A Walk through Leicester: being a Guide to StrangersWatts, Susannah
History
A Walk through Leicester: being a Guide to Strangers
Watts, Susannah
Leicester (England) -- Description and travel
on the right, leads to a range of new and handsome dwellings, called
SPA-PLACE, from a chalybeate spring found there, which, though furnished
by the proprietor with neat marble baths and every convenient appendage
for bathing, has not been found sufficiently impregnated with mineral
properties to bring it into use. The Humberstone-Gate is out of the
local limits of the borough, and subject to the concurrent jurisdiction
of the county and borough magistrates; though in the reigns of Edward VI.
and Elizabeth, attempts were made to bring it exclusively under the
magisterial power of the town. It is part of the manor possessed by the
Bishops of Lincoln, in the twelfth century, and is still called the
_Bishops' Fee_.
Southward from the Humberstone-Gate to the Goltre-Gate, very considerable
additions, consisting of several streets, have lately been made to the
town.
Advancing forward, the visitor, on passing the weighing machine, enters
the
BELGRAVE-GATE,
a street of considerable extent, in the broader part of which stands what
may justly be deemed one of the most valuable curiosities of the place;
it is a _milliare_, or Roman mile-stone, forming part of a small obelisk.
This stone was discovered in 1771, by some workmen, digging to form a
rampart for a new turnpike-road from Leicester to Melton, upon the foss
road leading to Newark, and at the distance of two miles from Leicester.
Antiquarians allow it to be the oldest _milliare_ now extant in Britain;
and perhaps the inscription upon it is older than most others that have
been found upon altars, or other monuments of Roman antiquity in this
island. It is about three feet long, and between five and six in
circumference. The inscription, when the abbreviations are filled up,
may be read thus--
Imperator Caesar,
Divi Trajani Parthici Filius Divus,
Trajanus Hadrianus Augustus,
Potestate IV. Consulatu III. A Ratis II.
Hadrian Trajanus Augustus,
Emperor & Caesar, the son of the most illustrious Trajan Parthicus,
In the 4th year of his reign, and his 3d consulate.
From Ratae (Leicester) 2 miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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