For several centuries after the Conquest, the inhabitants of Leicester, who were compelled to grind their corn at the Earl's mills, were obliged also to bake their bread at his ovens. These were situated mainly in that quarter of the town which lay nearest to the Castle. Hot Gate, the "vicus calidus" of the 14th century, is said to have received its name from the genial warmth of the glowing furnaces, and their memory is also preserved in the name of Bakehouse Lane. A Bakers' Row ("rengia Pistorum") is mentioned in the Mayor's Accounts for 1306.
The value attached to bakehouse rights, and the compulsory character of the suit or service by which tenants were bound to bake at their lords' ovens, are illustrated by a document, executed about the year 1200, in which Petronilla, the widow of Robert Blanchmains, and mother of Robert FitzParnel, Earls of Leicester, confirmed a grant of certain land and houses outside the South Gate of Leicester to a namesake of hers, Petronilla, the daughter of Richard, Roger's son, of Leicester. The property included a bakehouse, or oven, (furnus), and the Countess of Leicester gave to Petronilla Rogerson and her children and heirs all the suit of the men outside the South Gate to bake at the bakehouse, with all the liberties and free customs, saving the customary tenants of the Countess who were bound to the bakehouses of the Countess within the town of Leicester, and saving the liberty of the Countess' burgesses outside the said Gate. If Petronilla Rogerson should desire to remove the bakehouse elsewhere upon her lands the Countess granted that they might have suit wherever the bakehouse might be placed on her lands. At the same time a deed in similar terms was made by the Countess' son, Robert FitzParnel, the Earl; and, two or three years later, a like confirmation of the grant was executed by Saher de Quincey, Earl of Winchester, the husband of the Countess' daughter Margaret.
It is not clear whether a burgess could then make an oven of his own, though the reservation of the burgesses' rights in the Countess' grant suggests that this may have been so. No burgess would be allowed to do so, we may be sure, without
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