How to be a tourist in Leicester ……. Gallowtree Gate … homework .... and a remarkable find

First  the tourist apologies for getting it wrong .....sorry Gallowtree Gate for calling you a street ... blame it on Tuck and Sons in 1926.

No defence I know as so many Leicester readers have pointed out, for which I hang my tourist head in shame. 

And promise to do better by checking the names off against a modern street map and not just relying on Mr. Tuck, who got it so wrong in 1926.

I tried ringing him but he ain't taking calls. So back to the original story ... about a Gate not a street.

Now there are two simple ways to be a tourist in Leicester or for that matter anywhere.

The first is to ignore the guidebooks, forsake advice and just boldly set off in the expectation that the journey will offer up plenty of surprises.  

The second is to carefully research the city with the help of the guidebook and the internet and if there is one search out the tourist bus.

I have always chosen the first course and as result walked for miles, missed heaps of interesting things, and ended up at a derelict car park.

Tina prefers the well-researched approach including the bus, and since giving into her way of being a tourist I have never been disappointed.

But back in January having done the research thingy we came unstuck with Gallowtree Gate.  I vaguely remember that gate was an old word for street but did think there might be a Roman connection.

And I rather laughed at the idea that the street might have a connection with hanging people.

Tina’s research revealed a lot to which I threw in my collection of Tuck and Son picture postcards which date from 1926.

These led me to expect a throughfare of Victorian and Edwardian buildings with a few modernist ones squeezing into gaps made by Mr. Hitler’s bombs.

But not so on the Saturday we found Gallowtree Gate with its post war shops and pedestrian way, which was a tad disappointing, although I think I was able to locate where Dun and Co were.

That said my picture post card offered up a nice message on the back from Minnie who was staying in Beaconsfield Road, and was “having a nice time, lovely weather. Plenty of motor rides [having had] a nice ride down from Heanor." 

And the added surprise was that Beaconsfield Road is still there, which may not have been the tourist attraction we had anticipated but was still a nice bit of historic continuity ……. Even if the City Planners had done for my Gallowtree Gate

Location; Leicester

Picture; Gallowtree Gate, Leicester, 1926, from Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/