[2] The village remained a small settlement (population 238 in 1921) until 1925 when the Leicester Corporation compulsorily purchased the bulk of the Winstanley Braunstone Hall estate.

[3] The earliest dated human find recorded is a Bronze Age axe (about 1000 BC) found in 1893.

Like most forests, these were composed of a series of large woods containing small early settlements or hamlets inter-connected by rough trackways – from which most of our public field paths owe their origin.

The above lands were held by Robert Burdet under Hugh de Grandmesnil, one of William I's most powerful barons.

The largest estate of the time was owned by Abraham Compton and comprised 68 ewes, 25 lambs, 14 cows, 6 heifers, 4 calves and 6 pigs.

His attempts were thwarted when his bore hole was filled with stones by intruders, thought to be from local mining districts.

What is now the Memorial Gardens was used as a military camp, occupied first by the British Army and later by the American 82nd Airborne Division troops.

After the war, due to the severe housing shortage, people were allowed to occupy the camp until they found homes of their own.

By the 1990s, however, Braunstone was perhaps the most troubled part of Leicester, with crime rates and unemployment among the highest in the city.

In April 1994, The Independent newspaper reported that unemployment on the estate was above 25% and was blighted by youth gangs engaging in anti-social behaviour.

It was built in 1776 for the Winstanley family, lords of the manor and the main land owners in the village of Braunstone.

But, while the Friar Lane houses were lived in by wealthy merchants and professional people or were used as town houses by landed families, Braunstone Hall was the centre of a country estate passed on through the Winstanley family from generation to generation.

It was not designed by one of the many fashionable country house architects of the day but by local builder and Leicester politician, William Oldham.

The walled garden, restored and beautifully planted by the city council, once contained fruit trees, serving the household both as a source of food and as a place to stroll.

They commissioned one of the most famous of Victorian Architects, William Butterfield, to design cottages for estate workers at Cressida Place and in Main Street.

Butterfield modelled the houses on traditional buildings and used local materials but their design has a deliberate, thought-out quality which suggests that it was the work of an architect.

In 1902 parts of the estate adjacent to Narborough Road were offered for sale as building plots.

[5] Braunstone was greatly changed in the 1930s when the Winstanley estate was bought by the Leicester Corporation, partly as land for new housing.

In 2013 plans were unveiled for the restoration of the building and its conversion into a hotel, restaurant, wedding venue and conference centre.