Brook Street

Brook Street, as the name suggests, follows the line of the Sileby Brook from The Banks to its junction with High Street. Although only a small lane in length, the lane was home to a number of important families. The Oswins, Aynesworths, Churches, Sherrard and King familes all had properties situated here. In the 17th century Thomas Church was known as 'Thomas Church in the brook' to describe where in the village he came from.

Today the visitor to Brook Street would see the end result of over a century of development, this being large areas of modern housing. Without knowing the journey of how this part of Sileby got to this stage it would be easy to dismiss it as just simple housing development. However, as the 1903 Ordnance survey map shows, at the turn of the 20th century, it was still quite rural here. It was only with the arrival of Boot and Shoe companies, in particular Newbold and Burton, that all this was to change.

By the mid 1920s the character changed to one of factories and industry, whose expansion would dominate the area. When these industries declined in the 1980s and '90s they left great brownfield sites, which the planners were very happy to fill with housing. Hence, Brook Street has gone full circle in a hundred years; from housing to industry and back to housing.