It is logical to suppose that Bainbridge Avenue, Russell Avenue and Lockington Avenue, which were all laid out around the same time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, are in some way, nominally, interlinked. Certainly it would appear that the names Bainbridge and Russell have come down to us via unusual middle names of members of the Rendle family (Charles Bainbridge Rendle and Edmund Marshman Russel Rendle), who were, prior to the sale of the area for development, owners of this part of the Vinstone Estate. Long gone from the area now, it is possible that the name Lockington was also a part of this family’s heritage.
Records show that a William Bainbridge bought Lockington Hall, between Derby and Loughborough, in 1576. The family were still there during the Civil War, in the mid-seventeenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century John Bainbridge Story, of Lockington, was High Sheriff of Leicester. Clearly in the absence of better evidence it is hard to draw any definite conclusions, but neither name is particularly common, so their proximity here could well be a legacy of that earlier history.The name Lockington itself would appear to have started out as something like ‘the homestead by the enclosure that belonged to Lucc or Luca’s people’.
