The Jewry Wall in Leicester, England is the substantial ruined wall of a public building of Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum).
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The wall, an impressive example of standing Roman walling, is nearly 2000 years old. It measures 23 metres (75 ft) long, 8 metres (26 ft) high and 2.5 metres (8 ft) thick.[1] It is the second largest piece of surviving civil Roman building in Britain (the largest being the "great work" at Wroxeter). The structure comprises alternate bands of Roman brick and coursed masonry. In the centre of the wall are two large arched openings about 3 metres (10 ft) wide and 4 metres (13 ft) high; there are further arched alcoves on the eastern side.
The wall lies to the west of St Nicholas' Church, which includes in its late Saxon and early medieval fabric much re-used Roman brick and masonry.
The remains of the town's public baths, lying immediately west of the wall, were excavated in four seasons from 1936 to 1939 by Dame Kathleen Kenyon and date from approximately 160 AD.[2] The wall and some of the foundations of the baths are now laid out to public view. They are adjoined by a building housing the Jewry Wall Museum and Vaughan College, which stands on the remainder of the baths site (including the site of the three furnaces). The museum contains excellent local examples of Roman mosaics and wall plaster.
The site is in the guardianship of English Heritage.
The wall appears to have formed the western (long) side of a large rectangular basilica-like structure. However, the precise character and function of this building has been a matter of much debate. 18th and early 19th-century antiquaries tended to identify it as a Roman (or British) temple, sometimes said to have to have been dedicated to the god Janus.[3] The ruin was also occasionally identified as "part of a bath".[4] For much of the 19th century it was widely believed to have been a town gate, despite the fact that this was suggested by neither its structure nor its location: nevertheless, this interpretation still appeared as a statement of fact in the generally authoritative Victoria County History as late as 1907.[5] The prevailing view in the early twentieth century was that the ruin was part of the town basilica.
When she began her excavations in the late 1930s, Kathleen Kenyon initially thought that the overall site was that of the town forum (of which the basilica would have formed a part). Although she modified her views when she uncovered the remains of the baths, she continued to believe that the area had originally been laid out as the forum, with the Jewry Wall the west wall of the basilica; but argued that in a second phase of building, only about 20 years later, the site had been converted to become the public baths.[6] This interpretation later had to be abandoned when, in a series of excavations undertaken between 1961 and 1972, the true remains of the forum were firmly identified a block further east (Insula XXII).[7] The Jewry Wall was then identified as the wall of the palaestra (gymnasium) of the baths complex, and this continues to be the explanation which is most commonly accepted, which is given in the official Scheduled Monuments listing, and which appears in the interpretive material on site.[8]
There are still a number of unanswered questions, however, and the issue remains open.[9]
The name of the wall (first recorded in c.1665) is unlikely to relate to Leicester's medieval Jewish community, which was never large and which was expelled from the town by Simon de Montfort in 1231.[10] One theory, which has achieved widespread currency, is that the name bears some relation to the 24 jurats of early medieval Leicester, the senior members of the Corporation of Leicester, who were said to have met in the town churchyard - possibly that of St. Nicholas.[11] However, it seems more likely that the name in fact derives from a broader folk-belief attributing mysterious ruins of unknown origin to Jews.[12] Such attributions are found at a number of other sites elsewhere in England and in other parts of Europe.