I was taken to task last week for suggesting that Loughborough was not a traditional tourist destination, because of the outing Thomas Cook made in 1841. Let me explain ...
When I suggested we weren't a touristy place, I was thinking around a number of things. When I first visited Loughborough I was an avid collector of souvenirs of places I'd visited, which usually took the form of a keyring with the name of the place on it. Sometimes these were beautiful with crests on, other times they were plastic fobs with a blurry picture of the place on, and other times they were a leather affair with the name of the town printed on. I looked all around the town, but the only one I could find was in Woolworths, and was one of the rather less-than-inspiring leather ones. I've still got it (and the rest of the collection) probably upstairs in the attic.
Ok, that's perhaps not the best reason to suggest Loughborough is not a tourist destination! The other thing that I was thinking was that I think people who would consider spending a week's holiday in Leicestershire are probably in the minority (something to do perhaps with a lack of coastline, and a dearth of charismatic, legendary heroes, like Robin Hood). I know I'm a bit on dodgy ground here, after all, Leicester now has Richard III, and it's true that visitors to the city have increased as a result of this, and not everyone wants to see the sea!
As I said last week, when I first came to Loughborough there was a tourist information centre, but now there isn't. True, Leicester has a destination organisation in Leicestershire Promotions and they've done a good job of trying to connect tourist venues in the city and the county. And, as you know, I'm forever extolling the virtues of our 5 museums, our Local and Family History Centre, our wonderful buildings, our parks, our cinemas, our markets, our fair and everything else I can, when I chat with people, take people on guided walks, give talks, blog or write books. the one thing I keep forgetting to mention is that all our 'attractions' are within a very close area. If you start at the Market Place and walk the shortest route, these are the distances:
To Charnwood Museum in Queen's Park - 0.2 miles
To the Carillon in Queen's Park - 0.25 miles
To the Old Rectory Museum - 0.3 miles
To Taylors Bellfoundry - 0.5 miles
To the Great Central Railway - 0.8 miles
So what of the Thomas Cook connection? Cook, living at Market Harborough, brought a party of about 500 people along to Loughborough from Leicester on a Temperance outing, on 5 July 1841. They each paid one shilling to travel by train, and arrived at the Midland Main Line station from where they walked to the meeting on Paget's Park, which I believe is now known as Southfields Park. This trip was successful, and Cook planned and executed excursions for Temperance supporters and school children over the next few summers. By 1854 Cook had given up his trade as a woodturner, and begun to make a living from arranging trips. So this is what makes Cook's trip from Leicester to Loughborough the first 'package tour', or more accurately, the first of Cook's package tours.
Of course, Cook's trip in July 1841 was not the first trip to take place. An example of an earlier one happened when the Nottingham Mechanic's Institute brought a group of between 400 and 500 members by rail to Leicester to visit that town's * own Mechanic's Institute. This appears to have been a very successful visit despite there being few people around to welcome the visitors. However, by the time the group came to leave they were enthusiastically waved off by thousands of Leicester people.
It does appear, however, that Leicester seems to play a role in those early trips. Sorry for the lack of photos and dense text!
Now, onto the Maypole Dairy. Ahhhh, sorry, I've run out of time today, so I'll be back next week with that story.
Thank you for reading.
* Although Leicester was a city at the time of the Domesday Book, it lost that status in the 11th century, not regaining it until 1919, thus at the time of the visit of the Nottingham Mechanic's Institute, Leicester was a town. Nottingham gained its city status in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:
Dyer, Lynne (2019). Thomas Cook or Maypole Dairies? Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/02/thomas-cook-or-maypole-dairy.html [Accessed 24 February 2019]
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