The massy mound, the rampart once
Of iron war in antient barbarous times.
From the Infirmary, if the visitor wishes to close his walk, he may enter the town by the Hotel; if he feel inclined to extend it, he will find himself recompensed by the pleasure his eye may receive from a lengthened stroll up the public promenade, called the New Walk. This walk three quarters of a mile long, and twenty feet wide, was made by public subscription in 1785; the ground the gift of the corporation.
Following the ascent of the walk, we gain on the left a pleasing peep up a vale watered by the Soar, where the smooth green of the meadows is contrasted and broken by woody lines
and formed into a picture by the church and village of Aylestone, and the distant tufted eminances decorated by the tower of Narborough. A little imagination might give the scene a trait of the picturesque, by placing among the meadows near Aylestone, the white tents and streaming banners of king Charles’ camp, there pitched a few days before his attack on the garrison of Leicester; or it might advance the royal army a little nearer to its station in St. Mary’s field, from whence the batteries against the town were first opened. Still continuing to ascend, the walk affords along its curving line many stations from which the town with its churches appears in several pleasing points of view.
Returning by the London toll-gate if the traveller wishes to obtain a full view of a fine prospect, he will turn
aside from the road, and mount the steps of one of the neighbouring mills. From such a station the clustered buildings of the town extend before the eye in full unbroken sweep; beyond it the grounds near Beaumont Leys varied in their tints by tufted hedge-rows, and streaky cultivated fields, blend into the grey softness overspreading those beautiful slopes of hill into which the eminences of Charnwood forest, Brown-rig, Hunter’s hill, Bradgate park, Bardon and Markfield knoll, rise and fall. These hills, running from hence, in a northern direction compose the first part of the chain or ridge, that, from the easy irregularity and elegant line it here displays rises at length into the more grand and picturesque hills that form the peak of Derbyshire. The abbey and the adjacent villages pleasingly vary the
scene on the right, from whence it melts away into the blue distance of the neighbourhood of Melton, the north-east part of the county.
As we descend along the London road, watching the hills more and more hid by the town, the road bends into a curve, and here takes the name of Granby Street; many ranges of buildings having been here erected within the last fifteen years. Turning to the left, we again arrive at the town by the entrance into Hotel Street.
That ingenuity of improvement not only in the conveniences, but the recreations of life, which has lately advanced so rapidly as well in the provincial towns as in the capital, led the inhabitants of Leicester into a plan for the erection of new edifices
appropriated to the purposes of public amusement. The considerable buildings, which in this place arrest the stranger’s eye were accordingly erected by J. Johnson, Esq. architect, on subscription shares.