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