Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hardly a building can be seen from rural Tythorn Hill .
Beyond Gees and Blue Bank Locks an aerial to the left marks Leicestershire Police
headquarters before reaching the A563, Leicester's outer ring road. King's Lock is followed
by the canal joining the river with its much more winding course. Just after the confluence
the river is crossed by the former railway line, which has now become the Great Central Way
cycle route where Aylestone Bridge also takes a minor road over, and travels past a church
with a 1930 stained glass window.
Leicestershire county cricket ground lies to the east of Aylestone Mill Lock. To the east of
St Mary's Mill Lock are Aylestone Gas Works, now the first gas museum, including a 1920s
all-gas kitchen complete with gas radio.
Leicester - named after Llyr or Lear, king of the sea, meaning darkness and death, or after
the Legra, the Celtic name for the Soar - was the Roman town of Ratae Coritanorum by 100.
Raw Dykes was a section of aqueduct supplying the town. Indeed, the town began as an Iron
Age settlement. Later it was to be where Simon de Montfort called the first Parliament in
1265.
At New or Freeman's Meadow Lock the river comes in and crosses the canal to reach a
long weir guarded by a boom before the two watercourses combine below the lock. Over-
looking the lock is Leicester City's King Power football stadium of 2002.
The river leaves to the left as the canal enters the Mile Straight, a grand water avenue
through the city centre, designed in 1890 for flood defence purposes but now forming an im-
portant part of the city. Old and new bridges across include some ornately decorated Victori-
an structures. Surrounding buildings feature the same blend of the traditional and the modern.
These include the Liberty building of 1921 with a Statue of Liberty on one corner, and the
De Montfort University and the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, which has a Victorian
street scene, period costumes, clocks and clockmaker's workshop, and a history of the ho-
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