The Square



This area at top of the Warwick Road, with its drearily functional modern architecture, is known as The Square (although, being dominated by a traffic roundabout, it has lost its square shape). This is where, on the night of November 21, 1940, a German bomb destroyed a number of fine Elizabethan and Victorian buildings, as well as the Globe Hotel. The top photograph is of the De Montfort Hotel. Below is the Thursday market (the white stall in the center of the picture is the fishmonger's stall, where this morning we bought a large fillet of halibut), with the clock tower in the foreground. The clock tower was dedicated in 1906, but the original crown on top was destroyed by the German bomb; the crown was replaced with the one you see in the picture in 1973. In the middle of the marketplace is a marker on the site of the Globe Hotel, where eight people—evacuees from London—died in the bombing.