub-urb having been established Thompson then assigns the role of the land developers and builders to;

‘..judge whether a locality could sustain a piece of suburban development and how to trim and adjust it to suit the market’ (Thompson 1982).

The trimming and adjustment in the West End lead to the building of streets of smaller terraces in the ‘Martyrs’ area and then marginally grander terraces on tree lined streets off Narborough Road. Thompson sees no reason why such houses would not also appeal to the quest for single family liv-ing and privacy by the lower middle and working classes;

‘The normal terrace house was not only perfectly capable of acting as a single family home but was in fact usually de-signed and initially occupied as such’ (Thompson 1982).

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On balance it would ap-pear that it was money rather than manners that created this suburb. As Prit-chard notes;

‘Throughout the last quar-ter of the nineteenth cen-tury, the driving force which translated the city’s growth in population into new housing was the in-creasing proportion of white-collar and skilled manual workers who were able to afford a rising stan-

dard of accommodation’ (Pritchard 1976).

Once in such an area Thompson notes;

‘it is at least as likely that the environment influenced the be-haviour pattern as that the desired behaviour pattern helped to shape the environment’ (Thompson 1982).

The ‘patterns on the ground’, show us that the Harris family did their best to ensure this was a well-planned respectable area with public buildings to cater for the moral and spiritual well being of its residents. The ‘five important influences’ pro-posed by Dyos do not all apply to the West End and while Thompson makes some interesting counterpoints, there is

still no perfect equation emerging for the creation of suburbs. Population did have a major impact; any influence the provi-sion of public transport had would come only after develop-ment was well underway and expand the area beyond that owned by the Westcotes Estate. The role of landowners, de-velopers, builders and providers of capital has been pivotal in the creation of good quality housing in the area. The quest for ‘social exclusivity’ seems less of a determining factor al-though it undoubtedly shaped the community who settled here.

I have to conclude that economic, political, geographical and social elements combine in subtly different ways to determine what sort of suburb is created. Above all the local circum-stances present in each and every development must mean that no two suburbs are alike. Whether the West End was a true suburb or simply an accretion at the town edges now seems irrelevant. What appears to be the case is that a suburb is more about ideology than geography.

The study of the ‘shapes on the ground’ has given me an im-pression of how the area developed. What is now worthy of further investigation is what it felt like to live in the West End at the end of the nineteenth century, what mental images it conveyed to the people of Victorian Leicester and how desir-able an address it was. The quality and the essence of the place might be difficult to research and could only be hinted at from street maps and building plans. I have no doubts that it would feel a very different place from the West End today, physically, culturally, spiritually and socially.

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Below: Upperton Road, 2005 by Steve Cadman on Flickr

Bibliography

Bennett, J. D. ‘Street names of Leicester’, Leicester Muse-ums, New Walk, Leicester 1985.

Daunton, M. ‘Housing’ in F.M.L. Thompson, ed., The Cam-bridge Social History of Britain, vol 2. Cambridge University Press 1990

Dyos H.J. ‘Exploring the Urban Past’, Cambridge University Press 1982

Dyos H. J Editorial Urban History Yearbook 1974, 1976

Dyos H.J. ‘The Victorian Suburb’, Leicester University Press, Leicester. 1961

Elliot, M. ‘Victorian Leicester’, Phillimore and Co Ltd, Lon-don 1979

Ellis, S. ‘A mill on the Soar’ Whitewings, Oadby 1978.

Haynes, B. ‘Working class life in Victorian Leicester - The Jo-seph Dare Reports’. Leicestershire Libraries and Information Services (1991)

Kellett J.R. ‘The railway as an agent of internal change in Victorian Cities’ in ‘The Victorian City’, eds Morris J.R. and Rodger R. Longman, London 1993.

Morris, R. J. and Rodger, R eds ‘The Victorian City’ Long-man, London 1993.

Simmons, J. ‘Leicester past and present, vol 2 The Modern City’, Eyre Methuen, London 1974

Pritchard, R. ‘Housing and the spatial structure of the City’, Cambridge University press, Cambridge, 1976

Rodger, R. ‘Housing in Urban Britain’, Macmillan, London 1989

Rodger, R. ‘Slums and suburbs’ in ‘The English Urban Land-scape’ eds Waller, P.J. , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000

Thompson F.M.L. (1982) ’The rise of suburbia’ in ‘The Vic-torian City’, eds Morris J.R. and Rodger R. Longman, Lon-don 1993.

Kellys and Wrights Directories of Leicestershire and Rutland

www.leicester.gov.uk for history of the West End; population statistics

www.martyrs.org for history of Westcotes and the Harris fam-ily

myleicestershire.org for images unless otherwise noted

This essay has been published as part of the Manufacturing Pasts collection http://www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts

Essay and all images released under Creative Commons attri-bution non-commercial license unless otherwise stated

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