Conservation Areas in Harborough district - Swinford Conservation Area

Swinford is a compact village whose form consists of a core of older buildings and the church within an irregular quadrilateral of roads. Roads lined with development lead into each corner of the quadrilateral and there is one loop lane linking two of these roads (from Stanford and Kilworth). This core quadrilateral and the four roads makes up the Conservation Area. Later development further out from the core and the modern housing of Chapel Fields is excluded. With the core of the village being the quadrilateral there is no central focal point. Rather the village has open nodal areas where the four roads reach the core, there being a fifth node at the junction where the roads from Lutterworth and Walcote converge. Some of the kerbs are of granite.

The Conservation Area is a mixture of former farmhouses and farmyards, cottages and more substantial houses. The building material is principally red brick with clay tiles, though there is some slate. Websters and the former Cave Arms are thatched. There are vestiges of the timber framing tradition, notably in Websters dated 1718, the former Cave Arms Public House, early parts of The Retreat, Home Farm in Rugby Road and elsewhere in farm buildings as at the Berries. There are several boundary walls of mud with corrugated iron coping. The churchyard retaining wall to the road, and parts of the church of All Saints are in river pebbles. The church itself is within the central quadrilateral, partially hidden by buildings. It is reached by three alley footways alongside and between buildings from north, west and south. The view towards the church along these footpaths, especially that from North Street, is important. The churchyard, raised above the road and bounded by red brick and pebble retaining walls, forms a significant open area to the west of High Street.

The grouping around the junction of North Street, High Street and the road to Kibworth is important, it includes Home Farm House, the two 17th century steeply gabled buildings of the Old Manor and Kibworth Road Farmhouse, a K6 red cast iron telephone kiosk and several cottages.

The southern side of the core quadrilateral between the roads to Stanford and Rugby is significant. The south side of the road has a wide grass verge with a Walnut tree; a long stretch of mud wall is behind . This space was formed by setting back the long mud boundary wall which curves between the Stanford and Rugby Road. Behind this mud wall and along the Rugby and Stanford Road the settlement is more open with orchards, paddocks with farmsteads. The open undeveloped space between the two roads is significant and makes a major contribution to the setting the more densely developed village core to the north.

To the north on one corner is The Limes, an imposing 3-storey red brick 18th century house; on the other corner is the open space of the churchyard whose surface is level with the top of its retaining wall of river cobbles. The Church itself, of sandstone or river cobbles, is in an elevated position behind; its octagonal Swithland slate clockface dated 1819 is prominent.

The approach along the Stanford Road is notable, not just for the lime trees but for the estate cottages of 1881 and the three red brick farmsteads of The Berries, Swinford House and Park Farm. The yard buildings to the rear of The Berries are complete and the yard is cobbled. On the Rugby Road at the edge of the village is Home Farm with 17th century red brick steeply roofed barn, and partly timber framed farmhouse on the Rugby Road.

Swinford Conservation Area map