New Walk at Leicester in Leicestershire c.1908 [Author's Collection]. Map extract from Ordnance Survey Sheet 121 Derby and Leicester OS One-Inch Map Depicted 1950, Published 1954. Crown Copyright. Reproduced with kind permission of the National Library of Scotland under the Creative Commons Attribution licence.

New Walk at Leicester c.1908

In my humble opinion, one of the most wonderful things about Leicester is New Walk - every city would be richer for a traffic-free avenue such as this. It stretches from the city centre at Belvoir Street to Victoria Park which contains De Montfort Hall. When the avenue was first laid out in 1785 it was called Queen's Walk, following the line of the Roman Gartree Road. It has remained a pedestrian thoroughfare because in 1824 the City Corporation decreed that it should be "for the purpose only of a footpath..." Fashionable buildings did spring up after around forty years but were allowed only on condition that they were constructed at least ten yards from the causeway. Consequently, a spacious air pervades to this day. The earliest houses were probably built in 1825 in the style of Regency classicism."

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