Victorian factories

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably have picked up that I'm a bit of a fan of our smaller towns and villages, rather than our big cities. Hence, I find Loughborough to be the perfect size, and only tend to visit cities on holiday - apart from Leicester, which I travel to regularly for work. Years ago I used to visit Nottingham, but rarely go these days.

Anyway, my point is that I have avoided trips to the capital as far as possible, and have also avoided trips to England's second biggest city, apart from around Christmas 2003 when I took the oldest child to see one of his schoolfriends dance in The Nutcracker ballet at the Hippodrome, and a couple of evening trips 2014/15 to see the youngest child perform with the Birmingham Junior Conservatoire Band. 

However, I've recently had the occasion to visit Birmingham for work, and specifically to visit the museums. I was quite surprised by what I found, and couldn't help but make some connections with Loughborough.

Ok, so we haven't got anything equivalent to Symphony Hall in Loughborough, unless you consider the interior, which looks very Art Deco to me and reminded me of our Beacon Bingo, which opened as an Odeon Cinema in 1936.

The auditorium at Symphony Hall

One of the doors into the auditorium at Symphony Hall

Beacon Bingo, once The Odeon, Loughborough

The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter involved a guided tour around the factory of Smith and Pepper. The business opened in 1899 and closed in 1981, but the factory was never cleared out and instead has been preserved, like a time capsule, affording a fascinating insight into what it would have been like to work in a Victorian factory. The similarity with framework knitting was obvious really, if I'd stopped to think about it, and then also with the Herbert Morris factory. The buildings had long narrow rooms with very large windows along the long side and having the opposite interior wall painted white - all to bring in and reflect as much light as possible so the workers could see the intricate work they were doing. When the original building was extended, another long, narrow building was erected with windows sloping up to the roof (not a good description, but you'll see what I mean when you see the photos). The walls of the building opposite were then clad in white tiles - were these possibly Hatherware? Buildings that were used by framework knitters in Loughborough would have had windows very close to the roof and there were likely to have been glass globes filled with water hanging in them, which would have spread the light on the work being done. The Morris factory had those sloping windows I mentioned above - maybe they are called skylights (of a sort), and it is believed that these lights attracted the attention of a passing Zeppelin on the night of 31st January 1916. 

White tiled wall and glass roof at the Jewellery Quarter Museum

White tiled wall and ground floor windows at the Jewellery Quarter Museum

Large side windows, roof windows and white tiled walls at the Jewellery Quarter Museum

Machinery at the Jewellery Quarter Museum

I think the slope of the roofs would originally have been glass at Herbert Morris

I also visited the Coffin Works, which was another Victorian factory, frozen in time, started in 1882 and closed in 1997. The guided tour was of the Newman Brothers factory, where they made handles and decorations for coffins, as well as satin interiors, and shrouds (but not the coffins themselves). What this factory had in common with Smith and Pepper factory was that they were both working with metal, and the smell of grease, the sound of the presses was also common to both. In both factories, the guides did some demonstrations of some of the work that the employees would have done. I couldn't help but think of our bellfoundry. It's a working Victorian factory: it's hot; it's noisy; it's smelly and it's blummin dangerous! 

The Coffin works 

Metalworking at Taylors 2017

My final museum visit (can't really count a cuppa in the Edwardian tearooms in the main museum and art gallery in Town Hall Square!) was to the Pen Museum. Well, that was fascinating! So many pen nibs!!! What did they say - 90% of the world's words at one time were written using a nib from Birmingham! Staggering! It was also in this museum that I read a little about the gun factories in Birmingham, which is interesting because Natahaniel Corah, who started Corah's in Leicester, in the mid-1800s, but not before he'd spent his early years as a framework knitter, then at 27 going to work in a gun factory in Birmingham! And, he used to do business in The Globe pub in Leicester, which is so-called in honour of those framework knitters! Two questions arise here, for further investigation sometime, the first of which is was Nathaniel Corah any relation to the builders, and printers of the same name in Loughborough?

Information about the Birmingham gun quarter

The other question concerns one of the Birmingham pen-making firms which was named after the owner - Joseph Gillott: is there any connection with the Gillott's of Loughborough who had the garage of that name?

Gillott's factory

Nibs at the Pen Museum

Joseph Gillott

Gillott's nibs

Picture of the interior of Gillett's factory

A couple of other incidental connections were that at the Coffin Works they had a machine produced by SamcoStrong in Leicester, which the other half used to work for, and all the museums I visited had typewriters, but it wasn't until I got to the last one (the Pen Museum) that I found an Imperial typewriter from Leicester. 

A SamcoStrong hydraulic cutting press

An Imperial typewriter from Leicester

Other connections to Loughborough - like the canal and terracotta buildings - will have to wait for another blogpost now, as I've run out of time.

Canal, lock and bridge in Birmingham

Terracotta building in the centre of Birmingham

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). Plaques. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/03/victorian-factories.html  [Accessed 17 March 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

Shakespeare in Loughborough: Macbeth, pubs and, um framework knitters!

Shakespeare in Loughborough

Last week was the birthday of our most famous playwright, William Shakespeare, who was born on 23 April 1564. Incidentally, he also died on 23 April, 52 years later in 1616. So, what better way to celebrate the occasion by experiencing a production of one of his plays, in Loughborough itself.

The Festival Players are a Loughborough-based amateur dramatic society, who began life in 1954. The history of the society  shows that they have played many types of productions, including musicals, and plays in many genres. However, I couldn’t find a mention of any Shakespeare in there, so I’m assuming that last week’s performance of Macbeth was a first for them. And what a first it was!

 

 

 

The Festival Players were lucky enough to be taking part in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages initiative, which gives selected amateur performers access to workshops, support and mentoring from the RSC, and this was evident in FP’s Macbeth, especially in the battle scenes, which felt realistic, and yet safe!

The acting was great, the set was versatile, and the whole atmosphere dark and scary, made all the more realistic by the venue – Sir Robert Martin Theatre at the university – having a floor level stage area, rather than a traditional raised stage. Interestingly, the inaugural production of the Festival Players - Young Wives’ Tale - took place in Martin Hall, which is the building in which the Sir Robert Martin Theatre is found.

In their time, the Festival Players have played in Stanford Hall Theatre, in Martin Hall, Hind Leys Theatre, The Cope Auditorium, and Loughborough Town Hall.

Back to Shakespeare though. As he is our most famous playwright, I suppose it is to be expected that there will be plenty of things named after him. I’m thinking roads, pubs, theatres etc.. We know Daniel Defoe – he of Robinson Crusoe fame – passed through Loughborough, and wasn’t hugely impressed, suggesting our little market town was of no note, but I wonder if Shakespeare ever passed through? He must surely have known Francis Beaumont (1584 – 6 March 1616), born at Grace Dieu and (I think) a descendant of the former Lords of the Manor, a fellow playwright who also wrote for the King’s Men. Beaumont often collaborated with John Fletcher, and in his turn Fletcher collaborated with Shakespeare on Henry VIII, the play said to be jinxed as it was during a production of this play that the Globe Theatre in London burnt down.

The former Shakespeare / Crown & Thistle

 

 

Anyway, at one time, and certainly in 1889, we had a pub called the Shakespeare, on Sparrow Hill. This changed its name to the Crown and Thistle, closing in 1922, and latterly being a flower shop owned by Sid Powell, which can be found next to Caravelli’s. Of course, we still have Shakespeare Street in town – just like other places have, e.g. Nottingham, Southport, Newcastle, Lincoln, and Glasgow – which has Shakespeare Street School at the end of it. This locally listed building in gothic-revival style has had various uses over the years, including being used by the university for its chemistry department (I think it was chemistry) and as an annex for Limehurst School.

 

 

 

Moving from Loughborough to Leicester, we find there was a Shakespeare’s Head pub on Southfields Road, although this can have had no relation to Shakespeare the bard, as the name was actually the Shakespeares Head, a grammar error that Shakespeare is unlikely to have made! This 1960s pub closed in 2012 and has recently re-opened as a sports bar, grill and café called the Fat Budha. There is also a pub called The Globe in Leicester, on Silver Street, which has been going since the 1720s. Rather naively and until relatively recently, I thought this was some reference to Shakespeare, but I now know this is a reference to the framework knitters who may well have drunk here: The globe refers to a globe-shaped glass cover that the framework knitters placed over their candle in order to better spread the light whilst they were working on the frame. And I’d better stop there before I completely lose you! Sorry, this week’s post has turned out to be a bit of a ramble, but I do hope you’ve found it entertaining!