Colin Crosby Heritage Tours

Looking Up In Leicester (A Guided Walk in Leicester)

"Looking Up in Leicester" is a fascinating Guided Walk around the City Centre devised and led by Blue Badge Guide Colin Crosby, of Colin Crosby Heritage Tours.

These strolls are an enjoyable way of soaking up some Local History.

The walk starts outside the Town Hall, in Town Hall Square.

Leicester has a spectacular selection of Victorian architecture above the well-known shops and offices. The fact is that all decent sized towns (Leicester, Southend, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth, Coventry, Nottingham etc) have the usual High Street stores (Woolworths, W.H. Smith, Boots etc) and they all tend to look the same, so that by looking at the shops one could be in any one of those towns.

However, when raising one's gaze to the upper floors, one realises that the towns are not really the same as each other.

There are some amazing sights on the upper floors of Leicester's buildings, involving angels, monsters, goddesses and mythical beasts.

A creature much in evidence in Leicester is the wyvern. Similar to a dragon, the bird-like wyvern is usually depicted as having two legs, unlike the reptile-like dragon, which has four. However, Leicester wyverns are usually shown with no legs at all.

Among the buildings featured on the walk will be the old Midland Bank (HSBC), the Turkey Cafe, the Singer building, the Clock Tower, with its statues of four of Leicester's benefactors, and the Thomas Cook Building, with its frieze showing the early history of the company. Thomas Cook's first-ever trip was from Leicester to Loughborough.

Dates, costs and where to meet

A place on 'Looking Up In Leicester' costs £5.00 per person, or £4.00 if paying in advance. The guided walk begins at Town Hall, and is running on:

I'm sorry, but there are no plans to run this event at present.

If you would like to book a place on one of these dates, please telephone Colin on (0116) 2611576 or email him at colin@crosbyheritage.co.uk.