Westcotes Estate

Bromkinsthorpe

From the Middle Ages until the 19th Century the area to the west of the River Soar and within the Parish of St Mary’s at Leicester was known as Bromkinsthorpe and contained two manors: Danett’s Hall and Westcotes1. The manor of Westcotes had belonged to the Abbey of Leicester but in 1558 came into the ownership of the Ruding family and remained in their ownership until 1821, when it was sold to the Freer family who in turn sold it to the Harris family by 18462.

The Westcotes Estate Limited

The Westcotes Estate Limited company, established by members of the Harris family, had its offices at 3 St. Martin’s East and appears to have operated as ‘master developer’ of the land within the company’s ownership: laying out the streets and installing the infrastructure to facilitate housebuilding, but selling freehold plots to individual investors and speculative builders to execute the construction and onward sale or letting of the new homes. By the start of the twentieth century the company had arranged its extensive landholdings into a series of separate, numbered estates. The land west of Fosse Road became Estate No.1: Sykefield Estate.

No. 1: The Sykefield Estate

In 1904/053 Orders were obtained from the Council of the Borough of Leicester for stopping-up of part of Fosse Road and of the Braunstone Footpath. The former seems to have facilitated the straightening of the adjacent part of what is now Fosse Road South, whilst the latter was presumably to extinguish a public footpath crossing the land. Maps assumed to date from this period, and held by The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, show the initial layout arrangements for the residential development of the Estate.

Westcotes Gardens

On 14th March 19054 a conveyance took place between The Westcotes Estate Limited and the Borough of Leicester for ‘a piece of land to be used as a public park and garden known as Westcotes Garden’. The conveyance required costs of 10 shillings to be paid by the corporation to the company and included the following provisions:

“…the intention of the gift being that the said land shall forever hereafter be used especially as a pleasure ground and open space for aged and infirm people, women and young children, and not as a cricket or football ground or a ground for games of a like character…”

“…before 1st June 1905 surround the park with an unclimbable iron fence of the usual corporation pattern (or other to be approved by the company) at their sole expense also plant all sides a belt of trees or ornamental shrubs to minimum width of 9 feet”.

  1. ‘The ancient borough: Bromkinsthorpe’, in A History of the County of Leicester: Volume 4, the City of Leicester, ed. R A McKinley (London, 1958), pp. 380-383. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol4/pp380-383 [accessed 22 January 2022]. ↩︎
  2. Ibid. ↩︎
  3. 30th September 1904 Order of the Borough of Leicester stopping up part of Fosse Road. 8th March 1905 Order of the Borough of Leicester stopping up part of Braunstone Footpath. Author’s research at Leicester County Records Office 23/09/2021. Box DE9128/167. ↩︎
  4. Author’s research at Leicester County Records Office 23/09/2021. Box DE9128/85. ↩︎