Now is the month of May

April was a busy month for the blog as I signed up to write 26 blog posts for the A-Z challenge. Here’s a link to the whole lot of them!

May is also shaping up to be a busy month, with so many anniversaries to celebrate, connections to share, and national days/weeks/months to contribute to, not to mention books to write! Where to start? Ok, let’s share a quick connection, first!

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be singing in Coventry Cathedral (Mahler’s 8th Symphony, known as the Symphony of a Thousand), and during the rehearsal breaks I managed to get a photo of the wonderful Crittall window that forms part of the entrance to the cathedral. Coventry Cathedral is a Grade 1 listed building, and was designed by the architect Sir Basil Spence, who won the design competition in 1950. The foundation stone for the cathedral was laid in 1956, and the building completed and consecrated in 1962. Sir Basil Spence worked in collaboration with Arup Associates, an architectural firm who were later involved in the development of the engineering buildings on the campus of Loughborough University. Of course, there are many Crittall windows still to found in Loughborough town centre.  

There are a number of anniversaries in May, some of which have already passed, but I have blogged about in connection with Loughborough in previous years, like The Great Exhibition; the Festival of Britain; and VE-Day (have a look at how one street commemorated VE-Day during the lockdown of 2020).

Some of the national awareness months are worth mentioning, particularly Local and Community History Month, after all, what is this blog if now local history?! If you use the web view (scroll down to the bottom of the posts, if you’re reading this in mobile view, and click on ‘View Web Version’), you’ll be able to search this blog, look back at the archives, or click on a term that interests you.

National Walking Month is another awareness initiative of note, and there are a number of walks on this blog – like the Zeppelin Trail, the Three Towers Trail, the Sculpture, Art, and Architecture Trail, the Loughborough Plaque Trail – as well as countryside walks close to our lovely town, like the Nanpantan Reservoir, and The Outwoods.      

During Mental Health Awareness Week you might investigate ways to protect your own mental health, or you might want to read about people’s experiences from the past. This is a particularly harrowing case from the early twentieth century in Loughborough.

Learning at Work Week might be interesting for those who work, but if you don’t there’s always International Museum Day (18th - why not visit one of the ones in Loughborough?), or International Tea Day (21st – why not visit one of Loughborough’s independent teashops – ooops, I think we’ve lost many of these now!).

And then there’s other anniversaries – like 25 years since the formation of the Milestone Society. There are a few posts on this blog which feature milestones, one about the Pack Horse milestone , and one a comparison of our milestones with others I’ve spotted across the country.

Hmm, I think that’s enough rambling around Loughborough for one post!!!

My poor photo of the Crittall frame Great Screen, designed and etched by John Hutton

____________________________________

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 (2026). Now is the month of May. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/05/now-is-month-of-may.html [Accessed 17 May 2026]

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

Houses and milestones

Looking back through the blog, I had a feeling that there were quite a few things that seemed to crop up quite regularly. I'm guessing these things must be important to me, otherwise I wouldn't keep writing about them! So, I thought I'd re-arrange the word cloud on the blog, so that those terms I've used most frequently appear at the top of the list. No surprise that 'Loughborough' appears the most frequently!! *

Anyway, last week I went to a most brilliant talk on the housing that is situated around Oxford Street, Paget Street, Station Street etc., which was once part of the Paget Estate (William Byerley Paget), the housing that was once part of the Storer Estate (around Storer Road), and the villas on Derby Road. This really resonated with me as I lived in the area for a number of years, and I have been trying to find the time over a number of years to investigate some particular aspects of the housing. I've alluded to this in previous posts:

Victorian house plaques
Spotlight on Ashby Road
Spotlight on Middleton Place  

Maybe one day I'll get there!!

In the meantime, today, I shall be writing about one of my favourite topics - milestones, or mileposts, or what I affectionately term totem-cum-mileposts! Well, actually, I probably won't have time to cover the latter, but examples are in 'Secret Loughborough'.







Long-standing milestones tend to sit alongside a former trunk or turnpike road, and we have two such milestones, close to the town centre. We also have a rogue one!

As Dan Snow once said, at a show he did in Loughborough Town Hall earlier this year, there are such joys to be got from being a generalist! As  'local historian' I find my interests are pulled in many directions, so this weekend I was lucky enough to be able to go along to the Annual General Meeting and conference of The Milestone Society, a national organisation whose mission is to identify, record, research and conserve our rich heritage of milestones. The meeting was held in the village hall at Milton Malsor, a small village in the south of Northamptonshire, close to Towcester.

Milton Malsor

Milton Malsor

The Milestone Society welcome

One of the displays

After the business of the AGM (you know the sort of thing, reports from committee members, election of committee members etc.), we had a short presentation on how to widen the appeal of the society. Like other societies, the active membership is concentrated around slightly older people, but in order for the society to flourish and continue, the society needs to attract new members. Time for a short lunchbreak!

Village pub

Lunch

After lunch we were treated to an enthusiastic presentation on that most wonderful piece of street furniture, the telephone kiosk, from its inception in 1884 to its demise and re-use as, for example, housing for defibrillators, coffee stops, portable bars, or small libraries. 

Library in a telephone box in Redruth, Cornwall

The concluding paper of the day was on the development of the roads around Towcester, which included, amongst other things, a description of the Roman roads, the development of coaching inns (particularly The Angel, The Tabard (later The Talbot) and The Swan), the development of road surfaces, and the turnpikes. Interestingly, on one of the slides, the newspaper snippet presented a link to our area:

"At Old Stratford village theroad has ben raised, widened and made with paved bottom, and coated with Mount Sorrel stone."    

At the event I was also able to pick up a few books, booklets, and newsletters (for a donation) which are both interesting and useful. After the meeting I went off in search of two milestones in the nearby village of Blisworth. My sense of direction is no what it should be, so I missed these, but I do know that unlike the ones in our area, these two are stone with a metal plaque attached to the front. 

As I said above, I've blogged about milestones before:

Some in Southampton
Some in Brecon 
Misplaced milestones, preserved at Bourton on the Water
Some in South West Wales

And, I have many more, from various other areas of the country. But, let's remind ourselves of our own milestones:

Leicester Road milestone 

Derby Road milestone at Dishley

Well, that's all I've got time for this week! See you next time!

Lynne

* I have a feeling this word cloud doesn't display on a mobile device. However, if you can see it you can click on any of the terms and it will take you to the blogpost[s] that use that term. Of course, now that I've looked at the word cloud I can see so many mistakes, and decisions that I've made, and then made a different one!! My professional self is freaking out over the lack of authority control!!! Some examples are 'Henry Fearon' and 'Archdeacon Fearon'; 'Taylor's bellfoundry' and 'Taylors bellfoundry'; 'GCR' and 'Great Central Railway' and 'mileposts' and 'milestones'. Sighhhhh ... 

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). Houses and milestones. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/10/houses-and-milestones.html [Accessed 6 October 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

       

A week of local history

I have been very fortunate this week to have spent my spare time engaging in history and heritage-related activities, with quite a number of like-minded people, some of whom I already knew, and some of whom were new to me.

The week started with a meeting with a large group of folk, all engaged with activities and projects related to Loughborough. There seems to be a lot of big anniversaries coming up in the next couple of years and there are some exciting plans afoot. The next upcoming event to look out for is Picnic in the Park on June 8th, arranged by the folk at Charnwood Arts. Staff from the Local and Family History Centre, aka the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers, will be hosting a stall celebrating the 200th birthday of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Victoria and Albert will be in attendance - well, actors will be portraying them!

Picnic in the Park 2018

Talking of the Local and Family History Centre, the current display is a great one - the Midland Main Line then and now - and well worth a visit if you can.

I spent an evening talking with loads of people about what about Loughborough we'd like to see in the Victoria County History volume on the town. This is a national project that's been going since 1899, with the aim of writing a history of every single parish in the country. Progress was initially quite swift, but has since slowed down, and there are still many areas of the country to be written about. We had so many ideas Loughborough's history, it just reinforced to me how fantastic our little town is, and oh so interesting! We thought there was so much to include that we could fill lots of volumes!

I missed a trip to Nottingham with a dear friend due to illness. I was so looking forward to being shown around some of the more interesting parts, especially as I rarely venture off the beaten track that is the Broadmarsh Centre route through to the Victoria Centre, although I did once have a guided tour of the areas associated with D H Lawrence, which was fascinating, I have been to Green's windmill, and I recently had a look at the Alfreton Road area.

Green's windmill

Back in Loughborough, and at the Local and Family History Centre I did a bit of research and met some very interesting people, with whom I seemed to have much in common, not least an interest in milestones!!

After many years of not being available for training, I finally made it to the Old Rectory Museum for some training to be a guide during the open season! Wow! What an exciting opportunity to be able to show people around the building and explain its history, as well as learning something about the artefacts upstairs. There were three of us being trained, which should help towards keeping the ORM open, but there's always a warm welcome for anyone else to be trained up as a guide - just get in touch with the ORM if you're interested!

At the weekend I had a front row seat at a concert in the Trinity Methodist church on Royland Road, given by the Loughborough Male Voice Choir and Hathern Band. Sadly, the youngest wasn't playing due to revision for exams, but it was a great concert, with some lovely singing and some superb playing.

Well, better go now, books don't write themselves!

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). Garendon Estate water mill. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-week-of-local-history.html [Accessed 19 May 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 

Loughborough Lichfield and Southampton

Well, what a varied week this has been! After a weekend in Birmingham, I was out 'Loughborough-connecting' in a few other places, including Lichfield and Southampton. In both places I found plenty of things to remind me of home - as well as many differences, of course, like a distinct dearth of yachts in Loughborough!

Lichfield public library has undergone a staggering change, moving from an expansive Victorian building on the site of a former friary, to a small church in the centre of the Market Square. In order to fit, they had to withdraw quite a lot of bookstock, and some of the seating is now in a most odd place. However, they haven't gone smart, yet. Loughborough library goes smart at the beginning of April, I believe, so at certain times access will be by library card only, and there will be no staff within to help. 

Study tables in the former altar area

Stained glass in Loughborough library

Upstairs in St Mary's church in Lichfield, now part of the library, used to house the heritage centre. Some of the information boards had been retained, and I was rather interested in this one, and whether or not there was any connection with the various branches of the family with that name in Loughborough.

The view out onto the market below in some ways reminded me of Loughborough!

Stained glass above, bustling market through the clear glass

Looking down on Loughborough market

I have a feeling that all Burtons stores are closing, or already have. There's been a lot of disgruntlement about the Abergavenny store which still had its original 1930s signs, as during the re-purposing of the building, there was a degree of lack of care over the valuable heritage. The Burtons store in Lichfield has been long gone: like Woolworths stores and Co-op stores, Burtons shops are quite distinctive, but the Lichfield one also has definitive evidence of its former life.

Lichfield Burtons

Foundation stone in Lichfield

Best I could do for the moment!

And finally in Lichfield, I spotted trams - ok, toy trams!!! Wonder if they are models of those connected with The Brush?

Trams in the Toy Museum, Lichfield

Meanwhile, down in Southampton, markers on the roadside that I think were to do with water, reminded me of the milestones in Loughborough.

Milestone on Leicester Road

Down towards the Ocean Village we happened upon the former railway station and the former offices for the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). The station has been transformed into a casino, while what was the hotel, Southwestern House, to its right is now luxurious flats. It was in a small upstairs room that Churchill and Eisenhower planned the D-Day invasions of WW2.  The building was once extensively used by the rich and those travelling on cruises. Apparently, the staircase was influential in the design of the stairs in the Titanic. The dining room was known as the Wedgewood, Ballroom and, as the name suggests, was painted in those iconic Wedgewood colours of powder blue and white. The building is still joined to its neighbour by the original steel structure. Inside the building there is an original document relating to George III. I haven't been able to ascertain what exactly this pertains to, but in my quest for information did discover that a statue of George III was presented to the borough of Southampton in 1809, and placed in a niche on the Bargate: some of my readers will be interested to note this statue was made of coade stone. Not entirely sure what the LSWR offices are now, but probably housing. 

The former railway station with the Imperial flats to the right

The inspiration for the stairs on the Titanic

The former LSWR offices

Along the same road there was a branch of the Wilts and Dorset bank, whose construction reminded me of the lodge to Aingarth, on Leicester Road, which was originally a lodge to The Elms. I might be wrong but the construction looks similar - Aingarth is ashlar (although I can't find my photo at the moment).

Wilts and Dorst Bank

The final thing that reminded me of Loughborough was a pub called the London Hotel. Nothing to do with the name, more to do with the construction material again. The upper storeys look like Hathern tiles, but further investigation reveals that both the upper and lower floors are constructed of tiles made by Carter and Co. of Dorset. 

The London Hotel, Southampton

Detail of the London Hotel, Southampton

Hathernware on Loughborough's Lloyds Bank

And there I must stop, otherwise I'd go on all night! 


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). Loughborough, Lichfield and Southampton. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/03/loughborough-lichfield-and-southampton.html [Accessed 24 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

Connecting Loughborough

Oh dear, apologies are due again! There was no post last week as I was on half-term break in sunny (yes, it really was!) Wales!

Every time I go away I am always so surprised by all the things I see that remind me of home, everything from bells, to slate, to lime kilns, canals, and many, many other things! Here's a few of the things that caught my eye on this break: there really were loads more too!

In Brecon it was lovely to see Welsh slate in use, as gravestones, laid out on the floor of the cathedral, and as roofing tiles. Welsh slate is quite different from our local Swithland slate: it splits more cleanly and thinly, so the gravestones (those that were standing in the graveyards) had smooth backs and the roof tiles were not as chunky as Swithland ones. We also saw slate at Conwy and Clatter.

Slate flooring

Slate gravestones at Clatter

Slate at the Welsh slate mnes

Slate roof at Conwy

Slate roof at Conwy

Slate roof at Conwy

A Swithland slate roof

There was evidence of there once having been a railway in Brecon: an inscribed stone on one of the former railway bridges. Loughborough's Great Central Railway is still steaming ahead, but the only remaining evidence of the former Charnwood Forest Railway has recently been demolished.

Evidence of a railway at Brecon

  

The Great Central Station

The site of the former Charnwood Forest Railway

The canal at Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, affectionately known as the Mon and Brec, is about 36 miles long and terminates in Brecon. Along its length are the usual bridges and locks that so remind me of our Grand Union. As far as I know though we haven't got an aquaduct: the one at Brecon is good enough to rival the one at Ponty-whatsit!!

A bridge on the canal at Brecon

A lock on the canal at Brecon

An information board at Brecon

The Grand Union canal

What we haven't got alongside our canal, however, are lime kilns, but having seen the ones at the Moira Furnace running alongside the Grand Union, or like the ones in the grounds of Calke Abbey.

The run of lime kilns at Brecon

The inside of one of Brecon's lime kilns

The Museum of the Welsh Borderers in Brecon reminded me of our Carillon Tower and War Memorial Museum, especially since there was a picture of a German airship. 

Uniforms at the South Wales Borderers Museum in Brecon

A picture of a German airship in the South Wales Borderers Museum in Brecon

In Brecon town centre there was a clock which reminded me of the one on our town hall.

And some mosaics which reminded me of those in Town Hall Passage

Milestones are a particular favourite of mine: sometimes they're easy to find, other times less so!

Milestone on the road to Brecon

Milestone on Leicester Road, Loughborough

And, of course, there were pubs that reminded me of Loughborough too: our Griffin is on Ashby Square, our Clarence has been converted into flats and our Royal George has been demolished, and is to be replaced by flats.

The Griffin in Brecon

The Clarence in Brecon

The George in Brecon

The demolition of the Royal George in Loughborough

I'm sure you'll know that I could go on along these lines for a very long time, after all, this post just covers connections to Brecon, but we also went to Monmouth, Llandudno, Conwy, Bronllys, and Bodelwyddan - all of which had things that reminded me of home!

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

Dyer, Lynne (2018). Connecting Loughborough. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2018/10/connecting-loughborough.html  [Accessed 28 October 2018]

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