Finding Loughborough connections in London!

Last weekend I was very lucky indeed, as I spent a few days wondering around London, something I hadn't done for a very long time. I was thrilled to happen upon some direct Loughborough connections, like products made in Loughborough, and some less direct ones, of course!!

Super to see that Loughborough is trendy! There were numerous buildings in London that were being renovated and refurbished, and it seems a covering with a building facade photographed onto it is the new way to hide what's going on, and to look appealing rather than having the traditional hoarding. You can see this in Loughborough town centre, surrounding the HSBC in Market Place. Since the blog post about changes in the town centre was written, the base of the surrounding of our HSBC is now painted with leaves!

Like all cities, towns, villages, and probably hamlets, London has a selection of telephone kiosks dotted around the city. Many are still operating as telephones, some are a little unloved, one which had a perforated, rather than a solid gold crown on the top (below, bottom right), and, of course, those in the city of London are painted black rather than red! You can read about Loughborough's Grade II listed K6 kiosk in an earlier blogpost. 

Likewise, it comes as no surprise to find that London has letter boxes! We passed very many of these, and there were an amazing number of double ones. I've written loads of posts about Loughborough's letter boxes, which you can find at Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Burton Street box; and Unusual and unreal boxes!

I must admit I was hugely surprised by the number of clocks I saw in London, mostly on the sides or fronts of buildings! One of these reminded me so much of our town hall clock!

On a related topic, in the London Transport Museum, I spotted rather lovely pocket watch - sorry, the photo really doesn't do it justice - which reminded me about one of Loughborough's watch and clock makers - Frederick Stubbs. 

As you'd expect, there were all types of vehicles in the transport museum - like sedan chairs, stagecoaches, trams, trolleybuses, buses, underground trains, steam trains, charabancs - but surprisingly, I couldn't find a single Brush body! 

In another museum, there was a poster from the time of the First World War, which helped the person on the street to identify specific aircraft. One of these was the Zeppelin, and I was reminded about the attack on Loughborough on the night of January 31st 1916, about which I've written numerous blogposts, and shared a virtual walk. 

I've only written briefly on this blog about the Freemasons Hall in Loughborough, which is on Orchard Street, in a building that used to be a congregational chapel. It is quite, quite different from the one in London (which although you can't see it in the photograph, does actually have a clock above the entrance).

As in Loughborough, drain covers bearing the name of their makers were also in evidence in London! This is just one example of the hundreds we saw, and examples of ones in Loughborough are on this blogpost.

Goodness me, it's already time to share this post with you, and all I've managed to do so far is share some of the more generic things with you! Pop back to the blog next week, for some direct Loughborough connections - books, bricks, perfumes, and pharmaceuticals!

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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). Finding Loughborough connections in London. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/03/finding-loughborough-connections-in.html [Accessed 24 March 2024]

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Lynne

Loughborough pubs as meeting places

Whilst I was writing my latest book, ‘Loughborough Pubs’, I learned so many things not just about the history of individual establishments, but also about licensing, competition, pub management, legislation etc., of which there was far too much to include in the short volume that is now published.

Many of the pubs in Loughborough were the places where inquests into deaths were held, and auctions of land, property, and goods were also held in pubs. In the case of inquests, this would often be the pub nearest to the place where the person had died. Pubs were used for such ‘events’ as they were often the place with the biggest and most accessible rooms, often upstairs. Some of the pubs in which these events took place include the Bellfoundry when it was the Saracen’s Head; Champs, when it was the Unicorn; Fat Sam’s when it was the Mundy Arms; the Royal Oak; the Plough at Thorpe Acre; the Old English Gentleman; the Windmill, and the Bull-in-the-Hollow when it was the Buffalo’s Head.

Royal Oak

Old English Gentleman

The Windmill

Pubs were also often meeting places for various societies. I’ve mentioned the Loughborough Chrysanthemum and Celery shows in an earlier post, in ‘Secret Loughborough’ I wrote about the Freemasons meeting in the Bull’s Head, and the landlord of the Clarence, Henry George Lovett being a member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, and in ‘A-Z of Loughborough’ I included an entry on Thomas Glover:

“Born in 1817, Thomas Glover of the White Horse Inn on Bedford Street, owned many residential properties in Loughborough. In 1843 he met with local people to form a friendly society, the aim of which would be to administer relief to its members in times of illness and adversity. Called the Free Shepherds’ Society, it was perhaps based on the existing national Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds, created in Ashton under Lyne, being an amalgamation of the Royal Shepherds Sanctuary Benefits Society and the Ancient Order of Shepherds.”

Unfortunately, by the time the Loughborough Society was eventually established, in 1881, and was holding its meetings in the Golden Fleece, Thomas Glover had already been dead for 27 years, so never lived to see his initial ideas come to fruition.

Interestingly, while we had a pub called the Druid’s Arms, the United Ancient Order of Druids at one time held their regular meetings at the Windmill, and some anniversary dinners at the Cross Keys, now the Phantom, while the Oddfellows opened a new branch at the Windmill in 1834, and the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (RAOB), Percy Gale Lodge 944, were still meeting and fundraising here at the end of the twentieth century.

The Phantom, previously the Cross Keys

Meanwhile, the Royal Victoria Lodge of the Order of Druidesses held their inaugural and subsequent meetings in the Mundy Arms but went dancing on the occasion of their twelfth anniversary at the Black Boy pub, now the Blacksmith’s Arms. The Mundy Arms also hosted anniversary dinners of the Ancient Order of Corks, a part of the Freemasons, while a new Lodge of the Ancient Order of Shepherds in connection with the Ancient Order of Foresters was created at the Swan-in-the-Rushes, in 1866.

12 Degrees West, previously the Mundy Arms, now Fat Sam's

The Blacksmiths, previously the Black Boy

Swan-in-the-Rushes

And sadly, that’s all I have time for this week folks! Tune in next week for a bit more about pubs!

____________________________________

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 (2023). Loughborough pubs as meeting places. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2023/11/loughborough-pubs-as-meeting-places.html [Accessed 26 November 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.

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

Iron foundries Battle of Cotes and Freemasonry

Yet again, another week of astonishing moments and visits. So many, in fact that this week I am not going to wax lyrical about iron foundries I've visited, the Civil War Walk focussing on the Battle of Cotes that I went on, nor on the visit to the meeting house of the local freemasons. Instead, I've written up last week's walk - a circular walk from the Carillon to the bellfoundry and back, via some interesting history and heritage. Here's a link to The Three Towers Trail over on the blog pages. Enjoy!    

Freemasons and motorbikes

The direction of the blog is usually determined by the direction of either my research or my footsteps, and lately there seems to be a good deal of the latter involved! Well, I suppose, the events of today are the history of tomorrow so telling you about things I've been to over the last week is thereby justified!!

Again this week, I've been lucky enough to hear about and see things that are not often on open show, and most of it has been hugely exciting!

Over on Facebook there's been a few posts about the Masonic Hall on the corner of Orchard Street and Brook Side, which relatively recently had a couple of new signs erected on the outside near the entrance. I took the pictures below on 16 October 2017, and have included this building in my Plaques Walk (which is on the blog, but hasn't quite made it to the Walks section yet!)  

Previously the sign said "Carillion Banqueting Rooms" and originally this was the Independent Congregational Chapel. I love looking at "particulars" of old sales, and as well as the Market Place sale of 1961, I've now seen the details of the sale of the above property to the Freemasons in 1956:

Messrs. Garton the Mart were again the auctioneers, and again, Moss, Toone and Deane were the solicitors involved. At the time of the sale, the building, originally constructed in 1828, with a later addition to the back, was in use as the Loughborough Adult School. There was also a brick and slated workshop at the rear, and various other outbuildings, including two former air raid shelters and "adequate lavatory accommodation"!

Back in the Market Place, not for a sale this time, but for an event. As I walked along Devonshire Square, I was overtaken by 24 motorbikes! Gosh, they were noisy! And when I got to Cattle Market there were loads parked up - all shiny and bright! Imagine the excitement when I realised there were many, many more bikes (I'm using this term to cover motorbikes, trikes, scooters etc.) - along Market Street, filling the Market Place, spilling along the pedestrianised parts of Swan Street / High Street. In the centre of the Market Place there was a makeshift arena with a musical group playing at one end, a berry van selling fresh fruit on one side, and bikes queuing to enter the arena at the other end.

Well, I don't think I've seen so many bikes in one place since I last went to Matlock, or Abergavenny!!! Here's a few of my fav things:

Now where did I put that photo of me on my father's motorbike when I was about 3??

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

Dyer, Lynne (2018). Freemasons and motorbikes. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2018/05/freemasons-and-motorbikes.html  [Accessed 20 May 2018]

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