Goadby’s History of Loughborough, Chapter 9, Part 1

We’re again picking up the story of Loughborough as presented by journalist Edwin Goady, in his serialization in the ‘Loughborough Monitor’, a newspaper of which he was editor, which ran from 1864 to 1866.

We’re now onto Chapter 9, in which Goadby tells the story of Lord Hastings.

Goadby’s paragraphs are rather long, so in order to make reading the chapter a little easier, I have added a few spaces and created new paragraphs. This particular chapter seems fairly straightforward, so I’ve not added any notes this time. Other than that, I’ve changed nothing, so do bear in mind that this text is now about 160 years old, and may no longer be accurate, as there are many more discoveries that have been made that illuminate the history of Loughborough, and some terminology will have changed, so some of the information in this article will be wrong. I have not tried to amend these in any way, so reader, beware!

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THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH

In: ‘Loughborough Monitor’ 8 June 1865, pg.3

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT LORD HASTINGS.

Part I.—Origin of the Family—Historical Importance of the Lord Hastings—Services and Rewards—A Military Indenture. His local influence—Saint Leonard's, at Leicester—A Letter of his—Gloucester's Character of him.

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We must now retrace our steps a little for the purpose of continuing the manorial history of the town. We have already stated that the manor was granted to Lord Hastings in 1461, and confirmed in 1467. It was not restored, along with other possessions, to Henry, the fifth Lord Beaumont, until 1483, so that Lord Hastings held the manor during the greater portion of his life.

The family of the Hastings were descended from Robert de Hastings, the Portreeve, or principal magistrate of the town of that name, who was also steward to William the Conqueror. William, Lord Hastings, was the eldest son of Sir Leonard Hastings, Knight, of Kirby Muxloe, in this county. Both father and son were retainers of Richard, Duke of York, the father of Edward IV., and a most intimate attachment was early formed between the young prince and the future baron. History and the drama record alike the excellencies and defects of this handsome, courtly, chivalrous, and somewhat unscrupulous nobleman.

It is quite beyond our province to sketch his career, or give anything like an original analysis of his character. A few details of local interest are all that we can give, and the only digression we shall make will but serve the more fully to bring out the social and national usages of the time.

In 1470, Edward IV. returned from exile, landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, and marched thence to York, Wakefield, Sowdal, Doncaster, and Nottingham. In passing from Nottingham to Leicester, through Loughborough, Edward IV. was joined by a large number of adherents collected by Lord Hastings from his tenantry at Kirby Muxloe, Ashby, Loughborough, and other places, "so that he had then," says Leland, "a 4 M men or mo."

For these and other services Lord Hastings obtained, four years later, permission to enclose and impark 3,000 acres of land and wood at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 2,000 acres at Bagworth and Thornton, and 2,000 acres at Kirby Muxloe. In all three places he was also allowed to build a military stronghold. The one at Ashby was both a palace and a fort, with roomy halls, chambers, and a lofty keep, the ruins of which are now so familiar to every one who knows anything of county relics and county history.

His retinue consisted of two Lords, nine Knights, fifty-eight Esquires, and twenty gentlemen, and some of their names are now familiar enough to most of us, as Montfort, Harcourt, Chaworth, Danvers, Green, Sacheverell, Curzon, Neville, Vernon, Shirley, Babington, Bassell, Turville, &c. In 1475, he executed an Indenture with one "John Gryffyne, gentillman," which is of great interest in revealing the military system of those days. The great Barons used to contract with the King to supply him with a certain number of men for a given number of days' service, and upon a certain scale of remuneration; as one mark per day for a Duke, 6s. 8d. for an Earl, 4s. for a Baron, 2s. for a Knight, and 6d. for an archer, these sums being equivalent to ten times the amount in modern money. The Barons then made sub-contracts with smaller men, and usually managed to make money by the transaction. The indenture in question set forth that

"the said John is reteyned and withholden with the said Lord Hastynges to do him service of werre with the Kyng our soverain lord, now on his viage over the see for one hole year at his spere wele and sufficiently horsed, armed, and arrayed as it apperteneth to a man of armes, and iiii archers wele and sufficiently horsed, hernessed, habilled, and arrayed as it apperteneth to an archer, taking for hym selfe xviii d. a day, and for every archer vi d. by the day, of the wiche wages the said John hath receyved the first quarter of the said hole yere the day of sealyng these presentis, at which day the said lord hath yeven (given) knowledge to the said John that he shall make monstres (musters) of hym self and his said retenue, at Portes-downe in Hampshire, the xxiiiith day of May next comencyng, or the same day at any other place upon resonnabil warning."

Some of the other stipulations are rather curious. After "the said monstresse and payment" of the second quarter the men are "with goddis grace (sic) to go to shipp at such tyme as the Kyng and the said lord shall commande them, and for the other halfe of the said yere the said John shall be paid by the said lord, for him selfe and his said retenue on the yonder side of the See, monethly in English money, or in money there rynnyng (running) to the value of English money."

Another clause in this long and curious document shows us other sources of enrichment for the Baron. "Also the said lorde shall have the iiide parte of the wynnynges of werre as well of the said John as the iiide of iiides whereof yche (each) of his retenue shall be answeryng unto him of their wynnynges of werre duryng the tyme above said, be it prisoners, prayes (preys), or other goodes or cattall what so ever thei be, and the said John, or he, or thei that shall so take such prisoners or prayes shall show unto the said lorde within six days after the so takyng as well the names of the said prisoners as their astate, degre, or condicionn, and the quantite and value of the said gettyngis by estimacionn upon payn of forfiture the said prisoners and wynnyngis above said."

The indenture is signed by Hastings himself, and it is easy to comprehend the stir and excitement such enrollments would make in the neighbourhood, and the wasteful expenditure that any considerable army thus raised necessarily entailed upon the crown. We have only to conceive of a modern army of even 40,000 men so raised and paid, to understand the difficulty, expense, jobbing, and unscrupulous dealings that war entailed then, as now, in spite of our notions that people were honester formerly than they are now and avoided many of our supposed red-tapeisms and vicious practices.

The influence Lord Hastings exerted throughout the whole neighbourhood of his properties was very great, and very beneficent. At Leicester, he was a notable person, having obtained from the king a grant of the hospital of St. Leonards, and given the same to the Abbey of Leicester. The dean and chapter, to show their sense of this favour, covenanted by an instrument under their common seal, that

"Whensoever he should fortune to depart this life, they would keep a special obit for him in their church, on the day of his funeral; as also every year to celebrate his anniversary for the health of his soul and of the lady Katherine his wife."

And further to commemorate this gift, the Provost was to pay yearly on that day, at the end of the mass, the sum of 3s. 4d. to the Dean of the Chapter, 2s. to every canon then present, 12d. to every vicar of the choir, 6d. to every clerk, 4d. to every chorister, 4d. to the verger, and 1d. each to every poor man and woman then living in the almshouse belonging to the abbey.

By his will Lord Hastings commanded his executors to give him even greater honours. A thousand priests were to be selected by them to say a thousand Placebos and Dirigls, and a thousand masses for the safety of his soul, and every priest was to receive the sum of sixpence for his trouble. The following letter is characteristic, and exhibits his kindliness and gentleness.

To Richard Butler, Esq., on behalf of his servant Thomas Myles

Trusty and rygth well beloved friend;

I commend me to you, and praye you, insomuch as I am informed ye bend youre labors to vexe a servante of myne, Thomas Myles, of Everden, whom I love wel, withoute caws, reasonable; that ye vouchsaf, because of this my prayer, to have hym the rather in your favor as he be'nt so vexede hereafter, but that he may sit in rest; for I am loth that any of my servantes shulde have cause to complene upon you, or I, to have anything againste you.

Written at London, the 17th day of March (no date)

Your friend, HASTYNGS.

The melancholy end of this brilliant man, is a matter of common history, and even the wicked Gloucester when he has had him executed is made by Shakespeare to say of him, no doubt cunningly and perhaps truly:

"So dear I lov'd the man, that I must weep.

I took him for the plainest harmless creature

That breath'd upon the earth a Christian;

Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded

The history of all her secret thoughts:

So smooth he daub'd his vice with show of virtue,

That, his apparent open guilt omitted,

I mean, his conversation with Shore's wife,

He liv'd from all attainder of suspects."

The end of Chapter 9, Part 1!

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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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 (2026). Goadby’s History of Loughborough, Chapter 9, Part 1.

Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/07/goadbys-history-of-loughborough-chapter.html  [Accessed 5 July 2026]

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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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

Agatha Christie and the Loughborough Connection

Well, would you believe it?! I was sitting quietly reading a book a friend had lent to me when you could have blowed me down with a feather when something with a local connection was mentioned, in a novel that was essentially about farming on the borders of Monmouthshire and Herefordshire. This, of course, reminded me about those Agatha Christie connections I came across when I was reading all her detective novels, and which I said I’d tell you about …

According to my copy of ‘Passenger to Frankfurt’, it was published in 1930, but according to all the other sources I’ve checked, it seems to have been published in 1970, being her 80th book, and being published to coincide with her 80th birthday. It’s a stand alone book, which doesn’t feature any of her regular sleuths, like Poirot, Miss Marple, or Tommy and Tuppence, etc..

The story is essentially a spy novel, and has been compared with novels by John le Carré, and Helen MacInnes. Just over 200 pages in, and towards the end of the novel, Lady Matilda Cleckheaton, the aunt of Sir Stafford Nye, who is one of the main male characters, meets with her old friend, Admiral Philip Blunt, and the two of them try to remember the name of a project being undertaken by scientist, Professor Robert Shoreham. This project went by the name of ‘Project B’, mostly because they couldn’t remember what it was actually called! The conversation went like this:

Matilda: “Well, I don’t know what [the project] was exactly. I mean, I don’t think it was sleeping or laughing [gas], At any rate, it was something. It wasn’t really Project B. It had another name.

Admiral: What sort of a name?

Matilda rather thoughtfully: Well, he did mention it once I think, or twice. The name he’d given it. Rather like Benger’s Food.

Admiral: Some soothing agent for the digestion?

Matilda: I don’t think [the project name] had anything to do with the digestion. I rather think it was something you sniffed, or something, perhaps it was a gland. You know we talked of so many things that you never quite knew what he was talking about at the moment. Benger’s Food. Ben – Ben – it did begin Ben. And there was a pleasant word associated with it.”

What Matilda was trying to remember was Project Benvo, which was a drug that made people altruistic, possibly on a long-term basis - all made up, of course.

The other Agatha Christie novel I read was ‘After the funeral’, published in 1953. Following the death of Richard Abernethie, his sister is then murdered. Poirot questions family members, including Richard’s wife, Maude:

“Poirot had talked with Maude Abernethie – also about paint (the smell of) and how fortunate it had been that Timothy [Richard’s brother] had been able to come to Enderby [Hall, not Enderby in Leicestershire!], and how kind it had been of Helen [Richard’s widowed sister-in-law] to extend an invitation to Miss Gilchrist [Cora’s paid companion], also.

For really she is most useful. Timothy so often feels like a snack – and one cannot ask too much of other people’s servants, but there is a gas ring in a little room off the pantry, so that Miss Gilchrist can warm up Ovaltine or Benger’s there without disturbing anybody. And she’s so willing about fetching things, she’s quite willing to run up and down stairs a dozen times a day. Oh yes, I feel that it was really quite Providential that she should have lost her nerve about staying alone in the house as she did, though I admit it vexed me at the time.”

Finally, a novel by Bruce Chatwin, called ‘On the Black Hill’, which, according to the novel’s cover, was ‘Now a Sensational Film’, was published in 1982. It follows the life story of the Jones family, particularly the twins, Lewis and Benjamin. It was initially thought that old Mrs Arkwright, a neighbour, died from nephritis and the effects of insanity, but when doubts were expressed, and her body exhumed for examination:

“Dr Galbraith professed himself shocked by the result of the forensic tests: ‘I knew she was a martyr to indigestion’ he said, ‘but I never expected this.’

To avail himself of her capital, Mr Arkwright had laced his wife’s Benger’s Food with arsenic purchased for the persecution of dandelions. He was convicted in Hereford and hanged in Gloucester.”

So, I’m sure many of us have heard of Benger’s, but what was it?

A blogger writing about products that no longer exist, refers to it as a bit of a pick-me-up, a cross between baby milk and invalid food. It was actually a mixture of wheat-flour and an extract that contained ‘digestive ferments of the pancreatic juice’ which when mixed with warm milk, could convert starch in food into sugar. Apparently, Horlicks or Benger’s might be sent to soldiers fighting in the Second World War.

The company that originally made Benger’s was created in 1790 at the Otter Works, in Strangeways, although the food supplement wasn’t produced until the mid-19th century. Frederick Benger and Standen Paine, two chemists, took over the company in 1870, and it became a limited company in 1903, eventually changing its name to Benger’s in 1939, following a move to purpose-built premises in Holmes Chapel – a name which will be familiar to people from Loughborough who used to work at Fisons, as Fisons, at the time described as a £5m chemical firm, took over Benger’s ‘the baby-food makers’ in 1947. The rest, as they say, is history!! And the Art Deco factory in Holmes Chapel was demolished in 2015.

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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 (2026). Agatha Christie and the Loughborough Connection. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/06/agatha-christie-and-loughborough.html [Accessed 30 June 2026]

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

Agatha Christie Connections

When I read all the Agatha Christie novels back in 2024-25, because I started with the first of her novels, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’, which was written in 1916, and published in the UK in 1921, I always associate her with the 1920s and 1930s. As you already know, whilst I was reading the complete novels, I was struck by loads of connections I could make with our lovely town, and some I’ve written about on here (see list below).

Naturally, I made of note of all these connections, and looking back at them now, I had to wonder to myself why I had made this particular link? Why on earth would Agatha Christie be mentioning this, which was surely something that would not yet have existed. Of course, when I looked at the publication date of ‘At Bertram’s Hotel’, I realised that 1965 would have been about right for this connection. In fact, this shows just how up-to-date Christie was, and how she kept up with what was going on in the country!

Back in 1949, the government had passed the Special Roads Act, which pretty much gave the go-ahead to create some new roads, an idea that had been floating around since before the Second World War, and some attempt had been made in 1923 by a company set up by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. The first of these ‘special roads’ was the Preston bypass which was built in 1958, and which later became part of the M6.

On pages 3-4 of ‘At Bertram’s Hotel’, the reader is introduced to the hotel, and some of its guests:

“Inside, if this was the first time you had visited Bertram’s, you felt, almost with alarm, that you had re-entered a vanished world. Time had gone back. You were in Edwardian England once more.

… the big entrance lounge was the favourite place for the afternoon tea drinking. The elderly ladies enjoyed seeing who came in and out, recognising old friends, and commenting unfavourably on how these had aged. There were also American visitors fascinated by seeing the titled English really getting down to their traditional afternoon tea. For afternoon tea was quite a feature of Bertam’s ...

On this particular day, November the 17th, Lady Selina Hazy, sixty-five , up from Leicestershire, was eating delicious well-buttered muffins with all an elderly lady’s relish.”

Later, on pages 170-2, Christie, describing people in the hotel’s lounge, wrote:

“There were not many people in the lounge this evening. [The Chief-Inspector] saw Miss Marple sitting in a chair near the fire and Miss Marple saw him … It was quiet in the lounge tonight.

An ascetic looking middle-aged man was reading through a badly typed thesis, occasionally writing a comment in the margin in such small crabbed handwriting as to be almost illegible. Every time he did this, he smiled in vinegary satisfaction.

There were one or two married couples of long standing who had little need to talk to each other. Occasionally two or three people were gathered together in the name of the weather conditions, discussing anxiously how they or their families were going to get where they wanted to be.

‘ – I rang up and begged Susan not to come by car … it means the M1 and always so dangerous in fog …’

‘They say it’s clearer in the Midlands …’

Chief Inspector Davy noted them as he passed.”

So, if the book was published in 1965, then Christie must have been writing about the M1 in the Midlands some time earlier! How absolutely abreast of current affairs was Christie?!

Mr lynneaboutloughborough recently did a park run on Greenham Common: in his sharing of this activity, he’s been interested to note that some people look blankly at him, and wonder why he chose to run there, while others gasp in amazement and ask what it’s like there since the women who arrived there to protest about nuclear weapons in 1981 had moved out about 19 years later?

The first part of the M1 opened in 1958, but, of course, detailed plans were made much earlier and certainly shared in 1956. There was an outcry in our area, as the original plan for the route was to take it through the ancient Charnwood Forest. A petition to stop this gathered 32,000 signatures! A revised route was devised, and the M1 through Leicestershire from Leicester Forest East, going in a northerly direction, and therefore passing Loughborough, opened in 1965. Apparently, incorporated in the hardcore was building material from Garendon Hall, which had been demolished in June 1964.

Since that time, Charnwood Forest has become an ‘aspiring UNESCO global geopark’ and has received Heritage Lottery Funding to help tell the story of Charnwood Forest, and look after it for future generations. There have also been many changes to the layout of the M1, with new lanes added, and new junctions, installed, linking more places. And the site of Garendon Hall is now being developed for housing. What more can I say?

The Outwoods, part of Charnwood Forest

Part of Garendon Park

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Previous Agatha Christie connections posts

Snowcrete - https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/03/christie-connections-snowcrete.html

Christie and Cook - https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/08/christie-and-cook.html

Paul Pry - https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/03/christie-connections-paul-pry.html (part of the A-Z Art Deco Challenge 2025)

Pirates in the Market Place - https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/06/spotlight-on-pirates-in-market-place.html

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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 (2026). Agatha Christie Connections. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/06/agatha-christie-connections.html [Accessed 25 June 2026]

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

Spotlight on Pirates in the Market Place

Already we’re into June, and I must apologise for posting so few articles in May! I’ve had my head down, scribbling away at the next book, trying hard to reach a deadline!! That done, I’ve headed back here to do a bit of catching up with you.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time today trying to think what to write about, and then I remembered one of those connections to Loughborough I said I’d tell you about. This one is related to my reading of the entire output (novels, that is) of Agatha Christie, and connections I found that were either directly related to Loughborough or reminded me of Loughborough in some way. 

Having decided what to write about, I then spent a good amount of time looking for a book called ‘Thirteen for Lunch’. Odd. It didn’t seem to be on the right bookshelf. Hmmm, more searching. Back to the shelf it should be on, and lo and behold if I didn’t find a book called ‘Thirteen for Luck’! So much for my handwriting on the note I’d made for myself a couple of years ago!!

So, back to ‘Thirteen for Luck’, and what exactly is the connection with Loughborough …

Yesterday, I was buying some bread from the Belvoir Bakery market stall, when I noticed a couple of pirates walking past me. Now, I’m not one to not know what’s going on, but I really had no idea why there should be pirates in the Market Place of land-locked Loughborough, so far away from the sea. I even asked the ‘breadman’ as I’ve taken to calling him! He had no idea, either, and even said if I found out I should let him know!!

Well, it wasn’t actually that difficult to find out, as there were another couple of pirates huddled around the next occupied market stall. Naturally, I stopped to see what was going on …

‘Thirteen for Luck’ is actually a series of thirteen short stories, and the story which reminded me of a Loughborough connection is called ‘The Unbreakable Alibi’, and features Tommy and Tuppence as the detectives. A chap called Montgomery Jones has fallen in love with a woman, Una Drake, who challenges him to solve a puzzle of how she could be in two places at once. He’s hoping to solve this and as his prize, ask the woman to marry him, but he knows he can’t do it alone so enlists the help of Tommy and Tuppence.

The two places the woman is supposed to have been at the same time were at a hotel in Torquay, where she stayed overnight, and an evening in London, where she dined at a restaurant in Soho, caught a West End show, and had supper with a friend at the Savoy Hotel. When interviewed by Tommy and Tuppence in relation to the London evening, Mr le Marchant, a ‘breezy youth’ the following conversation took place:

“’I understand, Mr le Marchant,’ said Tommy, ‘that Miss Drake had supper with you at the Savoy last Tuesday evening.’ ‘That’s right,’ said Mr le Marchant. ‘I know it was Tuesday because Una impressed it on me at the time and, what’s more, she made me write it down in a little book.’”

I’m not going to tell you any more about the story, and thus spoil it for you if you intend to read it, but in the story, Mr le Marchant is called Jimmy. However, in a London Weekend Television production, Jimmy’s name was changed to Peter.

Meanwhile back in Loughborough …

The Peter le Marchant Trust (PLMT) was set up in 1976 by Clare le Marchant-Connell, following the death of her brother, Peter. The charity aims to make boat trips on the local canal and river a possibility for people of all ages, with physical disabilities, or with mental health concerns, as well as respite for carers.

During August 2026, the Trust is hosting a pirate day, with a week of events leading up to this. What better way to publicise this than by sending pirates to Loughborough market! I am now the proud owner of a PLMT mug and a keyring!

I’ve previously written about my canal boat trip with PLMT back in 2023. It’s a wonderful experience to be able to sit back and enjoy and take advantage of the benefits of a journey along the water, without having to do any of the hard work! A marvellous organisation, which I’m pleased to support in the small way that I can. There was another poster, specifically about the day itself, but I passed that on to someone else before thinking I might want to share it here! Never mind, you can follow PLMT on various social media channels and find out more information that way.

 

In addition to this specific pirate-related event, there are regular events like yoga, Tranquil Tuesdays, and art or photography opportunities. Oh, and the Trust now have a new boat, called Harmony!

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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 (2026). Spotlight on Pirates in the Market Place: an exploration of Agatha Christie connections with Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/06/spotlight-on-pirates-in-market-place.html [Accessed 7 June 2026]

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

Now is the month of May

April was a busy month for the blog as I signed up to write 26 blog posts for the A-Z challenge. Here’s a link to the whole lot of them!

May is also shaping up to be a busy month, with so many anniversaries to celebrate, connections to share, and national days/weeks/months to contribute to, not to mention books to write! Where to start? Ok, let’s share a quick connection, first!

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be singing in Coventry Cathedral (Mahler’s 8th Symphony, known as the Symphony of a Thousand), and during the rehearsal breaks I managed to get a photo of the wonderful Crittall window that forms part of the entrance to the cathedral. Coventry Cathedral is a Grade 1 listed building, and was designed by the architect Sir Basil Spence, who won the design competition in 1950. The foundation stone for the cathedral was laid in 1956, and the building completed and consecrated in 1962. Sir Basil Spence worked in collaboration with Arup Associates, an architectural firm who were later involved in the development of the engineering buildings on the campus of Loughborough University. Of course, there are many Crittall windows still to found in Loughborough town centre.  

There are a number of anniversaries in May, some of which have already passed, but I have blogged about in connection with Loughborough in previous years, like The Great Exhibition; the Festival of Britain; and VE-Day (have a look at how one street commemorated VE-Day during the lockdown of 2020).

Some of the national awareness months are worth mentioning, particularly Local and Community History Month, after all, what is this blog if now local history?! If you use the web view (scroll down to the bottom of the posts, if you’re reading this in mobile view, and click on ‘View Web Version’), you’ll be able to search this blog, look back at the archives, or click on a term that interests you.

National Walking Month is another awareness initiative of note, and there are a number of walks on this blog – like the Zeppelin Trail, the Three Towers Trail, the Sculpture, Art, and Architecture Trail, the Loughborough Plaque Trail – as well as countryside walks close to our lovely town, like the Nanpantan Reservoir, and The Outwoods.      

During Mental Health Awareness Week you might investigate ways to protect your own mental health, or you might want to read about people’s experiences from the past. This is a particularly harrowing case from the early twentieth century in Loughborough.

Learning at Work Week might be interesting for those who work, but if you don’t there’s always International Museum Day (18th - why not visit one of the ones in Loughborough?), or International Tea Day (21st – why not visit one of Loughborough’s independent teashops – ooops, I think we’ve lost many of these now!).

And then there’s other anniversaries – like 25 years since the formation of the Milestone Society. There are a few posts on this blog which feature milestones, one about the Pack Horse milestone , and one a comparison of our milestones with others I’ve spotted across the country.

Hmm, I think that’s enough rambling around Loughborough for one post!!!

My poor photo of the Crittall frame Great Screen, designed and etched by John Hutton

____________________________________

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 (2026). Now is the month of May. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/05/now-is-month-of-may.html [Accessed 17 May 2026]

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

Complete list of A-Z blogging challenge posts 2026

A-Z Blogging Challenge Reflection

It was in 2024 that I first discovered the A-Z Blogging Challenge, and decided to take part. The challenge involved writing a blog post for each letter of the alphabet, every day in April apart from Sundays. Each day's article was themed around a specific topic, chosen by me, started with a letter of the alphabet, the first article beginning with the letter A and the last with letter Z.

In 2024, I chose to write a series of posts on random topics associated with some way with Loughborough. This was reasonably successful, so I also took up the challenge in 2025, focusing on Art Deco as the theme, illustrated by examples from Loughborough.

In April 2026, it was a very last-minute decision to take part in the challenge, as I had a lot of other things happening, so I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to complete the challenge. This was the first hurdle; the second was finding a suitable theme to write about!

I gave it some thought, and settled on the theme of architects with some connection to Loughborough. The next challenge was to find someone whose name began with the letter of the alphabet for the day. In some cases, this was easy, and I found one architect for these letters. In other cases, this was more difficult as I found several possible entries for some letters, and so I had to make a choice about which person to write about. In yet other cases, I had to bend [my own] rules, and select someone based on their first name rather than their surname.

As you might imagine, there were some letters that proved extremely difficult to write about, especially those towards the end pf the alphabet. In these cases, I ended up writing about architectural topics, rather than architects per se. Y was very tricky and I found myself connecting yew trees with the cemetery, and with the architects of the cemetery chapels, Bellamy and Hardy. For letter Z, I indulged in sharing the story of a librarian connected with the free library on Green Close Lane, which preceded the Carnegie Library on Granby Street, which linked us back to the opening couple of posts – A for Allcock, and B for Barrowcliff.

My final challenge was not posting on a Sunday, as for the past 13 years, for the most part, this has been the day when I share an article about Loughborough.

Anyway, the A-Z Blogging Challenge was very challenging, but also very enjoyable. I hope you have enjoyed reading the articles as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Here’s a list of all the articles I posted during the A-Z Blogging Challenge, 2026:            

A - Edward Thomas Allcock

B - George Harry, and Arnold Montague Barrowcliff

C - Tom Anderson Collins

D - Thomas Henry Dobson

E - Ernest Alfred Dakin

F - Ernest George Fowler

G - The Goddards

H - Willie Thomas Hampton

I - Isaac Charles Gilbert

J - Anthony David Jacobs

K - Albert Edward King

L - S.W. Lax

M - William Bonython Moffatt

N - John Smith Norris

O - Frederick Webster Ordish

P - Arthur John Price

Q - Charles Henry Bourne Quennell

R - Archibald Hurley Robinson

S - Christopher Staveley

T - Frank Tranmer

U - Unity House

V - Reginald Vaughan

W - Watson Fothergill

X - So What is Our Letter X?

Y - Yew Trees

Z - Zebedee Moon

____________________________________

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 (2026). Complete list of A-Z blogging challenge posts 2026. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/05/complete-list-of-z-blogging-challenge.html [Accessed 3 May 2026]

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

And Finally We Reach Letter Z!

 An A-Z of Architects of Loughborough

For a complete list of the A-Z posts please head over to the bloglist.

 

So, we have reached the final letter of the alphabet in this A-Z blogging challenge, and what a tricky one it is too, to find something that fits the overall theme I’ve chosen this year! If I were writing a book called ‘A-Z of Loughborough’, I would have plenty of topics to choose from – Zenobia, Zeppelins, Zamosc, Zodiac Toys, and more! Trying to find an architect whose name begins with a Z, and who has some connection to Loughborough has proved impossible!

If I were sticking to the architectural theme, I could perhaps write about ziggurats, but those iconic, step-like rooflines, so typical of the Art Deco period, were featured in last year’s A-Z blogging challenge. Obviously, I want to share my new discoveries with you, but you could pop over to last year’s feature, or to the Art Deco glossary.

So, what am I going to share with you for this final blogpost of April? I’ve decided to go back to my professional roots, and the reason I came to live in Loughborough …  

Short biography of Zebedee Moon

Zebedee Mooon’ parents, Isaac, and Elizabeth, née Tilke, tied the knot on 12 November 1843 at Coleford in Somerset. Isaac was a coal miner at the Coal Barton Collieries, in Coleford, Somerset, as was his father, William. Elizabeth’s father was a farmer and butcher, and Elizabeth, unlike Isaac, signed her own name on the marriage register.

By the time Zebedee was baptised on 27 November 1859, he had older siblings, William, Eliza, Albert, Elizabeth, and Grace, while siblings born after Zebedee were Rosalie and Ann. The family lived on Kilmersden Common, in Coleford, and at the age of 11, like his father, Zebedee was listed on the 1871 census return as a coal miner. In June 1873, Isaac died, and between that time, and the next census, which was taken in 1881, Zebedee moved to Loughborough, and was boarding with the Skevington family at 56 Baxter Gate. Samuel Skevington, the head of the family, was a grocer, Zebedee was a postal clerk, and the other boarder, Nathaniel Riley, was a clock and watch maker.

On 26 December, 1882, Zebedee, who was apparently living in Barrow-on-Soar, married Sarah Ann Clarke of Loughborough. The wedding took place at the Primitive Methodist Chapel, which was probably the one on Swan Street. The following year, Zebedee appears in a trade directory as living on King Street, Loughborough, as a shopkeeper. The electoral roll for 1883 shows the house on King Street to be no.43: the houses along King Street were demolished and rebuilt around 1888, so the shop itself no longer exists.

1884 saw the birth of Zebedee and Sarah Ann’s first child, George, followed in 1887 by that of Jessica. Meanwhile, Zebedee was changing jobs again!

Loughborough’s first library was on Baxter Gate, and moved to the Town Hall (designed by the nationally-known architect, William Slater, who was also responsible for the design of the Baxter Gate Hospital, 1861) around 1856. However, it only stayed there for about 11 years, before closing completely, and it wasn’t until the town adopted Free Libraries Act of 1885, that a new library was built. This was on the corner of Green Close Lane (now part of the Sainsbury site), and was designed by Hodson, Price, Hodson. The first librarian here was Zebedee Moon, who stayed until July 1892, when he moved to Leyton, where the new library opened to the public on 1 June 1893. Interestingly, the building which housed the new Leyton library had originally opened as the town hall, and was designed by architect John Knight, and was built using white bricks. A new redbrick town hall (with Technical Institute adjoining) was built next door, as the original building was becoming too small, and this is when, in 1892, it became the library.

So, back to 1891, and the census return shows Zebedee, the borough librarian, aged 31, living with his wife, Sarah Ann, aged 29, and their children, John Morley, aged 7, Jessie, aged 4, and Elsie, aged 2, at no.138 Herrick Road, Loughborough. A directory of secondhand booksellers and public libraries, published in 1891, suggests that the Loughborough Free Library now had a stock of 5,000 volumes, and an annual circulation of 48,000. Money to fund the library was raised through the rates, amounting to about £260 per annum, of which £30 was spent on books. The opening hours were weekdays only, from 9.30 in the morning until 9.30 in the evening!

The Moon family welcomed another daughter, Ida, who was born in 1900, but who sadly died the same year. In 1901, the family are living at La Maison, Public Library, High Road, Leyton, and have been blessed with more children – Edna, and Eric. Later that year, Zebedee’s mother died in Folkestone, where she had been living at East Cliff Gardens, with her married daughter.

Zebedee continued to work as the borough librarian at Leyton, meanwhile, back in Loughborough, a new library was being built on Granby Street, designed by Barrowcliff and Allcock. In 1911, Zebedee and the family, which included two more children, Leslie Arthur, and Dora Gladys, were still living at the Leyton library. Daughter Jessie, now aged 24, was working as an assistant librarian at Leyton! 1921 and still the family are living at the library, although they were tricky to track down as Zebedee has been mistranscribed as Zelda!! So, Zebedee, wife Sarah Ann, and offspring, Edna, working as a library assistant, Eric, a civil service clerk at the Inland Revenue, and Leslie, an engineering apprentice with the Great Eastern Railway, and Dora. They are being visited by Jessie, who has married Albert Green, with whom she has 3 children.

I’m not sure when Zebedee retired from work, nor when he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, but I do know he died on 2 August 1938, when he was living at 14 Windsor Road, Wanstead. He left effects amounting to £1,968 18s. 2d..

In 2024, Michelle Johansen, writing about librarians during the period 1890-1920, is able to advise that Zebedee Moon, was one of many self-taught men from a working-class background, and like his colleagues, was “often to be found surrounded by books and papers, continuing into adulthood the diligent habits of self-education adopted in … youth.” Apparently, “Zebedee Moon of Leyton studied poetry and linguistics” in his spare time.    

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Basic facts

Name: Zebedee Moon

Parents: Isaac (c.1825-1873) and Elizabeth, née Tilke (1824-1901), m.1843 Colesford, Somerset

Date and place of Birth: 1859 (baptised 27 November), Coleford, Somerset

Spouse: Sarah Ann Clarke, m.1882, Loughborough

Children: George Morley (b.1884); Jessie Beatrice (b.1887); Elsie Elizabeth (b.1889), Ida Lillian (1890-1890); Edna Irene (b.1894); Eric Bertram (b.1899); Leslie Arthur (b.1902); Dora Gladys (b.1906)

Death: 20 August 1938, Wanstead

Places lived: Colesford, Somerset; 43 King Street, Loughborough; 138 Herrick Road, Loughborough; High Road, Leyton; 14 Windsor Road, Wanstead

Place of work/Offices: Loughborough Free Library, Green Close Lane; Leyton public libraries

____________________________________

I’m taking part in the April A-Z 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 (2026). And Finally we Reach Letter Z! Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/04/and-finally-we-reach-letter-z.html  [Accessed 30 April 2026]

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