Market Harborough is a town in the south-east corner of
Leicestershire, just inside the border with Northamptonshire. It has a
population of 23,000.
The town was founded around 1170 as one of the new towns
established by King Henry II, and a market has been held here since 1204. A
cattle market was held in The Square (which is actually a triangle!) until
1903, when it was moved to Springfield Street.
High Street leads away from The Square, being lined with a
number of elegant Georgian houses, most of which have been converted to shops.
Two buildings of note in High Street are the Parish Church of St Dionysius and
the old Grammar School.
The church, built of ironstone, dates from the 14th
century. The spire, which rises to 161 feet above the ground, is a particularly
fine example of a “broach spire”, namely one that has eight triangular faces
that rise from a square base atop a tower. The church is also unusual, for a
parish church, both for its dedication to St Dionysius and for not having a
churchyard.
Market Harborough is close to the Civil War battlefield of
Naseby, where, on 14th June 1645, King Charles I was decisively
beaten by the Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell. Charles held a
council of war at Market Harborough before the battle, but after his defeat
Cromwell occupied the town and announced his victory from the Bell Inn. The
church was used to hold 4,500 Royalist prisoners overnight.
The timber-framed Grammar School was built in 1614. It
stands on sturdy posts with an open ground floor, which served as a butter
market. The school was the gift of Robert Smyth, who was born poor but
journeyed to London to seek his fortune and managed so to do. One can still see
the Biblical quotations, carved into the arches supporting the upper floor,
that Smyth insisted on having made.
The building ceased to be a school in 1892 and it is now
used as an exhibition centre.
Other notable buildings in the town include Brooke House,
which was built in 1708, and Catherwood House (in The Square) which was built
in the Gothic style in 1876 and was lived in at one time by Sir William Bragg
(1862-1942) who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915 for his work on X-ray
crystallography.
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