Hugh de Grentmesnil first established Leicester Castle in the late 1060s. This was a time when the Norman hold on England was tenuous, with revolts against Norman rule were breaking out in many parts of the country. Hugh’s castle was strategically positioned in the southwest angle of the Roman town defences, overlooking the River Soar. This was a location that dominated the town, but from which the garrison could escape if they were in danger of being overwhelmed.

 

The first castle was of motte and bailey type, and consisted of an oval defensive rampart and ditch. On top of the earth rampart there would have been a timber palisade. The area within the rampart is known as the bailey. This would have contained a well and numerous timber structures including a hall, the forerunner on the current Great Hall, a church, an earlier version of the present Church of St. Mary de Castro, an armoury, a stables, and a kitchen. The master of the castle would have dispensed justice from the hall, where he and his followers would have ate and slept. To the south west of the bailey was a motte, a large mound of earth, surmounted by a timber tower, or keep. This was the castle's last line of defence. No trace of the timber keep survives, but the motte on which it stood still stands 9 metres (30 feet) high and 30.5 metres (95 feet) wide at the base.

 

 

After Hugh’s death the castle was passed into a succession of mediaeval magnates including both Simons de Montfort, father and son, in the thirteenth century and John of Gaunt, in the fifteenth century. Hugh’s heirs held various titles; the earliest were simply Earl of Leicester, subsequently they acquired the principal title of Earl of Lancaster. In the fourteenth century they became Dukes of Lancaster. Many of these magnates set about remodelling the castle for their own purposes. At first the main purpose of the remodelling was the improvement of the defensives. But as the threat of the locals rising in revolt receded the castle gradually became less of a fortification and more of the comfortable residence of powerful aristocrats.

 

In the early-mid twelfth century, quite early on in the development, Robert de Beaumont, second Earl of Leicester, set about rebuilding the timber castle in stone. This included the replacement of the wooden palisades with stone walls built into the outer face of the ramparts, and the replacement of the church and hall with stone buildings on similar sites. The first stone Church of St Mary de Castro was considerably smaller than the present building. This early Norman church was very richly decorated. Some of the exterior detail of this building can still be seen as interior features. The twelfth century Great Hall forms the core of the present castle hall. In addition to stone walls it had a roof supported on two lines of large timber posts. These posts divided the hall into three; the main body of the hall running north to south, with two flanking aisles east and west. Some of the original stonework and fragments of the timber posts can still be seen in the interior of the present building. Unfortunately because the top of the motte was modified in the nineteenth century it is not possible to say for certain whether the original timber keep was replaced by a stone keep.

 

As the castle became more of a comfortable residence additional suites of rooms were added to the great hall, both to provide private accommodation for the Earl’s family and a service wing. All surface traces of these later mediaeval wings have been removed, but a large stone-lined storage basement, known as John of Gaunt’s Cellar, survives below ground to the south of the hall.

 

 

One of the changes brought about by the downgrading of the castle fortifications was the development of the area to the south of the castle as the Newarke. This process began with the foundation of a hospital just to the south of the castle in 1331. Had the castle still been expected to resist assault no building would have been allowed within arrow range of the defences, but the hospital was located within 20 metres of the castle.

 

 

The hospital founded in 1331 by Henry, the third Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, comprised a church at the east with adjoining accommodation to the west. It was originally dedicated to ‘the glorious Virgin and All Saints’ and staffed by a warden, four chaplains and five women nurses. The arrangement was that the sick that were expected to recover were cared for in the nave of the church.

 

 

By the fourteenth century, the Earls of Lancaster were one of the two or three wealthiest and most powerful families in the country. In 1352 Henry, the fourth Earl, was elevated to Duke of Lancaster. Not long afterward Henry set about the transformation of the castle. Part of this transformation was to add an outer bailey to the north of the castle, but the main element of the remodelling was the development of the area to the south of the castle. Part of the development was the enlargement of the hospital to almost twice its original size, but the main works were to turn the entire area to the south of the castle into a religious precinct. A key part of the plan was the erection of new gateway, the Turret Gateway, on the south of the castle. At the centre of this precinct was a large church, the Collegiate Church of the Annunciation of St. Mary. The main purpose of the church was to act as a mausoleum for the Dukes, and it was to have its own college of clergy, consisted of twelve canons, thirteen vicars and six choristers, supported one hundred poor persons to administer to the church and the patients in the hospital. The clergy were to live in dwellings located around the church whilst the poor were to dwell in cubicles in the hospital.

 

Henry never lived to see his project finished. He died in 1361, with no male heir. So his son-in-law, John of Gaunt, inherited the Dukedom. It was left to John to complete the church, but on John’s death, in 1399, his son, Henry Bolingbroke, became Henry IV, King of England. The title Duke of Lancaster became an honorary title of the monarch, and Henry and his successors had their principal residence in London and were buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

It transpired that none of the Dukes of Lancaster was buried in the collegiate church. The thrice married John of Gaunt gave instructions in his will that he was to be buried beside his first wife, Blanche, close to the high altar in St Paul's Cathedral, London.

 

Leicester Castle conditioned to be regarded as the traditional seat of the Dukes and continued to be used for ceremonial occasions, such as the knighting of the future Henry V. The scheme to develop the area to the south of the castle as a religious precinct was completed with the construction of a wall to enclose the precinct. The wall that was built around the three sides of the precinct that did not face the castle had two large and imposing gatehouses, one towards the middle of the south side and one in the northeast corner. The latter is the monument now known as the Magazine Gateway. It was these impressive looking defences that led to the precinct being known as the ‘new-work’ or the Newarke.

 

 

The castle and the Newarke continued to be used for ceremonial purposes for several decades. This came to an end in the mid fifteenth century with the outbreak of the dynastic conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. For most of the period between 1461 and 1485 the throne was in the possession of the House of York, who opposed the claim of the House of Lancaster to the Crown. The Yorkists had no interest in either occupying or in maintaining either the castle or the Newarke. By the time the Yorkist King, Richard III, stayed in Leicester before the Battle of Bosworth, in 1485, the royal apartments in the castle were no longer habitable and Richard chose to stay at a local inn.

 

The castle still retained important functions. It still contained one of the town’s principal parish churches and the Great Hall was still used as a court. The use of the dwelling of the master of the castle as a court dated back to the eleventh century. Over the centuries, however, the legal system had been made more systematic, and rather than the local magnates presiding over a local court, from the twelfth century major cases were heard before judges who travelled around the country conducting trials in the name of the Crown; a system known as the Assizes. It is likely that until the fifteenth century judges timed their visits to Leicester to coincide with times when the Earls and later Dukes were not in residence, and that after that time the great hall became primarily a courthouse. Over the generations the great hall was increasingly adapted to suit the requirements of a court building. The private accommodation and the service wing, having fallen into disuse in the fifteenth century had probably been demolished by the early sixteenth century. The main entrance dates from the late seventeenth century, and further alterations made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to the great hall being divided into two courtrooms flanking a central staircase. In the 1980s a new Crown Court was built elsewhere in the town and the great hall ceased to be a courthouse.

 

The Newarke had rather more mixed fortunes. Even though there would be no more Ducal tombs in the collegiate church, the college had been richly endowed by the Dukes and continued to prosper for over two hundred years. Its prosperity was so great that there was even talk of the church becoming a cathedral. It even survived the dissolution of religious houses that forced the majority of abbeys, friaries and hospitals to close during the reign of Henry VIII. Even though the college was surrendered to the Crown in 1545, Henry VIII was reluctant to destroy an institution that was so closely connected with his Lancastrian ancestors so it continued to function. Edward VI had no such reservations, and in 1548 the college was dissolved, the property seized and the clergy pensioned off. Not long afterwards the collegiate church was demolished.

 

After Dissolution the precinct became a secular suburb. The clerical dwellings were reoccupied by the laity, and fragments of three of these houses survive above ground today, incorporated into later buildings. Some of the remains of the church were visible until the early twentieth century, when an Art & Technical School, forerunner of De Montfort University, was built on the site. Traces of the church are now said to be visible in the basement of the Hawthorn Building of De Montfort University. Elements of Trinity Hospital also survive, although a fire and alterations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have meant that only the chapel at the eastern end incorporates much mediaeval fabric.

 

 

Since the Dissolution only the walls of the Newarke can be said have played a significant role in Leicester’s history. These walls were well constructed and remained in a reasonable state of repair when England entered into Civil War in the 1640s. Leicester supported Parliament and was held for Parliament for most of the war. Efforts were made to put the town’s defences in good repair, including adding three bastions to the Newarke and digging a defensive ditch to protect it from attack from the south. However, when the main Royalist Army, commanded by Prince Rupert, approached in the late spring of 1645 it was soon apparent that the whole town could not be defended against such a large force. The garrison withdrew to the castle and the Newarke, establishing a powder magazine in the gatehouse in the northeast corner of the Newarke. After a few skirmishes, the Royalists entered the town itself and set about reducing the garrison in the castle and Newarke. After some negotiations Rupert set up his artillery to the south of the Newarke and ordered his guns to open fire. After a brief bombardment the garrison surrendered.

 

 

Having survived for many centuries and a siege the Newarke walls were demolished in the early nineteenth century, leaving only the two upstanding structures. The first of these was a building known as Prince Rupert’s Tower. This enigmatic building was demolished in 1935. It stood on the north side of Bonners Lane and probably formed part of the southern gatehouse to the Newarke. The second was the Magazine Gateway. By the end of the nineteenth century it had been incorporated into a barracks and has survived more or less intact. When, in the 1960s, there was a proposal to demolish the Gateway to make way for the inner ring road there was a public outcry and the Gateway, by then scheduled, was spared. This is how the Gateway now stands isolated as the only obvious reminder of the great collegiate church to the west and the precinct that enclosed it.