Standing where the carriageways of Leicester’s inner ring road diverge, the Magazine Gateway is one of the city’s most striking medieval survivals. To its north lies the Southgates underpass, to the east Newarke Street, and from the south traffic arrives along Oxford Street. Once the principal entrance to a walled religious precinct, the gateway now occupies a pedestrianised area between the De Montfort University Business and Law building and the Newarke Houses Museum, at the eastern end of a stretch largely absorbed by De Montfort University.
Origins and History
The story of the Magazine Gateway begins in 1330, when Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, established Trinity Hospital in an area along the south side of the castle wall. His son, who later became Duke of Lancaster, extended the precinct by founding a new collegiate Church of the Annunciation of St Mary, which reportedly housed a holy relic claimed to be a thorn from Christ’s crown of thorns. The gateway itself was completed shortly after 1400, alongside substantial walls that enclosed the entire college precinct. Known alternatively as the Newarke Gateway or simply The Magazine, it provided both pedestrian and carriage access from just outside Leicester’s South Gates into this walled religious enclosure. The gatehouse has two archways and rooms across three storeys, which originally served as a porter’s lodge on the ground floor and guest accommodation on the first floor. The vaulted archway remained open to traffic until 1905. Over subsequent centuries the rooms were put to varied use, including as a prison, a militia building, and a regimental museum.
What Survives Today
The Magazine Gateway holds Grade I listed status and is managed by the Leicester Museum Service, though it is generally only open to the public by arrangement. The medieval walls that once enclosed the Newarke precinct largely disappeared over time. In 1967 the area was built over by the James Went building, and photographs suggest that until then portions of the walls still stood up to around three metres in height. After the James Went building was demolished in 2006, excavations on the DMU PACE Building site uncovered buried wall sections surviving to a height of 1.5 metres. The original South Gates of the town, which once marked the entrance to the walled Roman and medieval settlement, no longer stand physically – they persist now only as a street name – making the gateway one of very few tangible remains from the medieval Newarke precinct.