Name The ward takes its name from the historical village of Humberstone and the modern housing estate and ancient village of Hamilton. The place-name 'Humberstone' is first attested in the
Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as 'Humerstane'. The name means 'Hunbeorht's stone'. The "Humber stone" is a
granite monolith of unknown (perhaps
glacial) origin that lies in a field in Hamilton. Until 1750 it had been fully exposed, but was then truncated and the remainder buried by a farmer. It was partly exposed in 1878, when it was estimated to have a volume of approximately and thus weigh about . It was said to line up with a stone nearby, St. John's Stone", to indicate sunrise at
midsummer, or at
Beltane. In the 1980s it was again partially uncovered and made accessible to the public. It was then fenced in when the Leicester north ring road was built and a sign was erected at the site, describing the stone's history. Hamilton was named after a
deserted medieval village in the civil parish of
Barkby Thorpe, just outside the Leicester city boundary.
Medieval and later history The village of Humberstone has been inhabited for many centuries. Part of the wall around St Mary's church is an original
cob wall. There is also a thatched cruck cottage dating from a similar time. The oldest parts of the church are the tower and the walls of the chancel, which are medieval. The chancel windows are nineteenth century. The rest of the church was rebuilt in 1857–8 to the designs of
Raphael Brandon. Inside he used locally obtained Humberstone
alabaster for the carved capitals of the pillars in the nave and other details. The church contains a slab with a picture of a knight incised on it. This was from the tomb of Richard Hotoft who died in 1451. There are two houses called "the Manor" in Main Street. One was built in the 16th century but enlarged in the 18th and had a 16th century tithe barn close to it. This barn has now been converted into a house. The other (east of the church) was built in the 18th century., Further to the west,
Humberstone Road railway station was on the
Midland Main Line.This opened in 1875 and closed in 1968 Part of the parish ("West Humberstone") became part of the County Borough of Leicester in 1891 (most of this is not part of the present ward of Humberstone and Hamilton) The Corporation electric tramway reached what later became Humberstone Park in 1904. This was then on the Leicester boundary. Humberstone was a centre for framework knitting. Two large houses were built during this time: Monks Rest (the old vicarage) built during the early part of the 19th century and Humberstone Hall begun in the late 18th century and finished in the 19th century. The grounds of Monks Rest are now a park. Humberstone Hall had a drive which was an avenue of Wellingtonias, which survive in Pine Tree Avenue. There was a Roman villa at or close to the site of the medieval village of Hamilton. Hamilton was not mentioned in Domesday Book (1086) The medieval village was a chapelry of Barkby It was abandoned in the 15th century. Its site is marked by earthworks. Sites of the village streets, the manor and probably the chapel can be picked out. Many of the houses in Humberstone were built in the 1920s on land that used to be part of the estate of Humberstone Hall. Some of the gardens in the area bear testament to this as they still have some of the century-old orchard trees in them. Humberstone village was annexed to the city in 1935.The Netherhall Estate was built by the local authority (Leicester City Council) 1n the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s several private gardens near to the old village were sold to property developers, but a combination of local hostility and a crash in the property market resulted in the land becoming disused. It has since been taken over by the council and converted into a public garden. The name Hamilton was revived for the new housing estate built on the
A563 road, east of
Rushey Mead in the 1980s.
Humberstone Garden Suburb The development of Humberstone Garden Suburb was based on the principles of the
Garden city movement. Garden suburbs modified the principles of garden cities to allow for residential "garden suburbs" without the commercial and industrial components of the garden city. They were built on the outskirts of cities, in rural settings such as Humberstone.The Garden Suburb is sometimes known as the Garden City. The Leicester City Transport buses on Route 37 begun in 1938 had this name on the front. The Humberstone Garden Suburb is notable because it is the only example in which a UK
workers cooperative has created a
housing cooperative and built a housing estate for its members. The Anchor Tenants Housing Association was formed in 1887 by the workers cooperative of the Anchor Boot and Shoe Co-operative Society which was a cooperatively run boot and shoe works in Asfordby Street, Leicester. The members of the cooperative contributed a percentage of their wages and bought a plot of land just outside Leicester by the village of Humberstone and built 97 houses. The first houses were in use by 1908 and the Anchor employees were let houses by the association at a rent that was collected to cover the upkeep of the properties. The original houses were designed by George Hern in a
roughcast cottage style at a density of seven to eight houses an acre. The suburb consists of houses in Lilac Avenue, Laburnum Road, Fern Rise, Chestnut Avenue and a part of Keyham Lane. The names of the new streets were chosen to emphasise the garden nature of the scheme. ==Geography==