Conservation Areas in Harborough district - Saddington Conservation Area

Saddington village lies in open countryside close to the Grand Union Canal. It sits on a ridgetop overlooking a steep valley in which is a reservoir constructed in the early 19th century to feed the Canal. Otherwise the Canal has left no obvious impact on the village. The Conservation Area includes most of the older core of the village but excludes new development to the north and some modern large agricultural units. It incorporates some new development (including conversions of farm buildings); the former farmyard of Cedar Farm is included because it is intermingled with older buildings and forms a definite entrance to the village from Smeeton Westerby. The village consists of a sinuous Main Street widening in two places to a triangular dog leg area. These are where Weir Road and Bakehouse Lane join Main Street, with the Church and Hall at the south end.

The two dog legs form separate focal points and break up the continuity of the street. The first of these by Bakehouse Lane has a good red brick 19th century building in the corner facing directly down the Main Street and forming a vista stop looking up. Opposite is Yew Tree House, the former Saddington Baptist Chapel (1848) and attached house. The little chapel on the corner looking up Main Street has elliptical rubbed brick window arches and the windows are cast iron with interlacing tracery. Bakehouse Lane has mud walls with slate coping.

The second dog leg is by Weir Road and has a small green on the corner. The side of some 19th century red brick cottages looks down the street. The street here is wider, with granite kerbs, the white colour washed Queens Head Public House and a variety of red brick cottages with slate roofs, many with renewed windows. The visual end to this section is the churchyard wall (stone, river pebbles and granite) with its gate facing up the street. The church with its sandstone and limestone tower, and the churchyard yews close the view. Just to the east is the churchyard a track leads down under trees to an agricultural yard. In the corner between Main Street and this track, behind a garden is the Old Rectory - a fairly plain mid 19th building but with an exceptionally elaborate gothick porch of 1864. 

The Conservation Area ends at the south of the village, here is the church and churchyard whose stone wall juts out into the line of Main Street and whose yew trees are prominent. Opposite is Saddington Hall behind high red brick walls. A regency front range was added to an earlier building and faces away from the village towards open countryside and the Saddington reservoir. It forms the entry from the south.

An interesting feature of Saddington is the row of 19th century red brick cottages set back from Main Street which are in line with the substantial red brick Dene House set back behind its garden, and together they run set back between the two main street dog legs. Dene House looks towards Main Street to the former Baptist Chapel whereas Reservoir Cottages look away from the village and over the valley and reservoir. Good views of valley and reservoir can be seen from the car park, behind the Queens Head Public House and glimpsed through its entrance from Main Street.

Saddington is a village of a curving Main Street with many corners. It stops abruptly by the church and Hall. Red brick buildings of varying ages and qualities and red brick boundary walls predominate. The roofing materials were originally Swithland slate and Welsh slate of both of which some remains; but these have in many cases been replaced by concrete tiles.

Saddington Conservation Area map