ST. MARGARET’S CHURCH.
This structure is rendered venerable by its tower, whose pinnacles and trefoil-work, with the niche, or tabernacle, on the corner of the south wall of the church, would have even shown it, had not its date been confirmed by Bishop Alnwicke’s register, 1441, to have been the work of the era of the regular gothic. From this tower, a ring of ten bells, well known for their excellence, sound in frequent peals of harmony along the meadow and river below.
This, when the other churches of Leicester were given to the abbey by
Robert Bossu, was annexed as a prebend to the cathedral of Lincoln, by the bishops of that diocese to whom it then belonged. The right of presentation is vested in the person holding the prebend, and the parish, with the neighbouring dependent parish of Knighton, is exempted from the jurisdiction of the Arch-deacon of Leicester. The inside of the church is handsome; the nave and side aisles are supported by gothic arches, whose beauty and symmetry are not concealed by aukward galleries. The organ was erected by the parishioners in 1773.
Several elegant modern monuments adorn the walls, and in the north aisle is the alabaster tomb of Bishop Penny, many years abbot of the neighbouring monastery of St Mary de Pratis. In the church-yard the military trophies of a black tomb commemorate Andrew
Lord Rollo. This nobleman was an instance of the attraction which a martial life affords to an elevated mind, for he entered the service at the age of forty, when generally the habits and inclinations of life are so fixed, as scarcely to admit any change. After many years of severe and dangerous services, he died at Leicester, as the inscription informs us, on his way to Bristol, for the recovery of his health, 1765.
It is to be observed of this and the other churches in this place, that the entrance is by a descent of several steps; a circumstance proving incontestibly, that the ground without has been considerably raised, since no reason could induce the founders of these sacred edifices to sink the floors beyond the natural level; nor is the surface of the church-yards alone, higher than the floors of the
churches; so caused by the continued interment of the dead: but the general level of the pavements of the streets is also higher; from which it must be inferred, that the ground on which the present houses are built has been every where raised, and that very considerably. That the rubbish produced by buildings, and particularly the consumption of fuel, should produce this effect, is what any one may readily believe; and the Bishop of Llandaff calculates in his Chemical Essays, that the quantity of coal consumed annually in London, would raise an area of ten miles square, a full inch.
But notwithstanding it may safely be affirmed that a much greater quantity of fuel is at present consumed, and more rubbish produced annually in Leicester, than at any other period whatever, yet the seeming paradox may easily be
proved, that little, if any alteration in the level of the town is made now. For the demand of all the refuse of the yards for the purposes of agriculture, and the ordinary attention paid to sweeping the streets, prevent any accumulation of soil: the change of level then, of which our churches afford such indubitable proofs, can only have taken place when the streets were unpaved, and made the receptacle of every kind of offal from the houses; and when the yards, uncleared for the purposes of improved agriculture, were choaked by accumulated filth; the whole almost ever yielding in abundance those noxious steams, the loathsome parent of pestilences, which, in former days, frequently proved the scourges of our larger towns, and too often spread their contagion to the villages. Hence the entrance into our churches, among other good sentiments,
may excite in the reflective mind a gratitude for the improved comforts the inhabitants of large towns now enjoy; and the same circumstances may also call forth the exertions of benevolence to promote still greater cleanliness, and to remove from the habitations of man those effects of filthiness, which, in proportion to their extent, are always offensive, and sometimes fatal.
Westward from this church-yard, extends a street strait and wide, but meanly built, called