All the Cathedrals (6): Leicester

I think we visited Leicester before any idea of visiting Cathedral towns had occurred to us. At the time of our visit Leicester City Football Club were atop the Premier League, and Richard III had not been that longed interred at the Cathedral. Indeed, it was the opening of the visitor centre on the site of the discovery of Richard III's remains that provided the reason for our visit.

Walking from the railway station to the Richard III visitor centre took us first of all into a shopping area that might have been in any town. However, the Lanes represents a quite different experience, with small shops and narrow streets. We wandered the market at one point in the day, too.

The Richard III visitor centre is well worth a visit. The presentation of the story of the discovery of Richard III's remains beneath a council car park, and the subsequent investigations that confirmed that these remains were indeed him, is excellent (though the detail might put some off from following the whole story). The last room in the visit contains a glass panel in the floor which allows you to look down at the very place where the remains were found. Since nothing else is displayed in this room, it provides a very reflective end to a visit. The more you know about the Wars of the Roses the more you will appreciate the significance of Richard III and his connection to Leicester. [If you can make anything of the Wikipedia page you have a better brain than mine. Desmond Seward's A Brief History of The Wars of the Roses is my own reading on the subject.]

We then crossed the nearby square to visit Richard III's tomb in Leicester Cathedral. We had to queue for a few minutes before accessing the tomb. The presentation is, like the last room of the visitor centre, very reflective.

The cathedral building itself was only relatively recently designated as a Cathedral, which means that it has something more of the character of a parish church. It shares, in a slightly different way than other cathedrals we have visited, the narrative of Saxon foundation, followed by a Norman construction, a stripping of statues and decoration at the time of the reformation (the Greyfriars monastery where Richard III's remains had been interred was closed at this point) and Victorian restoration. The history of the cathedral building is outlined here. This page allows you to take a virtual walk round the cathedral; the links from the side bar at the top of the page allow you to read more about the main features of the building.

A Lancastrian, of course, will not patronise the White Rose café as a matter of conscience!