load of hay or straw. The walls which supported these roofs were left standing in general."
Of the old stone Bridges, which served the needs of the town for many centuries, one, the North Bridge, was washed away by a flood in 1795. The other three were demolished in the 19th century, as they then proved insufficient to carry the constantly increasing traffic.
The Houses of Leicester, throughout the Middle Ages, were built of wood and plaster, and either thatched or, in some cases, covered with Swithland slates. Stone was used occasionally in a few important buildings, but brick was hardly, if at all, employed in the construction of houses at Leicester until the end of the 17th century. In the Town Chamberlains' Accounts bricks are never mentioned before the year 1586, when "lyme, ston, and brycke" were used for building the conduit head in St. Margaret's Field. When John Leland visited the town about 1536, he remarked that "the whole town of Leicester at this time is builded of timber;" and, more than a hundred years later, it presented very much the same appearance to John Evelyn, who calls it in his Diary "the old and ragged city of Leicester." At the end of the 17th century another visitor described the town as "old timber building, except one or two of brick."
The most interesting examples of domestic architecture, besides the Wigston Chantry House, and the old Vicarage of St. Mary's, which survived into modern times were the following:
(1) An old house in High Cross Street, now known as Wigston House.
(2) The old "Parliament House," in Redcross Street.
(3) The Blue Boar Inn.
(4) An old house in St. Nicholas Street associated both with Bunyan and Wesley.
(5) The "Lord's Place," in the present High Street, with the Porter's Lodge and Gardener's Cottage.
(6) The Old Barn, in Horsefair Street.
(7) The Confratery of Wigston's Hospital.
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