Boyers Lodge

Boyer's Lodge is a house dating from the early 17th century, with the left bay rebuilt in the 19th to 20th century and an early 18th-century rear wing. It was refurbished around 1985. The building features a timber frame with whitewashed brick infill visible in the right gable and in the original rear wall. The front is roughcast, and there is a granite rubble plinth. The rear wing is constructed of narrow brick with burnt headers, and the building has a thatched roof with brick chimneys. It has an irregular T-plan, is one storey high with an attic, and has a three-bay front. The right bay contains 20th-century three-light barred wooden casements, with bowed windows on the ground floor and large thatch eyebrows for the attic windows. The ground floor of the left bay has a similar two-light bowed window and 20th-century arched double doors. The gable ends and rear wing feature matching casements, and there is a 20th-century lean-to at the rear of the right bays. Inside, the timber framing includes long tension braces in the wall between the left bays, as well as stop-chamfered spine beams and joists. Thomas Boyer, one of the keepers of the Royal Forest, is noted in 1628 as one of several purchasers of Forest land. The house is recognized as the only surviving keeper's lodge associated with Leicester Forest, as documented by John Nichols in "History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester" from 1775 to 1811.