Windmills

This last week seems to have been extremely busy and exciting, with a focus on things industrial - well, not exclusively industrial, but quite a lot!

Monday evening I attended a talk in Woodhouse Eaves about windmills - well, mostly windmills, with a bit of watermills and steam mills thrown in for good measure! 

Wednesday evening I was at the Friends of Charnwood Museum talk on the geology of Charnwood, which included many references to the local quarries. 

Friday evening I was spellbound by a production called Murder By Gaslight,which took place in the Guildhall in Leicester: this was a professional production by Don't Go Into The Cellar, and was about Dr William Palmer and Dr Crippen.

Saturday afternoon I went along to the opening ceremony of the New Lount Industrial Trail. The nature trail has been there for quite some time, but the new industrial trail sees interpretation boards around the site, indicating where various parts of the coal mine used to be.

Sunday afternoon I visited the Shepshed watermill which was open as part of National Mills Weekend. Fabulous visit which kind of complemented Monday's talk. We were shown a map of 1826 which showed about 88 mills, but there were apparently about 130 windmill, with 4 such mills being in Loughborough. 

The Loughborough mills were: one in what is now the Midland Railway Station car park; one on Windmill Road, off Beeches Road, near where Ladybird Books, now Anstey Wallpapers, used to be; one on the site that is now occupied by Emmanuel Church, and one near the Windmill Inn, on Sparrow Hill. The latter, a post mill, was probably the subject of an illustration by John Throsby in 1789, in which the Church of All Saints (now with Holy Trinity) appears in the background. Of course, this is not a photographic representation of what the mill would have looked like, rather an idealised, rather romantic view, but none of the Loughborough mills still exist so there's nothing to compare the Throsby view with.

Unlike the Loughborough mills, the Shepshed mill does still exist: the mill was originally owned by the De Lisle family (of Garendon), and Henry Draper was the last miller to use it for its intended purpose. By 1956, the mill was derelict, and was bought by Bernard Foulquies, a hosier from Leicester, who eventually converted the tower mill into a dwelling, in fact it was one of the very first of such conversions. The restoration didn't go smoothly, as at one point it was possible that the route of the M1 would have meant demolition, but luckily the route of the motorway was later changed, although a subsequent earthquake did cause damage to the mill. Originally the mill had 4 sails, but here's what the mill looks like today:

The only thing I'm not sure about is the name of the windmill: I've seen references to a Blackbrook windmill, and a Fenney Spring windmill, both in Shepshed. I'm inclined to think they refer to the same windmill, but I'd be happy to put right on that!

Anyway, if having a restored windmill wasn't enough, Shepshed also has a watermill! This was also once part of the Garendon Estate, but went into other ownership in the 1970s and has more recently been restored, winning a national award for preservation in 2003. Nowadays, the mill is open a number of Sundays a year, and hosts car shows, Wartime events, and storytelling.

So, lots of restoration going on in Shepshed, apart from the milestone on the A512, but don't get me started on milestones!!!

  
Further resource on mills.
  

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

Dyer, Lynne (2017). Windmills. Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/05/windmills.html [Accessed 14 May 2017]

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Kendal Troutbeck Scotland Carlisle and the Loughborough Connection Part 1

Oh dear, I've been on holiday again, but, even as far away as Scotland, Loughborough has never been far from my mind!

On the way up to Scotland (somewhere called Portsonachan - we stayed in the Portsonachan Hotel, a break we bought at the Prestwold Hall Food Festival in May 2016) we stopped off at Kendal in the Lake District. I was quite impressed with the size of the Carnegie Library, and the fact that it appeared to made of red stone, rather like our own.

The other thing that impressed me was the obvious care that was given to their yards and courts: we also had a lot of these in Loughborough, and funnily enough, Kendal had an Angel Yard, not unlike ours, although I doubt they had a world-famous publisher based in theirs!!

Like Loughborough, Kendal has a market, the charter for which was granted in 1189, while Loughborough's was granted in the 1200s:

Sign over Kendal Market

The main street in Kendal is called Highgate, and this was the name of Loughborough's High Street before it became the High Street:

Highgate, Kendal

Having spent a few hours wandering around Kendal, we moved on to Troutbeck, a small villlage near Windemere. Here we were in serious rolling countryside, the home of sheepfarmers. While my thoughts turned to Robert Bakewell, I was also struck by the piles of slate I saw scattered along the roadside. 

Sheep at Troutbeck

Slates at Troutbeck

We still had a long journey to Scotland ahead of us, so we stayed the night in Dumfries. This was a very interesting town with strong links to Robert Burns, the celebrated Scottish poet, and we were staggered by the mausoleum, but even more so by the size of the gravestones in St Michael's churchyard. Most seemed to be made of the local sandstone, and were huge, and some had angels carved into them.

Enormous gravestones

What I would call normal sized gravestones

An angel carved into the sandstone gravestone

We visited several museums in Dumfries, many with a Robert Burns connection, but it was at the Dumfries Museum that there was a strong connection with Loughborough, in he shape of a sock - a garment fashioned on a framework knitting machine, although most likely to be made of wool.

A framework knitted sock 

As if that weren't enough, there was also a model of a cruck frame building, rather like our very own Windmill Inn, our Manor House (now Caravellis) and Lowes.

Model of a cruck frame building

Gosh, we're still only in Dumfries, and so so much more to write!! I think I'll leave that until next week! Pop back and hear about more local connections!

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

Dyer, Lynne (2017). Kendal, Troutbeck, Scotland, Carlisle and the Loughborough connection part 1. [Online] Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/02/kendal-troutbeck-scotland-carlisle-and.html [Accessed 18 February 2017]