The Festival of Britain celebrations in Loughborough

Festival of Britain celebrations in Loughborough

Last time we looked at the Festival of Britain and discovered some connections with Loughborough. In this post we’ll look at some more connections and at what Loughborough did at home to celebrate the Festival.

Around the time of the opening of the Festival of Britain in May 1951, Brush announced that it had received orders to the value of £500,000 for the latest addition to its already wide range of products, which was a caravan, to be ‘built in its entirety by craftsmen’ of the company. Apparently, production had been happening for most of April, and as the completed caravans were sent to the distributors in Cheshire, they had been admired by people who had seen them.

However, at the Festival on the South Bank, there was a parade of some of Britain’s best commercial vehicles, this especially since many road vehicles were involved in the construction of the festival’s buildings and exhibition areas. The Transport and Communications Pavilion exhibited mechanical-handling appliances, but the conveyancer and Brush industrial vehicles were shown in the Power and Production Pavilion. Across the pavilion, Brush Pony battery-electrics were much in evidence and were being used to perform general duties across the exhibition site, including transporting food to the restaurants.    

Taylors bellfoundry and bellringing also have a connection with the Festival of Britain. The following event took place in Loughborough: the Leicester Diocesan Guild Loughborough performed 5040 Cambridge Surprise Royal at the Bell Foundry Tower on Saturday 5 May 1951, to mark the opening of the Festival of Britain.

The bell tower at the Taylor bellfoundry

Ringing the bells at the bellfoundry tower (in 2019!)

In 2021 Taylors made a new bell for the church of St Mary’s in Klevedon, to replace their 4th bell, which had originally been cast by John Briant of Hertford in 1803, which had cracked. The new bell is known as Skip’s bell, and incorporates the inscription of the original. The church has eight bells, and the 1st, the tenor bell, was cast by the Whitechapel bellfoundry in 1951 for the Festival of Britain, where the bell sat on the South Embankment during the whole time of the festival, being bought by St Mary’s to replace their previous bell which had been cast way back in 1608 by Miles Graye of Colchester.

The Whitechapel bellfoundry

Also in 1951, the bell tower at the church of St Peter and St Paul in Oxton was also restored and cleaned. Taylors, who had re-cast the treble bell 1885-88 and bought the handbells from the church via a third-party, were brought in to assess the bells, the 3rd of which was moving in the frame. Their report said that ‘everything that was possible was wrong with the bells’ and quoted £600 for repairs, which in the end they did not undertake.  

In 1920, on nearby Selbourne Street, there opened an engineering company, Atalanta Engineering Ltd., with the pioneering Annette Ashberry as the works manager. Having worked on munitions in various locations across the UK during the First World War, she and seven other women came to Loughborough full of hope, but the economic downturn proved insurmountable, and Annette and one other woman moved the business to London, where things began to look up, and in 1925 Annette was elected to the Royal Society of Engineers, following her design for amongst other things, a dishwasher. As the company began to be more successful so they moved to better premises, ironically on Brixton Road (possibly in one of the buildings that now make up Kennington House), about 1.5 miles from where Sir John Leslie Martin created his Loughborough Parks estate!  

Although the company had done well, it closed in 1935, and Annette turned her hobby, of creating window boxes, into a successful new venture, and although she went back into engineering when the Second World War began, she returned to her window box and container gardening business. Such was the success and popularity of this that not only did she exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show, she also showed at the Festival of Britain Exhibition, in the same year that her first book was published.

Festivities at Loughborough

In July 1950 there was a large attendance at a meeting at which it was discussed how Loughborough was going to commemorate the Festival of Britain. At the meeting, a committee was created which was given the power to make various arrangements for the celebrations. Some of that committee were the mayor (John H. Corah) and deputy mayor (W. H. Stagg), Dr Herbert Schofield (principal of Loughborough College), Archdeacon W. J. Lyon, as well as representatives from various societies and clubs, including the Rotary, the Chamber of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce and the Trades Council, with the town clerk, Mr Usher, appointed as secretary to the committee.   

By December of 1950 it had been agreed that Loughborough’s own Festival of Britain celebrations would take place in June of 1951, and would include a parade and civic service at the parish church on the Sunday morning, and a united youth service in Southfields Park in the afternoon. In order to ensure the smooth running of the activities, a pageant committee was also formed: the pageant would depict come of the highlights of the town’s history.

And so it was that in June 1951 a series of events were held across Loughborough to coincide with the Festival of Britain.

One specific day was devoted to the presentation of a series of tableaux by pupils from a number of the town’s schools, who were joined by pupils from 35 schools in the area. For example, Rendell Street school presented the Martyrdom of St Joan, and children from Cobden Street boys’ school presented the Viking invasion of the country, which was apparently very popular with the spectators. Another popular feature of the pageant was a fancy dress parade.

The martyrdom of St Joan

In addition to the various tableaux, there was also singing, dancing, games and a comedy football match, and in the evening a comedy swimming gala was held at the Loughborough College baths. Unfortunately, rain marred the football match at the Brush sport playing field. However, in October some Aston Villa players took part in the floodlit match at the same grounds as part of the Loughborough Festival Week.

Commenting on the whole event, Mr Lee, the Youth Officer for North West Leicestershire, said to the Youth Forum: “I think it was quite wonderful the number of organisation that took part. They have all been really loyal.” Alderman Coltman also expressed the appreciation of the executives of the North Leicestershire Divisional Education Executive of the part schools and teachers had taken in the Loughborough Festival Week. 

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 16 May 2021

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Dyer, Lynne (2021). The Festival of Britain celebrations in Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-festival-of-britain-celebrations-in.html  [Accessed 16 May 2021]

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