A trip around Loughborough in early May

So, the blog has been a little wordy of late, so here are some photos I've taken around Loughborough during the first weeks of May 2025. Enjoy! First, some beautiful flowers in Queen's Park

A visit to the ceramics market

Looking out over Loughborough town centre

I think this one is the back of what used to be the Art Deco building of Marsden's the grocers, and is now Caffe Nero

Lloyds Bank

I found this view intriguing, as it shows the Art Deco decorations (on the right) from a different angle!

This is the top of the former Prudential building, part of which is now occupied by Max Spielmann and Subway

Building flats where Ellwoods garage used to be on Pinfold Gate

The new canopy on Southfields Park is now open, and the footpath around the park perimeter is now re-opened!

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Dyer, Lynne (2025). A trip around Loughborough in early May. Available from:  https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-trip-around-loughborough-in-early-may.html [Accessed 11 May 2025]

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May Day

After the excitement of International Art Deco Day last week, I suddenly realised how quickly April had passed by and that we were now into May. I was thinking about this yesterday, particularly about the Loughborough Lions carnival that used to be held on Southfields park - at least, I think it was the Lions. I must admit I didn't go every year, and in those days I certainly didn't take a camera around with me so I have no pictures to share.

Apparently, in 1998, they reckoned about 5,000 people went along to see a wide range of attractions and entertainment, some of the most popular being a mediaeval jousting tournament, a falconry display, a fancy dress parade and a drum band. Alongside the entertainment for the grown-ups was a funfair for children. Apparently, there was also a car boot sale! The event made about £4,000 and this was donated to charity. The Lions no longer hold a carnival on Southfields park, but I can't quite remember when they stopped.

As well as the Lions carnival, another event I think we probably see less of these days is traditional May Day celebrations with the crowning of a May Queen, dancing around a maypole and Morris dancing. 

Back in 1915, the girls of the Church Gate school celebrated May Day, and parents were invited along to watch. The event started with a procession, headed by the outgoing May Queen who was followed by the forthcoming queen. During the crowning ceremony, songs were sung, and then the outgoing queen gave a speech. The headmistress then gave out medals and bouquets, before the new May Queen also gave a speech. and then led the procession around the school playground. The event finished with dancing, which included Maypole and Morris.

Some of the children who took part in this event included: Elsie Barker, Evelyn Coltman, Dorris Bostock (outgoing queen), Gladys Yallup, Lizzie Brooks, P. Smith, D. Brown, I. Russell, E. Hunt, Edna Chappell (new queen), Connie Musson, Lilian Painter, Agnes Limehouse, Lizzie Howard, Doris Mee, Clarice West, Edna Morris, Dolly Gray, Daisy Simpson, Eveline May Haslam, and Edith O. Slinger. Those taking part in the dancing included: Agnes Limehouse, Doris Smith, GladysTallutt, Enid Collinson, Connie Musson, Lilian Painter and Madge Sadler. 

 

Of course, the other meaning of Mayday is that it's a word used as an international distress signal, although the well-known phrase is actually Mayday Mayday Mayday. It is used primarily by aviators and mariners, and signals a life-threatening emergency. One vessel which probably didn't need to use this distress signal was the RMS Aquitania, which was an ocean liner of the Cunard Line, and was operational between 1914 and 1950. During the Forst World War the ship operated as transport for troops, and as a hospital. Reverting to a passenger ship after the war, the ship was considered to be quite attractive and gained the nickname 'the Ship Beautiful'. When the ship was retired from service in 1949, it was the last four-funnelled ocean liner. The ship was scrapped in 1950. Y

You may be wondering why I'm mentioning all this? You may remember Clarence George Starkey, the first manager of our Odeon on Baxter Gate? Well, he was one of the 1.2 million people who travelled on the Aquitania, which sailed over 3 million miles and made 450 journeys. Starkey travelled from Southampton to New York in 1922, and spent the ensuing 10 years in the US before returning to Britain to become manager of the Regal cinema in Bradford. 

 

Join me next time and see where our voyage takes us! 

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough 2 May 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). Art Deco in Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2021/05/may-day.html [Accessed 2 May 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               

Thomas Cook or Maypole Dairy?

I recently caught sight of an interesting photograph of a Maypole Dairy which I want to tell you about, but first I feel I should explain about Thomas Cook!!

I was taken to task last week for suggesting that Loughborough was not a traditional tourist destination, because of the outing Thomas Cook made in 1841. Let me explain ...

When I suggested we weren't a touristy place, I was thinking around a number of things. When I first visited Loughborough I was an avid collector of souvenirs of places I'd visited, which usually took the form of a keyring with the name of the place on it. Sometimes these were beautiful with crests on, other times they were plastic fobs with a blurry picture of the place on, and other times they were a leather affair with the name of the town printed on. I looked all around the town, but the only one I could find was in Woolworths, and was one of the rather less-than-inspiring leather ones. I've still got it (and the rest of the collection) probably upstairs in the attic.

Ok, that's perhaps not the best reason to suggest Loughborough is not a tourist destination! The other thing that I was thinking was that I think people who would consider spending a week's holiday in Leicestershire are probably in the minority (something to do perhaps with a lack of coastline, and a dearth of charismatic, legendary heroes, like Robin Hood). I know I'm a bit on dodgy ground here, after all, Leicester now has Richard III, and it's true that visitors to the city have increased as a result of this, and not everyone wants to see the sea! 

As I said last week, when I first came to Loughborough there was a tourist information centre, but now there isn't. True, Leicester has a destination organisation in Leicestershire Promotions and they've done a good job of trying to connect tourist venues in the city and the county. And, as you know, I'm forever extolling the virtues of our 5 museums, our Local and Family History Centre, our wonderful buildings, our parks, our cinemas, our markets, our fair and everything else I can, when I chat with people, take people on guided walks, give talks, blog or write books. the one thing I keep forgetting to mention is that all our 'attractions' are within a very close area. If you start at the Market Place and walk the shortest route, these are the distances:

To Charnwood Museum in Queen's Park - 0.2 miles
To the Carillon in Queen's Park - 0.25 miles
To the Old Rectory Museum - 0.3 miles
To Taylors Bellfoundry - 0.5 miles
To the Great Central Railway - 0.8 miles 

So what of the Thomas Cook connection? Cook, living at Market Harborough, brought a party of about 500 people along to Loughborough from Leicester on a Temperance outing, on 5 July 1841. They each paid one shilling to travel by train, and arrived at the Midland Main Line station from where they walked to the meeting on Paget's Park, which I believe is now known as Southfields Park. This trip was successful, and Cook planned and executed excursions for Temperance supporters and school children over the next few summers. By 1854 Cook had given up his trade as a woodturner, and begun to make a living from arranging trips. So this is what makes Cook's trip from Leicester to Loughborough the first 'package tour', or more accurately, the first of Cook's package tours. 

Of course, Cook's trip in July 1841 was not the first trip to take place. An example of an earlier one happened when the Nottingham Mechanic's Institute brought a group of between 400 and 500 members by rail to Leicester to visit that town's * own Mechanic's Institute. This appears to have been a very successful visit despite there being few people around to welcome the visitors. However, by the time the group came to leave they were enthusiastically waved off by thousands of Leicester people.  

It does appear, however, that Leicester seems to play a role in those early trips. Sorry for the lack of photos and dense text!

Now, onto the Maypole Dairy. Ahhhh, sorry, I've run out of time today, so I'll be back next week with that story.

Thank you for reading. 

* Although Leicester was a city at the time of the Domesday Book, it lost that status in the 11th century, not regaining it until 1919, thus at the time of the visit of the Nottingham Mechanic's Institute, Leicester was a town. Nottingham gained its city status in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

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). Thomas Cook or Maypole Dairies? Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/02/thomas-cook-or-maypole-dairy.html   [Accessed 24 February 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     
    

Magistrate's Court, Police Station and the Wheatsheaf Pub

Magistrates, police and spar ornaments

Yesterday morning I had an early start for a Saturday as I had to be at Heathrow Airport to pick up number one son, whose flight from Central America arrived at 9.40. Worried that the Bank Holiday traffic queues would be enormous, and that the world and his wife would be travelling to Heathrow, and the airport would be really busy, I set off at 7am, with some trepidation. Luckily, I arrived at about the same time as the flight and managed to find a space in the short stay car park reasonably easily. The airport was fairly quiet and I had no trouble finding said son in amongst the other disembarkees.

Number one son playing bowls

As a result of this speedy operation, we were on our way home by about 11am and finally arrived about 1.15. He had some lunch and then I whisked him off to the bowls club to take part in a doubles match, which left me with a free afternoon, having not scheduled anything because I hadn’t been sure what time I’d actually get home.

What's left of the police station

Hubby wanted to nip into town, and I also needed a few things, so we walked in together. Usually, we walk along Albert Street, but today we went via Southfields Park, where we passed the new police station. I’d forgotten they were demolishing the old one, but we had a good view of the pile of rubble that is now the former police station.

Which set me thinking …

The Magistrate's Court on Woodgate

Police cell on the right

Now, I know I should know the answer to this, and I have read it somewhere, but, I think the police station which is currently being demolished was built in the late 60s / early 70s. This new building replaced the former police station, which was situated within the Magistrate’s Court on Woodgate. If you walk down Town Hall Passage from Woodgate, you can see 3 windows at ground level on your right, but there is also a window at waist height, which is the old police cell, where prisoners were kept.

The police department left this building to move into dedicated premises, but the Magistrate’s Court continued in this capacity until about 2007 when the new Magistrate’s Court was built on a plot facing the NHS Walk-In Centre, being at right angles to Sparrow Hill. I must admit, the new Magistrate’s Court looks nice, and even won the Building of the Year Award in the Leicestershire and Rutland Society of Architects at the annual award ceremony. Strangely, when, rather belatedly, I settled down to read this week’s local paper, there was a letter in there about the court being underused, and a comment about it now being on the inner relief road, and therefore being seen as the architects intended. Ok, it’s great if the need to use the building is less than expected, but a shame that such a new building has already lost its sense of purpose.

The other thing that happened, because we chose to walk into town a different way, was that I met an old friend in a shop I wouldn’t normally go into because it’s not on my route into town, and how fortuitous that turned out to be! She had recently been clearing out her parents’ home and had come across loads of old photos of Loughborough: I love old photos, especially ones showing people and buildings together, which help to piece together the history of the town.

The Orange Tree (formerly The Wheatsheaf)

My friend also told me about the shop next to the Orange Tree (formerly the Wheatsheaf pub): Apparently, there were spirits in there, which explained why no-one would stand near the till, and also an elderly lady in the back room who didn’t like the constant comings and goings of people. She also told me that long ago that if you went down the passage at the side of the shop and the pub there were houses there, and that there had been a big fire, which burnt them down. This was of great interest to me as this is where Henry Moore was a spar ornament maker. I’d already worked out that the Wheatsheaf Yard contained lots of little houses around a central courtyard, but it was so great to have it confirmed!

The Town Hall

After this I visited the Town Hall to see the new exhibition of local art and paintings. This was fantastic and there was some wonderful stuff on display, which is well worth a look if you have time. 

The Hospital mural

Finally, I walked past the site of the former hospital on Baxtergate and noticed that planning notices had been pinned to the mural: Applications have been submitted by Pizza Express, Bella Italia and Centro, so it looks as though we will be getting another cinema, along with at least two new restaurants.  

That’s all for this week, folks! See ya next week!