Sunday, 18 May 2025

Bell Sunday

Well, today I learned that there is such a thing as Bell Sunday, which, according to the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers falls on the Sunday closest to St Dunstan’s Day, the latter, this year being 19th May. St Dunstan was a 10th century Archbishop of Canterbury, is the patron saint of bellringers, and as a skilled metalworker, was an early experimenter with bell casting. The celebration on Bell Sunday serves to recognise that bellringers add to the national soundscape, and contribute to the life of the church – summoning people to church for regular services, or for christenings, weddings, and funerals, or simply reminding people by their regular bellringing practice, of what day it is! Oh, and taking part in ringing contests!

A bellringer's essential

The ringing chamber at All Saints

At one time more or less in the centre of Loughborough, there were four Anglican churches, the Church of All Saints; Emmanuel; Holy Trinity, and St Peter’s. The bells of All Saints are well-documented, and there can be few who don’t know that the very reason we have the country’s last remaining dedicated bellfoundry is because the Taylor family came to Loughborough specifically to refurbish the bells of All Saints, in 1839. Indeed, it was actually part of the contract between the bellfounder and the church that the bells be cast in Loughborough, hence the Taylors setting up their bellfoundry initially on Pack Horse Lane, on land leased for 20 years. Things must have worked well for the bellfounders, because when that lease was up they set up a permanent factory on Chapman Street/Freehold Street, and have remained there ever since, making new bells, and repairing old ones.





I haven’t done too much digging around looking for information about our churches, so I have only found scant details about the bells in some of our town’s other Anglican churches. The statutory listing for Emmanuel church simply says: “[The] Tower has 3 light bell openings …”


A report of the consecration of the Holy Trinity church mentions everything from the Minton floor tiles to the ceilings of pitch pine; from the varnished pitch pine seating, to the Devonshire marble altar, but says nothing of the bells other than “A pretty turret contains three bells.” Ironically, the first incumbent at Holy Trinity was the former curate of All Saints, the Rev. E. Bell!




The bellcote at St Mary's Nanpantan

The description in the statutory listing for the church of St Peter’s, on Storer Road and Fearon Street is extensive! However, no mention of the actual bells, other than the sentence “Organ chamber to south has 2-light window and ashlar gabled bell-cote to side over vestry which has flat arched windows and curving parapet.”

Slightly further afield, is the church of All Saints at Thorpe Acre with Dishley, a church which was built in 1849 to replace the mediaeval church at Dishley. Sadly, on my brief search I’ve only found scant information, again in the statutory listing, which simply mentions the “Western bellcote.”

 


I’ve mentioned the mediaeval church at Dishley, but the summary one would expect to find in the statutory listing for this as an ancient monument says, “Not currently available for this entry.” Which is a little odd … It would appear, however, that while Dishley church might once have been a scheduled ancient monument, it appears it is now a Grade II listed building, which was listed on Monday 15th March 1965. The description associated with the entry makes for interesting reading, particularly the final sentence:

“East, north and south walls of ruined aisle less church, C12/C13; rubble stone with ashlar dressings. Triple lancet east window. North wall: round headed doorway with semi circular hoodmould, plank door. South wall (from east to west) lancet, blocked round headed doorway, ogee-headed lancet, base of porch. Interior has remains of piscina, sedilia, aumbry. Slate grave slabs including those to the Bakewell family C20 slate slab commemorating Robert Bakewell on north wall. Scheduled ancient monument.”



Today as I was walking through Queen’s Park, I was lucky enough to hear a different kind of bellringing – the sonorous sounds of our spectacular carillon played so beautifully by our wonderful carilloneure!! 



I also walked close to another bell that will hopefully soon be ringing (or will it be chiming?) – where there’s a bell, there’s hope!!

Hope Bell in Queen's Park


In the meantime, I mentioned Robert Bakewell above, which has prompted me to commemorate his life and work – but that’s a blogpost for another day!!   

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Bell Sunday. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/05/bell-sunday.html  [Accessed 18 May 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

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By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

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If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

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You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

Sunday, 11 May 2025

A trip around Loughborough in early May

So, the blog has been a little wordy of late, so here are some photos I've taken around Loughborough during the first weeks of May 2025. Enjoy! First, some beautiful flowers in Queen's Park




A visit to the ceramics market



Looking out over Loughborough town centre







I think this one is the back of what used to be the Art Deco building of Marsden's the grocers, and is now Caffe Nero




Lloyds Bank


I found this view intriguing, as it shows the Art Deco decorations (on the right) from a different angle!




This is the top of the former Prudential building, part of which is now occupied by Max Spielmann and Subway



Building flats where Ellwoods garage used to be on Pinfold Gate



The new canopy on Southfields Park is now open, and the footpath around the park perimeter is now re-opened!



____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). A trip around Loughborough in early May. Available from:  https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-trip-around-loughborough-in-early-may.html [Accessed 11 May 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne     

Thursday, 1 May 2025

Art Deco A-Z Blogging Challenge

As you may know, over the month of April I took part in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, which meant writing a blogpost for each letter of the alphabet in order. I did this challenge last year, too, and focussed on anything Loughborough related that I hadn’t already written about in 'A-Z of Loughborough' (which is a book of snippets about Loughborough in alphabetical order, not a map!!).


This year, as it is the centenary of the exhibition in Paris from which the Art Deco style took its name, I challenged myself to blog about Loughborough’s Art Deco buildings. For most of these alphabetical posts the decision on what to write about was quite easy, although in some cases there were so many choices it was sometimes difficult to focus on just one! In other cases, I admit I did have to stretch the bounds a bit, so, for example, for Letter X we ended up with an eXercise book!




In case you missed any of the posts, here’s a complete list of them, which should make them easy to find. They are also included on the page with the complete list of blogposts, which now runs to over 630. Quite some time ago, I also created an Art Deco Glossary, again with a focus on Loughborough, although this is still a work in progress!  


Thank you for joining me in my alphabetical journey around Loughborough’s Art Deco!

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Art Deco A-Z Blogging Challenge. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/05/art-deco-z-blogging-challenge.html [Accessed 1 May 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Z is for Ziggurat

For the final entry in the A-Z Blogging Challenge focussing on Loughborough’s Art Deco buildings, let’s first have a look at some ancient structures!

We’ve already mentioned in earlier posts in this series, the influence of Egypt on the Art Deco style - Egyptomania and lotus flowers - but not so far mentioned the pyramids. I’ve never experienced the pyramids for real, but from what I’ve seen in photographs they appear to be huge structures, starting with a very large square base, with layer upon layer of structure that decreases at each level. In some cases, the outside surfaces look like tiny, tiny sets of steps, in other cases they almost look like very, very deep steps. An example of the former might be the Great pyramid of Giza, and of the latter, the Pyramid of Djoser.

According to the National Geographic, Egypt, with its astonishing pyramids, was a close neighbour to ancient Mesopotamia, the latter being between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, and better known today as Iraq, with parts of northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and western Iran. Being neighbours, it is not surprising that the architectural styles and structures could be deemed to be cousins, although the purpose of the buildings was different.

While Egypt had the Pyramids, Mesopotamia had the Ziggurats! I’ve never seen the ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats for real either, but from photographs it would appear that the base is rectangular, and the landings (if we’re thinking of these steps as a staircase) seem to be much wider, and thus there are fewer layers. So, for example, the Great Ziggurat of Ur has only three layers, while the Temple of Marduk has seven.

And the significance to Loughborough? Well, the town is replete with Ziggurats!! Our Art Deco buildings showcase loads of them! We just need to look up, to spot them!

Here’s a few examples from our wonderful town centre, starting with Cashino, then the corner of High Street and Baxter Gate, followed by the Blacksmith Arms on Ward's End, Fenways (now Peter's Pizza) on Baxter Gate, and finally a view of the former Echo Press offices, showing the three bays, and the steps to the keystone. 





 


And remember, next time you are in town, look up to view some of the other ziggurats not pictured here, like the former Baxter Gate Café, and the former Revs on Baxter Gate, Caffé Nero in Market Place, and the row of three buildings, each with three bays, on Market Street. 

Thank you for following along with the posts in this A-Z Blogging Challenge – I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed putting them together! A full list of these A-Z entries, plus all the other posts on the blog can be found on one of the special blog pages.

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I'm taking part in the A-Z April Blogging Challenge!!


_______________________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Z is for Ziggurat. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/04/z-is-for-ziggurat.html  [Accessed 30 April 2025]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne