must be cleared off before this excellent scheme can be completed but one may feel confident that some of Leicester's patriotic and prosperous citizens will quickly grasp this remarkable opportunity of doing a lasting service to their City.
(7) Two pointed arches, which form part of the cellar wall of an old house now standing on part of the site of the Church of Our Lady of the Newarke, and the effigy of a lady removed to the chapel of Trinity Hospital, are all that remain from the wreck of the Collegiate Church.
The mediaeval Walls of Leicester were originally kept in repair at the expense of the community, and with the help of murage tolls. During the 13th century they were maintained in good order. In the following century also, as the Borough Records show, they were from time to time repaired. A pit, for example, on one of the walls, in which corn grew up, was filled in with sand and gravel; and trees that had grown up in the Town Ditches were cut down. But the stones were tempting to builders, and the broad ditches under the walls' shelter offered desirable ground for the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. Long before 1500 the old fortifications began to assume a picturesque and peaceful aspect. The crumbling walls and the slopes of the outer ditches, which varied in width from 40 to 47 feet, were parcelled out, by the year 1492, in small plots among some eighty different holders. They were used mainly as gardens and orchards, but on some parts of the wall, and in the ditches, houses and barns had been built. Upon one strip of land, 40 feet wide and 430 feet long, between the Town Wall and Churchgate, were two pairs of butts, held by the "commons of Leicester," for the practice of archery. In 1587 the walls were described by the Town Clerk as "ruinous"; and in 1591 an order was made that no stone should be taken from the Town Walls without the license of a common hall. Queen Elizabeth paid a keeper of the walls £4 5s. 4d. annually, but this "Wallership," which concerned the Castle and Newarke walls only, may have been a sinecure. A lady who visited Leicester towards the end of the 17th century, wrote in her Diary:— "Ye walls now are only to secure gardens that are made of ye ruined places that were buildings of strength." A
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