The Turnpike

East Norton is situated on the ancient Leicester to Peterborough road, which became a Turnpike in 1753/4. There is a reference to the Turnpike on the charity board in the church. This is reported in the church history page of this website under ‘Charity Board’.

Not a lot is known of older history of the road, but in the church burial register is an entry for March 11th 1911 recording the burial of “an unknown man” who “died by the roadside”. Curiously his age is boldly stated to have been 72 years.

The Leicester to Peterborough Turnpike eventually became the A47 and as an important link from Leicester to the Great North Road (A1), was eventually designated as a Trunk Road.

With the ever-increasing volume of traffic the A47 soon became a very noisy feature in the village. It is reported as one of the reasons for the closure of the magistrates’ court, which used to be held every month on the first Friday. The court, known as the East Norton Petty Sessions, was moved to Thurnby in 1962, but had closed completely by the end of that decade. It was about this time that the A47 was straightened around the cross roads providing a service road for the houses along the A47 to the east, but claiming some of the garden from the bungalow on the corner of Hallaton Lane. This was just a foretaste of improvement work to come. See The Crawler Lanes and The Bypass for further reading.