Earl of Rutland, Aylestone passed to the Manners family, who later became the Dukes of Rutland. The estate was sold by the 6th Duke of Rutland, the sale being held at the Temperance Hall in Leicester on 26 June 1869. The Leicester Extension Act of 1891 incorporated Aylestone into the Borough of Leicester. The village had at this time an area of 1,723 acres. Aylestone's open fields were enclosed in 1766. about this time Aylestone was the chosen route into Leicester Town for the supply of coal from the areas around Bagworth, Desford and Swannington which was carried in by Packhorse "trains" who crossed, on the Aylestone packhorse bridge, the (sometimes swampy) flood plain area now known as Aylestone Meadows. During the English Civil War/War of Three Kingdoms King Charles 1 of England and Prince Rupert used Aylestone Hall as their headquarters during the siege and storming of Parliamentarian Leicester Town by the main Royalist field army on 30 and 31 May 1645. Aylestone Hall was occupied by a ladies' boarding school in 1846. When the estate was sold in 1869 the hall was occupied by a tenant, Nathaniel Stone, who purchased it. From 1871 to 1938 the hall was occupied by the Stretton family. It was requisitioned by the army during World War II. In 1950 Leicester City Council purchased it, and after renovation the hall and the grounds were opened in 1954 as a public park, with a restaurant and a clubhouse for the local bowling club. Aylestone Hall was renovated again in 2003, and converted into three separate dwellings and a clubhouse. It had been assumed that much of the hall's medieval fabric had been destroyed when alterations were made in 1850. However early timber framing, including parts of an aisled hall, were found during a preliminary investigation. The timbers were dated by dendrochronology to 1339. The hall has a mid-16th-century cross wing of stone in a timber frame, and was re–roofed in the late 17th century, using many of the original 14th-century timbers. Many of the seemingly Tudor architectural features, such as the star–shaped chimneys, were introduced during the rebuilding of 1850. It was the home of Dorothy Vernon and John Manners. A 15th-century packhorse bridge at the west end of Marsden Lane crosses the River Soar on eleven arches. Aylestone Park is an area of housing approximately a mile square, which grew between Leicester and