St Nicholas' Church, Leicester

The structure consists of a double bayed nave divided from a two bayed chancel by a central crossing tower, a double bayed north aisle ending at a transept, and a five bayed south aisle constituting a Lady chapel. The nave, dating before 879, is a stylistically Anglo-Saxon form of the basilica comparable to that at All Saints' Church, Brixworth. This was developed during the early 10th into a cruciform church centred around the tower in a form like that of Stow Minster. The south aisle, partly 11th-century, retains just a few of its Norman features. The romanesque stylistic unity was modified by the replacement of the original sanctuary and the addition of the Lady Chapel in the south aisle…

Located adjacent to the Jewry Wall, the church sits in the centre of the ancient Roman city of Ratae Corieltauvorum. Numerous ideas about the use of the site in Roman times have been circulated, the most popular being that it was a temple of the god Janus. This idea arose from the discovery of many historical animal bones scattered around the site which were assumed to be evidence of ancient sacrifice. These also gave rise to the name of the adjacent street name, Holy Bones, and the subsequent nickname for the church. Other antiquarians speculated that the site was a Basilica or the Decumanus Maximus (principal street running east to west). The Decumanus theory arose from the mistaken…