Blue Boar Lane, just off Highcross St, housed Leicester’s most renowned historic inn. Its association with King Richard III is legendary. Tragically, the Blue Boar was demolished circa 1835, and the remaining foundations were obliterated in the road scheme of 1962.
White Boar with King Richards army from a painting by Thomas Charles Barfieid c1926 (reproduced by Leicester Museums Story of Leicester) note he paints the White Boar emblem near the upper window
Mystery surrounds the origins of the Blue Boar. What is known is that in 1485 King Richard, on his way from Nottingham Castle to meet Henry Tudor at Bosworth, stopped off at Leicester. According to Billson’s Medieval Leicester, Richard, ‘passing down the ancient High St (Highcross St) on his tall white charger, he drew rein, before reaching the High Cross, at the now named Blue Boar Inn,(White Boar, as Richards emblem, would be hung outside) a beautiful building, with a tall gable front and a projecting balcony of carved oak’. Here, King Richard was to spend some time before battle. He slept in the principal chamber, in a large wooden bed gilded with gothic design. On the morning of Sunday 21 August, the King left Leicester with his army. In great pomp, on his milk white charger, preceded by the Royal Standard, and wearing his jewelled crown. Legend has it that as he passed over the Bow Bridge, his spur struck a parapet, an ‘old crone’ prophesied that where his spur had struck, so would his head on his return.
The Battle of Bosworth took place the next day.
A report in Nichols’ goes thus: ‘When all was lost but his life, stern Richard rushed into the arms of death, to seek for Richmond (Henry Tudor), but was surrounded by his enemies, after performing the most brilliant and war like achievements that history has related, he died by the hands of a multitude, who cut his body in the most shocking and barbarous manner. Richard’s body stripped naked, all tugged and torn with not so much a clout to cover his shame, was trussed like a hog or calf over his horse, he was taken back to Leicester by friends over Bow Bridge, where his head hit the coping , as the old women had predicted.
As with the legend of Richard’s demise, the sign of the Blue Boar is also questioned. Some historians have claimed prior to or after the battle, the inns’ name was the White Boar, and there is evidence for this The white boar was one of the house of York’s badges, so it is quite possible that the inn was called the White Boar prior, or on Richards entry into Leicester.
After Richards defeat, some reports suggest that the victorious army tore down any evidence of allegiance to the beaten King. The theory of the name change is referenced in the Gentleman’s Magazine of July 1845: ‘Henrys followers compelled the owner of the inn to pull down the emblem of the deceased king, and to substitute the white for the blue boar. The apartments which the king had occupied where pillaged and ransacked, and the hangings of the richly carved bed on which he had slept during his stay in the town were torn off and either carried away as booty or destroyed on the spot. The bedstead however being large and heavy was suffered to remain undisturbed with the people in the house.’
The bed that King Richard slept upon was to be the centre of more intrigue at the Blue Boar. By circa1560s, Thomas Clarke was landlord of the Blue Boar. The story goes that whilst making alterations to the bed, Thomas Clarke and his wife found a false bottom, in which was concealed gold coin, attributed to King Richard. From humble beginnings, Thomas Clarke became one of Leicester’s leading lights, eventually becoming mayor. He was also one of the towns surveyors and a brewer, with one record showing him supplying 240 barrels of beer per week. His wife, Agnes, was left the bulk of his fortune when Thomas died in 1603. A year later a nar’e do well named Thomas Harrison was lodging at the Blue Boar and made friends with the maid Alice Grimbold, who disclosed to Harrison that the widowed landlady Mrs Clarke kept a great deal of money on the premises. Harrison enlisted the help of others including a well known villain, Edward Bradshaw. Together they conspired to rob Mrs Clarke, who began to cry out for help, resulting in her death. It was alleged the maid, Alice Grimbold, shoved her fingers down Mrs Clarkes throat and choking her. Alice was then tied up in a chimney, before her accomplices fled the scene leaving a bag of money for the maid.
The men were eventually caught and hung for the crime. The maid was sentenced to be burned alive, which was carried out in 1605. Landlady Mrs Clarke was buried in St Martins, but her tormented soul was said to haunt the Blue Boar, her ghost becaming known as the White Lady.
After the trial the fame of the bedstead became established, becoming the main attraction at the Blue Boar. Eventually passing through private hands, at one point it was bought by a dealer who found the bed to large to get into his house in Redcross St: he sawed through the legs to shorten it. The bed was offered to the Leicester Corporation to display in the Leicester Museum, but the Corporation declined. In the 1840s, the bed ended up on the Beaumanor Estate.
King Richard’s room.
In October 1770, the LJ reported that Richard Foster had now taken and entered the Blue Boar, late in the occupation of John Nott who had moved to the Blue Bell in Humberstone Gate.
The Blue Boar was demolished in 1835, where it found the cellars were built of enormous blocks of stone, together with odd roman bricks. The south corner showed 5 ft thick walls in further excavations. These survived under the shop built on the site, until everything was obliterated in the new road scheme of 1962.
A new Blue Boar was built circa 1836 in Southgate Street, which will be dealt with under the street’s heading.
THE BELL AND TUN
An intriguing article emerged after King Richards’s body was found in 2012 in Leicester, which was printed in the Leicester Mercury on April 29th .
If this were to be true (there is no recorded evidence), it could suggest that the Inn where Richard slept was originally called the Bell & Tun. or Bell, I have no reference or evidence to suggest any truth in this other than when the Blue Boar together with the adjoining house was sold May 1835 to some builders for £800 the occupier at the time was a Miss Simmons. The LJ reported that the building in its present state stood on valuable ground that we expect that King Richards house will cease to be, so Lucy Champions account bears some weight adding up to further mystery surrounding King Richard 111’s stay in Leicester.
Richard III;s cognizance being a boar. His accounts mention 12,000 bores (boars) made on fustian (cloth) Although the King only reigned for a couple of years. The White Boar became a popular inn sign.
One possible explanation would be as his white boar emblem was hung outside, which was then painted in blue on his defeat. Hence the recording of the white and then blue boar, which it remained until its demolition.
Rumors had spread over the years that after the ‘sacking’ of the monasteries by Henry V111 King Richards tomb excavated, the coffin for many years after used as a horse trough outside another Leicester (sometime recorded as the White Horse sometime the Greyhound) King Richards remains were scattered over Bow Bridge, so much was this story believed to be true that the Corporation erected a plaque to tell of his demise in the River Soar. The discovery of his body in 2012 in the original place where he was buried Greyfriers near St Martins Church proved that the story Leicester people had been told over the years was total fabrication.
The chair was resident at the Blue boar in Southgate St when my uncle kept in the fifties, then in everards offices in Narborough after demolition