William Morris and Ladybird Books connections

Last week on the blog I focussed on hurricanes, inspired by my visit to the ThinkTank in Birmingham, and I promised I'd share my other discoveries from the Mint Cemetery and Winterbourne House. The latter has become even more relevant over the last week, but I can't for the life of me work out what connections I found between Loughborough and the Mint Cemetery! Well, here's a few pictures anyway:

The Mint Cemetery (aka Warstone)

A familiar name, but no relation to Loughborough's family

The catacombs

War grave

When we'd finished at the cemetery, we walked back through the jewellery quarter, and along the route saw a few 1920s and Art Deco buildings. If you're interested in Art Deco - and Loughborough has plenty of it! - don't miss the exhibition in the public library at the moment, which focusses on Loughborough's Art Deco buildings.

The Art Deco Electric Cinema from New Street station

An Art Deco building with familiar tiling

A 1920s building. Crittall windows, perhaps?

The walk to Winterbourne house also took us along the canal - which of course reminded me of Loughborough - which ran within feet of the railway line. 

Winterbourne House is a most exciting Arts and Crafts house, built around 1903, to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement that was started by William Morris. The owner of Winterbourne, John Sutton Nettlefold, was instrumental in improving housing for the people of Birmingham and described as a pioneer of town planning. He was appalled by the Birmingham 'courts', where lots of dwellings were clustered around a central yard, with no access to any kind of garden, but with plenty of open sewers. There were quite a number of similar areas in Loughborough, although many have now been demolished or replaced.

One of Loughborough's extant Courts

Nettlefold (1) was also a believer in the idea of the 'garden city', and providing open spaces amongst new housing developments: Shelthorpe is our local example (more about this in 'Secret Loughborough'). 

Gateway to Shelthorpe!

As well as housing, Nettlefold was also involved in a company called Kynoch who made gun cartridges, for hunting, and apparently Annie Oakley, when touring England with Buffalo Bill, paid tribute to Kynoch's production of ammunition! You would be right in thinking that Buffalo Bill and his group came to Loughborough, in 1903, although I don't think Annie was on that particular trip (a little more in 'Secret Loughborough'). 

As well as the footprint and architectural design of Winterbourne House, much of the interior decoration also reflected the fashions of the time, with period furniture, little Arts and Crafts features and walls covered with patterns of the time. The garden of Winterbourne House was designed by Nettlefold's wife following the ideas presented by Gertrude Jekyll. 

It wasn't until last week that I made another exciting discovery, which links Loughborough to the likes of Winterbourne House, when I watched a television programme about renovating an Edwardian property (3). This was hosted by George Clarke (an architect hero of my youngest child), who actually came to Loughborough to visit the former Ladybird factory on Beeches Road - lovingly named Ladybird House - which is now home to what is known as Anstey Wallpaper Company. Now, I was aware that the company had taken over many other wallpaper designers/manufacturers, but hadn't realised that they actually had an archive (2) of block prints used in the printing of paper, going back to the 1860s and the time of William Morris! From the shots shown in the programme, the archive looked immense - and exciting! I now feel inspired to go back to the Leicester Print Workshop and take some classes in block printing - not that I could ever produce anything as stunning as William Morris, and other proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement! 

Grand Designs Show, 2009

Of course, one of the most striking Arts and Crafts houses in our area is Stoneywell Cottage, designed by Ernest Gimson, now owned by the National Trust. I feel another visit coming on ...

Stoneywell Cottage

(1) Please note that although this website is an interesting history, it does suggest that John Nettlefold's wife, Margaret, was the daughter of Arthur Chamberlain, whereas the information presented in Winterbourne House says that she was the daughter of Joseph Chamberlain. Whilst I am keen to share the work of other local history groups, I am concerned about this information, but deem the rest of the information on the site to be of interest. If I had time, I would check these claims out for myself, but sadly I don't, and they are only vaguely related to the focus of my blog. Feel free to do a bit of digging for yourself - and let me know the outcome!!

(2) There is a separate page for the archive, although it appears not to have a different url. In order to access it click 'Design' from the lefthand menu, which will open up 3 sub-options from which click 'Archive'.

(3) Hurry!! Only 16 days left to watch!! Series 6, Episode 2.

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

Dyer, Lynne (2020). William Morris and the Ladybird Books connection. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/01/wiliam-morris-and-ladybird-books.html  [Accessed 26 January 2020]

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  

Hurricanes in Loughborough

So, this weekend I've been off on my travels again, this time visiting Birmingham. A trip to Symphony Hall to listen to the CBSO and CBSO chorus perform Mahler's 8th symphony, often known as Symphony of 1000, was the main reason for going to Birmingham, but this event was sandwiched between some other very interesting visits.

On the first visit, I popped along to the ThinkTank Museum. I'd been before, probably about 15 years ago, when the museum was the only building on the cleared land - apart from *Loughborough Connection Alert* the Curzon Building, which was once part of the Curzon Hotel, related to the Curzon Street railway station, and is due to be incorporated into the HS2 development. The Loughborough connection is, of course, with Curzon Street, and our Odeon, Curzon being one of its former names. I wonder if these are named after Montagu Curzon who was a British politician and soldier and son of the First Earl Howe?

The Curzon building through the museum window

Loughborough's former Curzon cinema 

Anyway, today the museum is surrounded by new buildings and interesting plantings. I really wanted to visit again to see the machinery they had on the ground floor - the bean engines, the steam train, the tram, and so on. I was pleased to find a Leicestershire connection in that one of the electricity generating engine was used by William and John Henry Symington for lighting in their corset factory in Market Harborough (which if I remember rightly is the building that now houses the town museum). But, what I didn't expect to find was a connection with Loughborough, but true to form, I accidentally did!

Hanging from the ceiling of the ground floor, and viewable from the upper floors of the museum, were two aeroplanes, one of which is often talked about these days - the Spitfire. The other suspended plane was a Hurricane, designed in 1933 by Sydney Camm, and the information board told me that after its last flight in 1945, it was sent to Loughborough College, where it stayed for an unspecified amount of time. Loughborough College then donated to the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry, before being displayed a the ThinkTank.

The Spitfire, followed by the Hurricane

The Hurricane

The information board 

The information board

Jokingly, on the theme of hurricanes, I said to my other half 'I wonder if Alex Higgins ever came to Loughborough?!' ... a quick delve into some resources, and I pulled up an online forum that suggests that he did, where he played against Willie Thorne in Loughborough Town Hall: sounds like a local Derby!! I also discovered that the 1929 World Snooker Championship, which took place between 17th December 1928 and 7th March 1929, was held at a variety of venues in England, Loughborough being one of them! 

This particular match in the Town Hall 17th to 22nd December, was a semi-final between Kelsall Prince, and Tom Dennis, and was due to take place over 25 frames. Until halfway through the fourth session the match was close with Dennis was leading, but as he also won the subsequent five frames, it was Dennis who won the match. Dennis eventually lost in the final to Joe Davis. 

Loughborough Town Hall

Another Loughborough connection on the ground floor of the ThinkTank Museum was the steam engine, and the associated display which mentioned Thomas Cook's first outing, a Temperance outing to Loughborough.

The information board

Local plaque commemorating the visit of Thomas Cook

And the information board about the hotels associated with railway stations reminded me of our own Great Central Hotel, now a day nursery and flats.

The information board

The former Great Central hotel, Loughborough

The final connection with Loughborough was in the form of a Mobil Special Land Speed Record Car, designed in 1933 by Reid Anthony Railton. The car broke the World Land Speed Record in 1938, 1939 and 1947, reaching a speed of 384 miles per hour. As far as I know, Reid Railton is no relation to William Railton, architect of Beaumanor Hall, properties on the Garendon Estate and Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in London.

William Railton's Beaumanor Hall

William Railton's Nelson's Column

The other visit I made, after attending the concert, was to the Warstone Cemetery (sometimes called the Mint Cemetery, or the Brookfields Cemetery), over in the jewellery quarter, before walking along the canal to Winterbourne House, and Arts and Crafts former family home, now belonging to the University of Birmingham. In both these places there were connections that reminded me of Loughborough, but I'll leave until next week, as all that walking has made me rather tired ...


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

Dyer, Lynne (2020). Hurricanes in Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/01/hurricanes-in-loughborough.html     [Accessed 19 January 2020]

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  

Pubs carillons and bedspreads

Sometimes I admit I do wonder what to blog about - I'm keen to write about things I know something about, but also about something you might be interested in reading about! This week, I was quietly minding my own business when the topic of the blog post just presented itself to me!

During a lunch break from work, I tootled over to the public library in Leicester. It's not a usual haunt for me, but something drew me to it last week. I went up the beautiful staircase to the floor that has the local history collection in it, and set about perusing the shelves for any interesting tomes that I hadn't seen before. Ok, so nothing new in the main section about Leicester and specific Leicester towns and villages, so I moved across to the more general section, still with a focus on Leicestershire and Rutland, and I was intrigued enough to open a book called 'An innkeeper's diary', written by John Fothergill in 1931, and published by that good old publisher Chatto and Windus.

As I flicked through the pages, I noted one or two things, but not enough to keep me interested for long, that was, until I got to the very last page, where attached to the inside of the back cover was a large foldout sheet of paper, folded rather like a map. It had obviously been unfolded many times, so I carefully opened it to reveal a large tattered and torn sheet that looked as though charcoal pencil lines had been drawn across it. On closer inspection, this turned out to be a whole load of signatures! 

Luckily, at the bottom of the page was a see reference - see page 225! Eagerly I turned back the pages until I reached 225, and read what it had to say about the signatures. The section was called 'The heights on the wall' and the opening text read as follows:

"In 1924 I measured David Plunket-Greene on the wall, 6 ft. 8 1/4 in., in a lavender-coloured frock-coat. Since then only five have beaten him and taken the threatened free meal, to wit: 

Lieut. O. Huxham, R.A.S.C.    In Boots - 6' 11 3/16" Reach - 9' 0" 

Major W.T.Hay, Black Watch    In Boots - 6' 11"         Reach - 8' 10" 

C.S. Maslin                             In Boots - 6' 10 4/5"   Reach - 9' 2" 

G.E. Sieveking                        In Boots - 6' 8 3/4"     Reach - -- 

Baron von Doernberg              In Boots - 6' 8 1/2"     Reach - --  

Of women the tallest are Evelyn Pritchard, Lady Lettice Lygon and Violet Wallis, all born to blush just short of 6 ft. 2 in.."

The remainder of the chapter is simply fascinating, and I'd love to quote it for you, but as this has little to do with Loughborough, I must explain ... Firstly, the appearance of the signatures on the foldout sheet reminded me of a very similar height chart that I included myself on in Tate St Ives, a few years ago. 

Secondly, the idea of a mass of signatures of people from the early twentieth century must have triggered something in my mind because next I idled across to the biography section in the library, although I wasn't in search of anything in particular.

The biography section included lots of volumes telling the life story of some of Leicestershire's more well-known folk, you know, like Tanky Smith, Daniel Lambert, Thomas Cook, Lady Jane Grey, Englebert Humperdinck and so on. But amongst these were also slim volumes covering the life of people who weren't famous, or who had been at one time, but who had now faded from memory.

One particular book seemed to stand out over the others, and I carefully took down an interesting orange covered book, called 'A truly honest man'. I wasn't until I'd looked at the cover that I learned that the book was a diary of a man called Joseph Moxon of Market Bosworth, and it covered the years 1798 and 1799. The book was edited by Peter J. Foss and Timothy Parry, and was published in 1998 by the Moxon Family Research Trust. There is a vague connection between this book and the one previously mentioned, in that one of Joseph Moxon's brothers, Nathaniel, ran a pub - the Bulls Head in Market Bosworth.






But the real connection lies back in Loughborough ...

You may have been to the Town Hall during the period of Remembrance in November 2018, when Alexandra's Bedspread was on display, or you may have seen it when it was on display in the Charnwood Museum. This was a bedspread that was embroidered with all the names of the people who contributed money towards a war memorial to commemorate those members of the armed forces who died during the First World War. The town of Loughborough chose to erect a Carillon as its memorial, and there were many subscriptions contributed by people from Loughborough and further afield, and it is the names of these people which are embroidered on the quilt.

Some names are instantly familiar, and their stories are well-known, but other names are puzzling, or may at one time have been obvious, but with the passage of time, had been forgotten. So, there is a project on the go which is interpreting all the names embroidered on the breadspread, and investigating the life story of these people, or at least, an investigation into why they may have contributed to the building of the carillon. The Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers are helping with this research - as are a number of other people - and the research is being led by one Deborah Moxon.

A small selection from the centre of Alexandra's bedspread

The other connection with Loughborough was the surprise, but welcome sighting of this book on the library shelves:

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

Dyer, Lynne (2020). Pubs, carillons and bedspreads. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/01/pubs-carillons-and-bedspreads.html  [Accessed 12 January 2020]

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