A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



the wall was uncertain, as the workmen did not reach the foundations. It 

 was 4ft. thick, and the upper part had fallen. Carte concluded from the 

 depth of the previous excavation that it would have been 1 2 ft. high, and 

 was certainly part of the wall found in 1685. On the east side of it in the 

 street the made earth was 2 ft. thick, and ' below it was a pavement of stone 

 like a street.' This wall apparently extended almost the whole length of 

 High Cross Street. 89 A granite and sandstone ' walk ' is said to have been 

 discovered running down the middle of the street from near All Saints' 

 Church to the gaol. 40 A tesselated pavement and hypocausts were found 

 under what is now No. 18, High Cross Street, and also under another house 

 in the possession of Mr. King, afterwards of Mr. Collier. 41 At the corner of 

 High Cross Street and High Street, when excavating for cellars under the 

 new High Cross Coffee House in 1901, three pieces of pavement (now in 

 the Leicester Museum), a portion of a stone column, and part of a wall of 

 masonry about a foot high were found. 42 The pavement shows a border of 

 elaborately twisted braidwork within which, on a white field, are closely set 

 knots of braidwork in lines perpendicular to the border. The colours and 

 materials are, apparently, for white a limestone, brown an ironstone, grey or 

 slate colour lias limestone, and red, as always, a brick. The sizes of the 

 tesserae range from in. to ij in. square (plate VII). The pavement is 

 one of a class in which the field is covered by a geometrical diaper. Other 

 specimens have been found at the Blackfriars. Another tesselated pavement 

 was also found on the site of the county gaol, where Free School Lane turns 

 from High Cross Street. 48 



Some carved impost mouldings and other carved fragments, perhaps from 

 an arch, were found at the junction of Blue Boar Lane and High Cross Street 

 (Nos. 21 26 in Leicester Museum) (plate II). Also a stone fountain (No. 12 

 in Museum), found at No. 52, High Cross Street, at a depth of 10 ft., which 

 may, as Mr. Fox says, have been a street fountain, or perhaps, if considered too 

 small for that purpose, may have stood in the peristyle of an important house. 

 Traces of a lining of pink cement were found in it (plate II). 44 A wall with 

 bases and shafts of columns was discovered in 1859 in Blue Boar Lane, not 

 far from the place where the carved mouldings were found. 46 Another base of 

 a column was discovered in June, 1907, in Blue Boar Lane, 12 ft. from the 

 surface, and is now in the Leicester Museum. The base is 2 ft. square and the 

 diameter of the column 18 in. ; the mouldings are of an early type (plate II). 



In making the cellar of a house (which belonged then to Mr. Worth- 

 ington) opposite the elm trees near All Saints' church, about 1675," a piece 

 of tesselated pavement, a little over a yard square, was discovered about 5 ft. 

 below the surface. It is interesting as being the only figure subject yet found 

 in Leicester, and is now in the Leicester Museum (No. i). It was dis- 

 covered at a time when few thought or cared for such things, otherwise it is 



Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, pt. i, 1 1 ; Thompson, Hist. Leic. App. p. 447 ; Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 61. 



10 Leic. Arch. Sue. ii, 23 ; Fox, op. cit. " Throsby, Hist. Leic. 20 ; Arch. Journ. xlvi, 62. 



41 Assoc. Arch. Sof. xxvi, 459. " Throsby, Hist. Leic. 383. 



44 Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 51. Mr. Fox had made out the finely-moulded outline of the tank which is 

 shown on plate II. 



44 Leic. Arch. Sac. ii, 23, 24 (1866). Information of the discovery of 1907 has been kindly supplied by 

 Mr. H. Pickering. 



46 Carte in Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, 9 ; Leic. and Rutl. N. and Q. iii, i 36. 



192 



