Exploring Leicester

The best way to explore the centre of Leicester is on foot, and this has become a lot easier, and more pleasant, thanks to the efforts made during recent years to pedestrianize several main streets and extend the central shopping mall.

Shopping

For the shopper, Leicester has a lot to offer. From the Clock Tower, you can go east along Humberstone Gate, south along Gallowtree Gate, or west along High Street, and find many of the stores that are familiar in an English city centre, but without the traffic that usually separates one side of the street from the other. However, Leicester has a few surprises as well. For one thing, you may come across street musicians and other entertainers in this area, or fairground rides and stalls at certain times of the year. The various festivals celebrated by many different religious groups make their mark on these streets, which are decorated accordingly.

Just off Gallowtree Gate is Leicester Market, the largest covered market in Europe. There has been a market on this site for 700 years, and there is a huge number of stalls, many of them selling fresh fruit and vegetables but a variety of other goods besides.

From the market, you can easily wander into “The Lanes”. These are some of the oldest streets in Leicester, as narrow as they were when laid out in medieval times, with a multitude of small shops and places to eat. There are arcades and alleyways that are just asking to be explored.

Cross from the Lanes over High St and you will enter the completely different world of the Highcross Centre. This two-level shopping mall boasts around 120 retail premises, including many top names such as John Lewis, Top Shop and River Island, plus a 12-screen cinema and a variety of eateries.

With its combination of new and old, Leicester is now regarded as one of the top ten shopping centres in the UK. However, there is much more to Leicester than just its shops.

Historical Leicester

Leicester’s history goes back to Roman times, and there are still a few vestiges of its origins to be seen. Walk along High St to its end and you will not be far from the Jewry Wall which, despite its name, was built as part of the baths complex of the original settlement, in about 160 AD. At 18 feet high and 70 feet long, it is the second largest piece of Roam civil (as opposed to military) masonry to be found in the country. The adjoining Jewry Wall Museum tells the story of Leicester from the Iron Age to the present day.

If you walk back towards the city centre along Guildhall Lane, you will pass by the Guildhall, which is one of the best-preserved timber framed halls in the country, dating back to 1390. It is believed by many that Shakespeare himself performed in a play here, and the building is still used as a performance venue today. It is also reputed to be Leicester’s most haunted building, with five different ghosts having been reported.

Next to the Guildhall is Leicester Cathedral. This is not a graceful, soaring building along the lines of many famous English cathedrals, but a former parish church that was transformed into a cathedral when Leicester was designated as a city in 1927. It is well worth a visit, not least as an oasis of calm at the heart of a busy city.

The cathedral contains the tomb of King Richard III, whose body was brought to Leicester after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. However, the burial only took place in 2015 after Richard’s remains had been excavated from a site very close to the cathedral but not known about for more than 500 years.

The first burial site can be visited as it is now part of the King Richard III Visitor Centre, built on the site of the chapel of Grey Friars.

Walking on

An alternative route from Jewry Wall is along the towpath of the River Soar, which forms part of the Grand Union Canal as it passes through Leicester. Apart from admiring the swans, rowers and canoeists, you can look across to Castle Park, which is the site of Leicester Castle, of which nothing remains except the motte on which the Norman castle was built.

If you cross at the first bridge, you can walk up The Newarke and visit the Newarke Houses Museum, which tells the story of 20^th century Leicester and the Royal Leicestershire Regiment. On a fine day, be sure to visit the gardens, which are themselves an historical exhibit of gardening through the centuries.

If you cross at the second bridge, you can walk between the buildings of De Montfort University. At the top of the road, where Bonner’s Lane meets Oxford St, is a Jain temple, the only one in Europe. This is a truly remarkable building, with a marble frontage covered in intricate carvings, many more of which can be found inside. This is a reminder of the cosmopolitan nature of Leicester, which is home to people whose origins are from all over the world. People of all the world’s major religions live here in peaceful harmony.

To your left you can see The Magazine, which was a gateway to the Castle site, with an attached three-storey building, built around 1410. It was through this gateway that Richard III rode on the way to his last battle in 1485.

Carry on down either York Road or Newarke St, cross Welford Place, and you will reach the start of New Walk. This article began with a description of Leicester’s latest pedestrianization, but here is proof that the idea goes back a long way. New Walk, despite its name, was laid out as long ago as 1785, with the stipulation that no wheeled vehicles were to be allowed along it, and the rule still stands to this day. It forms a pleasant, tree-lined route of some 1,100 metres, with substantial town houses built on either side, although many of these have since been converted into offices.

New Walk connects several open spaces, and eventually leads to the much larger Victoria Park, but you might like to stop at the New Walk Museum, and spend some time here. This is Leicester’s oldest museum, and its collection is very wide-ranging, specialising in the natural world and anthropology. Children will probably be most interested in the dinosaurs, including two skeletons that were discovered in Leicestershire, and the “Wild Space” exhibit which is an interactive exploration of biodiversity with many hands-on features.

The museum is also an art gallery, with artists represented including Durer, Pissarro, Hogarth and Lowry. The gallery possesses the largest collection of German expressionist art outside Germany.

When you’ve had enough, make your back to the city centre and gain refreshment at one of the dozens of pubs, cafes and restaurants on offer in Leicester. The cultural diversity of Leicester means that there is something to suit every taste, either in the centre or a short journey away along Belgrave Road, which is at the heart of the Asian community.

And if you still want more, there’s the National Space Centre only a few miles up the road by bus. Exploring Leicester is a very worthwhile activity, but you’ll need more than one day to do it!

© John Welford