All Saints Alley
All Saints Alley It seems
almost incredible that well within living memory
Westlegate was a narrow cobble-paved street not unlike
Elm Hill, lined with houses ranging in date from Tudor to
Victorian times. Now it is one of the city’s main
traffic arteries, the sole reminder of its past being the
thatched and gabled building which until recently
provided a rather unusual setting for a bank. Earlier in
the century it was a greengrocer’s shop and before
that a public house with the sign of the Light Dragoon -
known more familiarly as the Barking Dickey (dickey being
the dialect word for a donkey). To the right of this
house All Saints’ Alley hugs the wall to the west
and north of the church from which it takes its name,
another branch of the alley leading into Lion and Castle
Yard and thence to Timberhill. Until cleared away for
redevelopment a row of quaint gabled houses stood
facing the church from the north side of the alley. These
were mainly of the seventeenth century, brick built, but
mostly faced with cement.Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |