Plaques

Exciting new green plaque for Loughborough town centre! But first an update on Maypole Dairy!

So, last week we had a look at the history of the Maypole Dairy. Since then I've had a chance to get some photographs of the former Maypole Dairy in Swadlincote, which has been revealed during renovation work. The pictures don't do the sign justice but here they are:

Another shop that has been renovated in the town, the renovation taking the shop back to its former glory is Salt's. The Salt brothers had several shops which dealt in haberdashery, menswear and hardware. Today the shop is an antique-type shop, with a beautiful tiled entrance doorway:

Whilst I was out in Swadlincote, I also spotted that they have a heritage trail (available here as a pdf 6.1mb), and lots of plaques commemorating various people. Here's a selection of the ones I saw:

Seeing these reminded me of the plaques we have in Loughborough, which I've blogged about before (sorry, I still haven't got round to making them into a proper trail, but I will soon!). And now there's another one to add to the trail. Sadly, I missed the unveiling of the latest of the Leicestershire Green Heritage plaques, which took place about 10 days ago, because I was on a work trip to Birmingham (spotted some Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta work while I was out, so for a work trip it was pretty good!). 

So, Loughborough's new plaque is along Market Street, mounted on a pillar that supports the Iceland store, and commemorates John Heathcoat, who had a lace factory on this site, which was later used by Wright's (who also had a big factory in Quorn, now converted into flats). Now, I did write up a trail that followed the story of the Luddites who attacked Heathcoat's and Boden's factory on the night of 28th June 1816, so you can read a bit more about it on that page. There's more of the story over on my post about the Picnic in the Park event where the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers hosted a Ludd Hub, and one of their members walked from Loughborough to Tiverton in commemoration of the workers who followed Heathcoat to Tiverton to work for him after the attack.

There's also an account of a talk given by Tony Jarram on Luddites and Lace-Makers to the Friends of Charnwood Museum. You may be interested to know that it was Tony who successfully nominated Heathcoat's factory for a green plaque, which we now know was successful. As I said, I wasn't able to attend the unveiling, but here's a photo of the plaque in situ.     

Lynne

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Dyer, Lynne (2019). Plaques. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/03/plaques.html  [Accessed 9 March 2019]

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Lynne