Loughborough's Heritage Open Days Success

I'm sure you're all aware that the past couple of weeks have been Heritage Open Days, a time that sees many heritage buildings that aren't usually open, allowing the public access. Or, sites that normally make a charge. throwing open their buildings for free, or putting on something special for the Open Days.

This year, some Loughborough venues got together to offer a greater contribution to Heritage Open Days than has happened in previous years. Loughborough's Heritage Open Weekend took place last weekend, and many buildings, groups, and organisations took part, offering free art sessions, free roadshows, free guided walks, free demonstrations, or free access to archive material.

On Saturday morning, I was lucky enough to be able to do a quick tour of some of the town centre offerings, and it was lovely to see lots of pink bunting around! Sorry I didn't get as far as the GCR, the Bellfoundry, or the Grammar School. 

On Saturday afternoon I went on a guided walk related to Zeppelins, and on Sunday, I spent a very sunny morning walking a group of people around some of Loughborough's Art Deco heritage, and a very wet afternoon showcasing some of our heritage sites!

Thank you so much to everyone who was involved in providing such a variety of places to visit!

Here's some very quickly-taken photos from the weekend.

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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 (2024). Loughborough's Heritage Open Days Success. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/09/loughboroughs-heritage-open-days-success.html [Accessed 22 September 2024]

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About the Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend 2024

In my guest blog post this week, Jill Vincent, co-ordinator of the Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend, explains what this weekend in September is all about and how it came to be!

The Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend,

14th & 15th September 2024 

Jill Vincent, co-ordinator

Loughborough has a long and well-documented history: for example, we are mentioned in the Domesday Book; royal permission was granted to our Thursday Market and Fair in 1221; the Bell Foundry originated in the C14, and the Taylor family took over in 1784; the Industrial Revolution in textiles and engineering brought a rapid increase in population along with necessary education and training.

Loughborough’s built environment evidences our fascinating history and heritage. Vigorous local voluntary and community bodies support this heritage and meet in a Forum (organised by two members of the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteer Group (LLLSVG)) twice a year to update and exchange information, offer mutual support and cooperate.

Members of the Forum realised that many, individually, held Open Days as part of the national programme of Heritage Open Days (HOD) organised by the National Trust every September.  HODs give free entry to buildings that might not normally be open to public view.  Members who already held Open Days thought that if they collaborated and enlisted others to join them, the Loughborough offer would be so much greater - and indeed it is!

So, we have organised: 

Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend, 14th & 15th September 2024.

Twelve sites are taking part. They are:

• All Saints with Holy Trinity Parish Church
• Fearon Hall
• Carillon Museum, Military Memorabilia Roadshow
• Charnwood Museum
• Garendon Park
• The Generator Loughborough
• Loughborough Central Station (Great Central Railway)
• Loughborough Grammar School
• Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteer Group (guided walks)
• Old Rectory Museum
• Taylor’s Bellfoundry 
• Unity House

Visitors will be able to explore places that give an insight and experience of Loughborough’s history and heritage. Local enthusiasts will guide and inform and we believe that people will make exciting discoveries – not least because they may come to visit a familiar place and at the same time find somewhere new and unknown to them. We will be highly visible, with HOD bunting and banners. 

To find out more, visit the Heritage Open Days website and search for Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend, or click here for LHOW results. There are also a couple of other events that come up if you search the HODs site for Charnwood!

And please note that some of the sites do need to be pre-booked. All details are on the website. Do be sure to check.

We look forward to seeing you over the LHOW - remember - 14th and 15th September 2024!!

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About Jill Vincent

Jill’s career has combined her interest in the arts with work teaching and researching social policy, and active engagement in politics and the voluntary and community sector.

Jill studied fine art at St Martins, then had a break for children and family. She returned to study at Loughborough Uni (Sociology and Political Science) and gained her PhD from Nottingham Uni.

She worked for the Open University and as a researcher at the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough Uni. Jill’s employment and commitment to social issues complemented each other nicely. She was a Borough Councillor for 16 years, spending the final year as Mayor; she has been a Trustee at John Storer Charnwood and Equality Action (where she is still actively involved) and a Governor at Loughborough College (where she is now a co-opted member).

Jill’s interest in the arts is a thread running through her life. She worked in Arts in Prisons research and provision, and with Kevin Ryan at Charnwood Arts. She was a member of ACE East Midlands Arts Board, and was awarded an Honorary Degree by Loughborough University in 2012.

All of Jill’s experience, but that particularly in arts and heritage, has led her to take on the role of local co-ordinator for Loughborough’s heritage offering during the national Heritage Open Days event 2024. Jill will be around in person at The Generator, on the Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend (LHOW) 14th – 15th September, so do drop by and visit (pre-booking essential), and if not, she hopes you will enjoy the other LHOW offerings.

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Please note, the views expressed in this Guest Blog Post are the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the blog owner, lynneaboutloughborough.

Please use this blog's search facility to find related posts, e.g. Unity House, the Old Rectory, Loughborough Grammar School, etc..

____________________________________

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, or in the case of guest blogposts, with the named Guest Blogger. However, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Vincent, Jill (2024). About the Loughborough Heritage Open Weekend! Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/09/about-loughborough-heritage-open.html [Accessed 1 September 2024]

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.

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

Loughborough Mela and other local events

Last week I wrote about the misplaced milestone which lies outside the Organ Grinder pub on Wood Gate, and I had intended to follow-up with the story of another misplaced milestone (although that is not an accurate description), but lack of time meant this didn’t happen. I’ll follow this up in a future post, as I have a hankering to tell you about my exciting weekend, last weekend! 

As it happened, last weekend turned out to be a busy one, and I spent a lot of time actually being lynneaboutloughborough – that is, out and about in Loughborough or the surrounding area – and loving every moment of it! now, had I been a bit more organised I could have been out and about at even more places and events, but as I really am not – organised, that is - I ended up in the same place two days in a row, and so missed out on a visit to St Paul’s church in Woodhouse Eaves, which was having an open day!! I have a liking for that particular village and church because OH has run the Woodhouse May Day Challenge a couple of times, the people in the village are lovely, my neighbour exhibits at the annual art exhibition, the churchyard contains some lovely Swithland slate gravestones, and a few years ago I helped out with some research into William Railton, the architect behind Nelson's column in London, and the architect of St Paul's church in Woodhouse, amongst many others.

Anyway, back to the places and events I did manage to visit! Usually I walk to Quorn, but as there was so much happening this weekend, I drove the short distance, so I could go to the community centre in the park and view the new community heritage boards. This turned out to be a lovely space, the walls bedecked with about a dozen information boards, covering the local aspect of general topics like transport, education, religion, and pubs, alongside boards relating to Quorn families, Quorn industry and the like. Just the right amount of information and pictures were offered so I could read and absorb, but not get bored. And, of course, I could relate much of this information to Loughborough’s own situation – I feel another blog post coming on … Well done, Quorn Local History Group for an excellent display! 

Oh, and just in case you're not aware, there are campaigns out there to ensure that undesignated footpaths that are used regularly are reported as such, so that they can continue to be used, rather than closed off, and there are a couple between Quorn and Loughborough that are in danger of ceasing to be traversable.  

 

I admit I’m not one for big, crowded events, so standing at the edge of a marquee on the parish green, between the parish church and Fearon Hall, in Loughborough, I was probably the only person who was relieved that the 5,000 people who normally turn out for the Loughborough Mela, didn’t manage to make it this year. Having been cancelled last year, the event did go ahead this year, although on a somewhat smaller scale. This didn’t, however, make it any lesser an event than it usually is, and it was so exciting to be out and about, bumping into friends I hadn’t seen face2face in quite some time, and being entertained with music and dancing. Had I not been rushing back for Sunday lunch, I’d have tucked into some of the delicious food that was on offer, too! Anyway, I look forward to going again next year, probably as soon as the event opens, before it gets too busy!

 

And so, back to Quorn!!! Again by car, mostly down to lack of time, but also because I didn’t want to carry fold-up chairs a couple of miles!! The excitement this time came from listening to a concert performed by the Hathern Band in the park – an event that I always go to. Again, this didn’t happen last year, and in fact, this was only the second concert the band had done since March 2020, the first being only the previous weekend when they played at Oakham Park. So, as well as great music, it was also fab to be able to chat with friends both in the band and in the audience, and eat cake – and even the heavy downpour of rain couldn’t dampen the spirits!

 

I wonder what next weekend has in store for me?! Anyway, do pop back to the blog as it is regularly updated, and I just might be able to deliver that post about misplaced milestones soon …       

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 24 August 2021

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). Loughborough Mela 2021 and other local events. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/08/loughborough-mela-and-other-local-events.html  [Accessed 24 August 2021]

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.

You can leave comments below, but do check back as my reply will appear here, below your comment.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne     

Toothill Road

Part of Beating the Bounds

Last weekend I was lucky enough to go on a guided walk around the area, which was once part of the grounds of the Old Rectory, which is at the junction of Steeple Row and Rectory Place. It was really quite surprising that the small building in its compact, grassy surroundings actually used to be situated in extensive grounds, and that the building itself, by the Georgian times, was rather large!

As I was being walked around the area surrounding the oldest part of the town, I remembered that a while ago I had wandered around there myself and taken quite a few photos. But, as usual, when I come to find them I can only find a few of them!! So, here's the few photos of Toothill Road that I could find, Toothill Road once being land belonging to the Old Rectory, and its name meaning something like, a lookout on a little hill. There's also a few photos of the other streets from the walk.

Toothill Road

Other areas of the walk

Fearon Hall

Looking down Meadow Lane

The Rectory Garden

The Old Rectory

The gates to the Old Rectory - for more gates, see this blogpost

Looking up Meadow Lane

A familiar name!!

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 1 August 2021

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). Toothill Road. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/07/toothill-road.html  [Accessed 1 August 2021]

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.

You can leave comments below, but do check back as my reply will appear here, below your comment.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne

Picnic in Queen's Park and more

Last Saturday saw the 39th annual Loughborough Picnic in the Park, organised by Charnwood Arts. The day was so wet and windy that there was talk of cancelling the event, until Fearon Hall came up trumps and the picnic was transferred to the 'the urban village in the heart of the Loughborough' and the whole kit and caboodle moved in!

It was a bit of a squash, but the many and varied stalls were set out in the main hall, and performances took place in the upstairs space and one of the downstairs rooms, while some things still took place outside the hall, at moments when the weather permitted. It was crowded and noisy inside, but everyone who was looking after a stall, and everyone who visited seemed to be having fun! At one point Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert popped in to enjoy the festive occasion of their 200th birthday!

The rain has been such that at the end of this week, into this weekend, and Queen's Park is pretty waterlooged, with ducks paddling on the paths, the swan maze having an added dimension and the grass drowning. The park is riddled underneath with little streams that meet up with the Wood Brook in various places (I did find a map once, but, of course, I can't find it now). 

Last Sunday I spent the day in Birmngham, singing with the CBSO and a number of community choirs and individual singers. We had quite a long break, and so off I went in search of Loughborough connections! Near the venue was an arts and crafts house called Winterbourne House and botanic gardens, so I popped in to have a look to see if it were anything like Stoneywell Cottage, the house in Charnwood that Ernest Gimson designed for one of his brothers. Of course, it wasn't. In fact, it was totally different! Stoneywell is constructed of the local stone, and Swithland slate, whereas Winterbourne is of red brick construction. There was, however, an interesting use of slate for sculptures in the garden, upon which quotes had been carved. Inside I learned that Annie Oakley who had come to Britain with Buffalo Bill praised the firm owned by the owner of Winterbourne House for their ammunition.

The extensive gardens were beautiful and I was keen to see if the greenhouses and orangery might have a connection to share. Of course, they didn't! No Messenger conservatories here! In an area so close to the city of Birmingham where at one time there were extensive factories and foundries, it was always going to be the case that any ironwork would be produced there!

Back on the University of Birmingham campus, on my walk round I spotted a lovely building that reminded me of Towers on our own university campus, allbeit a little smaller! 

During the week I headed off to the New Walk Museum in Leicester to catch the Mods exhibition. Wow! That was fabulous! I was rather taken with the pinball machine they were auctioning off for charity, as it reminded me of my misspent youth!! And the beautiful scooters reminded me of the bike show in Loughborough market place, which I blogged about last year. Also on display was a bit of Loughborough memorabilia.

This weekend I spent Saturday in Market Harborough and Foxton, attending wedding celebrations. The connection with Loughborough that I was immediately aware of was me, as I had my wedding meal at Foxton Locks a few years ago!! And then, as I was walking around the village hall, I spotted some photographs which included some familiar names (Guy Paget, of the Ibstock Pagets, Hazlerigg, and Colonel Martin) and on the way home, we drove along a road in the village called Swingbridge Street, and over the swingbridge which crossed the canal, which, of course, reminded me of Loughborough's own Swingbridge Road.

The happy couple!

Today I managed to dodge most of the rain showers and headed down to the market place to see the cars on show - and what a show!!! Loads and loads of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and so many people too!!

To round off the day I walked over to Rosebery Community Centre (formerly St Peter's Community Centre) to view artworks created by local folk. Talented artists showed a huge variety of their work, from pottery to jewellery, paintings to wirework, and tyedye to printing. 

Gosh, a busy 10 days! And as if that weren't enough, I got myself a new car! Oh, and preview copies of my new book arrived through the post for me! 

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

Dyer, Lynne (2019). Picnic in Queen's Park and more. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/06/picnic-in-queens-park-and-more.html  [Accessed 16 June 2019]

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.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne