Writers in Loughborough

At the start of the pandemic, in late March 2020, I hosted an article on my blog by a friend who had written about artists of Loughborough, Leicestershire and Rutland. It was always my intention to follow this up with a piece about writers who had visited Loughborough and the surrounding area, but have not quite managed to do that yet. What follows is a very short account of some of those visits.

Sir George Beaumont had several houses, but eventually came to live at Coleorton Hall, a home which he had built on his estate, to replace an older structure. He was an amateur artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy, was a collector of works of art, and donated several works from his collection to what would become the National Gallery. Several artists are known to have stayed with Beaumont at Coleorton, including John Constable, David Wilkie, and Edward Landseer.    

Beaumont was not only involved in art, he was also a great supporter of writers, perhaps not surprising as he was a descendant of the playwright Frances Beaumont, who wrote plays under his own name and in partnership with John Fletcher, both contemporaries of Shakespeare. Many writers also visited and stayed with Beaumont in Coleorton Hall.

For some time I have puzzled over an entry that appeared in the ‘Morning Post’ of 6th July 1907:

 Since Wordsworth was born in 1770 and died in 1850, the 1907 event was not linked to either of these two events. True, some of his most famous works – like ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, and ‘Upon Westminster Bridge – were published in 1807 in a work entitled ‘Poems, in two volumes’, so perhaps this was the impetus for the centenary event? However, this seemed to me to be unlikely, and my search continued, until I eventually happened upon an article that cleared up the confusion.

Loughborough today is regarded as the second town in the county of Leicestershire, after Leicester itself. In the time of Sir George Beaumont, Ashby-de-la-Zouch had not yet become a spa town (that happened in 1822, 5 years before Sir George’s death), and the nearest large town would have been Loughborough. To the writer of the advert that appeared in the ‘Morning Post’, Loughborough would have been the focus of the centenary event because it was probably the closest town that people might have heard of. I’m just surmising here, I don’t know that this is true. What is true though, is that the centenary event actually took place in Coleorton, which is about 9 miles from Loughborough.

This was confirmed by a piece in the ‘Yorkshire Evening Post’, also on 6th July, which described the event as “a pilgrimage of Wordsworth’s descendants and admirers to Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire”:

The account of the event which appeared in the ‘Melton Mowbray Mercury and Oakham and Uppingham News’ on 11th July reported that the event had been organised by Mr and Mrs F. Abel Smith, who now lived at Coleorton Hall, and that Wordsworth had actually lived for a year, from October 1806 to August 1807, at Hall Farm, which was part of the Coleorton estate hence the centenary celebrations! The article also lists all the people who attended the event – and those who were unable to attend - and it really is quite a roll call. Here are some names you might recognise: Sir William and Lady Abney; the Right Honourable Charles and Mrs Booth; Honourable Pauline and Lady Maud Hastings; Mr and Mrs Everard; Captain and Mrs Heygate; Mr Perry Herrick; Lord Walter and Miss Kerr, and Mr and Mrs Edwin de Lisle – amongst many others! Services took place in the church which is associated with the hall, and were led by Rev. Christopher William Wordsworth, great-grandson of William, and by the Bishop of Leicester, Lewis Clayton (a suffragan bishop who assisted the diocesan Bishop of Peterborough in overseeing the diocese – Leicester at this time was part of the diocese of Peterborough).

An article in the 'Burton Chronicle' of 11th July 1907 describes all of the events that happened at the centenary, which was considerably more than the celebrations mentioned in the Melton paper. As well as the services, there was a viewing of various memorials in the gardens of the hall; an afternoon tea for distinguished guests was held at Hall Farm (although the aforementioned Mr and Mrs Abel Smith were not able to attend as Mr Smith was poorly), and the event concluded the following day at Coleorton, although because of the rain the garden party was abandoned, so the speeches took place in the picture gallery.  

The article in the Melton paper also says that Sir Walter Scott wrote the greater part of ‘Ivanhoe’ at Coleorton Hall. It is certainly true that Scott did stay at Coleorton Hall, as his letters to Charlotte Carpenter show. She became Scott’s wife, and their letters were discovered in 1935 by Paul Stevens, who at the time was the honourary librarian of Abbotsford, Scott’s home in Melrose, Scotland.

‘The Scotsman’ of 16th March 1935, prints an article by Stevens who in it reports that in April 1807, in Scott’s own words, that Wordsworth paid a visit to Scott in London: “Wordsworth is now in town, and [I] breakfasted with him yesterday – tomorrow I return the compliment.”  On 4th May 1807, Scott wrote that he had finished what he was doing in London and that he is setting out by coach at half-past four in the morning, “I go in company with Wordsworth down to Loughborough, where I will halt one day with him.” Now, I’m supposing that Scott is writing Loughborough, but probably means that he is going to Coleorton!

And there, I'm afraid, I must leave you, but just before I go, Richard Hardy, the rector of Loughborough, reported to the Home Office, in his capacity as a local magistrate, that he had committed for trial a father and son from Coleorton, who had broken the knitting frame they rented. The year was 1812, and the fear of Luddite attacks was growing, and colliers were joining textile workers in revolting. Sir George Beaumont had interests in mining, and so it was in 1812 that he did not visit his property in Coleorton. 

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

Dyer, Lynne (2021). Great Central Road and Windmill Road allotments. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/12/great-central-road-and-windmill-road.html    [Accessed 12 December 2021]

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Lynne