FACTORIES: GENERAL 1854 - factory being built for Messrs. Joyce & Foxwell, drapers (Leicester Advertiser, 1 July 1854).
FACTORY ROAD: INDUSTRIAL Formerly Back Lane. On Tues 11 May 1875 the town surveyor presented Hinckley Local Board with 'plans for making a new factory belonging to Messrs D[aniel] Payne & Sons, in Factory Lane, and received the sanction of the board…' (Leicester Journal, Fri 14 May 1875). The factory, once employed in making 'full fashioned jerseys and circular knit socks for the armed forces', is now the premises of RAE Motor Factors, the family business having ceased manufacturing in 1957.
Above, left: J. Harris and Co, boot manufacturers, 1896. right: Small factory with International Style motifs, 1927.
Above, left and right: Former factory of Daniel Payne & Sons.
A small factory on the Hollycroft side, now used as a warehouse, retains over the doorway a stone-engraved inscription, J. Harris and Co Boot Manufacturers 1896 (top, left). Attached to the adjacent Hartington Cottages, it shows a characteristic proximity of industry and domesticity in the town. On the second Saturday of 1929 there was a disastrous fire at the premises of Messrs John Jackson Ltd. and Messrs Finn & Dagley, both in Factory Road (Hinckley Times, 10 Jan 1930).
NMR - 1 photo (Middlefield Hosiery Works, c.1962).
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| Factory Lane in 1924 |
FARMHOUSE 1818 Leicester Journal, 3 April 1818: Farm to be let - 106 acres and newly erected farmhouse half a mile from the town, lately occupied by William Lea.
The FEATHERS - see The PRINCE'S FEATHERS.
FEOFFMENT COTTAGES - see GREAT FEOFFMENT COTTAGES 1852.
FERGUSON HOUSE 1885-7 New Buildings, corner. Built for Ernest Pritchard, GP. Three-bay, two-storey. Demolished. Photograph in Hinckley Library.
FIRE STATION, OLD (FIRE ENGINE HOUSE) 1830 Stockwell Head. Built in 1830 and let to the Inspectors of Lighting and Watching in the 1830s by the Great Feoffment Charity for a nominal annual rent of one shilling. It stood on the site of an earlier fire station which was in existence in 1782. It housed four manual fire engines from 1810 until 1897 when a steam power engine was purchased.
FIRE STATION London Road, adjoining the old Depot adjacent to Queen's Park (below). First motorised fire engine purchased 1926 at a cost of £1,200, replacing one powered by steam (Hinckley Times, 26 Jan). By the late 1930s it was described by the town surveyor as 'a disgrace'.
FIRE STATION 1938-39 Leicester Road. In 1938 the Urban District Council acquired a disused branch factory of Messrs. Simpkin, Son & Emery, and adapted it for use as a Fire Station, the cost of purchase and adaptation being £6,000. The council surveyor, J. S. Featherston., carried out the adaptation, and the new fire station was opened Saturday 14 January 1939.
'The total dimensions of the building, a single storey structure, are 119 feet by 60 feet, giving a floor area of over 7,000 square feet. It is divided by partitions into a main fire station containing a small office for the chief office, recreation room, and A.R.P. equipment stories. The building is heated by an efficient hot water system. The full width of the front consists of half glazed doors and the centre pairs are fitted with special rapid opening folding doors which are controlled from the driver's seats of the engines. The building is set well back from the road and the forecourt has been tastefully set out with dwarf walls and greensward… Mr. J. S. Featherston, Town Surveyor, described the old station as a disgrace to the town and the new one as a building of which they could all feel proud' (Hinckley Times, Fri Jan 20, 1939, with photographic illustration of façade).
Demolished July 1978 (Hinckley Times, 16 July).
FLAVELL'S YARD Slum properties here demolished in 1937-8 (Hinckley Times, 15 Oct 1937).
FOREST VIEW Butt Lane. A large Victorian house now situated in the grounds of the John Cleveland College. It was built for the Hurst family (formerly of Castle Hill House) in the 1880s.
Additions to the house for Herbert G. Clarke, Chairman and Governing Director of Sketchley Dye Works, were made sometime before the 1914-18 war according to plans by W. T. Grewcock of Hinckley. The house is depicted in the Illustrated Guide to Hinckley (1911) (above). It was purchased by the Hinckley Grammar School foundation in the 1940s to accommodate its private preparatory school. It later became the grammar school's art annexe and, after 1963, its homecraft centre. The servants' corridor and staircase survive, together with some original mosaic flooring.
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| Forest View in the 1920s |
The FOX AND GRAPES Bond Street. Appears in Pigot's 1822-23 Directory and in subsequent directories until 1841.
FOX YARD Properties here demolished 1931 (Hinckley Times, 15 Jan; 10 July 1931). A public enquiry was held into the proposals to demolish this and White Lion Yard. 'The White Lion and Fox yard properties were certainly more than 100 years old. [Mr Pickering] would not be surprised if some of the houses were 300 years old. The houses... were old and dilapidated, and it was impossible to say anything in their favour, except that in some cases there was good air space… [They] could not be put into a habitable state at a reasonable expense, and in many cases the only way to deal with them was to pull them down' (Arthur J. Pickering, Chairman of Housing Committee, in the Hinckley Times, 15 Jan 1932).
FRAMEWORK KNITTERS' COTTAGES (HINCKLEY & DISTRICT MUSEUM) See LOWER BOND STREET:DOMESTIC
FREE LIBRARY - see LIBRARY.
FRIENDS MEETING-HOUSE 1680 Upper Bond Street. 'The first meeting house was bought in 1680, an existing building which served for a few years. It was replaced in 1695 by a purpose-built meeting house on the same site in Bond Street, also used as a burial ground' (Butler, David M., The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain (1999), I, p. 355).
'The Quakers' Meeting-house was first in the Bond-end; and they still continue to bury their dead in that part of the town.' (Nichols, Leicestershire (1811), p.697)
FRIENDS MEETING-HOUSE 1736 Castle Street. 'A meeting-house, in 1736 on land acquired in 1730 and superseding one of 1695, was closed in 1841. It is shown on the 1818 Tithe Map. The building, which stood behind other property, is reported to have survived until 1958 but has since been demolished' (RCHM, p.123).
'April 24, 1730, the trustees [of the Quakers' Meeting-house] purchased the ground for the building of a new one in the Castle-street; in breadth towards the front eight yards, and in depth backwards 18 yards; on which it was built prior to 1735; and cost building, together with the ground, £116. Nov. 30 was conveyed as under, by the trustees, property belonging to the Society: Mary Mansfield had what was before used for the Meeting-house in the Bond-end, in value - £55 William Stephenson had a house for - £18 John Stephenson had another for - £43 TOTAL - £116' (Nichols, Leicestershire (1811), p.697).
'The town plan in Nichols (1811) [above, no. 3] shows the meeting-house, situated in a yard behind the premises of [what is now] Knight & Croft, chemist, on Castle Street, where there was no room for a burial ground. So in 1790 a burial ground was bought in Bond End, now Upper Druid Street, last used in 1807, and by 1930 a garden, closed for burials in 1858. ['The Friends Meeting House is seldom used' (Post Office Directory for Leicestershire, 1848).] The meeting was discontinued in 1842 and the building was sold soon after, the remaining site realising about £110, after which it was used as a drill hall for the Rifle Volunteer Corps until 1875, perhaps converted to cottages c.1893. It still stood in 1958, but by 1977 the area had been wholly redeveloped and nothing remains' (Butler, David M., The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain (1999), I, p. 355).
However, Greg Drozdz suggests that shop premises at 33 Castle Street (next to Charlotte Brame's house) may have been the site of the meeting house. 'It had those wonderful cast iron pillars, so reminiscent of chapel furnishings and a very common site in such buildings. I am sure these must still exist but currently obscured with the internal decoration.' Peter F. Ryder noted, amongst Hinckley's lost Nonconformist heritage, 'the former Friends' Meeting House behind 35/37 Castle Street, not so much demolished as transmogrified beyond all recognition' (Hinckley... Historic Buildings Appraisal (2000)).
FRITH HOUSE FARM Adjacent to Rogues Lane. Sale particulars at LRO (DE 1243/420), 26th June 1873. [Barwell parish?]
[Abbreviations: AAS - Associated Architectural Societies reports. HUDC - Hinckley Urban District Council. LRO - Leicestershire Record Office. NMR - National Monuments Record (Swindon). NRO - Northamptonshire Record Office. RCHM - Royal Commission on Historical Monuments for England. TLAS - Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society. VCH - Victoria County History]
