Saddington
Saddington maps (2 available)
Map of Leicestershire
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
See this old map of Leicestershire
Personalised maps
Create an historic map centred directly on any postcode!
Saddington books (13 available)
Market Harborough Town Walk Guide
Paperback
Melton Mowbray Town and City Memories
Paperback
Uppingham Photographic Memories
Hardback
Saddington memories
Read and share memories of Saddington and Leicestershire inspired by Frith photos
Be the first to add a memory of Saddington.
You can also read memories of nearby places in Leicestershire below.
Leicestershire memories
Alma Friston nee Oldfield
I was born in Smeeton on April 23rd 1935. I remember staying with a Mr and Mrs Webb. As you approached Smeeton there were cottages on the left hand side, we stayed in the last one next to a lane. The cows came up this lane everyday for milking, quite often straying on to the garden, it was our job to shoo them away. Down this lane was a chapel which was on the left hand side, I remember singing here. We lived in Leicester during the war, having moved from Smeeton and Kibworth Harcourt.
I remember the grocery shop run by Miss Terry, we bought Jelly Dummies to suck on.
Lots of memories walking in the fields and smelling violets ...read more here
A memory of Smeeton Westerby contributed by Alma Friston
School uniform
When I passed the 11 plus exam I was selected to attend Kibworth Grammar School. The only place that you could get the uniform was the little shop in the photo to the right of the monument in the Square. This meant a trip by train from Wigston to Kibworth. This was quite feasible in the days before Dr Beeching closed all the railway stations. I remember the uniform cost my Mum a fortune and I only attended for one term as my Dad who was in the army was posted to Germany for 3 years. There I went to another school requiring yet another uniform.
A memory of Kibworth contributed by Richard Child
George Lynns grocers
My dad, Maurice Marsden, started work at the age of 14 in Lynns shop in 1937, after serving in the RAF and Fleet Air Arm during the war. He returned to the shop to work and finished up as manager. The shop closed in the 70s.
A memory of Kibworth contributed by graham marsden
Just a Kibbuth Lad
For those who have never been to our village called Kibworth, it is worth noting locals call it "Kibbuth". You live in either "Top Kibbuth"- Kibworth Harcourt or "Bottom Kibbuth"- Kibworth Beauchamp. I myself personally, have lived in both and almost on the boundary of both parishes. For almost the past 40 years (man & boy), I have spent many a happy hour living, playing and working here. Some of my earliest reminiscences are of taking a pair of shoes to be repaired at Old Joe Nourish's cobblers shop on the Leicester Road (just at the end of the Rose & Crown (now Raitha's) car park.
On arrival at his shop, you would press the thumb catch on his ...read more here
A memory of Kibworth Harcourt contributed by Wayne Coleman
Extracts From Saddington & Leicestershire books
Situated on the south-west side of the village, the church was heavily restored by Frederick Peck of Maidstone in 1872.
The building is of about 1300 with an unbuttressed west tower of 1707, when its spire was taken down. As a church
architect, Peck was certainly indifferent, but his memorial is the former Royal Agricultural Hall, London Borough of
Islington, which he built in 1861. It was converted in 1983, and is now the Business Design Centre.
An extract from from"Leicestershire Villages Photographic Memories".
This is a small hilltop village
about a mile to the south east
of expanding Fleckney. To its
south is Saddington Reservoir,
a picturesque stretch of water
created in the 1790s to feed
the Grand Union Canal.
At about the same time,
navvies were pushing through
Saddington Tunnel on the
canal. There are several nice
late 18th- and early 19th-
century houses in the village,
such as the one facing the
camera. The camera proves to
be a magnet to two small boys
(extreme right).
An extract from from"Leicestershire Villages Photographic Memories".
The pinnacled and canopied Clock Tower, designed by Joseph
Goddard in 1868, dominates the forefront of the photograph,
while its four stoney local worthies, Simon de Montfort, William
Wyggeston, Alderman Gabriel Newton and Sir Thomas White,
Mayor of Leicester and mine host at the nearby Horse and
Trumpet, gaze down. Beyond Corts Limited can be seen the
dominant dome of the Opera House, demolished in 1960,
where each year the Christmas pantomime was staged and
appreciated with thunderous applause
by generations of children.
An extract from from"Leicester Photographic Memories".
The link between London Road and Gallowtree Gate, this
short north-south road is visually of the later 19th century. The
Grand Hotel of 1898 by Cecil Ogden (1858-1944) dominates
its southern end, while the rather exuberant Turkey Cafe of
1901 by Arthur Wakerley and the Victoria Coffee House of 1888
by Edward Burgess (fl.1886-1915) add that longed-for touch
of eccentricity and quality to an otherwise undistinguished
townscape. The shops to the left of the photograph retain their
excellent fronts with stall-boards and timber frames, a sight
which has become a rarity in a plate-glass world.
An extract from from"Leicester Photographic Memories".
The road extends to the now defunct railway line as 20th-century Countesthorpe balloons in an amoebic sprawl
westwards towards Cosby and Whetstone. In the residual hedgerows and trees lie clues to an 18th-century rural
landscape; the enclosures of the 1760s were hated by John Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, for its deleterious
effect on the lives of ordinary village people, and for its destruction of the open fields.
An extract from from"Leicester Photographic Memories".