: A Walk through Leicester being a Guide to Strangers by Watts Susannah - Leicester (England) Description and travel

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"Within this hour it will be dinner-time, Till that I'll view the manners of the town, Peruse its traders, gaze upon its buildings, And then return and sleep within mine inn."

SHAKESPEARE.

LEICESTER, PRINTED BY T. COMBE, AND SOLD BY T. HURST, PATER-NOSTER-ROW, LONDON, 1804.

ADDRESS.

INHABITANTS OF LEICESTER.

To the traveller who may wish to visit whatever is deemed most worthy of notice in the town of Leicester, the following sketch is devoted. And as the highly cultivated state of topographical knowledge renders superficial remark unpardonable in local description, we shall endeavor to produce, at the various objects of our visit, such information and reflections as a conductor, not wholly uninformed, may be expected to offer to the curious and intelligent, while he guides him through a large, commercial, and, we trust, a respectable town; the capital of a province which can honestly boast, that by its rich pasturage, its flocks and herds, it supplies England with the blessings of agricultural fertility; and by the industry of its frame-work-knitters, affords an article that quickens and extends the operations of commerce.

We now request our good-humoured stranger to accept of such our guidance; whether he be the tourist, whose object of inquiry is general information--or the man of reflection, who, wherever he goes, whether in crouded towns or solitary fields, finds something to engage his meditation--or the mercantile rider, who, when the business of his commissions is transacted, quits his lonely parlour for a stroll through the streets--we shall endeavor to bring before his eye as much of interest as our scenes will afford: and as for the diligent antiquary, we assure him we will make the most of our Roman remains; and we hope he will not quarrel with the rough forest stones of our streets, when we promise him they shall conduct him to the smoother pavement of Roman mosaic.

What may have been the name of the town we are about to traverse, before the establishment of the Romans, cannot be ascertained; for the Britons had no written monuments, and it cannot be expected that tradition should have survived the revolutions, which, since that period, have taken place in this island. King Leir, and whatever surmises may have been founded on the similarity between his name and the present name of the place, may safely be left to those who are more fond of the flights of conjecture than the solid arguments of truth.

Such is, most probably, the true etymology of the name of the place we are now proceeding to survey; for which purpose we will suppose the visitor to set forward from the Three Crowns Inn, along a strait wide street, called

GALLOWTREE-GATE,

, from its having formerly led to the place of execution, the left side of which is the scite of the antient city walls.

At the bottom of this street, a building, formerly the assembly-room, but now converted to purposes of trade, with a piazza, under which is a machine for weighing coals, forms the centre of five considerable streets. The

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