Celebrating our history through commemorative plaques

I've been lucky enough this last week to be able to attend a couple of events that celebrate the contribution made t our local society by a number of individuals.

I'm sure you've heard of the Leicestershire County Council green plaque scheme, and the Charnwood Borough Council brown plaque scheme. There are some examples of green plaques on the blogpost called Walking the Plaques, and some brown plaques make an appearance in 'Secret Loughborough'. 

Basically, they're a bit like the London blue plaque scheme, which is currently administered by English Heritage, and is essentially focussed on London. This particular scheme has been run by English Heritage since 1986, but had already been running for over 120 years, by other organisations. English Heritage tried extending the scheme to the whole of the country, but found that local councils and other organisations already had things covered, so they remained focussed on London. As an example, Harrogate in North Yorkshire, has over 80 brown plaques honouring people, places and events related to the town.

Leicestershire County Council's scheme has been going for about five years now, and around 24 commemorative plaques have been revealed across the county, honouring people and places - like John Heathcoat, Angel Yard, and William Cotton - and Sunloch, the winner of the Grand National in 1916 (these are just examples from Loughborough). Suggestions are made by the public and a longlist is made, the public then voting for their six choices.

This week I went along to the unveiling of a green plaque commemorating two Suffragettes from Loughborough, sisters, Kathleen and Nora Corcoran. They were active in the movement and members of the local Labour History Society have been researching their story, and produced a booklet describing the life and events in the story of the sisters. As they used to live in a property called The Shanty, on Casteldine Street, the plaque has been mounted on the wall of a property on that street. The houses have now lost their original names, and now have numbers, but, for a number of reasons, the plaque is on the wall of the house next to the one the sisters lived in.

The event was popular, and was attended by quite a number of people. First, there was a reception event with speeches about the sisters, followed by the unveiling in situ, and then a further reception event along with a visit to the Red House on Burton Street, the site of a fire, allegedly started by the sisters. You can read more about the sisters on the county council website, and the full text of the booklet produced by Mike Shuker of the Labour History Society can also be read on the web.

Inside the hall

Speeches in the hall

Awaiting the unveiling

About to perform the deed!

The unveiling

The plaque unveiled

Refreshments back in the hall

Inside the Red House

Over in Rothley the previous week, I was at the Rothley Court Hotel, once home to the Knights Templar, for the unveiling of a Charnwood brown plaque honouring Lord Macaulay, who was born here. Thomas Babington Macaulay, lived from 1800-1859, who amongst other things, was an historian, and Whig politician, serving under two prime ministers, Lord Melbourne, and Lord John Russell. The Encyclopedia Britannica have an excellent biography of the man.

Before the plaque unveiling, we perused the information stand and listened to a speech about Lord Macaulay and his life. Making our way outside, the weather was not brilliant but the rain was light enough not to detract from the actual unveiling of the plaque.

Here's a link to the official Charnwood Borough Council report of the unveiling of the plaque to Lord Macaulay:

https://www.charnwood.gov.uk/news/2019/10/29/charnwood_heritage_plaque_revealed_to_honour_local_historian

And here's how to nominate someone, something or a place for a brown heritage plaque: https://www.charnwood.gov.uk/pages/heritage_plaques

The entrance to Rothley Court

The information stand

Some of the literature available

Before the unveiling

The speeches

The unveiling

Some of the attendees to the event

The plaque unveiled

Close-up of the plaque

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). Celebrating our history through commemorative plaques. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/11/celebrating-our-history-through.html  [Accessed 3 November 2019]

Take down policy:

 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

Suffragettes

Perhaps 17th December is a little too soon to be blogging about what 2018 might bring, but I thought it might be an idea to give some advance warning that 2018 is going to be looking back 100 years, to the Representation of the People Act (6th February), which led to an increase from 8 million folk being allowed to vote, to about 21 million. 

Over on the UK Parliament website, they explain that only 58% of adult men had the vote prior to 1918, this being restricted to property and landowners, and excluded many members of the armed forces who might not have been resident in Britain for the full 12 months before an election.

The Representation of the People Act gave the vote to all men over the age of 21, all male armed forces personnel over the age of 19, and women of property, over the age of 30 were also given the vote. Nevertheless, there was still inequality which was finally sorted with the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 (2nd July), when all women over the age of 21 were enabled to vote. 

A couple of pages from the 1918 Act are available here.

Leicester have been fortunate enough to have been awarded some money to use for celebratory and commemorative events in the coming year, along with 6 other cities - Manchester, Leeds, Bolton, Bristol, London and Nottingham. A prominent Leicester Suffragette was Alice Hawkins, who died in 1946, and in whose honour a new statue is being sculpted and will probably be erected in Leicester's new Market Square in February 2018. There's some more information about the sculptor here, and a bit more about the location here. 

There's plenty of information out there about Alice, like this comprehensive website, and a book about the lady in question: Whitmore, Richard (2007). Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette movement in Edwardian Leicester. Breedon Books. There's also an interesting website in the making on which we'll be able to search for local events during 2018.

Talking of local - well, this is a Loughborough-focussed blog, after all - we had our own Suffragettes in Loughborough, Nora and Kathleen Corcoran, daughters of Dr Corcoran. There's a bit more information on them by Mike Shuker in East Midlands History and Heritage, Issue 3, July 2016, pp. 17-19, and an article in the Loughborough Echo of March 2016. I believe there is some connection between the sisters and a fire at the Red House on Burton Walks - oops, better not mention the Red House, about which I was going to blog, ummm, over a year ago (sorry).

Anyway, next year will see many events taking place in Loughborough in commemoration of the Suffragettes and their protests, including exhibitions, talks and other special moments. 

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). Snowy Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/12/suffragettes.html [Accessed 17 December 2017]

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  

Red, white or maybe green?

Ah, hello! Thanks for dropping by. If you landed here because of your interest in the 2016 US Presidential campaign, you may wish to go back to your search results and try a different link, unless you're interested in the houses of Loughborough, in which case, do please read on!

There's something that's been bugging me for a while, a couple of years in fact, since I did my tour guide qualification, when I had the luxury of time to spend looking through books, maps, newspapers and all the ephemera in the local studies room at Loughborough public library.

Now, I'm no map reader, but I spent hours poring over the old maps of the town, trying to visualise where things were then and where they are now - if you see what I mean! A good friend had said it would be really interesting to overlay the older map with a newer map and see what once stood on the site of those things that are so familiar to us today.

What a good idea, I thought, but not one I've ever had time to do anything about (I'm sure there's someone out there who has had the time and skills to do this though!), except to puzzle over the odd thing that I couldn't quite make sense of at the time.

So, I've now been thinking about this for more than 3 years, and, as is often the case, it's taken me this long to work it out. Ok, so it's been bubbling away in the back of my mind for this long, whilst a whole lot of other things have been at the front, but gradually I've managed to make some sense of what appeared to me to be conflicting information.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to get much pictorial evidence I need for this blog, so I hope my words, and the few pics I've got will be enough to convince you!

On an 1880s map of the town, I was looking along Leicester Road when I spotted the words "White House". Hmmm, was that going North or going South? Did I have the map up the wrong way, the right way, upside down, or what? Well, whichever way I held the map, it seemed to me that the White House was on the wrong side of Leicester Road. Ah, now, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, is it not? I was aware that the route of Leicester Road had changed over the years, and that the main road used to turn into Pack Horse Lane at one time (which, of course, means it was one-way in the opposite direction from what it is today), so maybe Leicester Road further down had moved too? Not very likely really, is it?!

Anyway, my consternation was because I had discovered whilst investigating the history of Middleton Place, that there was a White House on the Fairfield School site. This was so called because at one time, Fairfield House had been built as the home of the White family, who were owners in the hosiery company Paget and White, in 1823, before Augusta Sophia Middleton moved here quite some time after the death of her husband, Edward William Craddock Middleton, who died in 1887. At the time of the 1901 census she was still living in Shelthorpe Cottage (now The Cedars) and some of the White family were still living in the White House, but shortly afterwards, the Whites had moved out, and Mrs Middleton had moved in. 

Today, Fairfield House, now called the White House, is still on the Fairfield School site, but the view has been rather eclipsed by a new building, which sits in front of it. The view from Southfields Park isn't all that great either.

As we all know, Fairfield School is on the right hand side of Leicester Road as you head towards Leicester, and I'm pleased to tell you that this part of Leicester Road follows the original road and hasn't moved! If we travel out of Loughborough along this stretch of Leicester Road, to the point where there is a left turn into Beeches Road, with the BP garage on one corner and Maher's the off-licence on the other (actually, Maher's is now called Lifestyle Express), let's stop here for a moment. 

I believe this is the position of the other White House, which appeared as the only White House on that 1880s map! Maher's Lifestyle Express is it! If you walk along Leicester Road just beyond that left turn and look at the corner shop from the side and the back, I think you'll agree that this would have been quite a substantial property at the time it was built. And I believe this it the White House I couldn't quite place until recently. I haven't had time to check and see when it was built, nor who lived there over the years, so that's a blog post for another day! Talking of which, I haven't had time tonight to cover the Red House, or the Green House, or do I mean greenhouse? So that'll have to wait a while too!
     

Walking away from Maher's down Leicester Road

Maher's from the opposite side of Leicester Road

Maher's on the corner of Leicester Road and Beeches Road

A map of LES campus showing the White House in the middle of the block on the front right (No. 5)

A view of the White House (formerly Fairfield House) from Southfields Park

Fairfield (now the White House) just above middle of photo

White House, corner Windmill (now Beeches) Road

  

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

Dyer, Lynne (2016). Red, white or maybe green? [Online] Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2016/06/red-white-or-maybe-green.html [Accessed 19 June 2016]