Sunday 26 April 2020

Bikes about Loughborough past

So here we are, it's nearly the end of April 2020, and we've been stuck indoors for almost 5 weeks now. Admittedly, I've managed to go out and get some exercise by walking, but sadly, my bike needs a bit of attention, so I haven't been able to use it recently. 

Instead, I've looked back over bike trips around Loughborough through the ages! Enjoy!
























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). Bikes about Loughborough past. Available fromhttps://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/04/bikes-about-loughborough-past.html  [Accessed 26 April 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      
          

Sunday 19 April 2020

From Clement to Clemersons

Pondering over the guest blog post written by Tony Jarram recently about artists in Loughborough, I was idly looking through some notes, when I spotted someone who classed themselves as a landscape painter, who at one time was living on Sparrow Hill.

Clement Edwards Pike was born in Quorn in 1859 almost the youngest child of James Carey Pike, born in Derby on 26 June 1817, and his wife Maria Balm, born in Quorn, who married in 1851. There were eight children in all. On the 1861 census, James was listed as a Baptist minister, while Maria was listed as a lace manufacturer, employing 31 men, 16 boys and 22 girls, the factory being on Leicester Road Quorn, and the family were living in Quorn. The Quorn company made twisted lace, silk net and cotton-tatting, and was at one time called Balm & Hill. For more information see:


Anyway, back to the Pikes!

This was James Pike’s second marriage. His first had been to Lucy Wherry from Bourne, in 1839, and together they had at least three children, but Lucy died in 1850. James then married Maria and had another five children. When Clement was 12, his elder brother, Joseph was a medical student at St Thomas’s hospital in London, and when Clement was 17, his father died in 1876. On the 1871 census, the family were living in Leicester, but quite what Clement was doing between 1871 and 1881 I don’t know, but on the 1881 census returns, Clement is listed a being art 30 Sparrow Hill, in the home of his brother James, who is a physician and surgeon. Their widowed mother, Maria, their younger sister, Caroline Annie, and their nieces Jane and Florence are also listed here.

For occupation Clement has been recorded as a landscape artist. As yet, I have been unable to trace any paintings Clement may have done, nor have I been able to trace him on the 1891 census returns. UPDATE: Thanks to one of the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers (LLLSVs), Clement has been found on the 1891 census, masquerading as Clement Rike - at least according to the transcriber!!!! He is living with his sister Caroline and servant Kate Chapman, from Loughborough, at N0.10 Bramshill Gardens, Kentish Town. He is listed as a Minister of Religion,  Free Christian Unitarian Church.  

On the 1901 census, Clement is now recorded as being a Unitarian Minister, living on Carisbrooke Road on the Isle of Wight with his sister, Caroline Annie. By 1911 they had moved to Taunton Road, Bridgewater in Somerset, where they continued to live until at least 1919.


Clement died in 1928 at no.88 Leicester Road, Loughborough, although he was living in Mill Brook, Tavistock at the time. No.88, until recently the De Montfort Hotel, was the home of his sister, who had moved to Loughborough on her marriage, so presumably Clement was visiting her. She and her husband lived at the White House (formerly Maher’s the off-licence) on Leicester Road. Caroline had married relatively late in life, in 1923, at the age of 63, and she outlived her new husband, who died 2 years after their marriage, in 1927, by 10 years. Caroline died in 1937, and at the time she was living on Stanley Street.

So, the journey from Clement to Clemersons and the connection is that Clement’s sister, Caroline Annie, had married Henry Clemerson, a member of the Clemerson family who are so fondly remembered by many folk in Loughborough for their department store in the town centre.

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). From Clement to Clemersons. Available from:https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/04/from-clement-to-clemersons.html [Accessed 19 April 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 
      

Sunday 12 April 2020

Nita Isobel Bell in Loughborough


Thank you so much to Tony Jarram for the last blog post, which was on the most interesting subject of artists with a connection to Loughborough, Leicestershire and Rutland. I had thoughts that I might do a follow-up post, but last week was rather busy and a blog post simply didn’t emerge as I was saying cheerio to the youngest offspring who has gone off to help at the George Eliot hospital in Nuneaton.

Anyway, this week, while I was hunting around for some specific piece of information about Loughborough, I happened upon one Nita Isobel Bell. She popped up on the 1911 census, which was taken on 2nd April 1911, and she was recorded as being in Loughborough on that night. She was a visitor to Harry Mullholland, a joiner, who was living at 117 Derby Road. This particular property is a large one, on the corner of Grange Street and Derby Road opposite the Italian shop, and on the other side of Derby Road is what used to be the Station Hotel at the bottom of Station Street.

Since I’ve been in Loughborough this building has been a second-hand shop, but is now converted to residential use. It has one of those corner doors which indicates it was built as a shop, and this is borne out by the residents in 1927 being Mr E.C. Game, a grocer, and in 1939 being Alfred and Ellen Kemp, Alfred being listed as a sailor and grocer. The property isn’t listed in my 1901 directory, so this, along with the 1911 census entry, the style of the property and the date stone on the nearby properties of 1903, indicates to me that the property was built around 1903.

Anyway, back to Nita Isobel Bell … why was she in Loughborough on the night of the 1911 census?

Nita was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 12th February 1886 to parents Henry James Butler, and Margaret McHale. On the 1891 census the family are listed in a theatre in Castleford, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, and Henry and Margaret are listed as actors, as are Nita’s older siblings, Henry (19) and Herbert (16). Nita also has other older siblings, Edith (14), Florence (11) Reginald (8), and Gertrude (6) and younger ones, Beatrice (2) and Maude (a couple of months old).

The theatre in which they are staying was not actually named, but was on Albion Street, and whilst there are two buildings there today which were clearly theatres or cinemas, I think the one in question has since been demolished. The Castleford Borough website was most useful in pointing me in the right direction.




Anyway, by the night of the 1901 census, Nita is listed alongside her widowed father and her siblings Edith, Florence who is now a barmaid, Gertrude, and 8-month old James, at 97 Prospect Road in Scarborough.

In 1910, Nita married Thomas Bell, in Leeds. Thomas joined the Northumberland Fusiliers as a lance corporal and fought in the First World War. Their daughter, Josephine was born in 1919. What happened between 1919 and 1939 is not known to me, but Thomas died in June 1939 and in September of that year, when the census was taken, Nita and Josephine were registered at 267 Central Drive Blackpool. I know no more of Nita’s life, and her death was registered in Blackpool in 1970.

Nita’s appearance in Loughborough in 1911 may have been because she was a music hall actress, so perhaps she had come to perform in one of Loughborough’s venues? The Theatre Royal on Mill Street (now Market Street) with its entrance on Packe Street was built in 1904/5 and in 1910 was being run by Mr Leon Vint, and was known as Vint’s Electric Hippodrome. Is it possible that Nita was playing here when she stayed in Loughborough in 1911?

Or, perhaps Nita played at the Philharmonic Hall, which was sited on the corner of Beehive Lane and Southfields Road, and opened in 1889? Although, in 1906 the theatre was put up for auction, and wasn’t bought until 1912, so there perhaps wasn’t any activity during that period. It is unlikely that Nita was playing at the theatre on Ashby Road, which had opened in 1896 as the New Theatre, because after its reincarnation as a skating rink, in 1911 it was an electric theatre, so one of the early cinemas, before being rebranded in 1912 as the New Picture House. The Temperance Hall, on the corner of Granby Street and Devonshire Square, was probably a YMCA Hall at the time of Nita’s visit, and the former theatre on Sparrow Hill had long since ceased to be a theatre.

I’ve written extensively about the latter in earlier blog posts, which you can find here:


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). Nita Isobel Bell in Loughborough. Available fromhttps://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/04/nita-isobel-bell-in-loughborough.html  [Accessed 12 April 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