About me

The Loughborough tour guides award presentations

In 2011-12, at the height of my librarian career, and when I had been a mother for 21 years, I trained to be a tour guide, and in April 2013 I became an Accredited Leicestershire Tour Guide, along with four other people from Loughborough. 

Together we are still walking the streets of Loughborough, showing interested folks all those things about Loughborough that might have escaped their notice, ranging from the sites of Zeppelin bombings during WW1, through the former home of the Lord of the Manor, the former rectory and the guildhall, to society meeting places, pubs, theatres, cinemas, and sculptures, as well as university sites, former industrial buildings, and Loughborough's Art Deco heritage. 

If you would like me to lead a walk for your group, or for a private event, I am happy to do so. Standard walks on offer include Loughborough Pubs, Loughborough's Art Deco buildings, Loughborough's Industrial History, and a general historical walk, but walks can also be tailored for your group. For more details and information contact me at the address listed below - thank you!

I've been blogging on a variety of topics (librarianship, music, and a general blog) since 2007, but this Loughborough blog that you're reading now is the one that has interested me the most, and the one that I am keen to post to on weekly basis, although, sadly, I don't always manage this.

The blog came about because the wonderful town of Loughborough was in danger of being included in a book about UK towns that were rubbish: we were in the top 100 of these, but luckily didn't make it into the book, which only listed the top 50. I'm not deluded enough to think that my blog did anything to prevent us being in the top 50, and I do know that the intended book wasn't entirely serious, but I do hope that over the course of the last 9 years and 5 months since the blog started, I've promoted Loughborough, highlighted what's great about it, and encouraged people to visit, in order to make up their own mind about how great our little market town is, and what a lot it has to offer.

The posts vary in length and content, really depending on how much time I've got!! Some are simply a photographic record of an event, some are snippets of info, some are accounts of events and meetings I've attended and some are in-depth articles on specific topics. I particularly enjoy researching Loughborough people, features of the town, and specific streets. In some cases, other people have already done a lot of research into things that I'm interested in so I will not re-invent wheels, but rather point you in the direction of other people's offerings - and I certainly won't pass off anyone else's work as my own. All photos used in the blogs will have been taken by me, unless stated otherwise: I will not be uploading old photographs as I simply don't have many of my own, and I certainly don't have time to track down the copyright holders.

I love to hear your comments on the blog, or to help you with your questions or research. The only slight difficulty with the blog is leaving comments. To do this you have to log onto Blogger, or register or something like that! Probably a better way would be to leave me a comment via my dedicated-to-Loughborough email address, which is:

lynneaboutloughboroughatgmaildotcom

Of course, you will need to replace the words above with the appropriate punctuation - which is included to stop internet robots, not to deter you! Also, please be aware that any communication posted this way will appear on the blog, as will my replies: the system will not enable me to talk to you directly unless you provide contact details.

In 2016-17 I completed an Advanced Diploma in Local History with Oxford University Department of Continuing Education, and achieved a 2i. From July to October 2017, I wrote 100 words every day about Loughborough for 100 days, as part of an online initiative. Most of these 100-word pieces were whatever came out of my mind on the day I was writing, so may be slim on historical fact, and sometimes obliquely related to Loughborough! You can view the completed project here.






Also during 2017 I have started a blog and a Twitter feed - follow us @OldRectoryMuseum - for the Old Rectory Museum in Loughborough, a building with an interesting history, but often overlooked by visitors. I have since handed over the responsibility for this to newer members of the Loughborough Archaeological and Historical Society.

In July 2018 I was lucky enough to have my very first book published, called 'Loughborough in 50 Buildings' and this was followed in June 2019 by a second, 'Secret Loughborough'! My third book was due for publication in August 2020, but due to the coronavirus pandemic the publisher postponed the publication date of most of the books on their schedule for 2020 so  'A-Z of Loughborough' was finally released in August 2021.

During 2022 I took early retirement from my librarianship work, and am now involved in a variety of volunteering opportunities - all related to local history in some way! My latest book for Amberley, 'Loughborough pubs', is now (November 2023) published. The manuscript for 'Loughborough At Work' was lodged with the publisher in May 2024, for publication September 2025. 

If you are local to Loughborough, you can purchase my books, with the exception of 'Loughborough in 50 Buildings' directly from me, using the email address listed above. Alternatively, all published titles are available from the Local and Family History Centre at the back of the Carnegie library on Granby Street, as well as in WH Smith and Waterstones.  

In May 2022, I took a short break from blogging about Loughborough, as I had a few other projects on the go, but weekly blogging resumed in June 2022, so do please keep popping back, and see what I'm blogging about now! You can find a page on the blog which lists all the blogposts I've written.

In August 2023 the blog reached its 10th birthday, and by way of celebration I hosted a series of posts from guest bloggers, with subjects ranging from football to publishing; from nature to buildings; from streets to transport - and much more! A list of all these posts appears on the complete list page, mentioned above. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to this celebration! Here's to the next 10 years!

In September 2023 I took part in All About That Place, an event over 10 days which gave local historians, family historians, genealogists, and on-placers the opportunity to share their knowledge, research, and expertise through a 10-minute talk, broadcast via social media (YouTube and Facebook). My talk was about sharing the results of my local history journey via this blog.  

In April 2024 I plunged headfirst into an initiative to post a piece every day in April featuring an alphabetical list of self-chosen topics. This was a pretty intense experience, but I was able to use some of those pieces I had researched but had not included in 'A-Z of Loughborough'. The blog celebrated its 11th birthday in August 2024, with a few guest blog posts, and later, in mid-September 2024, all the planning for Loughborough's contribution to the national Heritage Open Days came to fruition, and I led two walks. I again contributed to All About That Place in early October 2024, with a talk about using all our senses to investigate local history.  

Wondering what next year will bring!!!

Thanks for reading! Enjoy!

Lynne

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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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 (2023). [Post title]. Available from: [ URL e.g. https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/03/loughborough-and-isaac-newton.html] [Accessed DATE]

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.

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.

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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”

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne