Loughborough Pub Licence Transfers

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been so busy on the blog, sharing the story of the Barkers the Builders, and Remembrance 2024, that I had forgotten that the first anniversary of the publication of my book ‘Loughborough Pubs’ – inspired by and dedicated to my friend Bill Wells, who was one of a few people who encouraged me in the early days of my local history journey – was mid-November 2024!

Around this time last year, I shared some relevant legislation around pubs, and the use of pubs as meeting spaces. This time, let’s have a look at a few selected licence transfers …

Half Moon to Hunters Moon 1959 / 1961

Half Moon (previously the Half Moon Inn) on Pinfold Street, closed in 1959 and the licence was transferred to the Hunter’s Moon which opened on Monday 11th September 1961, on the junction of Walnut Road and Poplar Road in Shelthorpe. It was opened as an Ind Coope house, and that brewery had just joined a group of other brewers – Ansells (Birmingham) and Tetley (Leeds) – to become Allied Breweries. Hunter’s Moon closed and was re-opened first as a Nisa then as a Spar mid-2015, but the pub name remains on the side of the building.

Bull’s Head to Bull’s Head 1927 / 1928

The Bull’s Head on High Street had originally been a coaching inn. It closed in 1927, and the licence was transferred to the new Bull’s Head in Shelthorpe in 1928. The Shelthorpe pub itself closed in X and is now a fast-food burger restaurant.

Nelson to Maxwells 1986 / 1987

The Nelson closed in 1986, and since that time has been home to various retail shops, and is currently a mobile phone shop. The licence was transferred in 1987 to Maxwells on Maxwell Drive, which was built to serve the residents of the new housing estate in that area.

Stag and Pheasant to The Beacon 1962 / 1963

As reported in the 'Loughborough Echo' of 6th December 1963, when the Stag and Pheasant on Nottingham Road closed in 1962, the licence was transferred in 1963 to The Beacon on Beacon Road, which served the growing population of that area. In recent years, The Beacon has had a major refurbishment, a side extension, and marquees erected in the grounds. However, both The Beacon and the Stag and Pheasant are listed in the 4th edition of a CAMRA listing - 'Real Ale in Leicestershire and Rutland' - which was published in November 1981 by the Leicester and Loughborough branch of CAMRA. Was the Stag and Pheasant still operating beyond 1962? Was a licence transferred from another pub to keep the S&P going for a while? Conversations with friends leads us to believe the licence really was transferred from the one to the other, and they were not open at the same time!

Nag's Head, Swan Street to the Ring O' Bells, Derby Road 1956 / 1956

Along with the Half Moon, the Nag’s Head is the only other pub mentioned here which no longer stands. It was situated where the former Wilkinsons building is now. Of course, the Wilkinsons building was only built around 2000, and replaced a Co-operative food store which had only been built around 1960, after the demolition of the Nag’s Head. The licence was transferred to the Ring O’ Bells on Derby Road when the Nag’s Head closed in 1956.

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‘Loughborough Pubs’ is available from W H Smith in Loughborough, through various online retailers, and - for Loughborough residents - from the author upon request. 

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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 Pub Licence Transfers. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/11/loughborough-pub-licence-transfers.html [Accessed 24 November 2024]

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Finding more Loughborough connections in London

If you visited the blog last week you will have seen the post about connections I found between Loughborough and London when I recently paid a visit to the capital. There were lots and lots of these connections, and this week I’m sharing the people connections I found! 

Most of the people with connections are big people, by which, I don’t mean in size, I really mean that they’re pretty famous!!

I was lucky enough to visit the Charles Dickens Museum, which was in the house in which the family lived before poverty struck. It was fascinating to read the story of his life, his writings, and his friendships. Dickens is known to have visited Loughborough, and stayed in the Bull’s Head Hotel which used to be on High Street. It was around 1855, when he stopped off on his way to Mount St Bernard Abbey, and he wrote about his experience in a weekly journal called ‘All the Year Round’. The actual article, called ‘Out of the world’, was published in the very early days of the journal which Dickens edited – Vol.1 issue 4, to be precise – and Dickens loosely disguised Loughborough by calling it Buffborough!

The Dickens Museum in London

I spotted Phillip Larkin, the poet, in the National Portrait Gallery! Larkin used to be a regular visitor to our lovely town, when his mother, and sister, used to live on York Road. I've written about Mrs Larkin in a number of blogposts: here's an example.

Nelson’s Column was as tall as I remembered it! The man who won the competition to design a monument to commemorate Nelson, was William Railton, an architect who was responsible for the Bavarian Arch, and several lodges on the Garendon Estate, as well as some Leicestershire village churches, like St Paul’s at Woodhouse Eaves. I’ve written extensively about Railton on this blog!

Richard Cobden was a radical politician who was jointly responsible for creating the Anti-Corn Law League, which was about abolishing the laws that taxed imported wheat, making products like bread more expensive for people to buy. In Loughborough we have a school and a road named after Richard Cobden.

Lord Macaulay used to live at Rothley Court, and a few years ago a plaque was unveiled on the building: I was honoured to be invited to attend the unveiling and wrote about it on an earlier post. The first picture below was in the Dickens Museum, as lord Macaulay was a friend of the author, while the second picture was in the National Portrait Gallery.

 

Charles Booth did lots of surveys of the poor in London, and at one time lived at Grace Dieu Manor house, which was a building that had been designed by William Railton for the de Lisle family. Mrs Ada Coltman visited Mr and Mrs Booth at Grace Dieu, and Booth's wife was the daughter of Lord Macaulay. I admit to sometimes confusing Charles with William Booth he started the Salvation Army, and who once lived in Sneinton, Nottingham, and who is celebrated with a statue in London.

Charles Booth

 

William Booth

The Blacksmith’s Arms is currently being refurbished again. This building was built in 1931, and replaced an older building which had once been called the Blackboy. You can read about my theory behind that former name, and its connection to the Burnaby family on an older blogpost. The picture below is simply a man with the surname Burnaby!

 

And so to another famous person – Handel! Not a direct connection to Loughborough really, but he used to stay at Gopsall Hall, where he wrote the Messiah to words by Jennens. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t repeat myself!

Copy of Handel's Messiah

Jennens

And there I must leave connections with London!

____________________________________

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 more Loughborough connections in London. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/03/finding-more-loughborough-connections.html [Accessed 31 March 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.

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

Hurricanes in Loughborough

So, this weekend I've been off on my travels again, this time visiting Birmingham. A trip to Symphony Hall to listen to the CBSO and CBSO chorus perform Mahler's 8th symphony, often known as Symphony of 1000, was the main reason for going to Birmingham, but this event was sandwiched between some other very interesting visits.

On the first visit, I popped along to the ThinkTank Museum. I'd been before, probably about 15 years ago, when the museum was the only building on the cleared land - apart from *Loughborough Connection Alert* the Curzon Building, which was once part of the Curzon Hotel, related to the Curzon Street railway station, and is due to be incorporated into the HS2 development. The Loughborough connection is, of course, with Curzon Street, and our Odeon, Curzon being one of its former names. I wonder if these are named after Montagu Curzon who was a British politician and soldier and son of the First Earl Howe?

The Curzon building through the museum window

Loughborough's former Curzon cinema 

Anyway, today the museum is surrounded by new buildings and interesting plantings. I really wanted to visit again to see the machinery they had on the ground floor - the bean engines, the steam train, the tram, and so on. I was pleased to find a Leicestershire connection in that one of the electricity generating engine was used by William and John Henry Symington for lighting in their corset factory in Market Harborough (which if I remember rightly is the building that now houses the town museum). But, what I didn't expect to find was a connection with Loughborough, but true to form, I accidentally did!

Hanging from the ceiling of the ground floor, and viewable from the upper floors of the museum, were two aeroplanes, one of which is often talked about these days - the Spitfire. The other suspended plane was a Hurricane, designed in 1933 by Sydney Camm, and the information board told me that after its last flight in 1945, it was sent to Loughborough College, where it stayed for an unspecified amount of time. Loughborough College then donated to the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry, before being displayed a the ThinkTank.

The Spitfire, followed by the Hurricane

The Hurricane

The information board 

The information board

Jokingly, on the theme of hurricanes, I said to my other half 'I wonder if Alex Higgins ever came to Loughborough?!' ... a quick delve into some resources, and I pulled up an online forum that suggests that he did, where he played against Willie Thorne in Loughborough Town Hall: sounds like a local Derby!! I also discovered that the 1929 World Snooker Championship, which took place between 17th December 1928 and 7th March 1929, was held at a variety of venues in England, Loughborough being one of them! 

This particular match in the Town Hall 17th to 22nd December, was a semi-final between Kelsall Prince, and Tom Dennis, and was due to take place over 25 frames. Until halfway through the fourth session the match was close with Dennis was leading, but as he also won the subsequent five frames, it was Dennis who won the match. Dennis eventually lost in the final to Joe Davis. 

Loughborough Town Hall

Another Loughborough connection on the ground floor of the ThinkTank Museum was the steam engine, and the associated display which mentioned Thomas Cook's first outing, a Temperance outing to Loughborough.

The information board

Local plaque commemorating the visit of Thomas Cook

And the information board about the hotels associated with railway stations reminded me of our own Great Central Hotel, now a day nursery and flats.

The information board

The former Great Central hotel, Loughborough

The final connection with Loughborough was in the form of a Mobil Special Land Speed Record Car, designed in 1933 by Reid Anthony Railton. The car broke the World Land Speed Record in 1938, 1939 and 1947, reaching a speed of 384 miles per hour. As far as I know, Reid Railton is no relation to William Railton, architect of Beaumanor Hall, properties on the Garendon Estate and Nelson's Column at Trafalgar Square in London.

William Railton's Beaumanor Hall

William Railton's Nelson's Column

The other visit I made, after attending the concert, was to the Warstone Cemetery (sometimes called the Mint Cemetery, or the Brookfields Cemetery), over in the jewellery quarter, before walking along the canal to Winterbourne House, and Arts and Crafts former family home, now belonging to the University of Birmingham. In both these places there were connections that reminded me of Loughborough, but I'll leave until next week, as all that walking has made me rather tired ...


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

Dyer, Lynne (2020). Hurricanes in Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2020/01/hurricanes-in-loughborough.html     [Accessed 19 January 2020]

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  

Burleigh Hall

"Oh my goodness, Baron Muncaster!" I exclaimed - perhaps rather too loudly, as everyone in the room turned to look at me!

"Baron Muncaster? asked my youngest.

"Yes, you know, Baron Muncaster!"

"Errr, no! I've heard of lots of other Barons, and Lords, and Counts, and Earls ... but not Baron Muncaster!"

"If I have then you must have!" I replied. "I was hoping you'd be able to help me, because although it rings loud bells in my head, I can't remember why!"

We were standing in the middle of an exhibition at Blenheim Palace featuring the life, work and words of Sir Winston Churchill, and as is my habit I was avidly reading the detailed information boards, when I came across mention of this baronetcy, which made me squeal. The name sounded so familiar, but wasn't one that cropped up often. Other exhibition visitors were, of course, quietly looking around, absorbing the astonishing history that was being presented, and I'd invoked their displeasure, somewhat, with my obvious excitement.

The youngest seems to have an appetite for, and an understanding of the ranks of the nobility, and regularly has his nose in Debrett's Peerage. He's also done the family tree and established his distant relationship with Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer (very distant - 4th cousin 1x removed of husband of 5th cousin 3x removed!) so when I mention specifically named persons in the  ranks of the peerage, he can usually tell me exactly who they are and how they got their rank. But not this time!

It took me a while, and a lot of wracking of my brain, but I finally got there, and realised why the name meant something to me, but not to my youngest - there was a Loughborough connection, and I was kicking myself for not getting there sooner! Here's an extract from "Secret Loughborough" which mentions Baron Muncaster:

"...in 1902 ...Burleigh Hall became the home of the Honourable Alan Joseph Pennington, son of the 3rd Baron Muncaster."

So, my memory was right - it just took rather a long time to get there!!

There were quite a number of other things I saw that reminded me of Loughborough. One of which was the statue honouring the 1st Earl of Marlborough, called the Column of Victory, which took me to Nelson's Column in London, designed by the architect William Railton, which then reminded me of the many Leicestershire buildings that Railton designed - like St Paul's Church in Woodhouse Eaves, and the lodges on the Garendon Estate.

Column of Victory

Column of Victory 

Column of Victory

Column of Victory

Nelson's Column by William Railton

In the library having oooohed and ahhhed over the books, I then found myself peering at the tiny black radiators! Of course, the chances of them being made by Messengers was low, and indeed, I didn't manage to find any indication of the makers.

A short, low radiator

A long, low radiator (showing scale!)

A long, low radiator

Also in the library was rather a shocker!!! An organ!! Maybe not the kind of thing you'd expect to find in a library? It was absolutely beautiful, and it was great to hear that it was in regular use. This wasn't the only organ, however, and as one would expect, the other one being in the Chapel. What was surprising though, was how tiny the chapel organ was!! These organs reminded me of our All Saints with Holy Trinity church, and in particular the series of organ concerts they hold every Sunday in August.

The organ in the library

The organ in the library

The organ in the library

The organ in the library

The organ in the chapel

The organ in the chapel (showing scale!)

The organ in the chapel

Introducing the organist at All Saints

The organist in action at All Saints

And, finally, Ladybird Books - well, an offshoot, at least - appeared, taking me right back to my childhood and the exhibition currently on at New Walk Museum, Leicester.

Ladybird products

Ladybird covers, exhibition at New Walk Museum

Ladybird covers, exhibition at New Walk Museum

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). Burleigh Hall. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/08/burleigh-hall.html [Accessed 18 August 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