A view of old Groby

A view of Groby that has changed little in 200 years

In 2006 there was an exhibition for a few days in Leicester which featured photographs, descriptions and sounds of places in the city and county that have not changed for some time and therefore contribute to local character.The places featured included the Leicester Grill on Welford Road, the pork pie library on French Road and the Cossington Street swimming pool. The descriptions were sometimes more interesting than the photographs. For example, it seems the Cossington Street pool was the largest municipal pool in England when it was opened in 1894. Apparently its position was chosen because of of an underground well which still supplies its water.

The view across the allotments

With the amount of redevelopment and building that has taken place over the years it can sometimes be difficult to find parts of our built landscape that haven’t changed and still contribute to the character of our villages, but here in Groby we have a few.If you stand at the corner of Glebe Road and look north across the allotments towards Chapel Hill you will take in a view that has hardly changed in 200 years. If you could travel back to 1811 you would have been surrounded by fields, and perhaps the odd agricultural building, all the way up to Chapel Hill, formerly known as Zion Hill.

The three storey house is built

Back in 1811 if you timed it right you could have watched the three storey house at the centre of your view being built. It’s said that when it was built it was designed to be the tallest house in the village. David Ramsey writes in his book Groby and its Railways that it would be another 20 years or so before Grooby became known as Groby. He says there probably would have been no large scale quarrying on the site now occupied by GE(Druck) on Fir Tree Lane, and the construction of the mineral railway line was decades away. When the railway did come in 1832 you might have caught sight of the line coming out of the tunnel near what is now the Ratby Road entrance to the allotments and then running alongside the road, though as it was in a cutting it may not have been visible.

The steam engines arrive

When the horses and ropes gave way to the steam engine you’d most certainly have heard the noise and seen the smoke. The development of large scale quarrying would have been the start of the major changes the village was to see. Farmyard muck would now have a competitor, quarry grime, and rural sounds would give way to the new sounds of extraction and the railway. If you could fast forward through time you’d have seen more houses and the chapel going up around the three storey house. Turning your gaze towards Ratby Road you’d watch the building of the terraced cottages that back on to the allotments, and the attractive bay fronted Victoria Cottages. But despite development all around, and the rebuilding of the United Reformed Church, this view to the Conservation Area across the land now owned by the Parish Council has survived and has been preserved for centuries. Go take a look. If you close your eyes you might just hear the ghosts of the trains rattling alongside Ratby Road.