Leicester Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Great Hall of Leicester Castle
View of the castle wall
The moth in late 2018

Leicester Castle is a castle in Leicester in the English county of Leicestershire . The complex is west of the city center between St Nicholas Circle and De Montfort University .

history

Leicester Castle was built over a Roman city wall.

According to the museums of Leicester, the first castle on this site was probably built around 1070, shortly after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, under the rule of Hugh de Grantmesnil . The remains of it still preserved today are limited to a moth and a few ruins. Originally the castle hill was 12.2 meters high. Over time, some kings stayed at the castle, e.g. B. Edward I in 1300 and Edward II in 1310 or 1311. John of Gaunt and his second wife, Constance of Castile , both died here in 1399 and 1394, respectively.

Later the castle was mainly used as a courthouse, with negotiations taking place in the knight's hall. In addition to being used as a jury court ( JM Barrie was a regular visitor and spent many hours there as a court reporter), the great hall was also used for sessions of the English Parliament , especially the Parliament of Bats in 1426, when conditions in London were unsuitable for Parliament. The house is also known for its connections with the Plantagenet family .

The castle, the gate tower, the great hall and “John of Gaunt's cellar” (erroneously called the torture cellar) are Scheduled Monuments . English Heritage has listed many of them as historical buildings, St. Mary de Castro as such first degree.

A section of the castle wall, adjacent to the gate tower, is provided with holes as loopholes. They were broken through the medieval wall by the citizens of the city. Leicester, which in the English Civil War , the parliamentarians supported, was in the 1640s by the Royalists besieged, set and burned. The third floor of the gate tower was destroyed in an election riot in 1832.

description

The castle complex consists of:

  • the Castle Gardens, a series of gardens along the banks of the Grand Union Canal . (There are official British Waterways berths there for overnight boats.)
  • the Church of St. Mary de Castro , the oldest part of which dates from the 12th century. It is still a parish church of the Church of England .
  • the knight's hall, which Robert de Bossu had built around 1150 . In 1523 it was significantly rebuilt, especially in the area of ​​the roof. The brick front facade dates from 1695. From the earliest times until 1992 it served as a courtroom.
  • John of Gaunt's cellar (erroneously called the torture cellar)
  • the remains of the moth itself
  • the courtyard, the open space between the knight's hall and the church of St. Mary de Castro, which was used for public executions. A plaque nearby says that John Wesley addressed "a great crowd" here in 1770.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ OH Creighton: Castles and landscapes: Power, Community and Fortification in Medieval England . Equinox, London 2002. ISBN 978-1-904768-67-8 . P. 143.
  2. ^ A History of Leicester Castle: The First Castle . In: Leicester City Council . 2013. Archived from the original on July 2, 2013. Retrieved on December 4, 2013.
  3. ^ Jack Simmons: Leicester Past and Present . Volume I: Ancient Borough to 1860 . Eyre Methuen, London 1974.
  4. ^ Leicester Castle and the Magazine Gateway . In: Leicester City Council . 2013. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved on December 4, 2013.
  5. ^ Turret Gateway: Description of the Ancient Monument . In: Leicester City Council . 2013. Archived from the original on February 22, 2011. Retrieved on December 4, 2013.

literature

Web links

Commons : Leicester Castle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 52 ° 46 '24 "  N , 1 ° 8' 28.3"  W.