File:Braunstone Hall, Leicester.jpg

English: Braunstone Hall was built in 1776 for the Winstanley family, lords of the manor and the main land owners in the village of Braunstone. In many ways the Hall resembles town houses like 17 Friar Lane. It is built in similar materials and has similar Classical proportions and decoration. But, while the Friar Lane houses were lived in by wealthy merchants and professional people or were used as town houses by landed families, Braunstone Hall was the centre of a country estate passed on through the Winstanley family from generation to generation. As country houses go, Braunstone hall is fairly unassuming. It was not designed by one of the many fashionable country house architects of the day but by local builder and Leicester politician, William Oldham. He used red brick and Swithland slate, common local materials. The central doorway and windows are emphasised just as they are at 17 Friar Lane. Here they are set in an arched recess reaching up to the top of the facade. The Hall has a slightly less elaborate frontage to the Park at the back and, inside, Classical columns in the entrance hall and an elegant staircase. Building has always been a dangerous occupation and the building records show that a stonemason and a labourer were killed in the construction of Braunstone Hall. Around the Hall, the Winstanleys had a Park laid out with a lake and gardens. As a wealthy family they had horses and carriages which were kept in the stable block next to the house. These buildings did not share the refinement of the house and were more like farm buildings, but they were still carefully designed, with fine brickwork arches and decoration at the eaves. The walled garden, restored and beautifully planted by the city council, once contained fruit trees, serving the household both as a source of food and as a place to stroll. There are also reminders of the Winstanleys in the village. They commissioned one of the most famous of Victorian Architects, William Butterfield, to design cottages for estate workers at Cressida Place and in Main Street. Both groups of cottages were built in 1859. Butterfield modelled the houses on traditional buildings and used local materials but their design has a deliberate, thought-out quality which suggests that it was the work of an architect. The parsonage, built in 1864, and the village school of 1867, were paid for by the Winstanleys. Braunstone was greatly changed in the 1930s when the Winstanleys estate was bought by the Leicester Corporation, partly as land for new housing. The Winstanleys park and buildings came to serve people from the crowded centre of Leicester. The Hall was turned into a school and the gardens and the stable block form part of the modern Braunstone Park.