A Series of Murders At “The Lodge”
It was Council built from the 1950s as a replacement for low grade housing in central Leicester filling the area between Scraptoft Lane (top) and Uppingham Road (red, bottom). The estate takes its name from the village of Thurnby which never had a “Lodge”. Way back, the village did have a station …
… on the line from Leicester Belgrave Road.
Belgrave Road was particularly popular for day trips to Skeggy and Mablethorpe.
Such seasonal business failed to save the line which closed (pre-Beeching) in 1962. Google Earth shows no real remnants of the track bed; but the horizontal strip of undergrowth is where it once ran!
It is possibly an old footbridge?
And below is the station master’s house (station far right) with an overbridge being demolished after closure.
So here is the estate as it stands today.
The curved road to the north of the stream is Thurncourt Road …
… and this is where Thurby Lodge shopping centre is. Here it is in the 1980s.
It now offers a substantial co-op …
… and a parade of ancillary retail businesses …
… some of which “have seen better days.”
… served by L37 and L38 which terminated at the shopping centre.
The route via Dudley Avenue is still covered today, as we shall see.
… operating cross city to New Parks. The L38 has become the 98, still via Dudley Avenue.
There is an on-line Leicester Buses comprehensive map which confirms this.
Also on the map is the 38A which runs via Dudley Avenue, but shows Nether Hall as its destination.
The trouble with “it’s all on line” is that lots of “it” is out of date and has never been removed. How about this Arriva map, dated 2011?
Or a very fuzzy combined map with no date?
All maps shown by fbb so far are on line BUT WRONG!