Pamphlet Day and newsletter time!

Another busy week in the little market town of Loughborough!

If you were out and about around the parish church area of Loughborough on Tuesday evening you might have encountered a couple of groups of folk having a guided tour of that area of town. There really is a lot to show people at this end of town, much more than can be covered in the time available!

I hope you made it to the talk in the public library on Thursday evening, a talk delivered by Stuart Bailey, Chair of the Leicester Civic Society. This was a fascinating insight into the work of the Civic Society, and their campaigns to protect some of Leicester's heritage. Of course, they are not always successful, but a side-effect of their campaigns, successful or otherwise is that there is now a rich heritage of photographs of buildings, before demolition, before refurbishment, and afterwards. There are a number of people in Loughborough who would like to [re-]form a similar society for our town: if you're interested, do get in touch.

On Saturday there was an event taking place across many venues in Loughborough, celebrating the "rich history and radical traditions of the political pamphlet". The event actually started on Friday, with a full day conference, being followed by the opening of the accompanying exhibition in the Charnwood Museum. Pictures at an exhibition:

Saturday saw Queen's Park, Charnwood Museum and the public library being venues for workshops, stalls, zine-making, and badge-making, amongst other things. I wondered around the beautiful Queen's Park, and spoke to a number of stallholders. Here's some pics:

This week also seems to be the week of the Spring newsletters, and several of these have popped through my letterbox over the last few days. 

I was also lucky enough to receive a copy of the book produced as part of the Charnwood Great War Centenary Project, which contains a huge amount of fascinating information about the town of Loughborough, about those who gave their lives, and the Zeppelin raids on the town, which I very much look forward to reading.

I would say I am looking forward to another busy week this coming week, but actually, I feel I could do with a rest - or at least a bit more time to investigate the heritage of our lovely town!

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2017). Pamphlet Day and newsletter time. Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/05/pamphlet-day-and-newsletter-time.html [Accessed 28 May 2017]

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.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne 

    

Loughborough local history rooted in Charnwood

So, lynneaboutloughborough has been out and about and a bit busy again this week! Let me tell you about it!

During the week there was a meeting about the Old Rectory Museum: don't forget, they are open most Saturdays from now until the end of October, and the new display is about the Civil War at Cotes. Check out their facebook group to keep up with the latest news!

Pop-up cinema at the Charnwood Roots Festival

Cinema is big on my list of interests, so I was really enthralled to listen to Brian Johnson talk about the village cinemas of Leicestershire and Rutland. Ok, so this didn't cover any of the cinemas in Loughborough, but it was fascinating to learn about all the little cinemas in the surrounding villages, the ways they were run, and the antics that both people running them and people visiting them got up to! 

The Roman mosaics in Leicester with GCR behind

Saturday we ventured further afield and had a tour of the excavations taking place in Leicester under what was the Stibbe building (the one in town, opposite the Highcross, not the one near De Montfort University that was demolished about 10 years ago). Yes, on one side was the Highcross shopping centre, but on the other side was the former Great Central Station. According to our guide, the company responsible for building the new premises will also be renovating the station, so that's something to look forward to. Anyway, we saw some stunning Roman mosaic floors, some surviving Roman wall, layers and layers of road surfaces, including the Roman one, and glimpses of the hypocaust. All this will be eventually displayed in the Jewry Wall Museum.  

 
Today, I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Charnwood Roots Festival, and gosh, did I have a great time!!! Charnwood Roots is a lottery-funded project to delve into the history of the towns and villages in Charnwood - so that includes Loughborough - uncover the facts and the stories, which will eventually be written up as part of the Victoria County Histories. These VCHs were originally created in the early 1900s and were a comprehensive guide to each parish in the country. However, although other counties have published updated versions of their histories, Leicestershire's, which was originally published in 1907, was briefly updated by W G Hoskins in the 1950s, but has not revised recently.

According to Professor Chris Dyer, Emeritus Professor of History in the Centre for English Local History at Leicester University, the idea to revise the Leicestershire VCH was re-born around 2007, and after applying for Heritage Lottery Funding, the Charnwood Roots project took off in about 2013. This project has seen hundreds of volunteers from across Charnwood get involved in researching the history of the area, from religion to work, from archaeology to education, from crime and punishment to health, from the land-owning gentry to the lowly peasant. 

In his lecture, Professor Dyer stressed that every place has a history, but that that history is more than just the infamous little Civil War skirmish, or the famous person who hails from the place. History is more than this. History exists partly because of the people who lived, worked and died in a place, so it's a combination of the experience of hundreds of people over thousands of years. People's experiences make history, and if we care to look around us we can find information about our hamlet / village / town history by simply looking - think of buildings and their architecture, place, street and field names, the village plan, the archaeology, the landscape etc.. When this is added to interpretation of the wealth of written records that exist - parish registers, wills, census returns, newspapers, memoirs etc. - the history can be extensive.   

The Charnwood Roots Festival was staged to present some of the research that has been done, this presentation being achieved through lectures, films (on laptops and in the pop-up cinema - pic above), storyboards, displays and interactive opportunities. Alongside this "story of the stone wood", local history societies and local heritage sites, local researchers and other organisations showcased their own work, information being presented in banners, artefacts, leaflets, books, noticeboards, and some very passionate people!

I spent most of the day talking: talking to people I know and love, and to people I've never met before; talking to people about things I was also passionate about, and I talked to people about things for which I only had a passing interest. I found out who some of blog readers are, and I promised to include some posts from new angles, so do look out for those over the coming months! I even managed to talk to some people about the #delaytheonsetofdementia initiative I run as part of my role as a DMU Dementia Ambassador!

So, enough writing, let's get to the pics!! Some didn't come out too well, as Beaumanor Hall can be quite dark downstairs and I didn't like to put my flash on, and some of my angles were a bit odd, so here's the best selection!

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2017). Loughborough local history rooted in Charnwood. Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/05/loughborough-local-history-rooted-in.html [Accessed 21 May 2017]

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.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne 

Windmills

This last week seems to have been extremely busy and exciting, with a focus on things industrial - well, not exclusively industrial, but quite a lot!

Monday evening I attended a talk in Woodhouse Eaves about windmills - well, mostly windmills, with a bit of watermills and steam mills thrown in for good measure! 

Wednesday evening I was at the Friends of Charnwood Museum talk on the geology of Charnwood, which included many references to the local quarries. 

Friday evening I was spellbound by a production called Murder By Gaslight,which took place in the Guildhall in Leicester: this was a professional production by Don't Go Into The Cellar, and was about Dr William Palmer and Dr Crippen.

Saturday afternoon I went along to the opening ceremony of the New Lount Industrial Trail. The nature trail has been there for quite some time, but the new industrial trail sees interpretation boards around the site, indicating where various parts of the coal mine used to be.

Sunday afternoon I visited the Shepshed watermill which was open as part of National Mills Weekend. Fabulous visit which kind of complemented Monday's talk. We were shown a map of 1826 which showed about 88 mills, but there were apparently about 130 windmill, with 4 such mills being in Loughborough. 

The Loughborough mills were: one in what is now the Midland Railway Station car park; one on Windmill Road, off Beeches Road, near where Ladybird Books, now Anstey Wallpapers, used to be; one on the site that is now occupied by Emmanuel Church, and one near the Windmill Inn, on Sparrow Hill. The latter, a post mill, was probably the subject of an illustration by John Throsby in 1789, in which the Church of All Saints (now with Holy Trinity) appears in the background. Of course, this is not a photographic representation of what the mill would have looked like, rather an idealised, rather romantic view, but none of the Loughborough mills still exist so there's nothing to compare the Throsby view with.

Unlike the Loughborough mills, the Shepshed mill does still exist: the mill was originally owned by the De Lisle family (of Garendon), and Henry Draper was the last miller to use it for its intended purpose. By 1956, the mill was derelict, and was bought by Bernard Foulquies, a hosier from Leicester, who eventually converted the tower mill into a dwelling, in fact it was one of the very first of such conversions. The restoration didn't go smoothly, as at one point it was possible that the route of the M1 would have meant demolition, but luckily the route of the motorway was later changed, although a subsequent earthquake did cause damage to the mill. Originally the mill had 4 sails, but here's what the mill looks like today:

The only thing I'm not sure about is the name of the windmill: I've seen references to a Blackbrook windmill, and a Fenney Spring windmill, both in Shepshed. I'm inclined to think they refer to the same windmill, but I'd be happy to put right on that!

Anyway, if having a restored windmill wasn't enough, Shepshed also has a watermill! This was also once part of the Garendon Estate, but went into other ownership in the 1970s and has more recently been restored, winning a national award for preservation in 2003. Nowadays, the mill is open a number of Sundays a year, and hosts car shows, Wartime events, and storytelling.

So, lots of restoration going on in Shepshed, apart from the milestone on the A512, but don't get me started on milestones!!!

  
Further resource on mills.
  

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2017). Windmills. Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/05/windmills.html [Accessed 14 May 2017]

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.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne