Like other towns and cities, Leicester held its own Art and Crafts exhibitions. The 1904 exhibition held between July and September at the Museum and Art Gallery included work by national figures and local makers. There was silverwork and jewellery by C R Ashbee; embroideries by May Morris and the Scottish designer, Ann Macbeth; Ruskin Pottery by W Howson Taylor; and by the architect, Halsey Ricardo, his design for the railway terminal station at Calcutta, India. Among the local makers represented were the silversmith, Sidney Reeve and jewellery by Alice Gimson (1882-1950), a distant relation of Ernest Gimson, who worked as a jewellery and metal artist.
Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, the socialist architects who pioneered the Garden City Movement, designed two estates in and around Leicester. Humberstone Garden City was laid out between 1907-11 for the industrial co-operative, the Anchor Boot and Shoe Productive Society of Leicester. 143 houses in Lilac Avenue, Laburnum Road, Fern Rise, and Chestnut Avenue off Netherhall Road were laid out with seven to eight houses per acre, long gardens, tree-lined avenues and a central recreation ground, a large green and a meeting hall. The houses designed by George Hern had a cottage-like feel and were finished with rough-cast. A second estate was laid out in Rothley in 1909-13.
Through the efforts of Henry Peach and Benjamin Fletcher, Leicester took a lead in environmental and conservation issues in the early 20th century. In 1924 an article in The Spectator included a tribute to the city’s forward thinking inspired by its Arts & Crafts leanings. View the article below, it was by Amabel Williams-Ellis published in The Spectator in 1924.
'Zip Zip Zenith! (And Some Observations on the Town of Leicester)'
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