Until the early 1980s, criminal court hearings were held in the Great Hall at Leicester Castle.

[2] The new building was designed by the Property Services Agency in the Modernist style, built in red brick at a cost of £4.4 million,[3] and was opened in March 1981.

[6] The design involved an asymmetrical main frontage facing onto Wellington Street.

The central section, which was recessed, was formed by a flight of steps leading up to a glass door giving access to a full-height atrium with a steel-framed pediment, which projected forward.

[7] Notable cases have included the trial and conviction of the children's home manager, Frank Beck, in November 1991, for sexual and physical assaults against more than one hundred children in his care,[8][9] the trial and conviction of the spree killer, Philip Smith, in July 2001, for the murders of three women in Birmingham,[10][11] and the trial and conviction of four men, in March 2005, for the murder of two teenage girls, Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare, with a machine pistol in Aston, Birmingham.