Pre 1870, referred to as in Knighton or Knighton Road.
In 1867, John Clewes, aged about twenty-four, was licensee of the Storks Head and Victoria Pleasure Grounds. John’s parents had kept the Coachmakers in Church Gate where John lived as a young boy.
Clewes applied for a spirit licence for the above as the Royal Agricultural show to be held here, advertising for events, dancing and amusements adjoining Victoria Park.
Opposition to the licence came from the lunatic asylum (now part of Leicester University) which backed on to his Victoria Pleasure Grounds. Indeed, an injunction had been taken out against John Clewes’ running of the grounds:
‘Immoral practices on the Pleasure Grounds’
The patients at the lunatic asylum were much disturbed by the conduct of prostitutes and card sharps, the going on were in view of the patients who were much disturbed by the way the Storks Head was conducting affairs. The magistrates refused the application.
John Clewes put the Storks Head up for sale in 1874, together with a frontage of 400 feet suitable for the erection of a villa residence. The pub itself was described as newly erected. John left for the Freemans Arms on Aylestone Rd where he went into liquidation within three years. He later turned up at the Champion in Humberstone Gate.
This wasn’t the end of the Storks Head’s notoriety as in 1883, John Mason who had taken on The Storks Head a year previously had his licence objected to due to the continued immorality over the previous two years.
The pub was inviting young boys and girls to engage in immoral conduct: girls of fourteen were serving at the bar and the gents urinals used for ‘immoral purposes’. Although witnesses corroborated the offences, the magistrates decided not to revoke the licence, but the police were instructed to keep watch on proceedings at the Storks Head.
A year later 1884 the Storks Head was put up for sale advertised as recently enlarged roadside hotel with grounds for sports. Although John Mason was to continue at the pub until his death in 1913, Ernest Edwin Mason then took on the licence, for 4 years followed by Ellen Mason for about 2 years when Ernest Edwin Mason was back in 1919, until 1930 when Horace Lathbury came in. So the Mason family had ran the Storks Head for almost 50 years.
For the next few decades the grounds were used mainly for this purpose. Cricket between Leicestershire and Warwickshire and senior league football was played early in the 1900s amongst many other sports.
1993, saw Ind Coope carry out the ‘Firkinisation’ of many pubs up and down the country. Leicester alone had three, far too many. Overkill soon bought an end to a lot, including the Fuzzock & Firkin, as the Storks Head had become.
The next move from Fuzzock (Yorkshire name for a donkey), to it ingeniously being called the Donkey.
What wasn’t so cleaver the obliteration of the classical façade of the old pub. The Donkey became one of the main music venues in Leicester, returning to its 1860 roots of music and entertainment.
Perhaps the pub would not have survived if it wasn’t for Warren McDonald who opened the Donkey circa 2003. His music, band knowledge and contacts made the Donkey a favourite for music lovers. For sixteen years he presided over one of the best pub/music/venues around. Warren sold up in 2019, although the Donkey carries on as of writing.
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