named after this. As Col. G. C. Bellairs has pointed out, it occurs in other places, as "The Gallowtree" at Glasgow.
There was some ground between this road and the town wall and ditch. In 1290 land was conveyed "with the buildings," which stretched "from the highway which is called Gallowtree Gate as far as the walls of Leicester"; and in 1337 a messuage in Galtregate stretched from "the said street to the town ditch." The space outside the East Gate, where the Clock Tower now stands, and where Church Gate meets Gallowtree Gate, and the roads branch off towards Belgrave and Humberstone, was known as Town's End, Galtregate Town's End or Galtregate End. There stood the Berehill, with a pair of stocks near it. This is mentioned in the Records of the Borough as early as 1260. It was a mound, formerly surmounted by a cross, used for many different purposes, and sometimes called the Roundhill, or Roundel. In 1317 the Mayor complained that Alan of Gissing used to stand with two grooms on the Berehill on Saturdays, waylaying woolfells coming by road, and forestalling them. It was a convenient place for the view of frankpledge for the East Gate, which was held there on the eve of the Epiphany. At the division of Wards in 1484, the fourth Ward began at St. Margaret's Church "unto the corner at the little bridge without the East Gate and Belgrave Gate on both sides unto the corner foryeinst the Berehill Cross." The Berehill adjoined the Haymarket, and it is possible that its name is derived from the word "bere," or barley, and that it was once the site of a market. Mr. Kelly thought that it was used of old as a place for bear and bull baitings, and derived its name from the word bear, but this is not very probable. "Bere" is a common name in Devonshire, especially for orchards, and this word seems to be derived from the Saxon bearu, a grove of trees — another possible ancestor of our bere-hill. In later days it became known as the Coalhill, "from its being the place where coal was formerly brought for sale in panniers on the backs of horses." In 1493 the Roundel belonged to St. Margaret's Guild.
The cross, after being repaired in 1552, seems to have been pulled down, together with the old wooden cage which stood
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