Displaying items by tag: Albert Street

The City, Kibworth Harcourt

The City is an unusually named small cluster of dwellings situated in a lane to the left off Albert Street just before the junction with Carlton Road. The origin of the name is unknown however there is the thought that places called ‘The City’ were because they were towards ‘London’ so effectively south of the community, whereas areas called ‘Scotland’ were to the north. Burton Overy has a Scotland area!  So maybe in Anglo Saxon or Roman times, the community stretched thinly from the Kibworths (south) to Burton Overy (north) resulting in the name ‘The City’.

Excavations to the north of The City have uncovered evidence that property existed in this area during and after the Roman occupation.

It is possible that some of the mud and thatched cottages existed in medieval times and there is evidence they were there in the latter part of the 18th century where the cottages had been built along both sides of the brook which flowed through The City towards and across Albert Street, then known as Hog Lane.  (see Early Modern Kibworth Harcourt Village Centre- The Pig Market)

One of the original houses-No.1 The City (demolished in 1940’s)

The brook which flowed through The City often overflowed resulting in flooding of the lane and the dwellings, the people must have lived in poor unhealthy conditions at this time. It is believed that the poorest occupants of the village lived there. There was a pump in the City which supplied water during the rainy season, however drinking water had had to be fetched from the pump in Main Street opposite the Old House, quite a trek carrying water.

By the late 1880’s the brook had been diverted through a culvert under the lane and Albert Street.

The City was described by local historian, F.P. Woodford, in his book ‘History of Kibworth and Personal Reminiscences' as: “three mud thatched cottages and three small brick and thatched cottages as well as other houses”

Acknowledgments

Kibworth to Smeeton ‘A Stroll Down Memory Lane’ by Philip J Porter
History of Kibworth and Personal Reminiscences by  F.P. Woodford

 Where Main Street, leads into Albert Street the road widens at the junction and is fronted by The Old House, a superb Carolean Grade I Listed house of 1678 (see Early Modern/The Old House). The curved iron railings of the Old House on Main Street encroach on the space which once formed a market area and where stood a market cross along with the village pump, and a water trough.