Coronation of Charles III and its connections with Loughborough

Whether or not you are supportive of the monarchy, whether of not you watched the coronation of Charles III in person in London, or on the television, whether or not you took part in a street party or other event, you might like to know about a few Loughborough connections with the coronation.

Firstly, that Loughborough University alumnus, Lord Sebastian Coe was one of the members of the congregation. He is gold-medal winning Olympian who attended the university in the late 1970s, spearheaded the London Olympic Committee in 2012, and was installed in the ceremonial role, as the sixth chancellor of Loughborough University in 2017.

The second connection is bishop Guli Francis-Dehquani, who was installed as Loughborough’s Bishop in 2017. She followed in her father’s footsteps, he being the Anglican Bishop of Iran from 1960 until he retired in 1990, the family having come to Britain in 1980, and in the footsteps of her maternal grandfather who was a Bishop in Iran.

Bishop Guli’s calling saw her ordained deacon 1998 at Southwark Cathedral and priest at All Saints Kingston-on-Thames in 1999. Following a period of curacy in the Diocese of Southwark, she became Chaplain to a music college and a primary school, and held a special role at Peterborough Cathedral, and the University of Northampton. She continued to serve at Peterborough Cathedral, and was made an honorary canon in 2016. The following year she became the first Bishop of Loughborough, being the suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Leicester, where he role as suffragan bishop was to assist the Bishop of Leicester. In March 2021, Bishop Guli became the diocesan bishop of the diocese of Chelmsford, and joined the House of Lords later that year. Bishop Guli was one of only three female bishops to take part in the coronation of Charles III, where she took communion and held the communion cup from which King Charles III and Queen Camila also took communion.

Loughborough’s second Bishop, who followed in Bishop Guli's footsteps, was Bishop Saju, who was installed in 2021, having previously been a vicar in the diocese of Rochester.

The third and final connection between the coronation and Loughborough is the Earl of Loudoun, the Right Honourable Simon Abney-Hastings. The title is an hereditary one, and the earl owns no land in Britain, and actually lives in Australia. He made the journey to London to perform the role of bearer of the royal golden spurs, a role which his family have been involved in since the 1100s. In the olden days, the golden spurs would actually have been attached to the king’s shoes, but in the 2023 coronation, they simply touch the heels of the King, and are then placed on the altar.

The earls of Loudoun have a claim to throne themselves, through being descendants of the House of York. However, the connection with Loughborough is through George Augustus Francis Rawdon-Hastings, the second Marquess of Hastings, whose mother was Flora Mure-Campbell, the sixth Countess of Loudoun, who married Francis Rawdon-Hastings, the second Earl of Moira, and later the first Marquess of Hastings. It was Francis Rawdon-Hastings, when he was the Earl of Moira, who sold off most of his land and property in Loughborough and the surrounding area, partly to fund his coalmining operations in North West Leicestershire.

Well, who’d have thought Loughborough would have had so many connections with the coronation of Charles III?!

Meanwhile, back in Loughborough, celebrations took place across the town!

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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.

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Dyer, Lynne (2023). Coronation of Charles III and its connections with Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/05/coronation-of-charles-iii-and-its.html [Accessed 7 May 2023]

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Earl of Moira's sale

About the Earl of Moira's sale, and the forthcoming exhibition at the library ...

Down at the Local and Family History Centre in the public library on Granby Street, the Local Studies group have put together a fantastic exhibition about a fascinating period in the history of Loughborough.

In the early 1800s, much of the town was owned by the Earl of Moira, but in 1808 he decided to sell up, and had several sales in 1809-10! These sales changed the ownership of many buildings and land in the town, and I believe the Lordship of Loughborough passed to Thomas Denning upon the death of the Earl of Moira in 1826.

An item from the library shelves

Since writing about the Earl of Moira’s sale for ‘Secret Loughborough’ all catalogues for the three separate sales have emerged, and an extract from ‘Secret Loughborough’ about the Earl of Moira is reproduced below.

Many of the public houses, inns, taverns, coaching houses etc. that I researched and included in a forthcoming book [1], ‘Loughborough pubs’ were sold during the Earl’s first sale, in November 1809. Today, many of these premises are owned by large companies who own properties across the country, but some are still locally owned, although the actual buildings may have been demolished and re-built, for example, the Bell Foundry on Swan Street. 

Saracen's Head, now the Bell Foundry, in 2017

And of the houses that were sold in 1809-10, many no longer exist, but much of the land sold has since been built on. Although many of today's residential properties in Loughborough are owned by private individuals, there do seem to be many owned by a few local companies.

So, here's that extract from ‘Secret Loughborough’:

"Francis Rawdon Hastings (1754-1826) was the Earl of Moira from 1793-1816. He took the surname Hastings as decreed by his uncle, the Tenth Earl of Huntingdon, thus becoming the Marquess of Hastings at the end of 1816. It was in 1809 that the Earl of Moira had his great sale of lands, dwellings and properties in Loughborough.

The Earl of Moira owned land across the country, but at a time of economic expansion realised the potential value in exploring coal mining in the area of his properties in North West Leicestershire. Loughborough was becoming increasingly prosperous, and the Earl thought that by selling much of his land and buildings here he could raise the money needed, as burgeoning prosperity meant people would be able to afford to buy them.

However, personal circumstances dictated that the only way for the Earl to be able to effect such sales was by putting forward a private members bill to parliament. The Earl of Moira’s Act of 2 July 1808 was successful, and his properties auctioned at the Bull’s Head Inn on High Street, in late 1809 and January 1810 [there were actually three sales: shops, pubs, cottages and gardens on 14, 15, 16, and 17 November 1809; mostly land and building ground on 23, 24, and 25 January 1810; and a wider variety (including the worsted and corn mills, arable, meadow, pasture and building land) on 9, 10, and 11 May 1810]  Many of the properties were already leased out to the people who bought them, and the sales particulars are a great source of information about the town, for example, the people who were using the properties, their occupations and where the properties were situated.

Lot 51, a house and yard on Sparrow Hill, occupied at the time of the sale by the architect Christopher Staveley who had worked on the nearby Old Rectory around 1800, was bought by Staveley for £75. Lots 154-157 in Market Place were several shops - a glover’s, a hatter’s, a grocer’s, a drapers. Lot 162, the Griffin pub, was situated on Bear Place, today known as Ashby Square. The street we now know as Market Street was in 1809 known as Maltmill Lane, with a brook running across it as mentioned in Lot 150, and outbuildings and a yard backing onto it from Market Place as described in Lot 151.

The scale of this sale was so successful that the Earl of Moira was able to develop the coalfields of North West Leicestershire, and the village of Moira therein, is named in his honour."

Do make sure you pop in to see the exhibition in the library, which runs from 9 January to 27 February 2023! 

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Notes

[1]  Manuscript written and submitted May 2021, due for publication November 2023.

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posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog. 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). Earl of Moira's sale. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/01/earl-of-moiras-sale.html [Accessed 8 January 2023]

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.  

 

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne