Knighton, Leicester

The population at the 2011 census was 16,805. but the Knighton census ward differs significantly from the Knighton neighbourhood area. A portion of Stoneygate is included. The ancient parish had a population of 383 in 1831, Knighton itself saw much building in the 1930s and 1940s with red-brick semi-detached houses. The village as a suburb expanded further in the mid-20th century with the building of the housing estates of West Knighton and South Knighton. These two estates have a mix of housing of the post-war era. ==History==

Knighton was named in the Domesday Book of 1086 (where it is spelled Cnihetone, and gives a picture of a fairly large village of 24 households and substantial farmlands, part of wider manorial estate known as The Bishops Fee under the lordship of the Bishops of Lincoln, who at the time of the Doomsday Survey was a Norman cleric named Remigius de Fécamp. It functioned as a civil parish between Leicester and Wigston Magna, with an identity separate from the town of Leicester until the end of the 19th century. Ecclesiastically, it was a chapelry of St Margaret's Church, Leicester and appears to have been so since before the Norman conquest. Both St Margaret's, Leicester and St Mary Magdelene, Knighton, were held by the Bishop of Lincoln, and from the 13th century St Margaret's was a prebendary church of Lincoln Cathedral, and thus had considerable autonomy compared to Leicester's other ecclesiastical parishes, which were all held by Leicester Abbey. The tithes and glebe lands at Knighton were thus in the hands of the vicar of St Margaret's. Although Knighton Church dates back to at least the 13th century, it was served by a curate, and did not have its own vicar until it was made a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1878. By 1888 Clarendon Park's road layout was substantially complete and built up. Queen's Road and Clarendon Park Road were provided with shops and other community facilities. Large, well-funded churches were rapidly established both in Clarendon Park and to a lesser extent Stoneygate. Among these were St John the Baptist Anglican Church (1885), London Road Congregational (1886), Queen's Road Primitive Methodist (1887), Clarendon Park Road Baptist (1894), St Michael and All Angels Anglican (1898), Clarendon Park Road Wesleyan Methodist (1901 replacing an 1886 mission hall), Salvation Army (1901) and Stoneygate Baptist (1905). Knighton was formerly a chapelry in St Margaret parish, from 1866 Knighton was a civil parish in its own right until it was abolished on 26 March 1896 and merged with Leicester. ==Knighton Park==

Knighton Park forms the southern part of the neighbourhood, south of the A563 Palmerston Way. The park was bought from the Craddock-Hartopp trustees by Leicester city council in the late 1930s but wartime prevented its conversion to a public park until 1953. The various compartments and zones within the Park still reflect many of the divisions of the land put in place in 1756 for agricultural improvements when the Knighton open fields were enclosed and subdivided for the first time. ==St Thomas More's Catholic Church==

The parish of St Thomas More was formed in 1947 and the church was designed in 1948 by the architects Reynolds & Scott, who built a number of parishes in the Diocese of Nottingham. The church was designed in a stripped basilican style. The broad west tower is a recognisable local landmark due to its distinctive nature. The design incorporated a domed baldacchino over the altar and altar rails, all of which have been removed. ==Notable people==

• Henry Knighton: wrote a history of England from the Norman conquest until 1396, the year he died. • Sir William Lindsay Everard: MP, brewer and pioneer aviator. • Clare Hollingworth: journalist and first person to alert the world that World War II had started ==References==