Читать книгу Mediaeval Leicester - Charles James Billson - Страница 9

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The greater part of the land in this quarter of the town was occupied by the Saturday Market, which lay at the South-eastern corner, bounded by the town walls, and by the Monastery of the Grey Friars, whose house stood south of Peacock Lane, and whose grounds extended, according to Throsby, from the upper end of the Market Place to the Friar Lane meeting house, that is, within four chains of the old High Street.

The principal mediaeval thoroughfares were Kirk Gate, The Sheepmarket, St. Francis Lane, The Cank, Loseby Lane, and Friar Lane. The road which ran beyond the South wall was known in the middle of the 15th century by its present name of Millstone Lane. In Queen Elizabeth's Charter of 1589 this road, or the Eastern portion of it, is called Horse Fair Lane. ​Nichols followed Throsby in identifying Millstone Lane with Hangman Lane, a name which occurs as early as 1337. But Hangman Lane would seem rather to correspond with Newarke Street, as in Combe's plan of 1802. This is indicated by the terms of the extension of the Cattle Market, in 1783, "down the South Gate to the Horse Pool, and also along the Welford Road to St. Mary's Workhouse or across Hangman Lane if necessary."

Kirk Gate is now called Town Hall Lane. In 1354 it was described as "Venella Martini," "Martin's Lane." In 1458 it appears as "Kirk Lane," in 1478 as "Kirk Gate," in 1483 it is called "the church lane unto the High Street"; in 1493, "St, Martin's Church Lane"; and, in 1505, "Church Lane." In 1494 the Abbot of Leicester paid rent to the Corpus Christi Guild for a house which he then occupied, called "The corner house" in the "Kyrke Lane End." It was also known as Holy Rood Lane. One of the objects of "squinting Pollard's" defalcations, in 1670, was a tenement described by Throsby as being in "Holy Rood Lane, now Town Hall Lane."

The Sheepmarket is the modern Silver Street. It was described in 1352 as "the lane which leads from the East Gate to the Church of St. Martin." In the next century it was known as the Sheepmarket, being so named in 1458. It was afterwards known as "the lane at the backside of the Lion," because, says Nichols, "where now is the sign of the King's Arms there was formerly the sign of the Lion till about 1670." He was, however, mistaken in identifying it with vicus calidus, or Hot Gate, which was the old name of St. Nicholas Street. When the market for sheep ceased to be held in the old Sheepmarket, at the beginning of the 16th century, the street became known as Silver Street, and is so named in Hall papers of 1587. The name may have been an old one revived, suggested perhaps by the shops of silversmiths. There is a Silver Street, as well as a Gold Street, at Northampton, the latter being the place where the Goldsmiths worked, and the former, part of the old Jewry, the locality of the Silversmiths. That silversmiths worked at Leicester is indicated by the occurrence of the name Silver, or ​Silverun, a silverer or silversmith. The name is not so common as Goldsmith, but John Silver was one of the Town Chamberlains in 1500, and in the 13th century several Silveruns are mentioned, who, as might be expected, inter-married with the Aurifabers, or Goldsmiths.

In the 15th century there was a street leading out of, or close to, the Sheepmarket, which was known as Gentil Lane.

Saint Francis Lane was described in the Coroner's Pleas for the year 1300 as "the lane which leads to St. Martin's Church and towards the Church of the Friars Minors." A house conveyed in 1368, which had once belonged to the well-known Leicester merchant, Henry Costeyn, was said to be in the High Street, "at the corner of the lane leading to the Church of the Friars Minors," and the property extended from the High Street to the garden of the Friars Minors. This lane must be the "St. Francis Lane" referred to by Mr. Carte, the 18th century antiquarian Vicar of St. Martin's, as lying between Wigston Hospital and the Grey Friars. It was afterwards called Peacock Lane, taking its name probably from the piece of land known as the "Peacock," which lay "at the Red Cross," west of the old High Street. There was a Peacock Inn in Southgate Street, from which it might have taken its name, but it seems more likely that both Inn and Lane were christened after the old Peacock ground.

The Cank, or Cank Street, which still bears its old name, was named after the public well, the Cank well, which lay there. An apple-orchard (pomerium), which was situated in the "Cank," is mentioned in 1352. On the division of the Wards in 1484, the ninth Ward was to begin "in the Cank at Thomas Phelips on both sides the Saturday Market unto the East Gate." At the division into ten Wards in 1557, the eighth Ward comprised "all the market-place, Cank-well, and to the East Gate." A yearly payment was given in 1563 to St. Martin's Church "out of an house at the Cankwell." The site of the old well is still marked on the roadway at the junction of Cank Street and Hotel Street. The name might possibly be derived from ​the old word "canch," which is used in Yorkshire and Norfolk to denote "a sloping trench, a water channel, cut on a road." In Leicestershire this word is generally used in the form "kench," e.g., to "kench" potatoes is to make a pit for them to lie in, to camp them. But there seems to be no evidence of an artificial conduit in the Cank. The conduit in the market-place was not put up till 1612.

Loseby Lane, the short street still so called, is said to date from the 13th century, and to derive its name from John de Loseby. It is perhaps more likely that it was named after Henry of Loseby, a Leicester burgess, who held a considerable quantity of land in the Parish of St. Martin and elsewhere in the Eastern quarter of Leicester about 1300. Loseby Lane bounded one of the 1484 Wards. In the days of Throsby and Nichols it was called the "Pig-market."

Friar Lane, as it is still called, ran east out of the old High Street, by the south side of the gate and walls of the Grey Friars' precincts into the Saturday Market. It was so named in 1392, when a messuage was described as being " at the corner opposite the gate of the Friars Preachers," and bounded on the north side by "a lane called Frere Lane." In 1484 it seems to have been known as the Grey Friars' Lane.