Elizabethan Loughborough was seasonally exceedingly wet. From the south ran the Woodbrook. This flowed through the town; entering alongside the Market Place and exiting via The Rushes. The Elizabethan Le Swynesians, now Swan Street, was probably named after a flock of breeding swans that was kept there. Les Russhes, now The Rushes, was where the rushes grew. They were a valuable commodity item for the town and provided an excellent roofing material. Le Kirkegate, now Churchgate, was a central part of the town and housed the wealthier townsfolk. It has retained its original Tudor width of about eighteen feet and remains an excellent indicator to the average breadth of medieval town streets. In 1860, a journalist reported an interview with a town nonagenarian; it related the recollections of the senior citizen's grandfather, who lived in sixteenth century Loughborough -

"There was a boggy tract within the town lying between the Woodbrook, as it crossed the Ashby Square, and the Market Place. The Woodbrook flowed down the open space being crossed at different points by a plank bridge with a hand rail, and reached the Rushes. Here was another old bog as the name denotes, with a raised causeway. There were two pools of water in the town, one in which is now called Devonshire Square and another where the Woodgate ends. Between Loughborough and Shelthorpe, there was a raised footway made of huge stones with bridges of planks here and there, where water tended to accumulate. Somewhere near Shelthorpe, there was a large pool of water which remained as late as the middle of the seventeenth century."¹¹

This account is given some credence, for the Bridgemaster's accounts itemise much bridging work in and around the town, particularly between 1570 and 1595. Sixteenth Century records also mention some of the various trades that were in the town. These include a tanner, a glove maker, a dyer, a blacksmith, a baker, a clothier who employed a weaver, a cooper, a rope maker, a barber, a mason, a glazier, a vole and vermin catcher, and various shopkeepers and innkeepers. Mr George Ward was the town's bearward; he was responsible for ensuring that all cattle were baited before slaughter. A heavy fine was imposed for non-compliance.¹² The stocks, pillory and whipping post stood in the market place and the gibbet may have been on the Forest Road, close to the Blackbrook. On July 17th 1564, the plague was so severe in Leicester that the assizes were held in Loughborough. Accompanying the Leicester magistrates and clerks were eight convicted felons. They were duly hung in the town, two days later.¹³

A total of 1,632 of the townspeople died in ten epidemic years between 1545 and 1631. Graph 1 indicates that in 1545, 1558, 1602, 1603 and 1609 there appears to be a correlation between times of famine and the incidence of some of the epidemics.

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