Lying a couple of miles south of Leicester city centre, Knighton is a residential suburb within the ceremonial county of Leicestershire. It sits between Clarendon Park to the north, Stoneygate to the east, Oadby and Wigston to the south, and the Saffron Lane estate to the west. Once a self-contained rural village, Knighton was gradually absorbed into Leicester during the Victorian period as demand for housing grew alongside industrial employment. Despite this expansion, the original village core survives and is now a designated conservation area, retaining historic buildings such as Oram Cottage and the Church of St Mary Magdalen.
History and Origins
Knighton’s recorded history stretches back to 1086, when it appeared in the Domesday Book under the spelling Cnihetone. At that time it was a fairly large settlement of 24 households with substantial farmlands, forming part of a manorial estate called The Bishops Fee, held under the lordship of the Bishops of Lincoln. The Norman cleric Remigius de Fécamp held the bishopric at the time of the survey. Knighton functioned as a civil parish separate from Leicester until the end of the 19th century, and ecclesiastically it was a chapelry of St Margaret’s Church in Leicester – a relationship that may predate the Norman conquest. St Margaret’s was a prebendary church of Lincoln Cathedral from the 13th century, giving it considerable independence from other Leicester parishes, all of which were held by Leicester Abbey. Knighton’s own church dates to at least the 13th century but did not gain its own vicar until it was made a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1878. The medieval village economy relied on agriculture, with four open fields – named Stockwell, Saffron, Goldhill, and the Breach Field – divided into narrow strips allocated annually among the village’s families. These were enclosed in 1756 and permanently divided between 14 families.
Growth and Population
Knighton’s ancient parish held just 383 people in 1831. By 1891, following the first wave of Victorian expansion into the northern part of the parish, that figure had risen to 6,075. Much of Knighton itself was built out during the 1930s and 1940s with red-brick semi-detached houses. Further growth came in the mid-20th century with the construction of the West Knighton and South Knighton housing estates, both of which contain a mix of post-war housing types. By the 2011 census, the Knighton ward recorded a population of 16,805, though this ward boundary includes a portion of Stoneygate and does not correspond exactly to the Knighton neighbourhood area.