enclosing stray cattle and horses and swine. Thus, in the year 1533, some countrymen, who threatened that they would come into the town to trade there against the regulations, were informed by the Bailiff that, if they did so, their horses should be "set in the Castle," and they themselves punished.
A hundred years later, a survey of the Castle was made, from which it appears that the Hall, a great Chamber, a Parlour, a great Kitchen, a larder and a dungeon, with out-offices, were then standing, in very bad repair.
The siege of Leicester in 1645 did further damage to the ruined fabric; and, early in the following century, the eastern side of the Hall was taken down and replaced by a brick front. At the same time the Kitchen was converted into a coach-house. The division of the great Hall into two separate Courts — a civil and criminal court, with an entrance lobby between them and a grand jury room above it — was effected, according to Thompson, in the year 1821, involving, as he remarked, "an entire sacrifice of all the historic and venerable associations of the fabric," The old Castle House was then entirely demolished. There remain at the present day (1) the ancient Norman Hall, almost entirely concealed beneath a modern disguise; (2) the Tudor Gateway and Porter's Lodge, near the North door of St. Mary's Church; (3) the Dungeon, or Cellar;[1] (4) the Turret Gateway leading into the Newarke, which is said to have been reduced to its present ruinous condition during a tempestuous election in 1832; and (5) Part of Southern defence. About the middle of the 16th century, the outward appearance of Leicester suffered a remarkable change The fine old
- ↑ Mr. A. Hamilton Thompson writes: "I suppose this may be the 'dungeon' referred to in the 17th century survey, at a date when the term had long been applied to vaults of a prison-like appearance. But 'dungeon,' in surveys and technical documents of an earlier date, is habitually used in the proper sense of 'donjon,' as equivalent to the great tower or keep of a castle. The word dunio is applied primarily to the earthen mount of a castle, then to the buildings of wood or stone upon it, and then to the keep, whether built on a mount or standing by itself. The term 'dungeon,' in the sense of prison, seems to arise from the presence of vaults, not necessarily prisons, in such towers. I rather wonder whether, at the date of the survey, the keep on the mount may not have been standing still in bad repair."
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