Magazine Gateway
Coordinates: 52°37′54.13″N 1°8′16.52″W / 52.6317028°N 1.1379222°W
The Magazine Gateway (aka The Magazine and also called Newarke Gateway) is a Grade I listed building in Leicester. Now a solitary landmark alongside Leicester ringroad, it was originally the main gateway of a walled enclosure built around 1400, giving access to the religious precinct of The Newarke. The vaulted archway was open to traffic until 1905. The gatehouse rooms were variously used as a porter's lodge, guest accommodation, prison, militia building, and regimental museum. It is now a building managed by the Leicester Museum Service, and is generally only open to the public by arrangement.
Leicester's South Gates were the entrance into the walled Roman and Medieval town of Leicester. In medieval times an area just south of these, outside the walled town, was set aside as a religious precinct known as the Newarke (or New Work) and enclosed with a substantial wall and gatehouse. The only other gate into The Newarke gave access from Leicester Castle. The area of the Newarke is now substantially occupied by De Montfort University (DMU), and the Magazine Gateway stands at the eastern end of a pedestrianised area between the DMU Business and Law building and the Newarke Houses Museum. While the 'South Gates' now only exist as a street name, the Magazine Gateway stands as a prominent landmark where the carriageways of Leicester's inner ring-road diverge. On the north is the Southgates underpass, to the east is Newarke Street, while from the south traffic arrives along Oxford Street.
The original purpose of the gateway was to provide a grand imposing entrance into the religious collegiate precinct of The Newarke. In 1330 the Trinity Hospital had been established by Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster in an area along the south side the castle wall. His son rose to be Duke of Lancaster and further aggrandised the area by founding a new collegiate Church of the Annunciation of St. Mary which housed a holy relic claimed to be a thorn from Christ's Crown of thorns. The Gateway was completed soon after 1400, at the same time as substantial walls which enclosed the college precinct. In 1967 The area was built over by the James Went building, and photographs suggest that until then, some of the walls remained up to a height of 3 metres (9.8 ft). In 2006, following demolition of the James Went building, excavations on the DMU PACE Building site found buried walls surviving to a height of 1.5 metres (4.9 ft).
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