Churchyard of St Mary De Castro Church, Leicester

St Mary De Castro Church, Leicester

Visited September 2019

This Medieval church is the second oldest in Leicester and, as it's name suggests, is inside  what remains of Leicester Castle (the name St Mary De Castro translates to St Mary of the Castle). I'm told the church is well worth a visit, but it's only open 12 to 2 most days.

The churchyard is full of mostly 19th century graves, although it's been in use for many centuries before that; it's the oldest continually used open space in the centre of the city! One wall of the churchyard is medieval, the others a bit more modern.

As seen in other graveyards in Leicester and the wider county, the gravestones are primarily made from Swithland slate, as was common in the 17th to 19th centuries. Want to know more about this type of gravestone? There's a paper on them from the Leicester Archaeological Society in 1941 on the Leicester University website, here, which even references on p.217 the hundreds of slate gravestones in the churchyard of St Mary de Castro.