A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE the wall was uncertain, as the workmen did not reach the foundations. It was 4ft. thick, and the upper part had fallen. Carte concluded from the depth of the previous excavation that it would have been 1 2 ft. high, and was certainly part of the wall found in 1685. On the east side of it in the street the made earth was 2 ft. thick, and ' below it was a pavement of stone like a street.' This wall apparently extended almost the whole length of High Cross Street. 89 A granite and sandstone ' walk ' is said to have been discovered running down the middle of the street from near All Saints' Church to the gaol. 40 A tesselated pavement and hypocausts were found under what is now No. 18, High Cross Street, and also under another house in the possession of Mr. King, afterwards of Mr. Collier. 41 At the corner of High Cross Street and High Street, when excavating for cellars under the new High Cross Coffee House in 1901, three pieces of pavement (now in the Leicester Museum), a portion of a stone column, and part of a wall of masonry about a foot high were found. 42 The pavement shows a border of elaborately twisted braidwork within which, on a white field, are closely set knots of braidwork in lines perpendicular to the border. The colours and materials are, apparently, for white a limestone, brown an ironstone, grey or slate colour lias limestone, and red, as always, a brick. The sizes of the tesserae range from in. to ij in. square (plate VII). The pavement is one of a class in which the field is covered by a geometrical diaper. Other specimens have been found at the Blackfriars. Another tesselated pavement was also found on the site of the county gaol, where Free School Lane turns from High Cross Street. 48 Some carved impost mouldings and other carved fragments, perhaps from an arch, were found at the junction of Blue Boar Lane and High Cross Street (Nos. 21 26 in Leicester Museum) (plate II). Also a stone fountain (No. 12 in Museum), found at No. 52, High Cross Street, at a depth of 10 ft., which may, as Mr. Fox says, have been a street fountain, or perhaps, if considered too small for that purpose, may have stood in the peristyle of an important house. Traces of a lining of pink cement were found in it (plate II). 44 A wall with bases and shafts of columns was discovered in 1859 in Blue Boar Lane, not far from the place where the carved mouldings were found. 46 Another base of a column was discovered in June, 1907, in Blue Boar Lane, 12 ft. from the surface, and is now in the Leicester Museum. The base is 2 ft. square and the diameter of the column 18 in. ; the mouldings are of an early type (plate II). In making the cellar of a house (which belonged then to Mr. Worth- ington) opposite the elm trees near All Saints' church, about 1675," a piece of tesselated pavement, a little over a yard square, was discovered about 5 ft. below the surface. It is interesting as being the only figure subject yet found in Leicester, and is now in the Leicester Museum (No. i). It was dis- covered at a time when few thought or cared for such things, otherwise it is Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, pt. i, 1 1 ; Thompson, Hist. Leic. App. p. 447 ; Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 61. 10 Leic. Arch. Sue. ii, 23 ; Fox, op. cit. " Throsby, Hist. Leic. 20 ; Arch. Journ. xlvi, 62. 41 Assoc. Arch. Sof. xxvi, 459. " Throsby, Hist. Leic. 383. 44 Fox, Arch. Journ. xlvi, 51. Mr. Fox had made out the finely-moulded outline of the tank which is shown on plate II. 44 Leic. Arch. Sac. ii, 23, 24 (1866). Information of the discovery of 1907 has been kindly supplied by Mr. H. Pickering. 46 Carte in Nichols, Hist. Leic. i, 9 ; Leic. and Rutl. N. and Q. iii, i 36. 192
