A BIRSTALL VILLAGE HISTORY

Aerial View of Birstall 2000

Birstall is believed to be of Saxon foundation. Inside its church is a Saxon carving known in the village as 'The Birstall Beast' and the remains of a Saxon window.
Following the Norman Conquest in 1066 the manor of Birstall was taken from its Saxon lord, Alwin Phochestan, and bestowed on Hugh de Grentesmaisnil who divided it into two and gave the smaller portion to Widard. In the centures that followed the lordship of the manor passed to various families, including the De La Warres, the Villiers, the Brokesbys and the Giffords. In the sixteenth century Birstall's two leading yeoman families,the Whiles and the Tuffleys established themselves. The Whiles freehold survived and prospered greatly until 1907, when Elizabeth, the last of the family in Birstall died. The Tuffleys story, however, is one of sad decline as by 1800 the family's substance had faded away in a cloud of financial confusion. But of all the old Birstall families none is more noteworthy than the Sibsons, a family of small farmers who never really attained yeoman status. The first written record of Sibsons in Birstall is in 1327 since which, right up to the present day, there have always been Sibsons in the village, which surely makes them Birstall's pre-eminent family.
For six centuries Birstall remained a poor place where the lords of the manor often chose to live elsewhere and with few families of even modest wealth. A depressing situation that continued until 1751. In that year the lord of the manor, Lady Mary Gifford, who was living in Paris, sold the entire Birstall estate of 1,000 acres, including the village, to John Bass, a wealthy Leiester business man for £21,000. Bass, with far-sighted plans for his new acquisition, built himself Birstall Hall by the old Leicester to Derby turnpike road (now Roman Road), enclosed the great open fields and modernised the estate's agriculture. Bass's unfortunate death in 1764 slowed the improvement but did not halt it.

This upturn in fortune saw Birstall, by the end of the eighteenth century, become a fashionable place for Leicester business men to live. This moneyed influx saw the building of another country house,The Lawn, in the centre of the village, also three large farmhouses, The Netherhall, Cliffe House and The Cottage were modernised and became gentlemens' residences.

By the 19th century county families of distinction were choosing to live in the village; at Birstall Hall there was John Mansfield, banker, MP, and mayor of Leicester and at Lawn House Francis Paget of the land owning political Paget family and in 1841 Goscote Hall was built by Benjamin Payne a local politician who was also an estate agent and newspaper owner. By the second half of the century Birstall's star reached its zenith when John Coupland, shipping magnate and master of the Quorn Hunt moved into Goscote Hall which he luxuriosly renovated.

But whilst Birstall was well on the way to becoming a middle class suburb of Leicester with the principal land owners displaying a comfortable benevolence, change continued to be modest for the working man. Indeed when the new National School was opened in 1860. Mr.Walker of The Holt hoped that with education Birstall would no longer be known, at least for the working man, as "that benighted place".

But with the approach of the twentieth century all four estates, seemingly in reasonable order, started to feel the nationwide fall in land values, increasing taxation and rising wages.
The old staple forms of wage earning, farm labouring, framework knitting and domestic service were no longer the working man and woman's only option. By 1901 only 27 males were agricultural labourers, that is just over 4%. Fifty years earlier 12% were labourers. Only 1 framework knitter remained, whilst fifty years earlier there were 67. The new century saw a growing variety and independence in employment; in the village there were now 45 in shoe manufacturing, 11 teachers, 12 market gardeners (6 owning their own business), 6 managers, 4 commercial travellers, 4 engineers or machine minders. The coming of public transport meant that a short walk to Belgrave allowed you to catch a tram to work in one of the town's many factories.
In 1899 with the coming of passenger traffic and a new railway station on the recently built Great Central Railway, impetus was given to new house building west of Loughborough Road on Birstall Hill (or Park Road and Tempest Road as they are today). Here incoming professionals with their own Leiester businesses leased or bought large houses instead of renting and modernising the old, larger village properties. At the same time in the old village there was piecemeal improvement of some of the Front Street cottages.

With the twentieth century Birstall's country estates, unable to resist the financial storms, teetered on the edge of insolvency and by the twenties three had sold out to speculative builders, while the fourth, the Goscote Estate, went under in 1933.
The 'semis' that sprang up on Birstall's virgin farmland were bought by a new generation of incomers. Many of these were men, who had left the crowded terraced housing of Leicester to fight and fortunately survive the '14-18' War. Returning they had vowed to give their families the opportunities that they had missed. This generation, amongst whom were the writer's father and father-in-law, initiated the social change which has proved unstoppable in Birstall and which today in its latest and largest manifestation can be seen in the enormous Hallam Fields development.

Michael Smith 2008