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Chilwell_Fox

Leicester's Heritage Thread

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Hi all,

 

Just been reading a book on Richard III. I Know when he stayed in Leicester he stayed in the White/Blue Boar inn which is now a travelodge. However, I was reading that another Blue Boar pub opened up on southgate street in Leicester shortly after its demolition in 1836.

 

Does anyone know where Southgate Street was?

 

Also, I was wondering if anyone had any photo's of the Great Central Railway through Leicester back in the 50s and 60s?

 

Cheers

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Hi all,

 

Just been reading a book on Richard III. I Know when he stayed in Leicester he stayed in the White/Blue Boar inn which is now a travelodge. However, I was reading that another Blue Boar pub opened up on southgate street in Leicester shortly after its demolition in 1836.

 

Does anyone know where Southgate Street was?

 

Also, I was wondering if anyone had any photo's of the Great Central Railway through Leicester back in the 50s and 60s?

 

Cheers

there's some good pics on facebook's "memories of Leicester" page , i'm fairly sure the blue boar is on there and i think it describes where it was in relation to the original because i read it fairly recently  , It might take some finding though and you'll need patience because the site is a bit scattered  :D

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If you were walking South on Highcross St, when you reached High St, it was dead opposite. On the East Side was the older Midland Red bus station. On todays map, it is St Nicholas Place, Applegate and Southgates. 

 

Southgate St ran into Oxford St at the Newarke Gateway/Magazine.

 

This map is from 1902

 

southgatest_zpse85191d4.jpg

 

Here's a close up

 

southgatest_zps8c88cbde.jpg

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Interesting map. Seems there was a burial ground where the Holiday Inn now stands (Harvey Lane, west of the highlighted road... assuming I have my geography right). That old train station is bigger than I thought, there's still a piece of track and an old signal in Rally Park nearby. Never knew we had a Royal Opera House between Cank and Silver St either, replaced by the Malcolm arcade in the 60's after a bit of research.

 

Amazing what you can learn from an old map.

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Some photos here of the old Leicester Central station

 

http://www.gcrleicester.info/html/leicester_central1.html

thanks , good find , so so good to see those photos ,

i well remember that sign "to the trains" and the waiting room as a  kid. it seems really hard to believe now but if my memory serves me well ,  me and some friends used to just go on trains to places like Husband's Bosworth on the train from there . it used to cost just a few pennies. we could have only been about 9 or 10 and no-one bothered us  . sometimes we just bought platform tickets and hid in a toilet when the guard came to clip them .

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  • 2 years later...

Never been a big history buff but I love seeing how buildings have changed and how cities have developed. Great to see the old railway, didn't even realise there was a proper station there until I was talking with parents over christmas. Great stuff.

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  • 6 months later...

Did anyone ever go to this, I remember going once to the speedway.

 

image.png.328489c45ec6a97191aba68e9f226c4d.png

 

For those who can remember it – even those who were not particularly fans of speedway, stock car or greyhound racing – Leicester Stadium, off Blackbird Road, was a fine stand-out local landmark.

Built from 1923, it started its days as Leicester’s home to four-legged racing, but became synonymous for its noisy two-wheeled successor!

 

The stadium was built on a greenfield site, north of where Parkers Drive met Somerset Avenue.

It was built because of the post-First World War explosion in the popularity of greyhound racing in the county, with other tracks on Aylestone Road and in Coalville.

Leicester Stadium opened on May 26, 1928, with six heats of the Quorn Open sweepstakes and a hurdle race completing the seven-race card.

Eleven thousand spectators, including Leicester Mayor Alderman J Thomas, attended and watched Barley Leader become the first winner over 525 yards at odds of 4-7f.

Greyhound racing continued during the Second World War, but, unfortunately, the stadium was also the scene of dog-and race-fixing by a nationwide ring of gangsters.

The stadium became HQ to the 12th (Motor Reconnaissance) Battalion, Leicestershire Home Guard, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel W J Symons VC.

Speaking in 2003, former Home Guard Bill Stevenson recalled: “In 1940, when I was 16, I lived on Pool Road, Newfoundpool. I wanted to do my part, as I had three brothers in the forces, so I joined this particular unit.

 

image.png.097e499868eefc9e0a43ab496be55000.png

Need for speed: Speedway racers Dennis Sigalos, Mark Courtney, Nigel Flatman and Finn Jensen racing at Blackbird Road in 1983.

 

“At the stadium, we had a guard on the front entrance looking over towards the railway, because, we were told, there was some ammunition buried in the centre of the stadium ground!

“We slept in the old ticket offices at the back when not on sentry duty.

“We used to go for a lot of field training in Abbey Park and practised throwing dummy grenades in the stadium.”

Despite competition from other county tracks opening, including Syston, Hinckley and Melton Mowbray, Leicester Stadium remained successful.

In 1950, Leicester stadium was bought by the owners of the two Coventry stadiums, resulting in a new company, Midland Sports.

Charles Ochiltree was made general manager, with racing held on Thursday and Saturday evenings, complete with modern facilities and food outlets.

Greyhound racing remained a popular betting sport, but it was the appointment of leading trainer Geoff DeMulder that brought success to the track in the 1960s.

Stadium use broadened in 1954, with the introduction of stock car racing. Races were held for two years, then sporadically, in 1962 and 1963, before a break until 1974, when it resumed until the stadium’s closure.

However, it is the no-brakes sport of speedway for which Blackbird Road is probably most remembered for today. Five years after Leicester Stadium opened, a speedway dirt track was built inside the greyhound circuit at a cost of £30,000 – about £1.6 million today.

The first speedway meeting was held on September 6, 1928, with motorcycle sidecar racing also staged that year.

The stadium lent its name to the speedway team, known as Leicester Stadium. The team competed in the English Dirt Track League in 1929 and the Southern League from 1930.

 

image.png.36a249c3bfb8fd75725e95d80c4ec7ba.png

 

The stadium’s track was relaid before the 1932 season, but speedway only operated intermittently in the years that followed.

Speedway returned after the war in 1949, with the Leicester Hunters team racing there until 1962, after which the speedway promotion of the day moved to Long Eaton due to low attendances.

A few meetings were staged in 1963, including the Pride of the Midlands individual competition, won by Ove Fundin, but regular speedway did not return until 1968, when the Long Eaton operation transferred back to Leicester, beginning the first era of the Leicester Lions.

The stadium drew audiences to watch the big-name speedway stars for the next 15 years - but all this was to change.

With the ever-increasing demand for land for housing, in November 1983 it was announced that Midland Sports Stadiums Ltd had accepted an offer from Barratt Homes for the stadium. The company had tried to buy the stadium in 1978, but this time, they were successful.

The last greyhound meeting took place on September 15, 1984, and the stadium was demolished not long after.

Back in 2000, reader Paul Thornton, of Leicester, lamented the times he watched Leicester Lions at Blackbird Road Stadium. “The smell and the noise was wonderful,” he recalled.

World Championship Speedway took place there and Mr Thornton said he saw “all the good riders from all over the world, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, USA and Australia.”

“After the races finished, we used to chat to the riders about how they got on in the race. Sometimes people were friendly and would talk about how they enjoyed the race and about who won. Me and my brother used to buy hot dogs and onions and a cup of tea from the café.”

 

 

 

 

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Lived at the bottom of Groby Road as a kid and remember you could hear the speedway every Tuesday i think it was in the early 80's.Never managed to go to a meet but still look at the houses when driving up parker drive and think why did they knock down what was a pretty impressive stadium!

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