Conservation Areas in Harborough district - Skeffington Conservation Area

The Conservation Area of Skeffington extends south from the A47 (Leicester to Peterborough Road) embracing the whole settlement and integral parkland attached to Skeffington Hall. It is a settlement hidden by trees and lying close to, but off the main trunk road.

The settlement itself is dispersed along a winding loop road from the A47 and two lanes leading off it. It now includes a close of semi-detached dwellings behind the much earlier Fox and Hounds Public House on the A47, as well as a row of more substantial houses opposite between the main street and the parkland.

Central to the area is Skeffington Hall, Listed Grade II*, a large house incorporating much 15th century work. The church of St. Thomas à Becket mainly built in 1860, and the extensive stables and outbuildings close by form a group set in the parklands of the Hall. Trees are important to the village and the church is closely surrounded by them. There is a tree preservation order on the parklands which contains fine oaks, limes and specimens.

The parkland boundaries are varied and include stone walls, a ha-ha stone wall, crocketed pinnacles at either end of a stone wall, and a stretch of a wall with a pair of stone gate piers topped by spread eagles onto the A47. The wall to the detached graveyard south of the loop road has interesting limestone copings and piers.

The village is dispersed around the edge of the park with clusters at the east end and by the junction with the road to Rolleston. The buildings are varied in iron stone or brick, with slate and some thatch, of varied dates from 18th century brick to 19th pretty brick estate cottages and others of stone.

There has been limited recent development at the eastern end of the park and in a former farmyard at the junction of the road to Rolleston. Both are within areas of trees and contribute to the feeling of dispersed settlement around the loop road around the park.

Skeffington Conservation Area map