Heritage Open Days in Loughborough

So, tomorrow is the last day to see the sculpture trail up at Beacon Hill, that I mentioned last week.

This week I’ve been out leading loads of guided walks for Heritage Open Days. The theme this year is architecture, and the sub-theme is buildings, bridges, and bees! Lots of scope there to do some imaginative walks – so I hope I managed it! Over the week I’ve shown people from Loughborough, the local villages, Leicester, and Nottingham, amongst other places, around our lovely town.

Of course, I couldn’t resist doing the Art Deco walk, which is a favourite of mine, and was really pleased to have a person from Napier on the walk, especially as I mention Napier in the walk! I also led a couple of walks around Queen’s Park. So often when we’re walking we’re in a hurry, or focussed on something specific, we don’t really see what’s around us, so it was great to be able to wander slowly around the park, and consider some of the things that are in it. The aviaries, the Hardy and Padmore lamppost, the old swimming pool, the bandstand, the swan maze, the Hope Bell, the Carillon, Songster, the little bridges, the watercourses, the new benches – the list just keeps on going! I was so pleased that someone likened our beautiful park to a small version of Regent’s Park!

A couple of my other walks were new, especially for the event. One saw us walk from Queen’s Park, along Woodbrook Way, onto Forest Road and the Forest Green belt, returning via Forest Road, into Wood Gate to see the former Co-op building, and a trip up the beehive car park for a bird’s eye view of the town and its surroundings. 

The other was a walk around town looking at the architects behind some of the town centre’s buildings.

I am leading another walk tomorrow, going into the old town, which I’m doing on behalf of the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers.

Today, my original plans didn’t come to fruition, so I found myself visiting some of the sites in Loughborough that were open for the Heritage Open Days weekend. First was the parish church, who had already had several visitors by the time I got there. Then came the Old Rectory Museum, which had a couple of talks and a walk planned for the day. A visit to the Generator building was next: I hadn’t been in for a while, and was so pleased to see the results of all the hard work that’s gone into the planning and development of the space. Hopefully it’ll be opening in January next year, and will be a wonderful addition to the social life of the town, offering exhibition and performance spaces.

View from The Generator

Next I went along to the Carillon, and had a better look at the museum than I had had a chance to do on the re-opening day. Such a lot of information and objects in such a small space, but it was still exciting and didn’t feel at all crowded.

For my final trip of the day, having already done my 10K steps, I felt justified in jumping in the car and driving over to Thorpe Acre, to take in some of Garendon Park. I couldn’t go on the guided walks, as I hadn’t booked, and I really didn’t have time anyway, so I picked up a leaflet, which had a map of the grounds on one side, and had some interesting chats with some lovely folk, before heading back home!

Phew! Looking forward to a bit of a rest next week!

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Heritage Open Days in Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/09/heritage-open-days-in-loughborough.html [Accessed 20 September 2025]

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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.

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Lynne

Up the Beacon Sculpture Trail 2025

  

Last week, very unusually for me, I made an impromptu trip out in the late afternoon – 4,000 steps and the equivalent of 60 flights of stairs before teatime!! I’ve been meaning to visit since June, and finally made it just over a week before its ending!

This year’s Up The Beacon Sculpture Trail takes place in the same area as last year, but with new and different sculptures to see. Oh, and also 70 tree people to spot! Having parked in the village of Woodhouse Eaves, I walked up Beacon Hill to the Upper car park, and then took the trail which winds around the lower levels of the area. Sorry, that’s not very descriptive, but if you happen to go along – and do, it’s well worth it! – park in the Upper car park, and you can’t miss the start of the trail! Find this lady, and you've found the beginning!

There were a wide variety of artists involved in creating the sculptures, including some school groups. As I mentioned, some sculptures from last year were still in evidence, although I’m pretty sure they had been treated to some new willow parts! There were lots of new sculptures, and I have to admit that some of my favourites were the representations of mycelium. This was particularly because I’d recently read a book called ‘The Observant Walker’ by John Wright, in which the author sets out on eight different nature trails across the country, and seems to regularly talk about the different species of mycelium he comes across.

Then there were the tree people to find! This may sound easy, but honestly, it wasn’t!! I guess it depends a lot upon what time of day you visit the trail. When I was there, the sun was still very bright, but was beginning to drop down, and so some of the little tree people were hidden in the shadow of the leaves. Having said that, I did manage to find 68 of the 70. Well, when I say ‘I’, I really mean that the hubby found the majority of them!! Still, it was good fun, and certainly made us look around more than we would probably have done if we hadn’t been avidly searching for those tree people!

Here's a few photos – I won’t share too many, as it will spoil the surprise and delight for you when you visit yourself, but do hurry as the trail closes on 21st September!

Many thanks to the artists who include:

Nita Rao; Susheel Rao; Mapplewell Hall School with Lisa Denham and Nita Rao; Alison Folland; Glebe House; Judith Eason; Erica Middleton; Soft Touch Arts; Nick Rapson; Silke Walker, Men and Women in Sheds; Sara Budzik; Ruth Stephens; Adetunji Onigbanjo; Ruth Singer; Tony Thory, and others.

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Up the Beacon Sculpture Trail 2025. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/09/up-beacon-sculpture-trail-2025.html  [Accessed 14 September 2025]

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.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne

Arts venue opening

Oh goodness me! There’s always such a lot going on, and I am in danger of forgetting to appear at some events!!! If it hadn’t been for a friendly reminder, I would have missed the opening day of the new arts venue that is Modern Painters New Decorators (MPND) who have moved out of the Carillon Court shopping centre where they had been for about seven years, and into a new space which they have kitted out themselves on Aumbry Gap – which nowadays seems to be called Aumberry Gap, but on the 1901 map is listed as Cemetery Place! While I know what an aumbry is – a cupboard or recess in a wall in a church in which the sacred vessels are stored – I have no idea what kind of berry an “aum” is, nor why it might be significant to this area. At one time I believe there was a church on this street – a non-conformist chapel, I believe, but I can’t remember any more than that at the moment.

Anyway, that aside, the new space for MPND is part of that new glass complex on the corner of Barrow Street and Leicester Road, and Aumberry Gap and Pinfold Gate, and is almost where William Corah’s, the builders, place was, and which later became Groops Music Tuition, then a gym. 

Golly, what a huge complex it is, too! I had no difficulty finding MPNDs as firstly, there were lots of people wearing MPND white t-shirts standing around outside the space, but also because I had enquired a couple of months ago and the concierge in the student flats had actually taken me round to the space that MPNDs were, ummm, decorating!

Truth to tell, on the opening day I was on a bit of a timescale, as I was due to be out walking the Erewash Canal later in the afternoon, but there was quite a lot to see, and so many lovely people to talk to, that I lingered for a while, talking and being amazed at the spaces that had been created within what was essentially a square box! There was a long, narrow-ish exhibition space overlooking the street, another, bigger and wider, and probably the main exhibition space running the depth of the building, and about ten artist’s studios in the middle – full of artists doing their thing, and demonstrating to the many visitors.

Looking out from the long, narrow gallery space

One of the things that appealed greatly to me was that although this was a new building, which one might have expected to be all spick and span, neatly polished, and almost like someone's living room, albeit, rather a large living room, but this space was so reflective of an industrial space! No exposed wooden beams here, just exposed metal ducting. No parquet or carpeted floors here, just polished cement (I'm guessing here!) under foot! And some stunning floor-to-ceiling windows!!

The floor!

Anyway, I was so pleased to bump into many people I knew, particularly some of these good people (photo below), and artist Jessica Ashman, whose work was the main feature in the exhibition. She took the trouble to visit the Local and Family History Centre in the public library to learn about Brazil Wood, near Swithland Reservoir, so it was great to see her interpretation of this on silk, dyed mostly using natural dyes, like madder and woad – things that I have only recently written about in ‘Loughborough At Work’.

Do pop in and visit the exhibition if you are able – when exhibitions are on it’s likely to be open Thursday to Saturday, 10am-3pm.

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2025). Arts venue opening. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/09/arts-venue-opening.html  [Accessed 7 September 2025]

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.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne