Houses and milestones

Looking back through the blog, I had a feeling that there were quite a few things that seemed to crop up quite regularly. I'm guessing these things must be important to me, otherwise I wouldn't keep writing about them! So, I thought I'd re-arrange the word cloud on the blog, so that those terms I've used most frequently appear at the top of the list. No surprise that 'Loughborough' appears the most frequently!! *

Anyway, last week I went to a most brilliant talk on the housing that is situated around Oxford Street, Paget Street, Station Street etc., which was once part of the Paget Estate (William Byerley Paget), the housing that was once part of the Storer Estate (around Storer Road), and the villas on Derby Road. This really resonated with me as I lived in the area for a number of years, and I have been trying to find the time over a number of years to investigate some particular aspects of the housing. I've alluded to this in previous posts:

Victorian house plaques
Spotlight on Ashby Road
Spotlight on Middleton Place  

Maybe one day I'll get there!!

In the meantime, today, I shall be writing about one of my favourite topics - milestones, or mileposts, or what I affectionately term totem-cum-mileposts! Well, actually, I probably won't have time to cover the latter, but examples are in 'Secret Loughborough'.







Long-standing milestones tend to sit alongside a former trunk or turnpike road, and we have two such milestones, close to the town centre. We also have a rogue one!

As Dan Snow once said, at a show he did in Loughborough Town Hall earlier this year, there are such joys to be got from being a generalist! As  'local historian' I find my interests are pulled in many directions, so this weekend I was lucky enough to be able to go along to the Annual General Meeting and conference of The Milestone Society, a national organisation whose mission is to identify, record, research and conserve our rich heritage of milestones. The meeting was held in the village hall at Milton Malsor, a small village in the south of Northamptonshire, close to Towcester.

Milton Malsor

Milton Malsor

The Milestone Society welcome

One of the displays

After the business of the AGM (you know the sort of thing, reports from committee members, election of committee members etc.), we had a short presentation on how to widen the appeal of the society. Like other societies, the active membership is concentrated around slightly older people, but in order for the society to flourish and continue, the society needs to attract new members. Time for a short lunchbreak!

Village pub

Lunch

After lunch we were treated to an enthusiastic presentation on that most wonderful piece of street furniture, the telephone kiosk, from its inception in 1884 to its demise and re-use as, for example, housing for defibrillators, coffee stops, portable bars, or small libraries. 

Library in a telephone box in Redruth, Cornwall

The concluding paper of the day was on the development of the roads around Towcester, which included, amongst other things, a description of the Roman roads, the development of coaching inns (particularly The Angel, The Tabard (later The Talbot) and The Swan), the development of road surfaces, and the turnpikes. Interestingly, on one of the slides, the newspaper snippet presented a link to our area:

"At Old Stratford village theroad has ben raised, widened and made with paved bottom, and coated with Mount Sorrel stone."    

At the event I was also able to pick up a few books, booklets, and newsletters (for a donation) which are both interesting and useful. After the meeting I went off in search of two milestones in the nearby village of Blisworth. My sense of direction is no what it should be, so I missed these, but I do know that unlike the ones in our area, these two are stone with a metal plaque attached to the front. 

As I said above, I've blogged about milestones before:

Some in Southampton
Some in Brecon 
Misplaced milestones, preserved at Bourton on the Water
Some in South West Wales

And, I have many more, from various other areas of the country. But, let's remind ourselves of our own milestones:

Leicester Road milestone 

Derby Road milestone at Dishley

Well, that's all I've got time for this week! See you next time!

Lynne

* I have a feeling this word cloud doesn't display on a mobile device. However, if you can see it you can click on any of the terms and it will take you to the blogpost[s] that use that term. Of course, now that I've looked at the word cloud I can see so many mistakes, and decisions that I've made, and then made a different one!! My professional self is freaking out over the lack of authority control!!! Some examples are 'Henry Fearon' and 'Archdeacon Fearon'; 'Taylor's bellfoundry' and 'Taylors bellfoundry'; 'GCR' and 'Great Central Railway' and 'mileposts' and 'milestones'. Sighhhhh ... 

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). Houses and milestones. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/10/houses-and-milestones.html [Accessed 6 October 2019]

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