200th Heritage Panel Installed

The history of one of Leicester’s most diverse neighbourhoods is being commemorated in the city’s 200^th heritage information panel.

Narborough Road, from its origins as a Roman road through to its present-day role as a bustling multicultural community, are celebrated in the newly-installed information panel between its junctions with Beaconsfield Road and Equity Road.

It is the latest in the Story of Leicester programme of information panels bringing to life the stories behind some of the city’s key historic, cultural and industrial sites.

Narborough Road itself was originally part of the route of the Fosse Way, which ran across England from Exeter to Lincoln. The late 1800s saw more development of the area, due to a combination of flood prevention works, improvements to the River Soar, the expansion of the Great Central Railway and the need for new housing for workers in the local hosiery, knitting, boot and shoe trades.

A study in 2015 looking at the ethnicity of the UK’s communities found that shopkeepers in Narborough Road represented 22 different countries, earning it the title of Britain’s most culturally diverse street.

The latest selection of heritage panels also includes one celebrating the Church of St James the Greater, near Victoria Park, the UK’s first local radio transmitter, on Anstey Lane at the exit of Gilroes Cemetery, and the history of Leicester Stadium, at the junction of Parker Drive and Somerset Avenue, where audiences once flocked to watch greyhound and speedway races.

More details of the city’s heritage information panels are available at the Story of Leicester website here.