The Bishops Fee, Leicester

The Bishops Fee was a large manorial estate and administrative liberty surrounding the north and east Leicester old town. From at least 1087 until 1547 it was owned by the Bishop of Lincoln, one of his endowment estates. It consisted of 2,658 acres and included the two major suburbs outside the northern and eastern town gates. The territory is now covered by many of the eastern and northern suburbs of the modern city of Leicester. First recorded in the Doomsday Book of 1086 as 10 carucates of land, it is possible it predates this and some sources have suggested the estate was Anglo Saxon in origin. During the English Reformation in 1547 the estate was appropriated from the Diocese of Lincoln by the Crown and sold to subsequent landlords. Its parish church was the Prebendal Church of St Margaret outside the north eastern corner of the old Roman and medieval walls and was administered from a local episcopal curia (or grange) probably situated next to the church.