Jewry Wall, Leicester

In the heart of Leicester is a site containing the remains of Roman buildings, including a surprisingly high section of the second century bathhouse. For reasons not altogether clear, it has been called the Jewry Wall since the 1600s, while Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1100s thought it was the burial place of the original King Lear.

Jewry may be a corruption of jurats, from the medieval Latin iūrātus (“sworn [man]”) iūrō “to swear an oath” and stood near the place where medieval aldermen or grand juries assembled, perhaps in the old church to its rear. Anything strange or unusual was often attributed, in the early modern mind, to Jewish people, since they were both exotic, ‘foreign’ and sometimes regarded as dangerous.

I find the wall itself more interesting than the name. As a second century bathhouse, I have no doubt that some of its orginial users, be they clients or staff, had believed in the Lord Jesus. Their voices are no longer heard, their names forgotten and their lives a mystery, but if their identity was found and entrusted to the Galilean Jew, the Messiah, the Saviour of the World, they shall not be forgotten, and shall outlive this wall many, many times over.

A. D