Leicester

Leicester, Leicestershire

Written in 1925:

Modern Leicester, with a population of over two hundred thousand inhabitants, is a thriving, vigorous, progressive city, proud of its industrial enterprise, somewhat fierce in its politics. It is mainly a city of brick: even its fine modern Town Hall (1878) is of brick, though some of the more recent buildings are of stone. The principal streets owe their narrowness to their antiquity, and are cramped and crowded. The Market Square is inferior to that of Nottingham, and the stucco Market Hall, with Corn Exchange above it, is chiefly remarkable for the vigorous concept of the architect who added the bold approach to the upper story. He built an arch in front, and threw another flying arch from its middle to the door. Such a style, if generally adopted, would be not a little inconvenient for one's neighbours. A drawing in the City Library, dated 1837, shows the Market Hall in red brick before it was plastered with stucco and without this fantastic bridge. The reforming zeal of a Radical Corporation unhappily destroyed many relics of old Leicester which modern feeling would loyally preserve. One was the tall octagonal tower which stood in the High Street, the last relic of the town house of the Earls of Huntingdon. Another was the fine renaissance High Cross at the top of the High Street, whose site is now marked by a poor cross in the pavement. The picturesque Wyggeston Hospital with chapel and master's house was demolished to make way for Wyggeston School, which has in its turn been transferred to a site adjoining the University College in Victoria Park. The gabled front of the old Blue Boar Inn was also shown no mercy. Happily, the old Town Hall was spared by these zealous utilitarians. This small, and from the outside insignificant-looking building, in spite of its gables and roof of blue Swithland tiles, was originally, the headquarters of the powerful Corpus Christi Guild. The Corporation acquired it towards the end of the 16th century, after the dissolution of the Guild in 1548, and it served as Town Hall down to 1875. It is in the shape of a quadrangle, and the Mayor's Parlour, rebuilt and pannelled in 1637, contains a fine Jacobean chimney-piece and some heraldic glass. The galleried Hall, which served as the Mayor's Court till late in the nineteenth century, was long the principal place of civic and theatrical entertainment in Leicester, and its timbered roof has echoed to much jovial merriment through the centuries.

From Highways and Byways in Leicestershire by Frederick L Griggs, pub.1926, Macmillan and Co.

County of Leicestershire
Family Places in Leicestershire
Old Town Hall Leicester

The County of Leicestershire

Picture from Highways and Byways in Leicestershire by Frederick L Griggs

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