Victorian Park Road (Loughborough)

Park Road is one of the main streets of Loughborough. It was named after the medieval (and possibly earlier!) deerpark that originally covered a great area of the Forest Side of town . The buildings which are currently standing on Park Road show a range of building styles dating from the Victorian period to about 1960.

The road has clearly seen a lot of changes in the last one hundred years.

Due to lockdown I have been exploring parts of Loughborough I was previously unfamiliar with, and I have also been researching areas that I know well. By accident, I came across two Victorian photos of Park Road on Ebay and I decided it would be fun to walk about and try to match the two photos .

This one may be my favourite of the two as it shows people going about their business. The view hasnt really changed very much although there is now a very large overhanging tree obscuring that first house. It also looks almost white on the old photo, whereas it is very much red brick.

The second photo proved harder to match, but I eventually found the correct houses at the Beacon Road end of Park Road. In attemoting to match this photo I realised that every different block of Victorian Houses on Park Road have different style door lintels! The ones on this block are a plain rectangle with a sort of rope design round the top three sides.

One of the houses shown has now lost its residential status and is a dentist. I stood in Garton Road to take the second photo, whereas as you can see in the original this was a grassed area and therefore Garton Road must have been created at some point later on.

I found this little exercise very interesting and I hope you do too.

If you are interested in seeing if old pictures were taken of your house then a search of eBay may prove worthwhile.