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1. Leicester’s
history goes back to the Roman times.
2. Most people of Leicester
are Asian immigrants.
3. The biggest street festival in England is held in Leicester.
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On first impression, Leicester is a modern city, but an attentive visitor
will easily find traces of its Roman and medieval past. Since the late
seventeenth century, Leicester has been a
centre of the hosiery trade and it was this industry that attracted hundreds
of Asian immigrants to settle here in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, about one
third of Leicester’s population is Asian.
They put on a massive and internationally famous Diwali, Festival of Light,
in October or November, when 6 thousand lamps are hung along the Belgrave Road and
about 20, 000 people come to watch the switch-on. The city’s Afro-Caribbean
community celebrates its culture in a whirl of colour and music on the first
weekend in August. It is the country’s second biggest street festival after
the Notting Hill Carnival in London.
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4. Local farmers sell their products
at the market in Dorchester once a
week.
5.
A famous English artist was born in Dorchester.
6. Dorchester
is no longer surrounded by Roman walls.
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The county town of Dorset, Dorchester still functions as the main agricultural
centre for the region, and if you come here on a Wednesday when the market
takes place you’ll find it busier than usual. For the local tourist
authorities this is essentially Thomas Hardy’s town. He was born in Dorchester and spent much of his life here. His statue
now stands on High West Street.
The town appears in his novels as Casterbridge, and the countryside all
around is vividly depicted, especially the picturesque forest of Cranborne Chase.
Dorchester has an attractive central part of
mostly seventeenth-century and Georgian buildings, though the town’s origins
go back to the Romans. The Roman walls were replaced in the eighteenth
century by tree-lined avenues called “Walks”, but some traces of the Roman
period have survived. At the back of the County Hall excavations have
uncovered a fine Roman villa with a well-preserved mosaic floor.
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