Sitting in the eastern part of Leicester, Thurnby Lodge occupies a corner of the city bounded roughly by the Uppingham Road to the south, the A563 outer ring road to the west, and Scraptoft Lane to the north. Despite sharing its name with the village of Thurnby, the estate lies just inside the city boundary and is not part of that settlement, which sits to the south-east. Neighbouring areas include Humberstone to the north and west, Scraptoft to the east, Evington to the south, and Goodwood also to the south.
History and Housing
Thurnby Lodge was constructed from the early 1950s through to the 1960s as a council estate, built to house residents displaced by slum clearance programmes in central Leicester. Houses were built in brick and concrete block, largely terraced, with two, three, and four bedrooms, and typically came with larger rear gardens and smaller front gardens. The final phase of construction extended the estate westward from Bowhill Grove as far as Nursery Road. Over the decades, many properties have passed into private ownership through right-to-buy schemes, resulting in a wide range of extensions and modifications to the original council-built homes.
Local Amenities and Transport
Children on the estate generally attend Thurnby Mead Academy or Willowbrook Mead Academy, the latter being architecturally identical to Scraptoft Valley school on the neighbouring Netherhall estate. Two public houses serve the estate: the Stirrup Cup on Thurncourt Road, one of the few remaining estate pubs in the area, and the White House Inn on Scraptoft Lane, the largest pub on the estate, situated at its northernmost point. Bus services connecting Thurnby Lodge to the wider city include Arriva Midlands routes 37 and 56/56A, Centrebus 40 CircleLine, and First Leicester services 38 and 38A – continuing a tradition of bus provision that dates back to the original Midland Red routes L37 and L38, which terminated on Thurncourt Road opposite the local shops.
Green Space and the Natural Stream
To the south of the shops on Thurncourt Road, running toward a parallel railway embankment, the land was originally open country with a natural stream flowing through it. That stream splits into two tributaries near the shops, with one branch continuing toward the city centre and the other passing southward through tunnels beneath the railway embankment. Leicester City Council later landscaped this area across several phases, adding a floodplain, though the work altered what had been a natural habitat previously supporting water voles and small freshwater fish.