ST. NICHOLAS'S
The ancient parish of St. Nicholas, 16 acres in area
and the smallest of the old borough parishes, lay in
the west of the town. The civil parish became merged
in the civil parish of Leicester in 1896. (fn. 1) The boundaries of the present ecclesiastical parish, largely
those of the ancient parish, were altered owing to the
construction of the Great Central Railway at the end
of the 19th century. From the junction with St. Martin's parish just south of Free School Lane, the boundary of the ancient parish runs south-east through
houses to the junction of Thornton Lane and Harvey
Lane. From there it goes west to reach Applegate
Street about half-way to the West Bridge. The
boundary then runs along the line of the river to a
point almost due west of the remains of Friars' Causeway. From there it runs to the east along the line of
that street to about the top of Great Central Street,
then south-east to Blue Boar Lane and south-west to
its starting-point. (fn. 2)
The main thoroughfare of the parish is St. Nicholas Street, which joins High Street and Applegate
Street and leads to the West Bridge. St. Nicholas
Street was known in the Middle Ages as Hotgate,
from the common ovens of the borough which were
in the locality. (fn. 3) Hotgate is first mentioned in 1297
and the name was Latinized as calidus vicus. (fn. 4) In the
17th century the old name was still current, although
the common ovens ceased to be used, (fn. 5) but by the
early 19th century it had become known as St.
Nicholas Street. (fn. 6) Applegate Street still preserves its
medieval name, although it was sometimes known in
the past as Shambles Lane. (fn. 7) There was a St. Nicholas Shambles at least as early as the end of the 14th
century, when it brought in a yearly rent of £3 5s.
to the borough. (fn. 8) Although in the 16th century the
Leicester butchers wished to confine their business
to the Saturday Shambles, in the Saturday Market
Place, their petition about the matter was evidently
disregarded. (fn. 9) A new shambles was built in 1681–2. (fn. 10)
Throsby refers to the street as Shambles Street, but
it seems to have been generally known as Applegate
Street at the beginning of the 19th century. (fn. 11)
Blue Boar Lane joins High Cross Street and Great
Central Street. It was known in the Middle Ages
as Guildhall Lane or Mayor's Hall Lane, from the
presence at its western end of the second of Leicester's
common halls. (fn. 12) This stood at the southern corner
of the street, opposite the east end of St. Nicholas's
Church. The borough purchased a building on this
site for a common hall in 1251, (fn. 13) and it remained in
the possession of the town until at least 1694, when
the old Mayor's Hall still stood. It is not known when
the hall was demolished. The present name of the
street is derived from the Blue Boar Inn which until
demolished in 1836 stood on the south side at the
junction with High Cross Street. (fn. 14) The 'Blue Boar'
was one of the best-known inns in Leicester during
the 16th century, and is traditionally the house in
which Richard III passed the night before the battle
of Bosworth in 1485. (fn. 15) Jewry Wall Street is named
from the Roman remains so called. It is not known
when the name originated, but in its more probable
form, Jury Wall, it was in use at the end of the 17th
century. (fn. 16) The explanation of the name which was
widely accepted in the 18th century and after, that
this area of the town was the Jews' quarter, (fn. 17) seems
highly improbable. Of Talbot Lane little remains, as
it was largely cut into by the construction of the
Great Central Railway in 1899. It was probably
named from a piece of ground called the Talbot,
which also gave its name to the Talbot Inn, which was
probably standing at the end of the 15th century. (fn. 18)
No. 10 Talbot Lane dates from the 18th century
and has an interesting staircase. Jester House, next
door, is of the early 19th century. Deadmans Lane
and its continuation, later called Sycamore Street, (fn. 19)
have now been lost in Great Central Street, which
was partly an improvement and widening of existing
streets and partly a completely new road cut through,
when the railway was built, to connect the former
Sycamore Street with St. Nicholas Street. (fn. 20) Its
construction necessitated the rebuilding of St.
Nicholas's school, and the demolition of houses in
Holy Bones. The new school was designed by J.
Stockdale Harrison and was opened in 1906. (fn. 21)
Vaughan College, next door, was also designed at
the same time by the same architect. (fn. 22)
Holy Bones, to the east of St. Nicholas's Church,
was so named at least from the beginning of the 15th
century, (fn. 23) most probably because it led to the churchyard. During the 18th century and earlier large
quantities of bones of cattle and other animals were
dug up there, and these were assumed to be the remains of sacrifices at the Jewry Wall, then supposed
to be a temple, and to have given the street its
name. (fn. 24) It is more likely that they came from the
St. Nicholas Shambles. Bath Lane runs north along
the river from West Bridge. It was named long before the public baths were built there in 1879 from
plans by John Breedon Everard, the city engineer. (fn. 25)
St. Nicholas's parish is now mainly a commercial
area of factories and warehouses, dominated by the
railway. There are some houses, and in Thornton
Lane is William Carey's cottage, the home of the
Baptist missionary to India, which is now a museum, (fn. 26)
and is an excellent example of a working-class home
of the type built at the end of the 18th century.
In 1563 120 families lived in the parish, (fn. 27) but by
the beginning of the 18th century there were only
90. (fn. 28) In 1801 the population was 947. It rose suddenly
to 1,589 in 1811. In 1871 it reached its highest figure,
1,925. (fn. 29) In 1931 the population of the ecclesiastical
parish was 1,388 (fn. 30) and in 1949 it was estimated to
have fallen to about 1,000. (fn. 31)
Church.
St. Nicholas's Church is probably built
on the site of the basilica of Roman Leicester,
although it is very difficult to say what lies beneath
the church, since only the ground under the narrow
passage between the church and the Jewry Wall can
be excavated. (fn. 32) Any explanation of the foundation
and early history of the church must be largely conjectural. It seems very probable that the large early
Saxon church which stood on this site was the minster
or cathedral of the Saxon see of Leicester. The
evidence of the fabric itself does not contradict the
possibility that the building of the church coincides
with the creation of the see. The first recorded
bishop, Cuthwine, is known to have been in office
from 679, although the see itself was not permanently
established until 737. (fn. 33)
The church was probably not dedicated to St.
Nicholas originally, that dedication only having been
adopted about 1220. (fn. 34) References to two churches or
chapels of St. Augustine and St. Columba, which
have received a good deal of comment by historians
of Leicester, (fn. 35) have their origin in the Novum Rentale
of Leicester Abbey made by Prior William Charyte
at the end of the 15th century. Writing of the parish
church of Cosby he states: 'Ecclesia de Cosby pertinuit ad ecclesiam sancti Augustini Leycestrie que
quidem ecclesia sancti Augustini sita fuerat ad orientalem partem cancelle ecclesie sancti Nicholai Leycestrie. Et erat ipsa ecclesia constructa sub duabus
tectis conjunctis super medias columpnas cuius una
pars erat dedicata sancto Augustino et alla [sic] pars
Sancte Columbe. (fn. 36) Charyte's evidence for this circumstantial statement is not known. It is possible that
the original dedication of the church was to St. Augustine and that it had a chapel dedicated to St. Columba.
It has always been assumed that the two supposed
churches or chapels of St. Augustine and St. Columba
were destroyed shortly after the Norman Conquest,
but just as the Jewry Wall stood ruined at the west
end of the church, so another ruin at the east end (fn. 37)
might explain the reference to St. Augustine and
St. Columba's as a distinct building. It is also possible that the half-remembered change in the dedication of St. Nicholas's Church might have led Charyte
or some earlier writer to assume that St. Augustine's
Church was separate from that of St. Nicholas.
Church of St. Nicholas, Leicester
It has been suggested that St. Nicholas's Church,
or churchyard, was the meeting-place of the jurats of
the borough, who left their name as a result to the
Jewry (or Jury) Wall. This theory was based upon an
explanation offered by Mary Bateson of a passage in
the charter of Robert, Earl of Leicester of the mid12th century, which freed the burgesses from pleading outside the town. The relevant passage runs
'neither for pleading nor for any other custom shall
they go out of Leicester, except (tantummodo) ad
coumecherchiam as was anciently established'. Miss
Bateson suggested that 'coumecherchiam' was a corruption of 'communiam cherchiam', and by translating 'tantummodo' as 'only', she suggested that the
passage meant that the burgesses should only plead
at meetings in their own common churchyard. (fn. 38) A
more recent suggestion for the meaning of this passage
is that 'coumecherchiam' is a contraction of 'communiam serchiam', the duty of aiding the sheriff
in finding strayed or stolen cattle, for which the burgesses would clearly have had to go out of the town. (fn. 39)
Whatever the truth of its very early history, it
seems certain that the church of St. Nicholas, under
its old dedication, was given to the college of St.
Mary de Castro in 1107 and passed to Leicester
Abbey on its foundation in 1143. (fn. 40) The abbey had
appropriated it before 1220 (fn. 41) and retained possession
of it until the Dissolution, (fn. 42) when the advowson
passed to the Crown. The Crown continued to present until 1867 when the advowson was granted to
the Bishop of Peterborough. (fn. 43) The Bishop of Leicester was patron in 1955. (fn. 44)
In 1651–2 it was proposed to unite the benefices of
St. Nicholas and St. Mary, but this scheme came to
nothing. (fn. 45) In 1938 the church was deprived of its
vicarage. Until 1948 it was served by a curate from
St. Martin's, but the vicarage was then restored. (fn. 46)
During the Middle Ages the vicars received a pension
of 6 marks from Leicester Abbey. (fn. 47) Before its appropriation the vicarage had been worth 10 marks. (fn. 48) Two
grants from Queen Anne's Bounty were made in
1714 and 1800 and two parliamentary grants in 1813
and 1824, but in spite of these augmentations the
vicarage was worth only £35 in 1831. (fn. 49) The stipend
was again increased in 1885. (fn. 50)
Little is known about the tithes of the parish after
the Dissolution, except that in 1626 the corporation
paid tithe to the vicar for the ground on which the
pest-house stood. (fn. 51) In 1853 these tithes, then amount
ing to £2 2s. 6d. yearly, were redeemed for a lump
sum of £55. (fn. 52)
The church of ST. NICHOLAS (fn. 53) consists of nave
and chancel, north and south aisles, and central
tower. It is built immediately to the east of the site of
the Roman forum, 12 feet separating the west end of
the church from the Jewry Wall, and considerable use
was made in building the church of the Roman
material so close at hand.
The pre-Conquest remains of the church are the
north and west walls of the nave and the wall above
the 19th-century arch of the south nave arcade.
Quoins of green sandstone of this early period survive
at the south-west corner of the nave and at the base
of the disused north-east angle of the chancel, which
was the north-east corner of the early church. The
ends of the middle pier of the north nave arcade are
formed of large blocks of the same material. Above
the north nave arcade are two small windows, the
arches on both faces of the wall turned with two
rows of Roman bricks. At the present time these
windows are double-splayed but examination has
shown that in both cases the inner ring of bricks on
the outer side has been cut back and that the windows
had originally only a single splay. These windows
and the wall in which they are set date possibly from
the 7th century and certainly from before the Danish
invasions. This early church extended for the whole
length of the present nave and chancel (the northeast angle has been mentioned above), and it seems
likely that the Jewry Wall formed the western wall of
the porticus, which, as at Brixworth (Northants.),
was probably continuous round the nave; the nave
was probably entered through arches in the side
walls. Traces of rough foundation walls between the
west end of the church and the Jewry Wall were
discovered at the excavation of that site. This western
porticus may have been designed for the instruction
of catechumens. (fn. 54)
The second stage in the building took place in the
last part of the 11th century, when building was
carried out in brown sandstone, dressed with axes.
At this time a central tower seems to have been built
in stone to a height just above the roof line, and then
probably completed in timber. The herring-bone
arrangement of Roman tiles at the base of the tower
dates from this time. A blocked opening in the north
nave wall possibly led to a stair, and there may have
been transepts to this church.
In the 12th century the tower was completed in
grey limestone to its present height, two stories above
and two below the roof line. The present arcade was
cut in the north nave wall, and a similar arcade was
probably cut in the south wall. That on the north
(the only one surviving) is of two bays, the arches
springing from the old central pier, which was
redressed and chamfered. The wide blocked arch in
the west wall and the south doorway with its simple
hood and abaci with nail-head ornament are of
the same date, probably the first half of the century.
The chancel of the 12th-century church was narrower than the nave and its walls were pierced,
probably for chapels, early in the 13th century. The
south arcade still survives and is of two bays with
pointed arches. That on the north is of one bay and
is now blocked up. There seems to have been a
sacristy farther east on the north side, where a
piscina remains in the outer wall. The south aisle,
which runs the full length of the church, was added
about 1300. The broach spire, which was demolished
partly in 1805 and partly a short while later, (fn. 55) was
probably added in the late 13th or early 14th century.
The clerestory was built in the 14th or 15th century,
when the nave walls were raised. The line of the
original roof can be seen above the chancel arch. The
timber-framed south porch was added in the 16th
century. In 1697 the north aisle was demolished as it
was dangerous, (fn. 56) and the north arcade was blocked.
It is not known exactly when the aisle had been
built. At the beginning of the last century the chancel
was in use as a vestry and the altar was in the south
aisle. (fn. 57) In 1825 a proposal was made to demolish the
whole structure as it was held to be in an extremely
dangerous condition. (fn. 58) Owing to the poverty of the
parish, however, no funds could be raised for the
proposed rebuilding, and nothing was done. Extensive alterations took place a few years later, when the
south nave arcade was taken down and replaced by a
large brick arch which spans the whole of the former
arcade. The architect of this restoration and alteration was an otherwise unknown Mr. Mortin. The
corporation subscribed two sums of £100 each towards the work. (fn. 59) The church was reseated at the
same time. Restorations were again carried out in
1873–6, when F. W. Ordish rebuilt the old north
aisle; (fn. 60) this was not carried to the length of the south
aisle, and its east wall ends on a level with the eastern
pillars of the tower. The wall is roughly filled with
rubble masonry. This new aisle is wider than the
former one. At the same time the porch was renewed,
the interior walls freed from plaster, the window
mouldings renewed and various other replacements
were made. A new pulpit was made to Ordish's
design, based on one in northern Italy. The church
was again restored in 1904–5, when Charles Baker
was responsible for securing the tower with steel
supports and for restoring the outside of the tower,
clerestory and north aisle. (fn. 61) Further restorations took
place in 1949. (fn. 62) Nearly all the outer walls of the
church show considerable signs of these various
restorations, and most of the windows are modern.
There is an 18th-century sundial of Swithland
slate on the south wall. The south aisle contains
a mutilated piscina and triple sedilia. In 1929 this
aisle was dedicated as a memorial chapel to Canon
Edward Atkins. (fn. 63)
The font stands at the west end of the south aisle,
and dates from the last century. (fn. 64) It is a square block
of sandstone, with a scooped basin, supported on a
single alabaster column. The old plate consists of a
silver paten of 1706, a cup of 1714 and a cup and
flagon of 1736. There are also three 18th-century
pewter plates and some 19th-century silver. (fn. 65) The
organ was installed in 1890. (fn. 66) There are three bells,
all by unknown bell-founders, but cast in 1617, 1656,
and 1710. Only that cast in 1710 is now used. (fn. 67) The
registers date from 1560 and the churchwardens'
accounts from 1761.
The churchyard was closed for burials in 1856.
Part of it was taken for street-widening in 1898. (fn. 68)
Charities.
Francis Palmer gave at an unknown
date an annuity of 10s., charged upon a house in
Jewry Wall Street, to be distributed among the poor.
In 1837 the money was being distributed by the
corporation. (fn. 69) Sir William Wilson of Sutton Coldfield (Warws.) left, by will proved in 1710, a yearly
sum of £10 from property at Sutton to be used for
the apprenticing of poor children from the parish.
The bequest was to take effect from 1792; in 1837
the children were being apprenticed mostly to framework-knitters. (fn. 70) Mrs. Elizabeth Clarke left £50 'by
will in 1780' in trust for the poor. The parish added
£5. The stock was apparently sold in 1801 to defray
a debt of £130 for building at the workhouse. (fn. 71) By
will dated 1821 Thomas Read left £50 in trust
for bread for the poor on St. Thomas's Day. The
interest was added to money received from the corporation and a substantial distribution of bread used
to be made. (fn. 72) One other charity, Smart's Charity for
bread, was lost before 1837. (fn. 73) One-half of the John
Norrice Charity is payable to the vicar by the Trustees
of the Leicester General Charities. The corporation
pay sums to the parish under the Courteen and Ive
charities, which also receives a share of the Heyrick
Charity for bread from the Trustees of the Leicester
General Charities. (fn. 74)