The Willow Brook to be rewilded through Leicester

There's a story on BBC News about the Trent Rivers Trust receiving a £834,000 grant from the Environment Agency to protect homes and businesses in the eastern side of the city.

Proposed natural flood defences the trust will install include creating new ponds, wetlands and tree planting.

Dr Jon Lewis from the trust says:

"We know that flooding can have a major impact on homes and businesses.

"We work to create natural features such as ponds upstream of where problems can occur - this is called natural flood management.

"The natural features we create can temporarily store water upstream of properties at flood risk."

What really caught my eye was the final sentence in the report which says the project will focus on the Willow Brook, which flows into the River Soar, and the Bushby, Thurnby and Evington brooks.

I began following the Willow Brook across Leicester in 2022 - a project to finish this summer. And I also posted a video of the extraordinary tunnel that takes it under the railway in the city.

And the Willow Brook is formed by the confluence of two of the other little rivers mentioned: the Bushby Brook and the Evington Brook.

Follow the Willow Brook beneath the Midland main line in Leicester

We left the Willow Brook as it disappeared towards the Midland main line after the Cobden Street bridge.

You have to be intrepid and in a group to follow it under the railway, so thanks to the Walk About Wazzock and the rest of the crew.

Because the culvert they take us through is extraordinary. It's much larger than I expected and perhaps and indication that the Willow Brook could be fearsome before it was tamed by flood prevention work.

As the commentary keeps saying, it looks like a railway tunnel. The Great Northern Railway line to Leicester Belgrave Road did cross under the Midland near here, but I have photographed the spot and it is nothing like so impressive as this conduit. Still, I'll post those photos one day.

These explorers start where I left off, at the Cobden Street end of the conduit. The amount of greenery they find there proves that the last photo in my pervious post does not show the conduit's portal.

There are more photos of the culvert, including one of a shaft coming down from above complete with rungs for hands and feet, on the Derelict Places site.

So it's over to me again now and one day soon I shall pick up the Willow Brook as near to the eastern portal of the conduit as I can and see where it takes me.

The last days of Leicester Belgrave Road station

Writing about Leicester's Willow Brook, I promised to tell you more about Leicester Belgrave Road station. This was the Great Northern Railway's terminus in the city.

Though regular passenger business never amounted to much, Belgrave Road was famous for the holiday trains that left there for Skegness and other East Coast resorts.

These lasted until 1962, and the last freight train ran in 1969. This was when the oil depot at Belgrave Road closed - a link with the Midland main line had been put in so trains could reach it from there and the rest of the GNR line closed.

When the Belgrave Road site was eventually cleared, a Sainsbury's supermarket and other stores were built there. The Sainsbury's has since been closed and demolished. The dull picture above, which I took on Saturday, shows some of the 1970s buildings still on the site.

A 2019 Leicester Mercury article looked at the plans for the site, but there's no sign of anything happening yet.

But forget all that and look at the photograph below.

It shows one of those late-1960s workings to the oil depot starting on the journey back. And it also shows what an enormous site this was.

The station itself is in the distance on the left-hand side of the photo, with the goods warehouses further to the right. 

And the b&m store in the photo above is halfway between the station and the camera and the Willow Brook may be marked by the tree in the distance on the far left of the photo.

Photo © Nigel Tout.

Following the Willow Brook across Leicester 1

Blogging about Leicester's Willow Brook, after seeing it emerge from beneath Belgrave Circle to enter the canal, I suggested it offered "the possibility of some urban river walks of the sort I post here by John Rogers". I tried the first of those walks on Saturday, heading upstream.

The pictures above shows the brook flowing towards me as it approaches Belgrave Circle. The stream is contained in a concrete channel - a contrast with its natural appearance on the other side of the roundabout - but at least there was a brisk flow.

I next caught up with the brook at Syston Street West at the Falcon Cash & Carry. The brook runs behind the palisade fence to the left of the building.

The far side of the stream was the site of Leicester's lost railway terminus: the GNR's Leicester Belgrave Road. Together with its goods yards, it occupied a huge site. I'll do a separate post comparing the station in its pomp with what you will find there today.

But as you can see, the cash and carry and its neighbouring buildings were obviously there long before the railway site was cleared in the 1970s. (Trains ran to an oil depot here until 1969.) And some of them are built over the brook. Could it be that they had some connection with the railway?

The next bridge to cross the brook carries Orchardson Avenue. Beside  it stands a rather smart, but obviously disused, office building. Then we look upstream to see the brook continuing in its concrete channel - I'll try not to show you too many photos like that.

Catherine (the last syllable rhymes with fine) Street comes next. It used to soar over the railway tracks on almost a viaduct just past its bridge over the brook, but that has been swept away and the road now runs at ground level. 

And in this photo looking upstream from the Catherine Street bridge you can see, if you look carefully, that the Willow Brook still helps to drain the land on its banks.

In finding the brook again I came across these two fine (though not always finely photographed) Victorian industrial buildings. The sign saying "Curzon Howe Works" is made up of original tiles.

I caught up with the Willow Brook again at Cobden Street. There was a greasy spoon takeaway to service all the industrial premises in this party of the city and another with an Indian menu just down the road.

The brook itself was free of its narrow artificial channel, looking more like it did when I first saw it entering the canal on the other side of Belgrave Circle.

Upstream of Cobden Street, the Willow Brook enters a tunnel beneath the Midland main line and the land once occupied by the sidings and goods yards beside it.

This last photo may show the brick portal of that tunnel, though the satellite photograph on Google has a line of greenery extending for a bit further, though this may be a remnant of the brook's old course. 

The parallel fences, by contrast, suggest the stream does stay above ground a little longer, but it didn't look the kind of site that would welcome visitors.

One day I shall pick up the Willow Brook on the other side of the railway and follow it further across the city. But first I shall post a video by some more principled urban explorers who have walked through the tunnel - it's a surprisingly impressive structure.

I hope it's been clear which words relate to which pictures. Thanks to John Rogers for the inspiration: as he says, following rivers - lost or still existent - takes you to parts of a city you wouldn't otherwise see.

Leicester's lost canal wharf district

This converted canal warehouse forms part of Leicester College's Abbey Park Campus and stands beside what was once, and may be again, Memory Lane Wharf.

I say "may be again" because pontoon moorings have been installed and, says Towpath Talk, there are greater ambitions:

Waterways and wellbeing charity, Canal & River Trust, working in partnership with Leicester City Council, has submitted plans for new boat moorings to be created at the city’s historic Memory Lane Wharf, enabling boaters to stop off and explore the city.

The plans, which have been drawn up in consultation with the Inland Waterways Association, would see 6-8 residential moorings and 4-6 secure visitor moorings created with electric hook-ups, water point and waste facilities.  If approved works would begin in October with the moorings available for use in 2021.

Maybe those pontoons are the new moorings, but there was little sign of the other facilities and no pleasure boats when I was there last week.

At one time Memory Lane was a busy commercial wharf, but that must be a good while ago. The Inland Waterways Association's National Rally of Boats took place on this stretch of the Grand Union in 1967, yet two articles about it in the association's bulletin for September of that year make no mention of the wharf.

A photograph of it published in the Leicester Mercury in 1974 shows why.

This was once a very industrial area of Leicester that even had its own railway terminus: the Great Northern's Belgrave Road. And Memory Lane was not the only canal wharf here.

Parallel to it ran one owned by Fellows, Morton & Clayton, the most important canal carriers in the early 20th century. You can see the entrance to it in the photo below, as well as the reflection of the former St Mark's church.

I have even seen the end of the Willow Brook described as the "Belgrave Circle Arm".

This final length of the brook is clearly man made, and it would have been a good place to site another wharf, but looking at an early OS map I found no sign of the brook here at all. Having run alongside Belgrave Road station, it disappears from the map.

There is a hint that in those days it met the canal on the other side of the bridge on Abbey Park Road, but I wonder if this culvert near the wharves is where Willow Brook really ended or ends.

There is plenty of derelict land around Memory Lane, which means that it might be possible to dig out a new marina here. Moorings here would give boaters access to Melton Road's "Golden Mile" and Indian restaurants - an exciting prospect.

The Willow Brook flows through Leicester to the River Soar

The photo above shows the Willow Brook shortly after it has emerged from a culvert beneath a large roundabout on Leicester's Belgrave Road in a corner of the city centre still dominated by the inner ring road.

Below the roundabout Willow Brook joins the Grand Union Canal and, through it, the River Soar. It's formed by the Bushby Brook and the Evington Brook when they meet in Spinney Hills in the east of the city. There names tell you where they have come from.

The Willow Brook has been in the local news recently because of pollution problems. The city council has warned that:

Fly-tipping, litter and oil pollution are contaminating the water, harming wildlife habitats, polluting Leicester’s river and canal network and causing blockages that could increase the risk of flooding in the area.

Still the Willow Brook and the two streams that form it do open up the possibility of some urban river walks of the sort I post here by John Rogers. As he says, they can take you to parts of the city that you wouldn't otherwise see.

Finally, a word for the swan in the final photograph. I assume he was the partner of the one on the nest at the mouth of the Willow Brook - I'm afraid she's a bit of a white blob in the second photo. He was guarding her from a distance by hanging out with two anglers on the canal towpath.

I am happy to record that he did not break my or their arms with one blow of his wings.

Six of the Best 432

The next Liberal Democrat leader must come from the party's left, says Leicestershire's own Mathew Hulbert on The Staggers, the New Statesman's rolling politics blog.

"Given that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated reasons for invading Crimea was to prevent 'Nazis' from coming to power in Ukraine, it is perhaps surprising that his regime is growing closer by the month to extreme right-wing parties across Europe." Mitchell A. Orenstein writes for Foreign Affairs on the close links between Putin and the far-right in Europe.

The Needle has a guest post by Richard Scorer on his book on the English Catholic Church and child abuse.

Meanwhile in Shropshire, reports Andy Boddington, the funding for Ludlow's proposed Buttercross Museum is under threat.

Declaration Game visits the Cotswold Cricket Museum in Stow-on-the-Wold.

28DaysLater has some extraordinary photos from its exploration of the tunnel that takes the Willowbrook under the Midland Mainline north of Leicester station.