Distance: just over 5 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps
Mostly urban and suburban walk from central Leicester out to Anstey where the legendary Ned Ludd reputedly broke a spinning machine in the late 18th Century.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
General Ludd: Origins
Nowadays Anstey is a large, reasonably affluent, village on the northwestern edge of Leicester. It is separated from the city by a small strip of farm land, the little Rothley Brook and the wide A46 road.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries by contrast it was a little manufacturing town, a key node in the East Midlands clothes making belt which stretched from Northamptonshire up to southern Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
Over time manufacturing became more concentrated. But for a long time framework knitters and other small scale makers worked – typically by themselves – from their homes, albeit often within a system ultimately controlled by major capitalists.
One of these small scale manufacturers may have been a man called Ned Ludd. There is an Edward Ludlam buried in St. Mary’s Churchyard near the centre of the village.
Reputedly in 1779 Ned Ludd smashed two frameworking knitting machines with a hammer in a state of rage. Exactly why is obscure: it may have been that his master whipped him for idleness, it could have been because he was fed up of being taunted by local children. Another version published in 1811 has it that he was defying an order from his father to realign the knitting machine’s needles.
Whatever the circumstances, or indeed whether this incident ever occurred is rather beside the point, because the tale passed into vernacular folklore. Across the East Midlands cloth and clothing manufacturing regions in the late 18th Century it became commonplace when a machine was destroyed – whether intentionally or unintentionally – that “it was Nedd Ludd who’d done it”.
This meant that in 1811 and 1812 when textile workers in Nottinghamshire rose up against the intensification of factory work and the deskilling of their jobs, smashing machines in protest, their actions were conspiratorially blamed upon Ned Ludd.
The direct action and protests of these so called “Luddites” spread across the Midlands and the North, becoming a major early instance of working class organisation and activism. When the protesting workers issued their demands, set out their grievances or broke a machine they signed themselves “Nedd Ludd” and claimed that their leader was “General Ludd”.
This was an important ploy as what the workers were doing was seriously illegal. Some Luddites who were captured in 1812 in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire were executed, whilst others were sentenced to transportation to Australia or given prison sentences. Disguising identities was important to early worker activists fearful of official repression and reprisals so that existing legend of Ned Ludd the machine breaker proved an effective cover for their protests.
Luddism has had an afterlife far beyond worker activists protesting the effects of the early factory system at the beginning of the 19th Century. It is arguable that the Luddites have been misrepresented in official histories, far from being anti-change and anti-progress, rather they were intelligent skilled people who like trade unionists and socialists in the decades since were primarily concerned with finding ways of improving safety at work and granting greater control over the machinery, and a larger share of the output of machinery to the workers.
This said, whilst the contemporary workers movement is starting to reclaim the legacy of the Luddites amidst concerns about the challenges (and potential benefits) of greater automation including of cognitive tasks, struggles over the control of digital platforms and demands for shorter working weeks, it is often amongst environmentalists that the Luddite mantle is most strongly claimed. Ranging from the unhinged philosophy and lethal actions of the Unabomber, to the more laudable and grounded forms of direct action practised by activists across the world opposing destructive infrastructure projects and logging schemes.
There is also a wide cultural legacy of Luddism in the form of references to the movement in computer games, popular music, films, novels and other mediums of creative expression. Not least a whole branch of speculative fiction devoted to imagining what the world might be like if the Luddites had succeeded and seized control of the emerging factory system for the working class in the early 1810s.
Not bad for a troublesome mid-Georgian workman from Leicester with anger issues who probably never actually existed.
The Walk
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At Leicester Railway Station where this walk to Anstey home to of the legendary Ned Ludd begins, exit onto London Road.
Once on London Road turn right and head towards the top of the semi-pedestrianised Granby Street.
Once at Granby Street walk down it for some distance.
Presently you come to Belvoir Street off to your left.
Turn left and walk along Belvoir Street for some distance.
You come out onto the side of Welford Place.
Take a slight left turn here, then cross over the road to head right down York Road right past the Welford Chippy on your left.
Continue along York Road for some distance passing Hodges & Drake Design in a converted early modernist factory unit.
You emerge from York Road onto Oxford Street.
Take a slight left turn here and cross the road heading onto the DeMontfort University campus.
Follow the road onto the campus until you come to a main square surrounded by a mixture of modern buildings and modernised ones comprising the original nucleus of the campus from the days when it was Leicester Polytechnic.
Upon reaching this square with the students’ union building just behind you to your left, turn right.
This leads past some red brick early to mid 20th Century buildings which house several of the University’s faculties until you come out onto a road opposite the Trinity Hospital almshouse called The Newarke.
Once on The Newarke turn left.
Soon you reach a bridge across the wide, heavily canalised River Soar, part of the Grand Union Canal system.
Cross the bridge and turn left.
Here off to the left again is a flight of steps down to the towpath beside the River Soar.
On the towpath turn left.
Then follow the towpath heading north along the side of the River Soar as it runs through the centre of Leicester and out into the northern suburbs, for quite some distance.
Presently you approach a small island in the middle of the River Soar connected by a series of bridges linking both sides of the waterway.
Just after passing a secondary school on your left and the offices of the Unite trade union (on the far side of the Soar) get ready to turn off and follow the path across a park called The Rally.
Here to your left there is a path running past a sculpture of three metal implements which look like spades. These are actually supposed to represent part of the mechanism of the mechanical typewriters which were made in Leicester by the Imperial Typewriter Company.
After a short distance the path curves left and runs straight along the perimeter of the park.
Presently you come to a junction and take the path running to the right behind a row of terraced houses.
After a short distance you approach – then cross – a road bridge.
This leads to a long straight section of mixed pedestrian and cycle track which you follow, initially along the side of a piece of wasteland and then through woodland.
It comes to an abrupt end opposite some allotments behind an estate of primarily post-war houses.
At this point turn right and walk down a short path leading onto the road through the estate.
Once on this road turn left.
Follow the road, heading straight until you come to a junction. Here turn right and walk down a short stretch of road onto the pavement beside the busy Groby Road.
Upon reaching the Groby Road turn left and walk along the pavement for some distance. Opposite a Greene King pub and a sign for a Premier Inn cross over the road by the traffic lights. Keep walking on the left straight ahead on the far side of the road.
Presently just after crossing the mouth of a road running up onto a modern housing estate, on your right there is a tarmacked track.
Turn right and begin walking up this tarmacked track.
After some distance it narrows and you keep following the track as it runs between two metal fences through woodland.
When the path ends you join a footpath. This footpath runs across Gilroes Cemetery, Leicester’s largest, opened in 1902, and the site of the city’s crematorium.
Turn left and follow the path for quite some distance as it runs across the cemetery.
Cross over the road at the traffic lights and turn down a road on the left leading towards a modern housing estate.
Cross over the road at the traffic lights and turn down a road on the left leading towards a modern housing estate.
Follow the road downhill for some distance.
Where it ends in a t-junction turn left.
Then follow the road to your left for quite some way as it winds across a modern housing estate.
Presently you come to a tarmacked footpath off to your right near a cluster of pale rendered houses.
Head down this path on the right a short way until you come to a junction. Here, turn left.
This leads out onto a grassy meadow. Here to your left there is a wooden post with the top painted yellow which serves as a waymark.
Turn off the tarmac path here heading left downhill across the grass towards a thicket. Here you encounter another waymark.
Just after the waymark there is a plank bridge and a stile. The plank bridge leads across a little brook which marks the boundary between the City of Leicester Council area and the Borough of Charnwood which sits under Leicestershire County Council.
Follow the path straight through a copse of tangled trees crossing several stiles along the way.
Soon this leads out beside a cluster of houses to a road.
Cross over the road and head down the footpath slightly to the right, passing an estate of new houses.
This leads downhill to the embankment carrying Leicester’s northern bypass. At the embankment the path heads off to the left.
Soon you come to a metal gate leading out onto a semi-paved path. To the right there is a tunnel underneath the bypass, which you turn and walk through.
On the far side of the tunnel you cross a small bridge over the Rothley Brook. From here the roofs of the southwestern edge of Anstey are clearly visible in the near distance.
After the bridge follow a tarmac path across the field towards a hedgerow on the far side.
At the hedgerow the path splits. Take the right hand arm and follow the path for some distance as it winds along the side of fields running parallel with an electricity power line.
Presently the path runs to the left through a metal gate and across a little grassy park towards a snicket leading onto an estate of 1970s vintage houses.
Once through the snicket and onto the housing estate turn right, following the road around for a short distance.
Next to a green privet hedge there is a snicket off to the right. Turn right and follow this snicket.
It leads onto a street of mostly 19th Century vintage houses running up to the village’s old school which fronts onto a main road.
Just off to the right stands St. Mary’s Church, in whose graveyard the tomb of Edward Ludlam lies.
Was he Ned Lud? Who knows? This is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
From where the walk ends opposite St. Mary’s Church turn right and follow the road a little further into the centre of the village. You soon come to a crossroads around which a large number of shops are clustered. The right southern arm of the crossroads has a pub on it called The Wagon and Horses. Just after The Wagon and Horses stands a bus stop. From here the frequent (half hourly during daytime weekdays and Saturdays in 2022) 74 bus runs into Leicester city centre. From Leicester city centre it is possible to get buses to destinations across the county and trains to destinations across the East Midlands as well as Birmingham, London and Sheffield further afield.