Old Town Trail

Created by award-winning artist, Candice Bees, winner of the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year award in 2016, the vulpine sculptures depict the fox in a range of dynamic poses.   Look out for the other two foxes on the roof of the Corn Exchange building in Market Place and at LCB Depot in the Cultural Quarter.

Newton is one of the four statues featured on the Clock Tower.  The grammar school’s former Greyfriars location now houses the King Richard III Visitor Centre.

n 1887 she became the founding joint secretary of the Leicester and Leicestershire Women’s Suffrage Society with Anna Beale and in 1897 co-founded the local branch of the National Union of Women Workers later campaigning for the formation of a Leicester Health Society.

The statue of Alice Hawkins was erected in Leicester’s Green Dragon Square in 2018 near where she addressed crowds during the suffragette movement.  The statue commemorates the centenary of some women gaining the right to vote.
The statue is the first statue of a named woman in the county of Leicester and stands at 7-foot-tall. The 800-pound bronze statue was created by sculptor Sean Hedges-Quinn and cast in a foundry in London. It stands on a 4-foot granite plinth and  portrays Hawkins speaking and gesturing with her right arm raised.

Joseph Timson, who had the arcade built, ran a hotel and boarding house on two corners of the arcade when it first opened, with a lunch bar and restaurant too. However, when he applied for a licence to serve alcohol with the meals, the people involved in the Temperance movement in Leicester raised concerns about the risk of drunkenness, convincing the council not to grant the licence.

It was not until it was excavated in the late 1930s by the pioneering archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon (coincidentally in preparation for the building of a new swimming baths) that its role as part of a substantial bathing complex was demonstrated, and not the town’s forum as previously thought.  Kenyon’s excavations were the first large-scale archaeological investigation of Roman Leicester and paved the way for eighty years of archaeological discoveries.

The parish and collegiate church of Saint Mary de Castro stands within the precinct of the Royal Castle of Leicester and was founded by Robert de Beaumont, first Earl of Leicester in 1107, and is the second oldest church in the city. From 1377 to 1399 John of Gaunt was Earl of Leicester and was also Geoffrey Chaucer’s patron.  It is believed that Chaucer married his second wife, Phillipa de Roet, in the church.
Richard the Third is known to have visited “my castle in Leicester “in 1484 and on previous occasions and would have attended mass in the church. He would have entered through the north door.  The Virgin Mary stands in a niche over the north door.

It was originally constructed as a monumental entrance from the town’s south suburb into the religious precinct of the College of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, popularly known as ‘The Newarke’ (New Work). It was built to impress visitors and house the porter’s lodge and guest rooms.

The gateway is built of local sandstone, and has three floors. The large and small arches would have allowed separate vehicular and pedestrian access into the Newarke, whilst the ground floor room would have been the lodge for the porter and his family. Access to the first and second floor was by a spiral staircase in a turret on the western side of the building.

Part of the Greyfriars area has now become a prominent residential area and as such the building has now been repurposed into student accommodation. However, as an acknowledgement to its history it is still known as ‘The Hosiery Factory’. Leicester’s knitting industry continues to thrive and much of the city is shaped by its industrial past. The buildings was restored thanks to a grant of £108k through the  Greyfriars Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI).

All of the windows had been infilled with two courses of brick to fit unsuitable uPVC double glazed windows. The grant funding paid for timber sash windows to be reinstated, repairs to the brickwork, and removal of modern cabling and alarm boxes to tidy up the building. The decorative brickwork and the data stone, which reads ‘Tudor Chambers’ and ‘1900’ was carefully cleaned.

Over a five year period, thirty buildings in the Greyfriars Conservation Area were restored and regenerated, 5,000 square metres of public realm improved and 3,000 people engaged in events, training and tours.  Overall private sector construction investment in the THI area over the duration of the project tis estimated at over £10 million.  As part of the scheme, Greyfriars has it’s own bespoke design manhole covers. For further information about the scheme, please visit: greyfriarsheritage.org.uk.

They are carved out of Peak More stone by Loughborough firm Midland Stone Masonry and sculptor/carver Alan Necchi.

A fox and tiger represent the city’s football and rugby club. The Wyvern, a mythical reptilian creature can be seen alongside a Leicester Long wool Sheep. A Peregrine Falcon, tells the story of the Cathedral’s own peregrines that nest on the spire and Richard III is represented by his personal emblem the White Boar.

Originally from the arms of Robert de Beaumont, the first Earl of Leicester in the Middle Ages. The cinquefoil, also known as a five-leafed flower, is a prominent feature on the city’s coat of arms and is also included in the county’s flag. It has been a recognised symbol of Leicestershire for centuries.

The Guild’s emblem, the Host and Chalice, is featured in 15th-century painted glass window fragments within the Mayor’s Parlour. Additionally, graffiti made by glaziers can be found in plain panels within the windows.