Page:Mediaevalleicest00billrich.djvu/81

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It was not found necessary to spend much upon repairing the Hall until the year 1306, when the roof began to give trouble. A "Keeper of the Guild Hall" was then appointed, who bought slates and other materials for mending the fabric. He made a bargain with a slater by contract for 5s. 11d., "and two boys helping him 4s. 1 1/2d.," the total cost (including some new benches) amounting to 19s. 2 3/4d. This bargain did not prove, however, to have been a good one, for extensive repairs were again found necessary in 13 14, when a thousand slates were put on the roof; and once again, in 1320, another thousand slates had to be used. Six years later, an end was made of this kind of tinkering, and the work of restoration was properly carried out, the structure being re-timbered and re-plastered, and re-tiled with two and a half thousand slates. After this reconstruction, which cost nearly £3, the building remained serviceable for upwards of forty years. By the middle of the 14th century, however, it had fallen into such a ruinous condition that timber was bought, it would seem, for propping it up, and it was again re-slated. In the Spring of 1366, the community decided to undertake the task of rebuilding it. This work was well carried out, at a cost of £24 14s. 0d., under the direction of William of Syston and John of Scraptoft, "keepers of the work of the common hall of the town." Some of the old slates were used up in roofing the little chapel on the West Bridge.

During the next two centuries this new building served as the Guild Hall of the Borough, although after the lapse of little more than a hundred years it was found somewhat inadequate for the purpose. Before the 15th century had run its course, the Community found it necessary to hold some at least of their meetings in the more commodious Hall of the Corpus Christi Guild. Long before the actual purchase of this Guild's building by the Leicester Corporation, the hall in Blue Boar Lane was sometimes referred to as "the old Hall," or "the old Mayor's Hall," so that it had evidently even then lost much of its vogue. It was sometimes, perhaps rather later, called disparagingly "the olde shoppe." It was still used by the Corporation, however, and periodically repaired. It was indeed handsomely redecorated in

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