Leicester (Roman) was the Romano-British civitas-capital of Ratae Corieltavorum (formerly Coritanorum). Possibly succeeding a major late Iron Age settlement, there was a brief period of military occupation before the new town started to develop in the late 1st cent. In the reign of Hadrian a forum/basilica complex was constructed, and slightly later a set of public baths in the insula (block) to the east of the forum. Part of the wall dividing the baths from their exercise hall survives today as the Jewry Wall. In the insula north of the baths was a macellum or covered market. Leicester does not appear to have had the later 2nd-cent. earthwork defences common at other towns of its status; in the 3rd cent. stone walls were built enclosing a roughly square area of about 105 acres. Relatively little is known of the development of private buildings in the town, but in the insula north of the forum was a major 2nd-cent. private house with exceptional wall-paintings. There were also shops of this date in the town; 3rd- and 4th-cent. residences and commercial premises have been identified.

Alan Simon Esmonde Cleary

post-Roman

Next a Mercian town, Leicester became one of the Danish five boroughs until captured by the English in 918. Under the Normans it was a seigneurial town, its lords the earls of Leicester based in the castle ( Simon de Montfort was a benefactor still remembered there). Lordship then passed to the earls and dukes of Lancaster, and in 1399 to the crown: the end of the castle as a ducal residence was a blow to Leicester's prosperity. The town revived through hosiery from the 17th cent. and later through footwear; by 1901 it was the fifteenth largest English town, a city from 1919 and a diocesan see from 1926. More than most industrial cities, it has a very visible past: ‘the castle, St Mary and the Newarke, St Nicholas and the Roman baths, and St Martin and the Guildhall are monuments the patriotic citizen of Leicester might proudly take any visitor to’ (Pevsner).

David M. Palliser