Belgrave Hall

Edmund Cradock, a Leicester hosiery merchant, built the house between 1709 and 1713 — an unusually long construction period, hinted at by irregularities in the brickwork and ground plan on the south side, which may point to a redesign or a halt while work was underway. The Cradocks are presumed to have moved into what was then called 'The Mansion House' by 1713, but their time there was brief and sad: Edmund died while visiting Bath on 21 April 1715, and his wife Anne received nothing under his will, with no record of how long she survived him. The estate realised far less than the family had hoped, and in 1718-19 the younger daughter Anne and her husband James Holwell petitioned the Court of Chancery against the executors. By then the house had already been sold, in February 1716, to John Simons for £1,350.

The Simons family held the Hall for forty-five years before it passed, by way of the Nottingham linen draper William Southwell, to the Vanns, who kept it for seventy-eight years. They ran their framework knitting and hosiery business from the Hall's substantial outhouses, built Belgrave House across the road in 1776, and twice supplied a High Sheriff of Leicestershire. In 1845 the heavily mortgaged estate was sold to John Ellis, the railway entrepreneur who had been a key figure in bringing the Stephensons in to build the Leicester to Swannington line. Ellis took possession in 1847 at the age of 58, with his wife and seven daughters; a Quaker and reformer, he attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, chaired the Midland Railway and sat in Parliament for Leicester.

After his death in 1862 the 'Belgrave sisters' remained, hosting literary and social gatherings, supporting the suffragette movement and serving the town — Charlotte Ellis spent nine years on the Leicester Board of Guardians. They loved the grounds dearly; Gertrude remembered 'the flowers that haunt old gardens' and wrote that 'for more than sixty years the Belgrave garden gave a very special kind of pleasure'. Margaret, the last sister, died in 1923, seventy-six years after the family arrived. The Hall then went to the hosiery manufacturer Thomas Morley, and in 1936 to the Corporation of Leicester for £10,500, who opened it as a museum and public gardens.

Leicester City Council now runs Belgrave Hall as a heritage site rather than a full museum, and the house is only open at certain times during the summer months, so it is worth checking before you travel. The two acres of gardens behind the Hall open on Wednesdays and the first full weekend of every month through the summer season, which runs from April to September; they still keep features first laid out by John Ellis in 1850, with formal planting, walled kitchen gardens and glass houses, along with statues and monuments rescued from 'lost' Leicestershire gardens, including the memorial to Edward Holdsworth from Gopsall Hall. Former outbuildings now house a small craft village of six workshop units.

Across Church Road, the parkland running down to the River Soar — once shared between the Hall and Belgrave House — is open to the public as Belgrave Gardens. If it is the Hall's after-dark reputation that draws you, event companies run organised public ghost hunts here, and the building is also available for private functions including ghost watches. Do go with an open mind and a measure of respect: this was a family home for more than two centuries, and real lives and real griefs are woven through its rooms.