Goadby's History of Loughborough Chapter 1, Part 1

About 18 months ago on this blog, I shared with you the very interesting life story of Edwin Goadby, who had made the leap from being an apothecary to editor of the ‘Loughborough Monitor’.

Goadby’s interest in the history of Loughborough led him to serialise his writings on the topic, in the ‘Loughborough Monitor’. As you can see from the title of the serialisation -  ‘The History Of Loughborough, From The Time Of The Britons To The Middle Of The Nineteenth Century’ – this was likely to be an extensive set of articles, covering a huge period of time!

As Goadby’s career was really on the up at the time he was with the Monitor, he was only with the paper for about 2 years. Thus, although his history of Loughborough was serialised, the twelve chapters, that were published in 21 pieces, only reached the time of Henry, Third Earl of Huntingdon (1535-1595)!

Today begins a hosting of Goadby’s History of Loughborough, following the serialisation pattern of 1864 to 1866. The text is transcribed as seen, and it should be remembered that in the ensuing 160 years, there have been many more discoveries and revelations about Loughborough’s history, hence some of the information contained in these serials will be wrong. I have not tried to amend these in any way. However, where possible, if names are mentioned I have tried to indicate in the notes field below the article, who these people might have been.

And so we begin …

THE HISTORY OF LOUGHBOROUGH, FROM THE TIME OF THE BRITONS TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Chapter 1, ‘Loughborough Monitor’, 5 May, 1864, pg. 5

CHAPTER I.

LOUGHBOROUGH IN THE TIME OF THE BRITONS, ROMANS, AND SAXONS.

Part I. – Mythical Origin of Towns – History enveloped in Name – The Coritavi, their Settlements – British Roads – Meaning of Oldest Name – Conjectures about its being a Roman Station and Praetorium – Curious Etymology – Its probable Occupation by the Romans.

A poetic haze hangs over the origin of most cities and towns. History has little to tell us in the matter, and less that is satisfactory. The poets and romancists appear to have had it all their own way. The former could usually discover some deity who commanded the building of a place, when he did not actually assist in person, as was frequently the cause, for Callimachus, the Alexandrian, puts it to the honour of Apollo that he “takes delight always in the foundation of new cities, and himself in person lays the first stone;” and the latter, who were often saintly monks, could easily import a hero from classic shores when they could not find one sufficiently divine and dignified at home. For instance, Stersichorus assures us that Apollo told Cadmus to follow a young heifer and found a city where she should lie down in the grass, and that the city was Thebes; and Geoffrey of Monmouth, a British chronicler, affirms, with equal confidence, that Brutus, a Trojan, being commanded by Diana in a vision to come to our island and raise a second Troy, came and travelled hither and thither until “at last he pitched upon a place very fit for his purpose,” where he built Trinovautum, afterwards Kaer-Lud, now London. Such myths are very harmless because very few persons believe them, but the puzzle they indicate and thus pleasantly smooth over is interesting. “Here,” for instance, some curious intelligent Nomad might say, “are houses, public buildings, streets, and men and women, with local attachments, social life, and community of interests. When did these begin? How were they formed? What power was it, visible or invisible, that organised all this? I can understand the use of a house in your damp and changeful climate, but what pleasure of necessity do these acres of brick and mortar represent? What centuries of existence do they speak of? What great names cluster around them? What institutions have grown up with them?”  Such questioning is both healthy and laudable, even when the questioner himself may be a unit in the mysterious aggregate, and all topographical history is more or less and answer to it.

As far as the origin of the town of Loughborough is concerned, we are not aware that such questions have been, or indeed can be, more than approximately answered. There is plenty of haze and plenty of uncertainty which might make a very good mythe [sic] were the place important enough and the mythical spirit extant in some rhyming chronicler or monastic recluse, Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have not even the least bit of a mythe [sic] concerning its origin or formation. Nor have we so much as a bald, literal declaration that in a certain year any Henry, the City-Builder – as the first German King was named from his tendencies that way – called together some wandering families upon its site, erected a castle to protect them, and gave them special privileges. We must be content with something much less imposing than that, unromantic as it might be. We must, in fact, be content to gather up some scattered threads of history, some casual notice and plausible conjectures, and let philology help us to ascertain what history nay be enfolded in the name itself, as it has helped to discover some germs of fact in many a beautiful mythe [sic].

The first historical germ yielded us by philology leads us to infer that Loughborough was a settled place of human abode before the invasion of the Romans B.C. 54. At that period the counties of Lincoln, Leicester, and Nottingham were almost entirely covered with woods, and the whole district was called Caledonia (from calyddon, a thicket), a name commonly applied to most of the woods in Britain. It was also known as the Forest of Arden, and extended from the Avon below Warwick almost [un?] interruptedly to the Trent. The inhabitants of these counties were therefore appropriately known as the Coritavi, or People of the Woods. Their firm and massive limbs and long red hair attested their German origin, and strongly confirmed the statement of the Welsh triads, which described them as having emigrated from a marshland in the country of the Teutons. Their chief city, according to Richard of Cirencester, was Ragae [sic], now Leicester. Predatory in their general habits, with extraordinary facilities for all the excitements of the chase, the wild horse, the buffalo, the boar, and the deer roaming at large in valley and wood, the instinct of self-preservation alone appears to have led them to settle in definite localities. Without laws, they were free to do as they chose, and each tribe or collection of families must protect itself from other even of the same name who might at any time assail and despoil them. Their places of settlement were usually upon some cleared portion of ground, adjoining a river or a lake, protected by the woods at its back, and capable of being easily fortified by a ditch of a fence of fallen timber. The woods, besides furnishing them with the means of subsistence, offered retreats which history shows to have been formidable even to Caesar himself.

Such were unquestionably the first settlers on the site where subsequently a small town arose. The natural advantages of the situation were considerable. It offered unusual facilities for supplying them all with the necessaries of life. Water, as necessary to them as a salt spring to Eastern tribes, was here abundant. The neighbouring forest abounded with objects of the chase. There was also easy communication in at least two directions, inward and seaward, At the distance of only a few miles, through the present village of Barrow-upon-Soar in fact, there passed an old British road, which probably threw out a branch road to or near it, and then crossed the Charnwood Forest between the hills of Beacon and Broombriggs. This was called the Upper Salt Way, and it is a curious fact, as we learn from Mr. Potter [note], that a field in Quorndon was called Salt Gate so late as 1607. Commencing on the coast of Lincolnshire, the road extended through Leicestershire to the borders of Warwickshire, and then by Birmingham across the Lickey to the salt mines of Droitwich, then called Salinae. The prefix Stan in the name of the neighbouring village of Stanford [on Soar], is the British term for road, and suggests that a branch of a British road of some kind passed that way, probably the road from Barrow through Cotes, known as the Catsick lane, which derives additional probability from the fact that the old British roads usually wound along the sides of hills and continuous elevations.

The British settlement of Loughborough appears to have received the name of Locteburn, or Loctebur, the earliest name yet known to history, from its being situate near the junction of the river with the lake, which geologists affirm once covered the greater portion of the meadows in the adjoining valley. The last remnant of this lake seems to have been in the extensive tract known as the Loughborough Moors, which, as we shall show further on, has not been brought under cultivation more than three or four hundred years. The word Locte, or Lucte, signifies a pool of sheet of water, and is preserved in Icelandic as Laugh. It also exists in the north of Britain in various synonymous forms, as Lag, Legan, and Loch. The terminal borne, or burne, was generally applied by the Britons, to those rivers that were the tributaries of others, and is frequently met with in the composition of old local names, as Cranbourne, Wimbourne, Sittingbourne, Burnley, &c. A few rudely-constructed huts, perhaps, with some simple fishing apparatus, and a few coracles on the water-side, with a barricade of trees or  ditch on that towards the forest, would be all that would exist to dignify it with the character of a settlement. And here it should be noticed that eminent geologists, are unanimous in declaring that all rivers anciently flowed over a greater breadth of land than they do now, and with shallower streams. The woad-stained forms of these wild-haired woodsmen grouped amidst the semi-excavated cors would make a very picturesque scene, and the primeval forest whose rugged retreats and natural altars made it the sacred home of the mystic and venerable Druids, would form a most magnificent background.

Whether Loughborough was occupied by the Romans or not during their stay in Britain, we have now few means of ascertaining, although many learned antiquarians and commentators have assigned to it the character of a Roman station. The similarity of its supposed Latinized names, Lactodurum, Lactodoro, and Lactodrodo, for which Lyttleton [1] appears to be [the] only good authority, to that given to the Roman station of Towcester, has often caused it to be mistaken for that place, and originated many curious suppositions. Robert Talbot [2], says Burton [3] in his commentary on the Itinerary of Antoninus, affirms that the place so named alludes to Lutterworth and Loughborough. He explains the meaning of the name rather curiously. He afterwards doubted the fact of the reference, because the place “hath not any token else of Roman antiquity, although sometime he thought it to be so by reading it Lectodorum, and deducing it from Letters, [check as difficult to read] that is in British, diversoria, Innes; and dur aqua; as if the name had been Lettidur or diversoria ad aquam” – the inns by the water. He adds, “Lactorate, the old town in Gaul differs as you see in the termination only, perhaps this may have had some relation, or dependence thereupon, like others in Britain.” Baxter, [4] in his Glossary, has another conjecture which rests upon even slighter evidence. He expressly states that Loughborough “appears to be” the Roman station of Condate, and to have been called by the people of the words Ligaroburgus, or the fortification, or castle upon the Ligur, the latter being our earlier form of Leire, the old name for the river Soar. He further asserts it to have been, “without doubt,” a royal town or Prastorium (prima scilicet Domus Regia sive praetorium). The grounds of this broad supposition are soon given, In the cosmography of the anonymous writer of Ravenna, Condate is placed between Nantwich and Leicester, but that treatise, as antiquarians have subsequently discovered, is not arranged into distinct journeys, so that the names of places are mingled in the most erratic confusion, and indeed are so corruptly written as not to be easily recognised. The evidence for the statement about its being a king’s residence, is nothing but the reference found in Camden [5] to its being a Saxon royal Vill, which will be presently considered. The two stations of Lactodoro and Condate have been more correctly placed, by a comparison of various itineraries, at Berry Mount, Towcester, and at Kinderton, on the Watling Street. The former station is placed by some at Stony Stratford, but wherever it was we may safely say that it was not at Loughborough, without in the least invalidating any other testimony as to its being occupied by the Romans. Dr. Gale, [6] for instance, thought he discovered traces of the British word guera, an alder in Vernometum (Willoughby), in Quorndon, Garendon, and Charnwood, and of Roman names in Loughborough, Burleigh, and Barrow.

There are indeed several reasons for believing that Loughborough was occupied by the Romans. It was the custom of the Roman commanders in their gradual conquest of our island, especially where resistance was lengthy and determined, as chroniclers assure us it was in the midland districts – to erect fortifications on the captured territory, which served to secure what they had gained, and formed a basis for further conquests. Such was the line erected by Oscarius Scapula between the rivers Avon and Severn. It was probably in such a manner that the Roman forts in Leicestershire arose, a check upon the surrounding country, and outposts for attack upon the yet undaunted Brigantes. Leicester and Manceter, with Beacon Hill, Loughborough, and Burrough Hill, would form part of an irregular line of this character. A via vincinalia, or branch road, would perhaps lead through Loughborough from Vernometum to the last Roman town of Androstesberies, which Mr. Potter [7] has carefully fixed near the site of Beacon Hill, from weighty considerations which indicate the presence of the Romans in that locality. The late Mr. F.J. Hollings [8] was strongly of opinion that Leicester was occupied by the warriors of the fourteenth Legion, and detachments of that body would occupy these minor stations.

END OF CHAPTER 1 PT 1

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Notes

[1] I believe this is George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton (1709-1773) who wrote an extended essay entitled ‘Observations on the Roman history’

[2] I have been unable to identify Robert Talbot

[3] William Burton (1609-1657), who wrote ‘A commentary on Antonius, his itinerary, or, journeys of the Romane Empire…’

[4] William Baxter (1650-1723) an antiquarian, wrote a dictionary of antiquities entitled ‘Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum’ published in 1719, and his ‘Glossarium Antiquitatum Romanarum’ was completed after his death by Moses Williams, and published under this title as a second edition in 1731.

[5] William Camden (1551-1623) was an antiquarian, historian, and topographer, who chronicled his survey of Britain and Ireland in his ‘Britannia’ in 1586.

[6] Dr Gale could be Thomas Gale (1635 or 1636-1702), an English classical scholar, an antiquarian, and a religious cleric who wrote quite a number of books. Thomas Gale was the father-in-law of William Stukeley. Or, this could be Roger Gale (1672-1744), son of Thomas, who followed in his father’s footsteps and published Thomas’s ‘Antonine Itinerary’ in 1709, which he supplemented with his own comments. Some of Roger’s letters appear in john Nichols’ ‘Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica’, published in 1790.   

[7] This is probably a reference to Thomas Rossell Potter (1799-1873), who wrote ‘History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest’, published in 1842.

[8] This is most likely to be James Francis Hollings (1806-1862) who was president of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1846-7, 1853-4, and 1858-9.

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Transcribed and presented here with the kind permission of the British Newspaper Archive. 

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Dyer, Lynne (2024). Goadby's History of Loughborough, Chapter 1, Part 1. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/05/goadbys-history-of-loughborough-chapter.html [Accessed 26 May 2024]

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