Odd Leicester

Everywhere you look you will find interesting, thought provoking, and curious things.  This is almost a truism.

Letterboxes

When letters were first being delivered, letterboxes were not needed.  The postman knocked on the door to collect a payment.  This was scrapped when people refused to pay for junk mail.  Then, residents were encouraged to put a letterbox in their front door.  This created a stir.  "Cut a hole in my front door?  So ugly, and the wind will whistle through."  But we got used to it.

In most cities you can follow the royal lineage.  Apparently most boxes created during Edward VIII's short reign were removed.  George VI has boxes.

Letter boxes of Leicester

Victorian Letter Box

Horsefair Street
(centre of town)

Edwardian Letter Box (Edward VII) 

St John's Road

Edward VIII

Windley Road

Georgian Letter Box (George V) 

Westminster Road

George VI

Leicester Road (Wigston)

Stoneygate Baptist and The Congregational Church

The Congregational Church

Stoneygate Baptist Church

The Clarendon Park Congregational Church came first.  James Tait was the architect, and it was built in 1886 of local granite.  This is one of the 235 churches that did not join the United reformed Church in 1972.  James Tait designed many congregational churches in the Midlands.

London Road has a number of impressive Church facades.  Another is Stoneygate Baptist built in 1914.

What about Henry Langton Goddard's St James the Greater?

In 1881 St James the Greater was a wooden chapel.  Goddard had high idea's inspired by a trip to venice.  Reality kept the church tower closer to solid ground.

St James The Greater.

A flight of fantasy?
It never happened

The original Structure
Chapel of Easy for
St Peter's Highfields