Lynne About Loughborough: canal

Showing posts with label canal. Show all posts

Monday, 22 April 2024

S is for Swan

Talking to someone the other day, they wondered why there were a lot of swans in Melton Mowbray. I must admit, I wasn’t sure if they were talking about real, live swans, or some other kind of swan, but whichever it was, it got me to thinking about swans in Loughborough!

A couple of really obvious ones, are the real ones that can be seen on the canal, or down at Charnwood Water, or the little pond adjacent to the Tuckers clay pit off Forest Road, called Swan Lake.

Then there’s the swans that give their name to something. So, Swanns Funeral Services on Bridge Street was established in 1892. Then, we’ve got Swan Street, which joins High Street and runs towards Derby Road, via The Rushes. On one of the maps I’ve seen, The Rushes was identified as being called West Street. I can only assume that these street names came from the knowledge that the area was frequently flooded?

Of course, along The Rushes, we also have a pub called the Swan-in-The-Rushes, but it hasn’t always been called this. Previously the pub was known as the Charnwood Forest Railway Inn, then became the Charnwood Inn when the old building was demolished and the new one built in 1931-2. It wasn’t until 1986 that the name changed again, to the Swan-in-The-Rushes.

But this wasn’t the first pub in Loughborough to have the word Swan in its name. In 1831, there appears to have been a new building with a yard built on Wellington Street, which was being used as a public house called the White Swan, and had been recently occupied by George Slater. This advert appeared in the Leicester Journal and Midlands County Advertiser of 10th June 1831. This new building must have replaced an older building which was also used as a pub, but called the Black Swan. Apparently, the White Swan closed in 1959.

On my recent travels, I have seen both White Swan and a Black Swan in Melton Mowbray, and the Three Swans at Market Harborough, all of which had lovely 3D signs!

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This is one of a series of posts in the ‘April A-Z Blogging Challenge’

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Dyer, Lynne (2024). S is for Swan. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/04/s-is-for-swan.html [Accessed 22 April 2024]

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Tuesday, 2 April 2024

B is for Brooks

Just recently I've found myself discussing Loughborough's brooks with a few different friends. We have very many brooks in Loughborough; you could probably say we were awash with them (except that the Wash is in East Anglia, I think!). The brooks and their tributaries are one, among many of the reasons Loughborough is prone to flooding.

These are some of the brooks in Loughborough, or on the edge of Loughborough:

The Black Brook; this is the biggest of Loughborough’s brooks, and it flows from nearby Shepshed into the River Soar. It was built to feed the Charnwood Forest Canal in 1796, and a dam made from earthwork was created, but failed in 1799. The brook was later dammed successfully in 1906. The brook passes along by Morrisons, and through the Garendon Estate.

Black Brook Reservoir

The Burleigh Brook; this runs along Ashby Road, besides the site of the university, and some arms of the brook actually run through the campus. There was once a pond approximately where Cotswold Close is now, which was known as Burleigh Brook Park, or Tickle Belly Park. The brook passes under the Ashby Road and Garendon Road, and then runs alongside Alan Moss Road, and joins the Wood Brook close to the fire station and Loughborough hospital at the end of Epinal Way. Together the Burleigh Brook and the Wood Brook pass under the canal, right across to close to Bishop Meadow Lock, where they meet the Summerpool Brook, before then joining the River Soar, which itself then joins the canal.

The Grammar School Brook; this brook is relatively short and runs parallel with Shelthorpe Road, crosses under the Leicester Road, under and around the area around Tuckers Road, and then under the canal, close to the Peter Le Marchant moorings, to join the Hermitage Brook.

The Hermitage Brook; this is joined by the Grammar School Brook, and together they join the River Soar, where it runs parallel to Stanford Lane.

The Summerpool Brook; this appears to start at the Meadows, close to the Adey Steel factory, and is joined by the Wood Brook, and together they flow into the River Soar, before they all join the canal.

The Willow Brook; the route of the Willow Brook is very much harder to find! It is around and on the opposite side of the derby Road, where the Willow Brook Retail Park is now, and where the Willow Brook Coach Works was previously. I’ve written a bit more about this in ‘A-Z of Loughborough’, published in 2021.

The Wood Brook; this brook is probably the best known in Loughborough and joins with another brook around the bottom of Valley Road, then runs parallel to Forest Road, alongside the Home Farm sports field, across Outwoods Drive, through the Forest Green Belt, down the middle of Forest Road, skirts the leisure centre, passes the Queen’s Park entrance gates at New Street, crosses under Granby Street, then under Market Street, alongside Brookside, under The Rushes, alongside the canal, then under Jubilee Drive, and out towards the River Soar, close to Bishop Meadow lock, where it is joined by the Summerpool Brook!

As brooks in Loughborough are so important, there have been a number of streets named to reflect our brooks. These include:

Beck Crescent

Brook Lane

Brookside

Brookside Road

Summerpool Road

Woodbrook Road

Woodbrook Way (footpath)

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This post is part of a series in the 2024 ‘Blogging from A to Z April Challenge’.

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Dyer, Lynne (2024). B is for Brooks. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/04/b-is-for-brooks.html [Accessed 2 April 2024]

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Lynne

Sunday, 10 March 2024

The Victoria Pub

A very long time ago, 2013, to be precise, Bill Wells and I got together to talk about the pubs of Loughborough, just after his book, ‘Billy’s Book of Loughborough Boozers’ was published, a new edition of his earlier work. We were both familiar with the work of Eric Swift, who wrote a book entitled ‘Inns of Leicestershire’ which was published in Leicester in 1975, which covered many of the pubs in Loughborough.

Swift’s opening words in his chapter on Loughborough inns begins (I’ve split this long paragraph into a couple of shorter ones to make it easier to read on a blog):

“Loughborough owed much of its prosperity at the end of the 18th century to the canal which gave access to the [River] Trent, and later through Leicester to The Grand Junction and so to London. Several canal-side pubs are left. All can be reached from the towing path, many have a post or hitching ring, to which the bargee can attach his horse while having a drink inside.

The Albion, on the towing path as you enter Loughborough from the North, and named after a famous British battleship, is typical. The Boat, not so old, is near the bridge on Meadow Lane, and The Victoria on the bankside where Nottingham Road passes over the canal, is long delicensed: but painted on the wall it says, ‘Family and Commercial Hotel’, though I suspect the narrow boats brought a good many customers.”

If you want to find out more about life on the canal, there is an exhibition on now down at the Local and Famiyl History Centre in the Loughborough public library.

Anyway, The Boat is still there, where Swift says it is, although the houses that were attached to it on the left have been demolished. The Albion closed a few years ago, around 2015, if I remember rightly, and has been converted.

Also, as Swift says, The Victoria is still a standing building, but hasn’t been a pub for many, many years. Bill and I discussed which of the buildings “on the bankside where Nottingham Road passes over the canal” it might possibly have been, and came to the conclusion it was the one that most recently has been a car body repair shop. Although it doesn’t actually sit on the canalside, it does have the appearance from the front of looking like a pub, but we could be wrong!

Anyway, what is amazing is that this particular property on Nottingham Road has been in need of a little tlc for quite some time, so imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks ago I happened to pass by while a glazier was replacing the wooden window frames with upvc. This has given the building a bit of a facelift, and a new lease of life! Hopefully, Swift would approve!

Heading towards the railway station

Heading towards town

The former Victoria? Pictured in July 2022

Pictured in January 2024

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). The Victoria Pub. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-victoria-pub.html [Accessed 10 March 2024]

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Lynne

Sunday, 7 January 2024

Changes in Loughborough 2023

This time last year there had been so many changes to buildings in Loughborough during the year, that I felt I ought to record some of them on the blog. Well, this year has also seen lots of changes, so here I am again looking at a selection of developments during 2023. Of course, apart from actual building changes, there have also been lots of instances of building change of use, or simply building vacation.

Here are some photos of a few of the changes I've noticed (apologies that some are so out of focus - I was having a worse day for photography than usual!):

Moon and Bell closed

Windmill changed to a residential property (I couldn't find my later photo which I'm sure showed even more changes than this particular photo from October 2023 does)