Tucked into the north-eastern edge of Leicester, Humberstone is a suburb with roots stretching back to the Domesday Book of 1086, where it was recorded as ‘Humerstane’. The name translates as ‘Hunbeorht’s stone’, a reference to a granite monolith that still lies in a field in the neighbouring area of Hamilton. This large stone, of possible glacial origin, was estimated in 1878 to have a volume of around 200 cubic feet and weigh approximately 15 tonnes. It was said to align with a nearby stone, known as St John’s Stone, to mark sunrise at midsummer or at Beltane. Partly buried by a farmer around 1750, partially re-exposed in 1878, and uncovered again in the 1980s, the stone is now fenced off near the Leicester north ring road, with a sign on site explaining its history.
The Village and Its Buildings
Humberstone was an inhabited settlement long before Leicester expanded to meet it. St Mary’s Church retains part of an original cob wall in its boundary, and a thatched cruck cottage of similar age survives nearby. The tower and chancel walls of the church are medieval, while the chancel windows date from the nineteenth century. The rest of the church was rebuilt between 1857 and 1858 to designs by architect Raphael Brandon, who used locally sourced Humberstone alabaster for the carved capitals in the nave. Inside, a stone slab bears the incised figure of a knight – identified as Richard Hotoft, who died in 1451. On Main Street, two properties are both known as the Manor. One dates from the sixteenth century, was enlarged in the eighteenth, and once had a tithe barn from the same period that has since been converted into a house. The other Manor house, east of the church, was built in the eighteenth century.
Growth, Transport, and Administration
At the 1821 census, the population of Humberstone parish stood at 415, a figure that more than doubled over the following four decades as Leicester spread outward. The suburb once had its own railway station on the Leicester branch of the Great Northern Railway, situated on Uppingham Road to the west of the old village. Services there declined sharply from 1953 and were limited to summer holiday specials from 1957 before the station closed in 1962. Further west, Humberstone Road railway station on the Midland Main Line opened in 1875. Today, Humberstone falls within the Humberstone and Hamilton electoral ward of the City of Leicester, which also covers Humberstone Garden City, Hamilton, and Netherhall. Hamilton itself takes its name from a deserted medieval village in the civil parish of Barkby Thorpe, just outside the city boundary.