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LLeeiicceesstteerrsshhiirreeHHiissttoorriiaann

NNoo 4411 ((22000055))

ContentsEditorial Joyce Lee 2Lubberly Leicestershire? Robin P. Jenkins 3Grace Dieu Priory Kenneth Hillier 5The Rabbit in Leicestershire Anthony Squires 8Leicestershire’s Oldest Gravestone? Kay E. Gowland 11Early Days on “The Saff” Kate Hancock 12Cockshaw’s Diorama of Leicester Market Place 14Swithland Wood – “secured as a National Heritage”

by Rotary in 1925 Patrick J. Boylan 151905 … A Year to Remember J.D. Bennett 19Joseph Wood: Preacher of “Sweetness and Light” Gerald T. Rimmington 22A Handbill for the old Great Central 25Beaumanor Park and its role in World War II and beyond Mike Coleman 26Medieval grave-slabs from Leicester Cathedral Terry Y. Cocks 29The Location Puzzle of the Old Groby Mill David Ramsey 30Online Sources for Historians – Treasure at your fingertips

– Leicestershire Museums “Open Doors” Project Debbie Richards 34Did Enderby become a Manor in order to settle a debt? Mark Carne 36150 years and still going! Alan McWhirr 37Recent Publications Ed John Hinks 39Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society Research Fund

- Guidance notes for those applying for grants 48

Cover picture: The old Groby water mill by G. Harley see pages 30-33

Editor: Joyce Lee

Published by the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, The Guildhall, Leicester, LE1 5FQ

2005

EEddiittoorriiaall

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JJooyyccee LLeeee,, EEddiittoorr

Leicestershire Historian 2005

Although land-locked Leicestershire may not seeman obvious repository of nautical associations, infact the county has played its part in our maritime

history. Admiral Beatty, commander of those “bloodyships” at Jutland and “Black Dick” Howe, whose victoryon the “Glorious First of June”1794 was the first of manyagainst Revolutionary France, both acquired local ties.Moreover, monuments such as those to Captain ThomasNoel at Kirkby Mallory, Admiral Beaumont at Stoughton,or at Ratby to Engineer Artificer John Richardson, whowent down with the Good Hope at Coronel in November1914, prove (if proof were required) that Leicestershirehas played its part in ruling the waves.

This year’s bicentenary of Britain’s greatest navaltriumph, at Trafalgar, however has sent researchersscurrying throughout the land to seek out local men whoserved with Nelson on that memorable day in 1805.Recently the Leicester Mercury, no doubt aided by one ofthe many ‘websites’ devoted to muster-rolls or NavalGeneral Service Medal-winners (I commend:

www.ageofnelson.org/TrafalgarRoll/index.htm or

www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/Trafalgar) identified sixty-nine Leicestershire men who served withthe fleet, either as sailors or marines. Even then theyforgot the officers, who included Sir Alexander Dixie, firstlieutenant aboard the frigate Phoebe; Midshipman JohnDrake, son of the rector of Oadby, aboard Defiance 74,and Midshipman Alexander Arbuthnot, of Shenton Hall,on the Mars 74 (74 denoting the number of guns carried).

We shouldn’t really be too surprised to find Midlandersafloat. In 1795 the need to find men for the rapidlyexpanding navy had led to the passing of an Act ofParliament (35 George III cap. 5) requiring each county toprovide men. Leicestershire’s quota, based upon herpopulation was set at 183. The returns survive amongst theQuarter Sessions papers at the Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester and Rutland (QS69/1) and makeinteresting reading. For each parish, or group of parisheswhere the population was small, is recorded the name ofthe ‘volunteer’, his place of birth or settlement, age, and‘calling’.

Some of Leicestershire’s contingents were local men.Market Harborough and Great Bowden for example foundGeorge Webb, a ‘waterman’ from Kegworth, who wouldserve for a bounty of 25 guineas. John Burkitts, a Stathernblacksmith, did better. He was paid a bounty of £30 byCroxton Kerrial and Braunstone. ElsewhereLeicestershire’s net was cast wider. Waltham and itsneighbouring parishes laid out 25 guineas to find thelabourer Thomas Trevesick, a Devonian from South

Molton, in place of one of their own and Thurmaston andHumberstone did well to find the Jamaican, ThomasOckley for the same amount. In truth, the places ofsettlement revealed by the records (Manchester, Sheffield,Liverpool, Warwick, Durham, Colchester, etc. as well astwo Jamaicans and a New Yorker) suggest not only adesire not to serve but also a well organised system tofacilitate substitution. Only one man was rejected; sadlittle John Bruin, a 17 year-old framework-knitter fromSileby, whom Captain Losack, the Regulating Officer,considered (even after the parish had appealed against thedecision) ‘unfit to serve his Majesty’.

The most luxuriant laurels must descend therefore uponthe brows of the (possibly) four Leicestershire men whoserved at Trafalgar aboard Nelson’s own ship, Victory.Those four were Able Seaman Thomas Simpson, ofLeicester; Royal Marines James Green and William Smith,and, rather less certainly, Landsman James Chapman, whois said to have served as a shipwright aboard the flagship.

Thomas Simpson’s origins remain obscure, though hisstatus aboard the Victory is clear. As an able seaman hewas rated as skilful enough to work aloft, handling sailsand rigging, or to cope with boats and the anchors. Heprobably earned a pound a month or thereabouts,comparable with the wages of a labourer at home – thoughno labourer had such opportunities for prize money. TheAyshford Complete Trafalgar Roll CD (details of whichare available on the first of the websites given above) tells

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Lubberly Leicestershire?Robin P. Jenkins

Kirkby Mallory. Detail from the monument toCaptain Thomas Noel d. 1756.

James Green was baptised at Lutterworth on 15 November1778. His father’s name is recorded as John Green but nomention is made of the mother in the parish register.However, the marriage of John Green and Hannah Green(which must have saved a deal of trouble) both ofLutterworth, was recorded in the parish register on 9October 1767. James was also a stocking-maker. Heenlisted in the 4th Company of Royal Marines at Chathamon 4 November 1796. He joined the Victory on 17 April1803 (three days after William Smith) and was killed inaction at Trafalgar. His prize and Parliamentary Awardmoney was sent to Greenwich Hospital though his fatherwas paid £40 from the Patriotic Fund administered byLloyd’s. The details of Private Green on the Ayshford Rollinclude the tantalising note that a certificate recording hismarriage to a widow named Ann Saviry in 1798 was‘supposed to be false’.

The fourth of these Leicestershire men was a J. Chapman,whose claim rests upon the preservation of a sea chest byhis family, with the tale that it belonged to a shipwrightaboard the Victory. The claim has disappointingly little torecommend it . There were in fact two men namedChapman aboard, both James, but neither appears to havehad an obvious local connection. One was born inEdinburgh and died in Dundee, while the other was aMiddlesex man whose mother, according to the Admiraltyrecords of an allotment he made for her from his pay,lived in Brentford. He too ‘ran’ in 1806 and so disappearsfrom the official records. Perhaps he finished his days inLeicester?

us that Simpson had joined Victory in May 1803 havingbeen pressed for the Navy. He clearly found life aboardher uncongenial – or perhaps couldn’t bear the thought ofanother engagement like that off Cape Trafalgar – becausehe “ran” while his ship was at Gibraltar in November1805, leaving unclaimed more than £6 and 10 shillings inprize and Parliamentary award money.

Our two marines are better served by history. At Trafalgar,Victory carried 146 Royal Marines; officers and men.They acted as the ‘police’ of a ship, guarding officersquarters and sensitive stores as well as providing a checkon mutinous sailors. They also served as unskilled labour,hauling on ropes and turning capstans. As soldiers at seathe marines assisted at the ship’s guns, or fought with theirmuskets and bayonets. In action at close quarters, theredcoats could be relied upon as a steady force to repelenemy boarders or to lead a boarding action the other way.Marines were also useful for work ashore, seizing andholding enemy fortifications and other installations.

William Smith, the son of William and Mary Smith, wasbaptised at Fleckney on 10 September 1780. He worked asa woolcomber but on 2 February 1799 enlisted for theChatham Division of the Royal Marines. He was not aloneas, a year before, John Food, a Fleckney stockinger hadsigned on and in 1793 Joseph Langham, a ribbon weaverfrom Fleckney had also joined the Marines. Smith’s fate isnot known. Stories of his return to Fleckney and eventualburial in the churchyard are based on the burial of aWilliam Smith in 1839, recorded in the parish register, butthe age of that William (84) suggest rather that he is theMarine’s father. We know, again with the help of theAyshford Roll, that Smith was discharged at Chatham on15 January 1806 (presumably with his £6.10.2 of prizemoney jingling in his pocket) but his subsequentmovements are unknown.

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A mariner’s will. Detail from the will of “marriner” George Ortonof HMS Portland made in 1744 and proved in the LeicesterArchdeaconry Court. (Reproduced by kind permission of theRecord Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland).

“Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,Rugged and high, of Charnwood’s forest groundStand yet, but Stranger! Hidden from thy view,

The ivied Ruins of forlorn GRACE DIEU.”

Just two years ago, the passer by might have echoedWilliam Wordsworth’s famous lines on the jumbledmass of s tonework that l ies just off the busy

Loughborough to Ashby-de-la-Zouch road. Since then,thanks to the financial support of the Heritage LotteryFund, English Heritage, local authorities and otherinstitutions, Grace Dieu Priory has shaken off its ivy andlooks much less forlorn. If all goes to plan, the site willbe open to the public in the early autumn 2005.

Although there were at least 736 monasteries for men inmedieval England (with a further 18 double houses), therewere only 153 houses occupied solely by women. GraceDieu is typical of the majority of nunneries founded afterthe Norman Conquest in that it was a priory rather than anabbey and its founder was of lesser rank. A sizeablenumber of nunneries were established by widows, andRoesia de Verdun, the founder ofGrace Dieu, reflects this pattern. Shegranted to her new foundation in frankalmoin the manor of Belton and theadvowson of the church there. WhenBishop Grosseteste confirmed thefoundation in 1242, Agnes de Gresleywas prioress. That same year Agnesand the nuns were given leave toappoint by letters patent an attorney ifnecessary for legal matters – this wasbecause “as by the constitution of theorder they shall never leave the

precinct of the house”. From the sixth century decreeshad been passed by church councils, advocating strictenclosure of monks and, particularly, of nuns. In c.1299,Pope Boniface VIII’s Bull Periculoso was promulgated inorder “to provide for the perilous and detestable state ofcertain nuns, who having slackened the reins ofdecency… gad about outside..” Constant repetition of thedecree suggests that it failed!

What records survive about the early years of Grace Dieuare found almost entirely among the official Patent andCharter Rolls issued by the Court of Chancery. It is achronicle of grants of land and other rights. Occasionallyanother story breaks through this mundane pattern. In1282 the prioress complained to Edward I that “Alan deThrengeston and Robert his brother… with a greatmultitude, felled and carried away trees from her severalwood in Beleton, impounded her beasts found in the saidwood, and kept them impounded without food or drink,whereof 16 perished, and beat and maltreated the saidprioress and her nuns”. For the first 170 or so years of itsexistence we have to assume that life at Grace Dieu wasremarkably similar to most of the other small, relativelyisolated, rural English nunneries.

In 1904, Abbot Gasquet published his English MonasticLife (1), and included a chapter on The Nuns of MedievalEngland. Much of the chapter is taken up with referencesto, and quotations from, a small paper-book of Accounts,dating between 1414 and 1418. The Accounts were keptby Dame Petronilla Dunwich, the cellaress at Grace Dieu,and detail the priory’s livestock, its rents from lands andbuildings and the sale of produce – such as timber, lime,cheese, lambskins, wool and fish. Also listed are 14 nuns,in addition to Dame Margaret Rempston, the prioress, and22 men servants and 8 women who were retainers.Gasquet argues that the picture afforded by the Accountsis “that of charming, peace-loving ladies; good practicalChristian women, as all nuns should be… occupied, overand besides their conventual and religious duties, inworks of genuine charity”.

This image is somewhat removed from Eileen Power’s inher seminal Medieval English Nunneries (2), which drewan unflattering picture of the Obedientaries, ordinary nunsand lay hangers on. She argued that the everlastingroutine had led to stasis, decay and simple disregard ofthe original ideals of poverty, chastity and obedience.Moreover, the great Dom David Knowles had no time forGasquet who, he said, “gathered material with a

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Grace Dieu PrioryKenneth Hillier

Grace Dieu Priory from the south-east in 1826.

Roseia de Verdon’s tomb in Beltonchurch taken from Nichols.

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pitchfork” and “lacked that passion for intellectualchastity”. I have tracked down the Accounts Book in thePublic Record Office (3) and hope soon to have ittranscribed and translated – Gasquet’s reputation is againon line!

Certainly when Bishop Alnwick of Lincoln visited GraceDieu in 1440/1, his subsequent report bore little relationto Gasquet’s panegyric. Alnwick’s Register of Visitationsin the 1440s (4) is a rich mine of information whichwould keep the Sunday tabloids, and Thomas Cromwellfor that matter, in copy for months. The records relatestories of unlawful entertainment; intrusion of pets;salacious gossip and assignations; social drinking afterCompline; incompetence or self-will of the Superior; and,most often, the failure to observe claustration. Grace Dieudid not escape. Dame Alice Dunwyche, the prioress wasrepeatedly maligned by her sub-prioress, Agnes Roteby,who complained to Alnwick that “by reason of old ageand incapacity she has renounced for herself all thegovernance of matters temporal, nor does she take part indivine service, so that she is of no use”. The cellaress,Margaret Bellars, was charged with allowing a malechild of 7 to sleep with her in the dorter and was shown tohave an elastic concept of claustration. She failed toattend quire, and visited “by herself over early of amorning the offices and other outbuildings wherein menare occupied”. Still not content, the peripatetic sisterjoined Henry, the priory’s chaplain, “out to their autumntasks to mow hay and harvest, insomuch that she rodeback at evening behind him on the same horse…” Henry,moreover, had a bad reputation even in Loughborough.

Little, so far, has been discovered of the Priory’s affairsbetween the Visitation and the sixteenth century. In June1509, Margaret Youche and the convent of Grace Dieu

were among those receiving the new king Henry VIII’sgeneral pardon; and the Visitations of 1518 and 1528recorded few problems (for instance, Dame Felicia Crisp,the cellaress, apparently did not rise for Matins). Yet adecade later Grace Dieu had gone the way of the rest ofthe religious houses in England and Wales. Typically,whilst the report of Drs. Leigh and Layton, Henry VIII’s“bruisers”, was damning (two nuns were found guilty ofincontinence), another finding by’ “six gentlemen of thecounty’ maintained that the fifteen nuns and prioress were“of good and virtuous conversation and living”. With avalue of just £100, the priory should have beensuppressed in 1536, but it strangely survived. The endwas not long delayed: on 27 October 1538, the nuns wereejected from the site. They were given pensions and a fewcan be traced in later records. Margaret Knottyford “lateof Gracedewe dyed xviij die Novembris in eodem anno”(1552); Margaret Rabon “formerly of Gracedieu wasburied at Belton 12 October 1557”; Elizabeth Presberye“pen from Gracedieu is living at Ashby-de-la-Zouch”(1573/4).

As for the buildings and land? The vultures had alreadygathered. The contents were bought by John Beaumont,who “was put in possession of the said late priory” andimmediately started to convert the buildings into amansion. In 1544 he was also granted the manor ofBelton. However, he was soon to lose it all. Abusing hisposition as Master of the Rolls, he was stripped of hisoffice and estates in 1552. Briefly the estate passed to theEarl of Huntingdon, who had coveted i t at theDissolution, but it was recovered after about five years byBeaumont’s widow, Elizabeth. When the Grace Dieu

Buck’s drawing of Grace Dieu in 1730, showing the ChapterHouse and parts of the inner cloister walls standing.

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The last three centuries have inevitably taken their tollon the buildings – whether through acts of nature or man– and it is now very difficult to establish which parts ofthe ruins date from pre or post 1538. Two archaeologistshave been working closely with the firm responsible forthe conservation of the site and their reports will,hopefully, shed more light on the problem. Both canaland railway desecrated the outer precinct and little hasbeen done to survey the areas immediately outside themain building area. Much remains to be discovered.However, a leaflet has already been published – theGrace Dieu Priory Nature Trail (5) – which takes thevisitor on a fascinating walk around the outskirts andgives brief details on the Geology and History of the site.An Education Pack (6), for primary schools, has beenwrit ten and a folder of original documents andcommentary for post-16 education has also beenprepared. An illustrated guidebook will be publishedearly in 2006. Another booklet, on the Ghosts of GraceDieu (7), details the various sightings of the Grey Ladyand her cohorts – but that is another story, not besttouched on in this more prosaic account!

References and Notes:1. Francis Aidan Gasquet. English Monastic Life.

Methuen, 19042. Eileen Power. Medieval English Nunneries 1275 to

1535. Cambridge University Press, 19223. Grace Dieu: Leicester: Account of Treasuresses 1 to

5 Hen V. Public Record Office SC6/1257/104. A. Hamilton Thompson, editor . Visi tat ions of

Religious Houses in the Diocese of Lincoln, vol. II.Horncastle, 1918

5. Peter Wilkinson. Grace Dieu Priory Nature Trail6. Grace Dieu Priory: A Pack for Teachers and Schools.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch Museum and Grace Dieu PrioryTrust, 2005

7. J. Browne, J. Dickinson. Ghosts of Grace Dieu.Thringstone Archaeology Group, 2004

branch of the Beaumonts died out , the estate waspurchased by Sir Ambrose Phillipps of Garendon Abbeyin the 1680s or early 1690s. The acquisition of the estateconsolidated his present holdings, but, living in somestyle at Garendon, he had no use for the Grace Dieubuildings. By 1730, when the Bucks’ drawing wascomposed, they were ruinous: only two sections, one theChapter House, were roofed. By the 19th century GraceDieu had been transformed into the romantic ruindescribed by Wordsworth and other poets and artists. Thesite was then scarred by first a canal (1794) and then arailway (1883), both now as defunct as the priory.

Grace Dieu: the Chapter House 1946.



Friends of Grace Dieu Priory Trust

For details of the Trust which has recentlybeen launched. Contact: c/o Angela Bexton,North West Leicestershire District Council,

Community Services, Coalville. LE57 3FJ.

Older readers who spent the war time years in thecountryside will have good cause to remember therabbit. As our armed forces fought abroad, the rural

population at home waged war on the hordes of an enemythat ravaged crops andthreatened our food supply justas surely as did Hitler’ssubmarines. When victory inEurope came, at home wewere certainly losing to therabbits. By 1950 they out-numbered the humanpopulation by about two toone. But in 1953 D-day cameagain, this time in the form ofmyxomatosis. Rabbitsperished weekly by themillions and suddenly itseemed that the war had beenwon.

For much of their history rabbits, more usually known asconies, have been anything but a pest. Until very recently, itwas thought that they first became part of our island faunawith the arrival of the Normans nine centuries ago.

However, an archaeological dig at Lynford near Thetford inNorfolk earlier this year has produced rabbit bones, showingsigns of butchery, in the context of second century Romanpottery.(1)

Throughout the middle agesand to the end of theseventeenth century they werean uncommon species and amuch-valued asset, being keptas a source of meat and fur inspecially constructed areascalled warrens. The possessionof a coney warren was alsoconsidered as something of astatus symbol, since the abilityto provide fresh meat at tableat all seasons was the mark ofa gentleman of quality.

8


The Rabbit in LeicestershireAnthony Squires

Catching rabbits with ferrets in a warren. From a manuscriptin the British Library.

Warren Hills, Coalville 1988. The post-medieval rabbit warrenon Charnwood Forest which belonged to the earls ofHuntingdon. Remains of the pillow mounds occupy the areaof the bottom right hand quarter of this view. (Photo: AnthonySquires)

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In its simplest form the early rabbit warren was a few acresof an estate’s poorest land which was set aside exclusivelyfor rearing rabbits. The warren was usually fenced or walledaround, although the larger ones sometimes used rivers orthe sea as boundaries. Some warrens appear to have had nophysical boundaries at all.

The warrener in charge sometimes dug tunnels in which therabbits sheltered and bred. Much effort and considerablesums of money were invested in the construction of lowbanks of earth within the warren. These were typicallyeighty feet long by twenty feet wide and are known toarchaeologists today as pillow mounds. They increased thespace for breeding and reduced the risk of the warrenflooding.

Warrens were to be found all over Leicestershire and haveleft a legacy of remains and place names. Apart from thedozen or so farms called ‘Warren Farm’, sure indicators oflocal warrens, there are other examples such as Conery Laneat Enderby, Coney Hill at Blaston, The Coneries in thecentre of Loughborough and Coneygear Wood near Croxton

Kerrial. Local field names may be helpful in locatingremains. Variations of ‘coney’ abound, including ‘conigree’,‘coniger’ and ‘coneygarth’. Look out for corruptions of theword, such as ‘the gunneries’ and discard any stories ofCromwell and the Civil War.

Along Beggars’ Lane at Lubbesthorpe, near the LeicesterForest East motorway service station, is a rare survivingexample of a warren with a single almost circular mound. Itwas first recorded in the 14th century and English Heritagehave recently listed it as an ancient monument. On WarrenHills at Coalville there are substantial remains of the pillowmounds of a much later warren which, as is noted below,caused much trouble to the local people.

Managing a warren was no simple matter, especially if aprofit over a long period of time was expected. The rabbitsdestroyed the vegetation in the immediate area of theburrows and had to be provided with additional food. Hay,tree leaves and even bark were given in winter. Prolongedsnowy periods often meant disaster to carefully nurturedpopulations. Another problem was keeping the inmates freefrom disease. Over-crowding meant that the ground mightbecome ‘rabbit sick’, with the result that the warren, or atleast part of it, would have to be closed down for a time and

Samuel Miles’ map of Charnwood in 1746, drawn beforeinclosure by Act of Parliament in 1808, shows the location ofeight warrens (indicated by black dots).

10


the rabbits moved elsewhere. Again, it was necessary toprotect the rabbits from natural predators such as hawks,kites, buzzards, polecats and stoats, to say nothing of thehungry human population. In 1408 two men were punishedfor taking rabbits from the warren of the abbot of Leicesterat Lockington. Individual animals which escaped from awarren were invariably destined for a very short spell offreedom.

The Herrick family of Beaumanor had two warrens onCharnwood Forest and the terms of a lease of 1673 betweenJohn Herrick and William Guthridge, warrener, providedetails of how the business was managed. Herrick agreed tolease one of the warrens to Guthridge for 21 years, for whichthe rent was nine pounds a year together with 120 pairs ofrabbits. For every pair short of this total the tenant was topay a penalty of one shilling. Herrick agreed to supplysufficient wood to fence the warren, cover the burrows andrepair the mounds as required. Moreover he would payGuthridge an additional 20 shillings a year to keeptrespassers out of his woods. (2)

A successfully managed warren could make considerableprofits for its owner. In the mid 17th century the warren atMisterton was worth 150 pounds a year compared with anincome of 170 pounds for the estate’s wood and 206 poundsfrom the rents of tenanted holdings. Most of the rabbitsproduced supplied the London market.

It would be difficult to over emphasize the environmentalimpact the rabbit has had on our countryside, especiallywhere large numbers have fed at high density. The animalwill eat a wide range of herbaceous plants and it cropsparticularly closely. Tree seedlings are effectively destroyedand woodland regeneration is retarded or preventedaltogether, a fact which was commented on by 18th centurywriters. The flowering stems of many wild flowers aredestroyed and grass, which would otherwise feed sheep andother stock, is lost.

During the 18th and 19th centuries advances in agriculturedirectly benefited the rabbit in this county. The enclosure ofthe open fields of so many parishes gave rise to hugeincrease in the miles of hedgerow which meant more shelterfor the rabbit. The development of root crops and theintroduction of winter feedstuffs for farm stock also enabledrabbits to survive severe winter weather. Moreover, the riseof shooting and the development of the sporting estate meantthat everywhere gamekeepers were controlling the rabbit’senemies. Fox coverts, planted widely in Leicestershire, alsosheltered rabbits. Although on its own in the wild, thespecies was demonstrating that it was well able to take careof itself.

It is perhaps not surprising that when rabbits escaped, orwere even allowed to roam from their warrens, they causedmuch damage and hardship to local small farmers. TheHerrick warren at Whittle Hill near Loughborough was sobadly managed that in 1748 the local people took mattersinto their own hands. A mob assembled and moved on the

warren, where they tore down fences, dug up the burrowsand killed the rabbits. The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1750reported that the military had to be called to assist thewarrener and his staff and to disperse the rabble. In theensuing struggle, one man was fatally wounded, manyrioters were arrested and 28 were imprisoned. At the earl ofHuntingdon’s warren at Whitwick, smoldering resentmentby farmers at the damage done to their crops by escapingrabbits lasted for many years before his lordship closeddown what had been an extensive operation.

With rabbits widespread in the countryside warrening wentinto rapid decline. The increase in corn prices alonesignalled the closure of many warrens, such as that atBelvoir which was ploughed up in the 1790s. Profits fromsheep, too, rose as those from rabbits fell. By the late 19thcentury the owners of local warrens found themselves incompetition with cheap imports of vast numbers of frozencarcasses from Australia, a phenomenon made possible bythe development of refrigeration for large-scale commercialpurposes.

Over much of Leicestershire in the late 18th century littleshort of total war was waged by tenant farmers, althoughmany a landlord had an ambivalent attitude towards rabbits.The Charnwood tenants of lord Stamford were obliged tosuffer losses to crops for the sake of the sport that the rabbitsprovided for shooting parties. In Bradgate park rabbits werepresent in almost unbelievable numbers. In 1861 a sportingparty of 13 guns killed 3,333 rabbits (and much morebesides) in one day alone. In the 1890s keepers in the parkwere netting 6,000 couples a year. At Leicester’s AbbeyPark rabbits were introduced at an unknown date and by1887 had become such a nuisance that a decision was madeto exterminate them. It was reported, again by theGentleman’s Magazine, that ‘many onlookers- mostly streetarabs - came along to witness the unique spectacle of a shootin the middle of Leicester’.

During the first quarter of the last century the menace toagriculture presented by the rabbit continued to cause graveconcern. By the 1930s the rabbit population of Britain hadrisen to an estimated 50 million. The 1939 Prevention ofDamage by Rabbits Act empowered county councils to serveorders on landlords and authorised entry to premises to seetheir instructions were being carried out. Gassing of burrowswas allowed, as was the use of gin traps at the entrances.Yet, by the beginning of the 1950s, the rabbit population hadreached a total variously estimated at between 60 and 100million.

The arrival in 1953 of myxomatosis had not come a momenttoo soon. Leaving aside the suffering it caused, the diseasehad the great advantages that it was specific to rabbits, it wasquickly spread by the ubiquitous rabbit flea and our nativerabbit population had no natural immunity to it. Aselsewhere, the rabbit population of this county declined byan estimated 95 per cent and remained low for the followingtwo decades.

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The sudden removal of the rabbit from the countryside hadan enormous effect on the landscape and the wildlife. Thefox in particular, as the chief predator of the rabbit,successfully adapted to a diet of more humble creatures suchas voles, mice, small birds and insects. The effect on theflora was also considerable. Writing in 1970, the author ofThe Flora of Rutland reported there had been a considerableincrease in coarse grasses as a result of the decline of theclose grazing of the rabbit. Elsewhere in Britain, manyhillsides flowered as never before, at least not in thelifetimes of those making the observations.

Over the last 30 years or so the rabbit population ofLeicestershire has failed to recover its numbers of half acentury ago. Casual observation confirms that myxomatosisis now endemic and continues to act as a brake whenpopulations rise above a certain level. The effects on thelandscape brought about by the arrival of the agri-businessof the late 60s, the 70s and early the 80s, were another factor

holding down rabbit numbers. Now that the dictates of theCommon Agricultural Policy reward farmers for conservinglandscape rather than producing food, it will be interesting tosee how rabbit populations react to a countryside whichreturns, at least in part, to the conditions of the late 18thcentury when the rabbit became so quickly and firmlyestablished in the wild.

References and Notes:1. Daily Telegraph 14 April 2005. For an earlier and lively

debate on the origins of the rabbit in England see: JohnWarry. The ancient history of rabbits. Local Historian.1988, 1: l3-15 and James Bond. Rabbits: the case fortheir medieval introduction into Britain. Local Historian.Vol 18 2: 53-57.

2. Herrick Mss DG9/145. (ROLLR).

continued from page 10

It was with great interest that I read the second part ofAlan McWhirr’s “Exploring Leicestershire Churchyards”in the Leicestershire Historian No. 40. In this Alan

mentioned the slate headstone of Reverend Elias Travers,Rector of Thurcaston from 1628 to 1641, as possibly beingthe earliest dated headstone in Leicestershire, althoughnoting its current position is inside Thurcaston church andquerying whether the stone ever actually stood outside in thechurchyard.

I was born in Cropston and attended Thurcaston Church ofEngland School from the age of five to eleven between 1927and 1933, and I passed this headstone almost every school-day (there was a “short-cut” through the churchyard to thefield footpath to Cropston) so I can vouch for the fact that itdid indeed stand originally in the churchyard. It was just afew feet from the main pathway, very roughly on a line fromthe right side of the path to the east end of the church.

As children we were taught Scripture by the Reverend A. W.Taylor every week; we all respected this ancient stoneunderstanding it was held to be the earliest surviving datedgravestone in Leicestershire.

David Ramsey writes:This stone now insideThurcaston Church, bore avery brief inscription, part ofwhich is still legible “…avers DD octobr 9th 1641”,and commemorates Elias

Leicestershire’s oldest gravestone?Kay E. Gowland

Travers who was rector of Thurcaston 1628 to 1641.Interestingly the lettering of the inscription is in two verydifferent styles and fonts – Travers’ name and the lettersDD are italic, sans serif, whilst the date below is upright,serif.

There is a noticeable similarity in the lettering on EliasTravers’ gravestone and a headstone at Ab Kettleby whichis situated on theoutside wall of thechurch, andc o m m e m o r a t e sThomas Bracebridge(1686) and JaneBracebridge (1688).The two distinct stylesof lettering are againin evidence and thenoticeable similarity inthe lettering has ledme to suggest that thetwo stones werecarved by the samehand. If so, is itpossible that given theapparent 40 plus yeargap between the two,that the Thurcastonheadstone may in facthave been carved laterthan its date suggests?

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Throughout its life, the Saffron Estate has had manyaliases including Saffron Lane Estate, The ParkEstate and Lubbesthorpe Park Estate, not to mention

the numerous nicknames that the estate has including itscurrent name ‘The Saff’ and earlier names ‘Candletown’ and‘Chinatown’. During building, the estate was largely referredto as the Park Estate with the earliest part (that which liesbetween Knighton Lane East, The Fairway, Saffron Laneand the Midland Railway) being called the Saffron LaneEstate. Why the estate was called the Park Estate isuncertain. That it was sometimes called Lubbesthorpe ParkEstate suggests that the land it was built on may have beenpart of the Lubbesthorpe manorial estate. The presence ofPark Farm on the site now occupied by Southfields DriveSchool would seem to support this theory.

The estate spread across the city boundary when it was builtand until the city boundary was moved half the estate wasthe responsibility of the City Council and the other half wasthe responsibility of the district councils of Wigston andBlaby. Fortunately, several plans of the layout of the estatestill exist among the city building plans. These plans havethe city boundary marked on it and show which parts of theestate sat in the city and which parts were in the county. Asthe city boundary was moved and the area around the estatewas developed, electoral wards and parishes were changed.Consequently, various parts of the estate have been in threedifferent parishes and four different electoral wards since itwas built. Early OS maps (XXXVII.2 & 6) show the areabefore the estate was built and during its infancy,neighboured by a rural landscape quite unlike the cityscapethat lies there today. The second edition (1904) map showsthe farmer tenants of the fields that were to become theestate and a small country track where Asquith Way nowcourses through the estate.

Leicester Corporation Housing and Town Planning Minutes(CM23/1-6) provide a wealth of information about thebuilding of the estate which is enhanced through theconsultation of city and Blaby District building plans.Building started on the earliest part of the estate called theSaffron Lane Estate in 1923 on land purchased from MrsEyres Monsell and Col. Craddock. Building of the main partof the estate, the Park Estate, commenced shortly after inthree phases. Again building plans showing the layout of theestate help to clarify which parts of the estate were includedin each phase of building. The building started in the cornernear the Saffron Lane Estate and Saffron Lane and spreaddown towards Stonesby Avenue (still called Aylestone Laneuntil November 1927).

Due to the scale of building throughout the city and theshortage of coal, building supplies such as bricks and tileswere soon unavailable forcing the City Council to seekalternate methods of house building. In September 1924,Boot & Sons signed a contract to build 1,500 concretehouses, 750 with parlours and 750 without parlours. Theconcrete houses were erected in three batches of 500,following the three phases of estate building. As the houseswere built adjustments and alterations were continuallymade to the houses to improve foundations and dampproofing and add structural reinforcements. Even as buildingcontinued and the first tenants began to move in, the CityCouncil received complaints about the condition of thehouses, an ominous foreshadowing of escalating problemsthat would eventually lead to the campaign to replace the‘Boot Houses’ in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite complaintsand clear problems with damp in the upstairs rooms thecontract was completed and by the end of September 1927all houses on the estate were occupied.

Early Days on “The Saff”Kate Hancock

An interesting scene showingbuilding and construction work inprogress on the estate [ROLLRM1438/1]. (Reproduced bypermission of the Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester andRutland).

With all houses occupied the Park Estate was far fromcomplete with full amenities. Many tenants were initiallywithout electricity in their new ‘modern’ homes as theresponsible departments were slow to connect gas andelectric supplies. The roads and paths were not immediatelyfinished. Their initial finish of ash and gravel was

insufficient and roads quickly became churned up mudtracks in bad weather. Not until March 1930 were all of theroads on the estate finished properly by Groby GraniteCompany.

The first shop to serve the estate was the Co-op on TheFairway, which opened in 1925. The only alternative toshopping at the Co-op was to walk to the shops on SaffronLane. Consequently, the Co-op enjoyed a monopoly on theestate until the end of the twenties when further shops werebuilt on Southfields Drive and Stonesby Avenue. The firstbus to serve the estate and convey residents into the citystarted its run on Monday 5th October 1925 but only servedthe edge of the estate stopping at Aylestone Recreation

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Building plan of the Co-op on the Fairway, opened in 1925.(Reproduced by permission of the Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester and Rutland).

Ordnance Survey map of 1930 showing the heart of theestate [OS XXXVII.6]. (Reproduced by permission of theRecord Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland).

Ground, a long walk for most residents. As more houseswere completed the bus route moved further down the estatebut by 1931 it still only went as far as The Fairway.

The estate had both city and county schools that openedduring 1926 and 1927. The Marriott Road School opened on9th March 1928, but children had been attending school intemporary huts there since 1926. Linwood Lane School heldits first day of school on Monday 6th November 1928.Finally, Southfields Drive School, originally calledLubbesthorpe Park Temporary Junior School, opened in1926. It shared the site with Newry School and used thebuildings of Park Farm until a permanent building could beerected. Interestingly Park Farm was also the site of the firstchurch on the estate. Southfields School sub-let farmbuildings to St. Christopher’s who held their first service inan old cow shed on 31st October 1927.

The history of the Saffron Lane Estate is fascinating. Whatstarted as a response to the call for ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ in1919, became a model council housing estate that was

applauded nationally. The early days of the estate are litteredwith problems to be overcome and triumphs, personalaccounts by early tenants are recorded in ‘The Story of theSaff: A History of the Saffron Lane Estate’ by the ‘SaffronPast and Present’ Group.

Note on sources:For those wishing to discover more, charts in the form ofhandy index cards, listing possible sources of informationand handy tips about parishes, electoral wards andcity/county jurisdiction can be found at the Record Officefor Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, located in the‘Leicester Index’ drawers under ‘suburbs’.

Acknowledgements: This article first appeared in theDustsheet produced by the Friends of the Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester and Rutland and is reproducedwith permission by the Record Office and the author. Therehave been one or two minor editorial amendments.Illustrations researched and provided by Margaret Bonney.

14


Cockshaw’s Diorama of Leicester Market Place

continued from page 13

Source: Leicestershireand Rutland Notes andQueries and AntiquarianGleaner Vol 1 p 130 1891.

Leicester’s Market Placetraders immortalized inverse by Isaac Cockshawc. 1812.

For over 70 years the Bradgate Park estate has been themost popular area in the county for quiet recreationand enjoyment of the countryside. It is well-known

that in 1928 the founder of British United Shoe MachineryLtd, Charles Bennion of Thurnby, bought part the estate ofthe Grey family of Newtown Linford and Groby and gavethis to the people of Leicester and Leicestershire. TheBennion gift covered the ancient deer park of the Greyfamily, including the ruins of Bradgate House, whereLeicestershire’s tragic Nine Day Queen, Lady Jane Grey,was born in 1537, together with the high ground of OldJohn.

However, it is not generally known that more than threeyears before Charles Bennion’s generous gift, the LeicesterRotary Club had already bought for the public benefit andpreservation one of the most popular areas of the presentBradgate Park Trust lands. This was Swithland Wood,directly across the road on the northern side of BradgatePark, opposite the Hallgates car park on the north-westcorner of Cropston Reservoir. The 137 acres of SwithlandWood was (and still is) amongst the richest and mostattractive ancient woodlands in the Midlands, famousthroughout the country for its spectacular spring displays ofbluebells.

Swithland Wood and the more or less adjacent The Brand tothe north cover the largest and most important outcrop of thewell-known Swithland slates, which are the youngestmember of the ancient Late Precambrian rocks, around 600million years old, that form the striking rocky outcropsacross Charnwood Forest, (though the latest evidencesuggests that the Swithland Slates part of the sequence mayactually date from the Cambrian period, which began around545 million years ago). As across much of CharnwoodForest, the ancient Charnian rocks of Swithland Wood arepartly covered by thin deposits of soft red desert clays andsands of the Triassic Mercian Mudstone Group, dating fromaround 220 million years ago, and by some patches ofglacial deposits.

The characteristic thick purple, blue-grey, to greenSwithland Slates were used quite extensively as roofing slateand building stone in Roman times, as evidenced from theLoughborough area and Leicester including Jewry Wall, andfrom as far away as Borough, Norton Disney and Thorpe inLincolnshire. Quarrying seems to have been re-establishedby around 1260. Swithland slates were used in the re-roofingof Leicester Castle in 1377-8 and for repairs to the Castle in1439, by which time other important Leicestershirebuildings including the fourteenth century LeicesterGuildhall had Swithland slate roofs.

15


By the 15th century the stone was also being used as a moregeneral building material, for example in the drains andcellars of Bradgate House, while the value of polished slatefor engraved lettering was known from the late 16th century,though the majority of the well known and much admiredSwithland slate headstones and other memorials are from the18th to mid 19th century. As sawn slabs of slate becameavailable with more advanced quarrying techniques,Swithland slate began to be used for many other purposes,including sundials, sinks, fireplaces and cheese presses, aswell as a building material for houses, farm buildings anddry stone walls across much of Charnwood Forest.

It seems that quarrying for slate within the present SwithlandWood was on a small scale and not continuous, andpresumably took place by or under the authority of the Greysof Bradgate who owned the Wood as part of the BradgateEstate from medieval times until after the First World War,and the Bradgate Estate accounts and other records in theLeicestershire, Leicester and Rutland Record Office detailsuccessive tenancies of the various quarrying leases from1688 onwards.

Slate extraction from Swithland Wood on a more industrialscale using gunpowder as an explosive appears to havebegan in the later 18th century. The large and deep Old SlatePit near the northern boundary of Swithland Wood wasopened in 1813 by the Hind family under a lease from theBradgate Estate, but suffered from mixed fortunes.Production ceased for some years in 1838, restarted and thelease in the Old Pit lapsed in 1849, but was taken up byThomas Rudkin in 1850. The larger abandoned quarry,Swithland Great Pit, in the centre of the Wood, must havebeen started during the same period.

In 1859 the well-known Ellis family of Belgrave Hall whosecommercial interests included the Leicester andSwannington and then Midland Railways, and later the Ellis& Everard builder’s merchant business, took over the leaseon the Great Pit and introduced the latest quarrying methodsand equipment, including a lifting crane and a weighingmachine. Within less than thirty years the Big Pit hadfollowed the best stone downwards to a remarkable depth ofover 55 metres (180 feet). By the time of the first OrdnanceSurvey Six Inch map of 1883 only the Great Pit was stillworking, and the abandoned quarries were filled with water.The Great Pit finally closed in 1887 and this too quicklyflooded creating the very attractive tree-surrounded featurethat is one of the most popular sights of Swithland Woodtoday as well as being a popular but challengingenvironment for advanced sub-aqua exploration.

Swithland Wood - “secured as a NationalHeritage” by Rotary in 1925

Patrick J. Boylan

By the early 20th century the present rich oak, lime, ash,sycamore, hazel and birch woodland had become fullyestablished (or probably more accurately re-established)over all of Swithland Wood, and no doubt there was sometimber extraction and forestry management, though despiterecent extensive research by Stephen Woodward its seemsthat there are no records of what exactly was done in termsof either felling or any planned replanting rather than naturalregeneration. However, the Bradgate accounts show that in1905 alone over 2,000 cubic feet of standing timber (oak,lime, ash and birch) was auctioned in ten lots, raising thethen quite considerable total of £210.

In July 1921, in one of their first disposals of freehold of theBradgate Estate land they had owned for over 400 years, theGrey family sold Swithland Wood together with SwithlandWood Farm and Hallgates Farm, a total of 286 acres in asingle lot by auction for £7,300. The buyer was the well-known Leicester timber merchant, William Gimson, whowas apparently interested in acquiring the property tocontinue the commercial forestry operation and sell thetimber through his own business. For a time Gimson felledand extracted mature timber for sale, but by 1925 it wasreported that all the (currently mature, presumably) valuabletimber had been taken.

However, very soon there was growing concern that one ofthe one of the most important and beautiful natural historysites in the county, now known to have over 400 differentvarieties of trees and plants according to the latest surveys,could be damaged or even destroyed by continued forestryworks and subsequent replanting, as had recently happenedto too many other important areas of Charnwood Forest. Thewidespread call for action to save Swithland Wood wastaken up by the Rotary Club of Leicester, which had beenformed less than nine years earlier in 1916 as only thethirteenth Club in Britain and Ireland within the RotaryInternational movement founded in Chicago in February1905.

The prime move was the Club’s most important andinfluential founder member, the architect Waller K.Bedingfield. Among many other things Bedingfield was along-standing member of the Leicestershire Archaeologicaland Historical Society and the Leicester Literary andPhilosophical Society, serving as President of the “Lit. &Phil.” for 1930-31. In addition to undertaking someimportant architectural projects through his Museum Squarepractice of Bedingfield and Grundy, including the well-known Art Deco factory for Goddard’s in Nelson Street,Leicester, he was the architect and planner for the late 1920sextension of Abbey Park. As part of this work he began theexcavations of the Leicester Abbey site, the work beingcontinued in the 1930s by his younger brother and partnerRalph Waldo Bedingfield.

At a meeting of the Rotary Club Council on 3rd January1925 Bedingfield asked permission to bring forward thequestion of the possible purchase of Swithland Wood, andten days later the Council appointed the President, George

Tarratt, the jeweller,Bedingfield, the CountyArchitect William Keay,and William Bastardwho had an importantspinning business in theCity, to serve as apreliminary committeeto investigate theproposal. This confirmedthat William Gimsonwas sympathetic withthe view that the Woodshould be saved fromany further substantialfelling for timberextraction. On this basishe was prepared to sellSwithland Wood to the Rotary Club for only £3,000, subjectto the condition that it should be preserved “for the publicuse for ever”, this condition being guaranteed by vesting thelegal ownership permanently in trustees or the NationalTrust.

The Committee recommended to the Rotary Club Councilthat an appeal should be launched both among the membersof the Club and outside it to buy Swithland Wood on theseterms. This was endorsed by the Council, and the proposalwas put before a meeting of the whole Club on 16thFebruary 1925. Bedingfield proposed the resolution, whichwas seconded by Bastard, and it seems from the detailedMinutes that survive that in all the discussion that followedthe comments of members of the Club were always entirelyfavourable. The Medical Officer of Health, Dr Millard,supported the proposal “from the health point of view”,while the prominent designer, Harry Hardy Peach (founderof the Dryad group of companies locally and of the Designand Industries Association nationally) pointed out thatLeicestershire has less common land than any other largecounty in the country. The resolution to buy SwithlandWood and hold it in permanent trust for the public benefitwas finally carried unanimously, and a Swithland WoodCommittee of nine members, including Bedingfield, waselected.

The Swithland Wood Committee opened with an appealaddressed to the Rotary Club’s own members. By 10thMarch the committee was able to report to the Club Councilthat nearly £1,000 had already been pledged by Clubmembers, and the appeal was then broadened to individualsand businesses outside the Club. Less than a month laterprogress was so encouraging that contracts for the purchasewere exchanged and a 10% deposit was paid, WilliamGimson having stuck to the verbal agreement on the pricedespite receiving an offer of £3,500 from someone describedas “a speculative builder”.

By 23rd June 1925 it was reported that 104 members of theClub had contributed £1,002.14s.0d whilst 100 non-Rotarians had added £1,466.14s.6d. Major contributors from

16


Waller Bedingfield.

outside the Club included H. Percy Gee, Stead & Simpson,Freeman, Hardy & Willis, and Wolsey Ltd, each of whichcontributed £100, while the seller of the Wood, WilliamGimson, added a donation of £100 towards the purchase athis already below market value price. On 29th June 1925 abusiness meeting of the whole Club agreed to complete thepurchase, the balance of around £600 including legal costsbeing covered by a Westminster Bank overdraft. Negotiatingthis overdraft cannot have been difficult: the Bank’s localManager was Rotarian O. Wheeler, Treasurer to theSwithland Wood Committee, and all the Committee’smeeting had been held in the Bank. The purchase wascompleted on 1st August 1925, with William Bastard,George Tarratt and W. Arnold Viccars named in theConveyance and Deed of Trust as the Trustees on behalf ofthe Rotary Club.

The management of the Wood passed immediately to theClub’s Swithland Wood Committee which decided tocontinue with the fund-raising to raise funds not just to repaythe overdraft but for the immediate fencing of the dangerousflooded Great Pit, and for other site management and publicaccess works, at an estimated cost of around £2,000. One ofBedingfield’s original ideas of 1925 had been to for the Clubto set up an annual Bluebell Service in the Wood, and thefirst Bluebell Sunday was organised by the Club on 20thMay 1928, though after a few years the Parish of Swithlandagreed to take over the organisation of this. By 1931 theClub had not only paid off the overdraft, but had raised afurther £3,000, of which £2,400 had been spent on fencing,landscaping works, a parking area and on employing aRanger and casual staff, leaving a sum of around £700 in theCommittee’s investment account. Thus the total raised bythe Club over six years was just over £6,000, (equivalent toat least £135,000 at 2005 prices).

In 1928 Charles Bennion of Thurnby, founder of the BritishUnited Shoe Machinery Company Ltd., bought Bradgate

Park “for the quiet enjoyment” of the people ofLeicestershire and Leicester. The land was vested in thecounty and city councils jointly as open space under s.10 ofthe Open Spaces Act 1906 which allowed councils to holdand administer suitable land in trust for “the enjoymentthereof by the public as an open space within the meaning ofthis Act and under proper control and regulation”. Afterconsultations, in 1929 the two councils set up the BradgatePark Trust to serve as the legal owner of Bradgate Park inperpetuity and to manage this for the public benefit inaccordance with the terms of Charles Bennion’s gift and the1906 Act.

It soon became clear that the Bradgate Park preservation andaccess scheme was a great success, and on 4th May 1931 abusiness meeting of the Rotary Club unanimously agreed tooffer Swithland Wood to the Bradgate Park Trustees,accompanied by the £700 balance from the second fund-raising campaign as an endowment to help with futuremaintenance costs, “on condition that the Wood may begiven to the Public use for ever and be managed by theBradgate Park Trustees and under the same regulations asthe Park”.

This approach was very enthusiastically welcomed by theBradgate Park Trustees, led by Col. (later Sir) RobertMartin, Chairman of the County Council, who had in facthelped the Rotary Club with its fund-raising six yearsearlier. Sir Robert was also a noted local historian and long-standing supporter of the Leicestershire Archaeological andHistorical Society, serving as Chairman from 1933 to 1953and President from 1955 to 1961. It was recognised by theBradgate Trustees, and far more widely, that apart from thefact that the two areas of public access open space wereadjacent, to bring together the management of these twoextremely different examples of unspoilt Charnwood Forest

17


Contemporary view of Swithland Great Pit.

public benefit by the Rotary Club. Because of this, it isnowadays universally assumed that Charles Bennion’spurchase of Bradgate Park in 1928 began the first moves topreserve for the public benefit some of the most importantunspoilt parts of the ancient landscapes of CharnwoodForest. In fact, his munificence followed, rather thanpreceded, the extraordinary efforts of the Rotary Club ofLeicester.

Bennion, though not himself a Rotarian, knew many of thekey members of the Leicester Club. In the Centenary Year ofRotary International, and on the 80th anniversary of thecompletion of the purchase, it seems appropriate to point outthat it seems very likely indeed that Bennion’s mostgenerous gesture in buying Bradgate Park was heavilyinfluenced, if not directly prompted, by the pioneering actionof the Rotary Club in buying Swithland Wood for the publicbenefit more than three years earlier in 1925.

Sources and further reading:

Ball, M.E. & Jones, M.D., 1976. The Extractive Industries.Pp. 47-55 in Evans, I.M. (editor), 1976. Charnwood’sHeritage. (Leicester: Leicestershire Museums)

McGrath, A., 2004. A Geological walk around BradgatePark and Swithland Wood. (Keyworth: British GeologicalSurvey)

Moseley, J.B., 1981. Geology and mineral extraction. pp.130-147 in Crocker, J., (editor), 1981. Charnwood Forest:A Changing Landscape. (Wymondham: Sycamore Press forthe Loughborough Naturalists Club)

Rotary Club of Leicester Archives. Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester and Rutland ref. 21 D 69.

Thompson, F.B. & McIntosh, M., 2000. Rotary in Leicester.A History of the Rotary Club of Leicester, 1916-2000. (2ndedition) (Leicester: Rotary Club of Leicester)

Woodward, S. 1992. Swithland Wood. A study of its historyand vegetation. (Leicester: Leicestershire MuseumsPublications no. 116)

18


landscape and habitat, and managing them as a single unit,would be not only more efficient but would providecontrasting environments for both nature conservation andpublic enjoyment.

The County and City Councils in turn approved the proposalfor the transfer of Swithland Wood to the Bradgate ParkTrust. After the completion of the formalities, on Monday 7thNovember 1931 the Bradgate Park Trustees and other localand national dignitaries including the Lord Mayor, Harry H.Peach, Lindsay Everard MP and Claud Bennion (CharlesBennion having died in 1929) were invited to the RotaryClub’s luncheon meeting in the Oriental Hall in Leicester’sMarket Place. In the chair was the President, the leadingLeicester solicitor A.A. Ironside who had undertaken the legalnegotiations free of charge through more than six years. Themeeting saw the formal signature and exchange of the TitleDeeds of Swithland Wood and two accompanying TrustDeeds. William Bastard, on behalf of the Swithland WoodTrustees, then formally handed the Deeds and a £600 WarStock certificate to Colonel Robert Martin.

In thanking the Rotary Club for the gift on behalf of all thepeople of the County and City, Col. Martin pointed out thatit was now possible to walk two and half miles from the topend of Swithland Wood to the far corner of Bradgate Parkwithout passing land that did not belong absolutely to thepublic of Leicester and Leicestershire. In acknowledgementof the Rotary Club’s remarkable efforts, the Bradgate ParkTrustees presented the Club with a key to Bradgate Parkwhich was to be handed each year to succeeding RotaryClub Presidents, giving them the right to pass through thegates of the Park at any time. Sir Arnold Wilson, Chairmanof the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, wasthe guest speaker, and described the Club’s preservation andgift of Swithland Wood as “without parallel in history of theCouncil”.

In recognition of the gift, a commemorate inscription in verylarge letters was carved into the main vertical face of theabandoned Swithland Great Pit, and which must have beenthe biggest ever Swithland slate inscription. The letteringseems to have been designed by Bedingfield: a scaledrawing for the lettering, apparently initialled by him, ispreserved in his Secretary’s file for the Swithland WoodCommittee. The inscription reads:

The Rotary Club of LeicesterSecured Swithland WoodAs a National Heritage

However, due to rising water levels in the flooded quarry thebottom line of the inscription is only seen in periods of longand extreme droughts. Indeed, in particularly wet seasonseven the middle line may be partly or completely underwater. Because of this in 1948 the inscription was duplicatedon a small bronze plaque affixed to a rock by the main pathjust above the Swithland Great Pit. Most unfortunately,however, the bronze plaque gives the year when the Woodwas “secured as a National Heritage” as 1931 – the date ofits donation to the Bradgate Park Trust, not 1925, the actualdate of the purchase of Swithland Wood in trust for the

The misleading 1948 bronze plaque.

On Monday, 8th May 1905 Andrew Carnegie himselfarrived at the Midland Railway station on London Road topreside at the opening ceremony. He was met by a smalldelegation which included Edward Burgess and ErnestHiley. the Town Clerk, and after lunch in the Mayor’sRooms at the Museum, the party proceeded to Bishop Street.The opening ceremony for the new building took place inthe Reference Library on the first floor, and as well asCouncillor Stephen Hilton, the Mayor. Alderman GeorgePayne, the Chairman of the Library Committee and Sir J. F.L. Rolleston, the MP for Leicester, the audience included theChief Librarians of Nottingham and Derby. AndrewCarnegie’s speech was reported in full in the local press andincluded the observation that, “While all classes in Leicestermay enter this library free and enjoy the books, there is oneclass above all others which is benefited by the free library,and that is . . . the manual labourer – the working man, thepoor man and his children, to whom the library is thegreatest boon”.(2) At appropriate moments during theproceedings, the Victoria Band played “selections of up-to-date music”, and to commemorate the occasion Carnegiewas presented with a golden key and an album of localviews.

To inaugurate the Lending Library, the Mayor borrowed thefirst book – a copy of James Thompson’s History ofLeicester. The building was opened to the public the nextday and a contemporary guidebook described the facilities:

“On the ground floor it consists of a handsomeEntrance Hall, a Lending Library, 100 feet long, andproviding accommodation for 40.000 books, and aReading Room, 80 feet long, where newspapers andmagazines of all descriptions will be provided for theuse of the public. Upstairs is the Reference Library,which is arranged to hold 40,000 volumes ofreference, and a Ladies’ Room for newspapers.magazines and reference books. . . . In the basementis . . . the Juvenile Lending library and ReadingRoom. In all the rooms the fittings are of the latestand on the most approved plans.” (3)

A bronze plaque in the entrance to the building (which hasbeen the Reference Library since 1935, when the LendingLibrary moved back to Belvoir Street) records AndrewCarnegie’s beneficence:

“This Municipal Library was erected with fundsgenerously provided by Andrew Carnegie Esquire,who opened the building to the public on the 8th dayof May 1905.”

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Leicester in 1905 was a busy, multi-industry townwhich already had a population of more than 200,000.It had more than doubled in size in the previous 25

years, but the new electric tramway system which hadopened the previous year was helping to bind the town into amore coherent whole. From the many local events whichhappened that year, I have chosen three which linkedLeicester to the wider world.

In 1902 the Scottish-born, American multi-millionaire andphilanthropist Andrew Carnegie, owner of the largest ironand steel works in the USA, who was noted for his generousfunding of new library buildings on both sides of theAtlantic, offered Leicester Corporation £12,000, aconsiderable sum then, to build a new Municipal Library.(1)His offer was accepted in July of that year, and a site on thecorner of Bishop Street and Bowling Green Street waschosen for the new Library, to replace the one at the cornerof Wellington Street and Belvoir Street. The Library wasdesigned by the Leicester-born architect Edward Burgess toharmonize with the Town Hall, and built by Clark & Garrettof Willow Street; the heavy, wrought-iron railings frontingBishop Street were the work of W. T. Burbidge & Son, ofthe Iron Fence & Gate Works, York Street.

1905 . . . A Year to RememberJ. D. Bennett

An early photograph of the Municipal Library, Bishop Street,Leicester.

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When the marchers arrived back in Leicester on Sunday,18th June, having returned via Dunstable, Wolverton,Wellingborough, Kettering and Market Harborough, TheTimes reported them to be “in excellent trim,notwithstanding their tramp of 200 miles”. Five brass bandsescorted them to the Market Place, where a huge crowd waswaiting to greet them, and as at the outset, an open-airservice was held. To mark the occasion, each of themarchers was presented with a medal, and of rather moreimmediate use, 3 lbs beef, 3 lbs potatoes, 4 loaves, I lb sugarand 1/4 lb tea. Perhaps not surprisingly, King Edward VIIhad declined to receive them or their petition, but theirprotest may nevertheless have helped the passage throughParliament later that year of the Unemployed Workmen Bill,the beginning of the idea of state assistance for theunemployed.

Less dramatic events took place in July when the BritishMedical Association held its 73rd annual meeting atLeicester. It was attended by more than a thousand membersfrom all parts of the United Kingdom, as well as a number offoreign and colonial delegates. General meetings took placein the Y.M.C.A. building on London Road and sectional

There was serious unemployment in the town in 1905 and onSunday, 4th June a large crowd gathered in the Market Placeto watch as some 480 unemployed Leicester men, mostlyboot and shoe operatives. set off to march to London.(4)Among them were a number of old soldiers who had servedin Egypt, India and South Africa.(5) They planned to presenta petition to the King to draw attention to their plight, andwere probably inspired by a smaller march the previousmonth, when shoemakers at Raunds in Northamptonshirehad taken similar action.

The marchers were led by Amos Sherriff, a future Mayor ofLeicester, George White, the secretary of the unemployedCommittee, and the Rev F. L. Donaldson, Vicar of StMark’s, who conducted an open-air service before theydeparted.(6) They carried banners inscribed ‘Leicester’sUnemployed March to London, Representing 2000 Men andTheir Families”, and the procession included a one-horsedray carrying 1400 pairs of spare socks, donated by asympathetic Leicester manufacturer. Two brass bandsaccompanied them to the borough boundary.

When they reached Market Harborough, the first stoppingplace, about forty of the marchers decided they had gone farenough and returned to Leicester by train. The remaindercarried on, via Northampton, Bedford, Luton and St Albans,and were given food and shelter by people along the way.On Friday, 9th June, tired, wet and footsore - it had rainedalmost every day - they finally reached London. After a bathand a meal at the Salvation Army hall in Lisson Grove,Marylebone, they made their way to Marble Arch, where alarge crowd had assembled to witness their arrival. Therewere a number of welcoming speeches, then they proceededto the hall attached to Bedford Congregational Chapel, inCharrington Street, St Pancras.(7) This was to be theirLondon “home”, though they had some of their meals atSalvation Army hostels.

A demonstration in Hyde Park planned for Saturday, 10thJune had to be abandoned because of heavy rain, but aftermorning service at St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday, 11thJune, there was a rally in Trafalgar Square. This attracted alarge crowd, including about a hundred members of theLeicester Labour Party who had travelled to London byexcursion train.

The march attracted considerable public attention, and wascovered in great detail by the local press (particularly theLeicester Daily Mercury and the Leicester Daily Post, someof whose reporters accompanied the marchers for part of theway), and to a lesser extent by the national press. It was alsoextensively photographed and many postcards of it werepublished. One of these shows the leaders of the march onHampstead Heath on Monday, 12th June, where they held ameeting before setting out on their return journey. It wasaddressed by J. Ramsay Macdonald, the Labour candidatefor Leicester, who had joined the march at Bedford and hadalso spoken at the Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square rallies.A crowd of sympathetic onlookers collected money to helpthe marchers on their homeward journey.

The leaders of the Leicester Unemployed March on London,Mr Amos Sherriff, Rev. F.L. Donaldson, Mr George White,taken on Hampstead Heath, on Whit Monday, 12th June1905, prior to the start for home.

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July and an excursion to Belvoir Castle (courtesy of theDuke of Rutland) was included in the week’s events. Theassociation ended its visit to Leicester with an eveninggarden party at Abbey Park on Friday, 28th July, hosted bythe Mayor, Councillor Stephen Hilton, when 2000 guestswere present.

Sources:1. Andrew Carnegie also funded libraries at Melton Mowbray

(1904) and Loughborough (1905), but he did not attend theopening ceremonies.

2. Leicester Daily Mercury, 8 May 1905.3. G. Clarke Nuttall. Guide to Leicester and Neighbourhood

(1905), 27-8.4. It is difficult to arrive at an accurate figure for the number of

marchers as contemporary accounts vary somewhat. The Timesstated that about 480 set out from Leicester: most of those whodropped out did so at Market Harborough, but one or two moreleft the march later on or were expelled for misbehaviour.

5. According to the Leicester Daily Mercury, there were 164 ex-servicemen among the marchers, of whom 102 had seen activeservice, including one old soldier who had served in both theCrimean War and the Indian Mutiny; 57 were former membersof the Leicestershire Regiment.

6. A fourth man, F. W. Dawdrey, is also described in some reportsas one of the leaders of the march.

7. Bedford Chapel and Hall closed in 1908. They were rebuilt asthe Charrington Hall, but this was destroyed in an air raid in1940. Camden History Society, Streets of St. Pancras (2002).65.

ones in the Technical & Art Schools in the Newarke, where“a large room [had] been fitted up as a pathologicalmuseum”. Some events were also held at the TemperanceHall in Granby Street, the Royal Opera House in SilverStreet and the Drill Hall in the Newarke, where “aninteresting exhibition of surgical appliances” could be seen.

Proceedings opened on Monday, 24th July, and thefollowing evening, after a special service at St. Martin’sChurch, when the Bishop of Birmingham preached asermon, the president-elect, Dr. G. C. Franklin, who was anhonorary surgeon at Leicester Infirmary, delivered hispresidential address at the Royal Opera House. It was on thesubject of medical education and was followed by areception for overseas visitors. Other local doctors who tookpart in the proceedings were Dr. C. J. Bond, also a surgeonat the Infirmary, who read a paper on surgery, and Dr. C. K.Millard, who later became Leicester’s Medical Officer ofHealth.

One of the highlights of the week was an address by Dr.Henry Maudsley, consulting physician to the West LondonHospital in Hammersmith, dealing with the success of thepreventive war against disease, which attracted a very largeaudience. (He later founded the Maudsley Hospital in SouthLondon.) Dr. V. H. Rutherford of London sounded awarning note when he attributed degeneration to alcoholism,with £160 million spent every year on drink – more than wasspent on food; he recommended the appointment of aMinister of Public Health.

The B.M.A.’s annual dinner was held on ‘Thursday, 27th

An early view of the Y.M.C.A. building, Leicester, where the1905 annual meeting of the B.M.A. was held.

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In 1884 the Revd. John Page Hopps, minister of the GreatMeeting Unitarian Church in Leicester, wrote a letter tothe editor of the Leicester Daily Post, in which he asked

(probably with a chuckle) ‘whether a Unitarian may beminister of a Congregational Church, and whether it is amatter of course….that a minister of a CongregationalChurch becomes the minister of a well-known UnitarianChurch, and in doing so says “I make no change”’.1 He wasreferring to his friend, the enigmatic Joseph Wood, thefounding minister of Wycliffe Congregational (now UnitedReformed) Church, who lived and worked in Leicester forfifteen years, from 1869 to 1884, before departing to becomethe minister at the Old Meeting in Birmingham.

Wood was born in 1843, the son of James Wood, Governorof the National Refuge for Homeless and Destitute Childrenin London. He is known to have attended King’s College,London, a strictly Anglican institution for the training ofclergy, but seems to have left both the college andAnglicanism before attaining either a University of Londondegree or the college’s own Associateship diploma. Thecollege at the time would have been living under the shadowof F. D. Maurice’s dismissal from a professorship there in1853; the ideas expressed in his Theological Essays wouldhave lingered. Students would have argued over ChristianSocialism. They would have noted Maurice’s sympathy withUnitarians, his insistence that great literature other than theBible was equally inspired by God, and especially his dislikeof the idea of eternal punishment. Certainly the shadow ofMaurice lingered long enough for Wood to have been

enveloped by it,2 for it was the hallmark of his ministry atKing’s Lynn, a task upon which he embarked in 1866without further training in a Congregational college.3

In May 1869 Wood preached at Oxford Street Chapel inLeicester, the Leicester Chronicle commenting that he was‘a minister of great ability and promise, who belongs to the“broad church” of Nonconformity’.4 It is clear that this was‘preaching with a view’ to becoming the minister there.When William Woods had left the Oxford Street pastoratefor Australia earlier in the year it was clear that thecongregation wanted his successor to be ‘a political parson’,‘who would look after the passing political events’.5 It hadbeen noted that ‘at Lynn he has been prominent, like Mr.Picton in Leicester, in the promotion of public movements,in giving special Sunday lectures to working men, and inconducting training classes for the young’. By June 13 hewas already commencing what would be a short ministry atOxford Street.6

It is evident that in Congregational minds in Leicester Woodwas associated with James Allanson Picton, described as ‘aman of keen, alert and sanguine mind’, who, when he hadbeen appointed to the pastorate of the Gallowtree GateChapel in 1863 was so popular that the side pews had had tobe altered to effect increased accommodation. He was,however, said to believe that ‘Christ was a mere man whoperformed no miracles, who shared at least some of theprejudices of his time and nation, and who wrought the greatrevolution traced to Him by appealing to and revealing the

Joseph Wood: Preacher of “Sweetness and Light”

Gerald T. Rimmington

The hall of the Collegiate Schoolwhich had closed down in 1866,was bought by the Revd. JosephWood’s congregation and namedWycliffe Congregational Church.(Reproduced by kind permission ofthe Record Office forLeicestershire, Leicester andRutland)

23


external element in man’. Not surprisingly Picton did notsurvive there as minister beyond 1869. There was a split inthe congregation, followed by an exodus of about a hundredPicton supporters, who were soon to join Wood’s church.7

It was not long before Wood too was accused of heresy. TheOxford Street congregation became divided, and the ministerand eighty members resigned. Wood and the resigningmembers held services at the Corn Exchange andTemperance Hall until eventually, in 1872, they bought thehall attached to the defunct Collegiate School for boys,which had closed in 1866. The new church soon had effigiesof John Wycliffe and Hugh Latimer at the front, and wasnamed Wycliffe Congregational Church; the intention wasthat it should become the ‘morning star’ of a newreformation.8

Wycliffe was a very unusual church. There were no formalrequirements for church membership, apart from attendanceat services and financial subscription. The initial rulesspecified acceptance of ‘only open and free communion’,and recognised as members ‘all who regularly attend itsservices, and who have placed themselves in communicationwith the Minister or the Committee, that their names beentered on a Church roll’.9

There was, however, a statement in the first roll of churchmembers which modified this, stating that ‘the only essentialdoctrines required by the Deed to be held by the Pastor arethe Fatherhood of God and the Divinity of Our Lord andSaviour, Jesus Christ’. The statement went on to say that:

A Christian Church is a society of individuals themembers of which regard God and man fromJesus Christ’s standpoint. This position isreached not by an intellectual but by a practicaland experimental examination of the life andwords of Jesus Christ. As a result of suchobedience each member becomes possessed ofthe conviction that God is “the Father fromwhom every family in heaven and on earth isnamed”. It is the perception of this Fatherhoodand this Brotherhood which qualifies formembership in a Christian society; and inrealising these relationships in love and ministrylies the true sphere of every Church’s work.10

It is clear from the statement that Wood and his memberswere Unitarian rather than Trinitarian in doctrine.

Wood was both industrious and persuasive in urging hiscongregation to experiment with special schemes to raise thelevel of religious intensity. There was, for instance, acommittee meeting in 1874 at which he introduceddiscussion ‘as to the desirability of holding some specialPrayer Meetings and Services….in order to obtain morefervour and zeal among the members of the congregation’. Itwas not long before ‘all present seemed to agree….and itwas resolved that the same be undertaken without delay’.11

By 1877 there were several educational classes, in one of

which, since Wood was a gifted musician, he taught singing.As well as French and English classes there was a ‘largeSociety, meeting each Thursday evening for Debate andSocial Reunion’.12 Seaward Beddow, who became ministerat Wycliffe more than two decades after Wood’s departure,quoted a contemporary (but unnamed source) to the effectthat Wood’s ‘outstanding quality [was] a ripe independenceof thought…. In the pulpit he had a beautiful and flexiblevoice; his reading of the Bible was superior to any I haveknown elsewhere. He was not afraid of raising a smile inChurch, although in those days few ministers dared to dothat’.13

In 1874 Wood was elected chairman of the Leicester SchoolBoard, set up under the terms of the Education Act 1870 toprovide elementary education facilities. He succeeded DavidVaughan, the vicar of St. Martin’s and founder of theWorking Men’s College which was later named after him.Vaughan and the Church Party formed a majority on theboard when it was set up and elections were held in 1871,but after the elections in 1874 it was the Liberal-Nonconformists headed by Wood who dominated, and whoproceeded rapidly to open new schools. Wood quicklyrealised that the type of school building then favoured, anddesigned basically as one large room in which a headmasteroperated with the assistance of pupil teachers, wasinefficient. He noted the report produced by J. F. Moss, thejournalist-secretary of the Sheffield School Board, whichexpressed admiration for the Prussian Volks-Kindergarten,with its classrooms designed for 50 to 80 pupils, withchildren assigned to classes according to age and attainment,each class taught by a qualified teacher. He noted too thatVaughan had ignored the advice of Her Majesty’s InspectorJ. R. Blakiston, who had advocated at least some schools inwhich the main room was reduced in favour of ‘four smallerclassrooms, or three larger rooms attached to each’. He wasquick to persuade the board to rescind the earlier decision tobuild the Charnwood Street School according to the older

The Revd. Joseph Wood. (Reproduced bykind permission of the Leicester Literaryand Philosophical Society).

24


pattern. He then visited a new school in London built on theclassroom system, and returned to propose that CharnwoodStreet be built on similar lines, with twelve classroomsranged around a central hall. He also proposed that the staffwould consist of five certificated teachers, five ex-pupilsteachers and twelve pupil teachers. Wood argued verypersuasively that there would be ‘increased order anddiscipline in the school, a more thorough classification of thechildren, a more accurate estimate of the progress made byeach child, that each child came under the direct control of aqualified teacher, that the teaching was more thorough andsystematic, and that the parents greatly preferred it’. Schoolswith classrooms built around three sides of a central hall,like Charnwood Street, were to be the norm for all schoolsbuilt subsequently in Leicester up to 1903, when the schoolboards were superseded by Local Education Authorities.Wood was in command of the situation until 1884, when heleft Leicester for Birmingham,14 the editor of the LeicesterChronicle commenting that as chairman of the board he had:

laboured with an assiduity, earnestness, anddetermination which have had a marked andbeneficial effect on the policy of the Board. Therev. gentleman is undoubtedly an enthusiast inschool work, but his enthusiasm has beentempered by a judgment singularly sound, andthe result of his efforts….is seen today in theproud position which Leicester occupies amongthe towns of the country in the matter ofelementary education.15

Like most of the leading ministers of Leicester, bothAnglican and Nonconformist, Wood became an enthusiasticmember of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society.It was a neutral debating chamber for people of widelydiffering views, within which he quickly became ‘a strongadvocate for the recognition and active discharge of the dutyof the Society towards the town of Leicester’. In 1877 hesuggested that the members were not doing enough toelevate the citizenry beyond their own ranks. He proposedthat ‘it should assume the position in the town which theMidland Institute held in Birmingham, that it might greatlyaid the higher education of the people by establishingcourses of lectures, open to the public generally, and that afirst course on Music would be popular and successful’.Before long there was a course of four lectures on ‘TheHistory and Development of Pianoforte Music’ given by E.Dannreuther, to which the ‘public were admitted on thesame terms as the members’. It was followed by courses inother subjects.16

In October 1880, mindful of the opening of a universitycollege in Nottingham, Wood gave a presidential address inwhich he continued to declare that the Society should bedoing more for higher education in the town. He statedbluntly that ‘it should be prepared to take another stepforward by forming the nucleus of a movement which mightultimately lead to the establishment of a local university’.17

Others were to take up the challenge later, but it was Wood’sidea initially, that there should be a university in Leicester.

Despite all his remarkable gifts and boundless energy,however, there was always a question mark dangling like aDamoclean sword over Wood’s continuation in theCongregational ministry. One incident in 1874 must havemade him wonder if he was in the right denomination. Aletter was received by the Executive Committee of theLeicestershire and Rutland Congregational Union fromRobert Dawson, secretary of the Notts. CountyCongregational Union, complaining that Wood wasexpressing ‘opinions at variance with what we believe to befundamental principles of polity or doctrine most surelyaccepted among the Churches of our faith and order’. Hewas accused of believing ‘that the teachings of our Lordhave no authority for us drawn from his Divine claims, butonly such as depends on the amount of truth which in ourindividual opinion those teachings may contain’. There musthave been much embarrassment, for Wood himself was amember of the committee. He was not, however, asked toexplain himself; nor did he offer a rebuttal. No action wastaken, the excuse being that the complaint had come fromoutside the County Union’s area rather than from within it.18

More seriously, the Autumn Assembly of theCongregational Union of England and Wales was held inLeicester in 1877. In conjunction with it there was a fringemeeting to try to settle the differences between those holdingviews similar to Wood’s and those who were orthodoxTrinitarians. Wood was present at the meeting to hear J. A.Picton state that he was trying to ‘discover some commonground on which Christians of varying shades of thoughtmight meet in independence of dogma or of Christianity’shistorical basis’. Both groups were conscious that they weretrying to combat rising secularism. The orthodox group sawthe answer in increased evangelistic activity; the liberalswere more likely to engage in cultural activities of an‘elevating’ kind. Although the matter was discussed at greatlength in the following Spring Assembly of theCongregational Union in London a majority of delegatesdecided to reaffirm their conviction that ‘in the unity of theGod head there are three persons of one substance, powerand eternity [so that the] doctrine of the Trinity is thefoundation of our communion with God’, as had been agreedin the Declaration of Faith and Order agreed by the Elders ofthe Congregational Church in England in 1658.19 It was invain that the liberals like Picton and Wood complained thattimes had changed, that the Utilitarianism of Bentham andMill, Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marx’s Das Kapital andthe rise of higher criticism had made biblical literalismoutmoded and orthodox theology in need of revision. Woodhimself responded by writing a book on The Bible: what itIS and what it is NOT. He also gave lectures on Blake,Browning, Tennyson, Hardy and Ruskin, as well as directingperformances of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

It was only a matter of time before Wood made the breakwith Congregationalism. That opportunity came in 1884,when he was invited to become the minister of the OldMeeting in Birmingham. It was an invitation that had beenmade several times before, but which he had resisted, so hetold his church members, because of ‘bonds of affection and

esteem which had grown between us’.20 Even so, he decidedthat he did not like the label of ‘Unitarian’ any more than hewould have liked being called a ‘Trinitarian’; he was‘simply going from one free church to another’.21 TheLeicester Chronicle commented that:

The town will lose a very powerful religious,social and political influence, which was all themore powerful because it acted mainly below thesurface, as it were, and many of us will miss areal friend.22

What is certain is that Leicester lost a very remarkable man.

Notes and references:1. Leicester Daily Post, 17 June 1884.2. O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, I (1829-1859), (London,

1966), 547-549.3. The author is indebted to Dr. Geoffrey F. Nuttall for this

information.4. Leicester Chronicle, 1 May 1869.5. Ibid., 16 January 1869.6. Ibid., 5 June 1869.7. G. T. Rimmington & A. McWhirr, Gallowtree Gate

Congregational Chapel 1823-1921(Leicester, 1999), 13; APeel, These Hundred Years: A History of the Congregational

Union of England and Wales (London, 1931), 267; F. B.Lott,Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary andPhilosophical Society (Leicester, 1935), 75-76.

8. Leicester Daily Mercury, 18 July 1921. Address by the Revd.Seaward Beddow, B.A., at a memorial service for the Revd. J.Wood held at Wycliffe Congregational Church.

9. Wycliffe Church Records (held at Wycliffe United ReformedChurch).

10. Ibid., n.d.11. Ibid.12. Ibid., 31 October 1877.13. The Revd. Seaward Beddow, ‘Historical Account of Wycliffe

Congregational Church’ (unpublished).14. G. T. Rimmington, Education, Politics and Society in Leicester

1833-1903 (Hantsport, N.S. Canada, 1978), chapters 4 & 10.15. Leicester Chronicle, 14 June 1884.16. F. B. Lott. Centenary Book of the Leicester Literary and

Philosophical Society, 75.17. Ibid., 76.18. Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester &

Rutland9hereafter LLRRO): N/C/MB/3 (Executive CommitteeMinutes, Congregational Union of Leicestershire & Rutland),27 April 1874.

19. LLRRO: N/C/215/69, 12 October 1658.20. Wood’s letter of resignation in Wycliffe Church records, 11

June 1884.21. Leicester Chronicle, 5 July 1884.22. Ibid., 14 June 1884.

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continued from page 24.

This handbill from 1968 advertises the few remainingpassenger trains along the old Great Central London

Extension line from Nottingham, through Leicester Centralstation, to Rugby. The main line route south of Rugby hadalready been severed in September 1966, following thewithdrawal of the through services to London Maryleboneand Banbury. This limited local service offered no directconnections at either end of the route. Tickets werepurchased from the guard on the train and could only bebooked to the few stations on the line. Season tickets werestill available for the declining number of commuters, buttheir purchase required a visit to a different (staffed) stationin Nottingham, Leicester, or Rugby. The handbill also statesthat cycles and perambulators are carried, but thatpassengers are responsible for their removal from stations.The point was well-made: most of the stations had beencharacteristically built with island platforms, where accessfrom the road level could now only be gained by negotiatinga lengthy staircase. Since all of the stations were nowunstaffed, no assistance or lift would be available. Notsurprisingly, the service was sparsely patronised. It survivedonly until May 1969 when the former Great Central routewas totally closed.

Jon Dean

A Handbill for the old Great Central

Beaumanor Park which lies in the small village ofWoodhouse near Loughborough has remarkableconnections with the intelligence and code-breaking

operations of the Second World War. The park became anintelligence corps training school and a secret listeningstation, being the home of the War Office ‘Y’ Group, fromwhere the operators intercepted encrypted enemy signals inMorse Code and sent them to Station X at Bletchley Park fordecoding.

Beaumanor Park consisted of Beaumanor Hall, 28 mixedand dairy farms, St Mary’s in the Elms church, the vicaragehouse (Garats Hay), 5 country residences, 81 attractivehouses/cottages and shops and 4520 acres of parkland. Theownership of Beaumanor had been in the Herrick familysince 1594 who rented it out to the War Office during theSecond World War. Initially Beaumanor Hall was used forthe No.6 Intelligence School.

As the war proceeded it had soon became apparent that avital part of the war was to be communications, andnumerous listening stations with a decoding centre atBletchley Park were set up to intercept and decode enemymessages to give Britain a vital insight into what the enemywas planning.

Fort Bridgewoods near Chatham in Kent was one of theearly listening stations, its operators scouring the radiospectrum for German signals. It was run by a small numberof adept professionals under the guidance of LieutenantCommander Ellingworth, a retired naval man. As the phoneywar came to a close, the levels of radio traffic increasedalong with the danger of attack and invasion, andEllingworth and his team were moved to RAF Chicksands inBedfordshire in 1940. This move promised betteraccommodation and a safer existence away from the

bombing in the south. However, upon arrival, they foundthat only two small rooms in the priory had been allocated tothem as Wireless Intercept Set Rooms, and only half of anacre of land was available for the aerials. Ellingworth maderepresentation to London while work continued, and the FortBridgewoods “exiles” became known as the Special YGroup, SYG for short.

With the increasing amount of Enigma traffic, it was realisedthat Y Service resources also needed to be greatly expandedand a countrywide search took place to identify suitable sitesthat were within close proximity to major road, rail andtelephone systems which would maximise communicationlinks back to Bletchley Park. Beaumanor Park fell into thiscategory. Although the hall was already occupied by No.6Intelligence School, this left some 350 acres of land aroundthe site which was available for the necessary administrationand Set Rooms to be built, and which would provide thespace required for the masts, towers and aerials. So workbegan on Beaumanor Park and in October 1941 the SYGwere moved from RAF Chicksands to Beaumanor.

Upon arrival the staff were met by the local billeting officerand things went much smoother this time. However, the SetRooms were not in the best of condition for operations, butthe staff made do with what they had. An interesting insightinto life at Beaumanor can be gleaned from the “BeaumanorStaff Magazine” (BSM) which was produced betweenOctober 1941 and Summer 1949. With the move came achange in name for the group from SYG to the “War OfficeY Group” with Beaumanor becoming the group’sheadquarters, hence WOYG HQ. During the war the Ynetwork included Strategical (fixed) Intercept Stations suchas Beaumanor, small mobile Tactical Intercept Stations, andDirection Finding Stations.

Civilians including licensed radio amateurs filled many ofthe Y Services posts at first but as the Y Services expandedto keep pace with the increasing amount of radio traffic, itsoon became clear that not enough experienced operatorswere available to undertake the task, so training for ATS,WAAF, and Wren service personnel was started to producedtrained operators for the Y service.

At Beaumanor, the first operators were mainly civilianEWA’s (Experimental Wireless Assistants), SWA’s (SeniorWireless Assistants) and W/Ops (Wireless Operators). Mostof these operators had been amateur radio operators beforethe war, and came from civilian trades such as the PostOffice. These expert operators worked mainly in Hut H andformed their own community. When the first of the ATS

26


Beaumanor Park and its role in World War II and beyond

Mike Coleman

Beaumanor Hall.

girls arrived on the site the existing operators were not verycomplimentary about the girls newly acquired skills, butdouble banking with experienced operators soon proved thatthe girls would be invaluable to the ‘Y’ Services. Thevarious Huts on site did not mix and in some cases whatwent on in the other Huts remained a mystery to many forover 30 years afterwards.

The first contingent of ATS girls were sent to Beaumanor in1942, Some were billeted in Quorn at various cottages andthe ‘Old Bull’s Head’. Others went to Barrow-on-Soar and asmall group to Newtown Linford behind the ‘Bradgate’while others were spread around Woodhouse Eaves.

The layout of the wireless station at Beaumanor was as far as isknown unique. The huts which housed the wireless receivers(Set Rooms) were designed to look like the usual buildings tobe found in the grounds of an estate of this type. Two of theSet Rooms were designed to look like semi-detached farmcottages from the outside with false front doors, chimneys andwindows. Inside it was one large room, with only the windowsat the top being real. Other buildings were disguised as a cartshed, stables and a cricket pavilion complete with a false clocktower. A later addition was a large Victorian style greenhouse.All of this was to give the right appearance from the air andeven the locals were fooled from a distance.

The Huts as they were called, were just that - cold anddraughty with leaking roofs in the winter, and hot and humidin the summer, conditions which were far from ideal for thelong hours of demanding and exhausting work that wereundertaken by the expert wireless operators.

The technical equipment used for wireless intercept workwas different from that used for the normal broadcastreceivers available during the day. Highly selective precisionreceivers were required to tune into the often weak signalsand at this time the only people using this type of equipmentoutside the ‘Y’ Services were the amateur radio operators,many of whom were taken on as operators by the variousorganisations in the war years. The story of the VoluntaryInterceptors, “VI’s, MI8c” is one of great interest. Theseamateur radio operators would have made most of their ownequipment; with commercial equipment being beyond themeans of the vast majority of people. The commercial radioreceiver that was required for the intercept work and whichwas to become the backbone of the radio world for yearsafter the war came from America. Examples can still befound for sale even today, many of which still work.

Many of the 350 acres at Beamanor were used for theaerials, some of which required supports of up to 100 metersor more. Much effort and expertise was needed to maintainan aerial farm of this size, and often wires broke or supportsblew down.

With the use of broadband radio amplifiers and distributionsystems one antenna could be shared between 18 radios orso. One hut typically had 16 operators and a supervisor.Some of the antennas needed to be duplicated for differentdirections and not all of the operators needed to be on thesame antenna, so the distribution system was complex. The

27


Operation Hut H with aerial, showing dummy chimney anddummy windows. Hut I is at the back.

National HRO used for intercept work during World War II.

Inside Hut A, the “cricket pavilion” which was the Teleprinterroom. The pneumatic tubes which were used to receive theintercepted messages from the four Set rooms are shown inthe top left of the illustration.

Operational Hut H. This Set Room was disguised as a pairof cottages.

operators at Beaumanor worked hard within the constantlychanging environment, as various anti-intercept techniqueswere employed by the Germans to avoid being monitored:frequencies were changed at a key phrase or time, signalswere masked by transmitting close to other occupiedfrequencies, the amount of transmitted power was kept downto the minimum required to maintain two waycommunication links, whilst different frequencies were usedto transmit and receive.

Operators fresh from training who were capable of sendingand receiving messages adequately in the classroom, wouldfind the real world of signal intercept so very different. Theirfirst day as a new operator would be spent sitting with anexperienced operator (double banked – sharing a double setof earphones). It was commonplace to find that a newoperator could hear traffic, but not what the experiencedoperator was hearing and taking down. The work involvedkeeping the radio on frequency, changing frequency,searching, paperwork, as well as taking down the messagesfrom the target stations. It was common by the end of thefirst shift for a new so-called fully trained operator to havefelt that they had achieved nothing. However, with the helpand guidance of the more experienced operators, the noviceoperators started to get over what at first seemed to be aninsurmountable block.

The way a person sends manual Morse is similar to a voice,and experienced operators were able to identify individualsenders through their “fist” as it was known, even when theircall sign changed. Hours of experience were required tounravel the more complex situations such as overlappingsignals from different stations and at varying strengths,mixed in with interference, both man-made and atmospheric.An experienced operator would be able to identify anddismiss extraneous signals in seconds.

During the war, many things changed at Beaumanor in andaround the Set Rooms. Research and development went oncontinuously at the site including improvements to aerials,amplification of signals, direction finding, radio technology,and transmitter finger printing. “SigInt” or Signals

Intelligence was the most secret and long lasting activity.Analysts worked on the reading of logs, direction findingand plotting, the correlation of decrypted messages, times,dates, frequency, operator and call signs, and helped toproduce detailed breakdowns of the various radio nets inoperation. They were even able to predict call sign changesso that operators could be given schedules of when theenemy network should next be activated, on whatfrequencies and by which operators. Work was carried outjointly with Bletchley Park on network analysistransforming what became known as “Fusion” then ontowhat was called “Super Fusion”.

Currently few sources have been found on the work of theNo.6 Intelligence School contingent at Beaumanor. Howeverthe writings of Hugh Skillen point to the probability thatNo.6 Intelligence School trained the Tactical Y groups in theskills which were required to break simple German codes inthe field. The Tactical Y Groups operated on the front linesin places like the North Africa arena, using mobile Yvehicles receiving the tank to tank, and tank to HQ signals,at quite short distances. This type of communication wastactically significant, as the messages were not usuallyenciphered by the enemy with the Enigma machines, butused other simpler methods, allowing the operators todecipher the messages without having to wait for them to besent back to Bletchley overnight and returned the next night.This is one explanation for the comings and goings of No.6Intelligence School in the Hall at Beaumanor and themovement of a large number of their staff to Bletchley as theamount of traffic increased. It can be said that the modernunderstanding of the phrase Signals Intelligence was born atBeaumanor Park although it will still be many years beforethe records in the national archives will be opened up toshow just which processes and systems were born there.

By the end of the war in Europe (8th May 1945) Beaumanorwas host to 1,300 wireless operators who manned 120wireless sets twenty-four hours a day. Then as the rumblingsof the “Cold War” were starting to reverberate aroundBritain, the site was purchased by the Ministry of Defence in1946 and re-tasked on a smaller scale to other areas ofinterest and continued its evolution through till 1970 when itclosed its gates for the last time as part of the Y service.

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War Office “Y” Group. Portion of interior of a typical manualSet room.

Closing Beaumanor in July 1970.

The site at Beaumanor still exists and has been owned by theLeicestershire Education Authority since 1974. Untilrecently the Set Room buildings had been left alone and theonly work carried out on them was to tidy them up. Now theLEA is turning them into residential accommodation forvisiting children.

For further reading:1. Moore, Len. Z17 - My War Memories. Self Published.

ISBN 0952977907 A personal insight into the life of Len Moore one of theoperators at Beaumanor.

2. Skillen, Hugh, introduced by. The Rest of BSM: FourYears of Wartime Wit and Humour in the RoyalSignals/ATS/Intelligence Corps. 1995. ISBN0951519069A detailed reconstruction of the Beaumanor StaffMagazine and much more.

3. Skillen, Hugh. Enigma and its Achilles Heel. 1992. ISBN0 951519093 (paperback) ISBN 0 951519026 (hardback)

4. Nicholls, Joan. England Needs You: The story ofBeaumanor Y station in World War Two. 2000 ISBN 0-9538186-0-8

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continued from page 28.

Medieval grave-slabs from LeicesterCathedral

Terry Y. Cocks

The floor of the pre-Reformation church of St Martin,now Leicester Cathedral, must have contained manymonumental brasses and incised slabs. Thomas

North, in A Chronicle of the Church of Saint Martin inLeicester (1866) tells us that in 1547 nine hundred pounds ofbrass was sold (half of it to Thomas Newcombe thebellfounder), much of it probably from gravestones in thechurch.

Only five of these memorial slabs survive, and only one, asmall stone of c. 1500, with indents of brasses of a man andwoman, remains in situ in the floor of St Catherine’s Chapel.Four much larger slabs were deposited in the old WesternBurial Ground adjacent to the Guildhall when St Martin’swas rebuilt in the 1860s. From recent work on the interior ofthe tower and spire it seems that parts of some slabs wereused in the rebuilding, as a few stones were seen to beartraces of carved lines, though no marks of figures orinscriptions were to be seen.

The slabs in the Western Burial Ground were examined in1951 by Mr J. A. Daniell of Leicester Museums, and later byMr F.A. Greenhill, who described two of them in his bookThe Incised Slabs of Leicestershire and Rutland (1958), avolume published by this Society. One slab, of Tournaimarble, c. 1325, bearing the incised figures of two men, wassubsequently fixed in the wall of the Cathedral Song Schoolpassage; another, with brass indents of 14th/15th centurydate but re-used no fewer than four times, was similarly re-erected in the north transept in 1964.

The slabs left in the burial ground were:

1. A slab of yellow sandstone, 232cm by 193cm, 22cmdeep, estimated to weigh approximately one ton. It couldbe identified as one illustrated by Nichols, displaying a

floriated cross, with a black-letter inscription of whichthe name CARDEMAKER could be read, the name of aLeicester family fl. c. 1350-1470. In 1956 a little of thecross head and lettering could still be discerned.

2. A slab 230cm by 104cm, 10cm deep. Dating from c.1500, it bore indents recognisable as (1) figures of acivilian and his wife; (2) probably a representation of theHoly Trinity of the Virgin and Child above their heads;(3) two groups of sons and daughters; (4) inscriptionplate; (5) corner decorations, perhaps emblems of theFour Evangelists.

During preparations for the building of the Cathedral VisitorCentre on the site of the Western Burial Ground the twoslabs were again examined in 1995, when it was found thatweathering had entirely obliterated the traces of carvingnoted on the Cardemaker stone in 1956. It was felt, however,that it was of interest as it could be identified from Nichols,and that both slabs should be preserved as survivals of thepre-Reformation church. Discussions were held withLeicester City Council and their Museums Service about theslabs being re-sited in the cathedral precincts or theGuildhall complex, or placed in storage by the museum, buttheir bulky size presented problems.

A solution was found early in 2005, when by arrangementwith the Revd. David Cawley and the ChurchesConservation Trust, the two large slabs, with five 18thcentury headstones and fragments of a medieval stonecoffin, were removed to All Saints’ churchyard, HighcrossStreet. Here they have been placed in the north-east cornerof the churchyard, the headstones re-erected against the walland the two slabs and the coffin fragments placed in front ofthem.

The artist G. Harley recorded this beautifulpicture of the old Groby water mill in theyear 1820 (right). The mill building was

actually beyond repair at the time it wassketched and painted and was due to be replacedwith a new water mill built on the eastern side ofGroby Pool.

Fortunately, the pre enclosure map of Grobytogether with its 2,000 strip fields has survivedwithin the Grey family estate archive and GrobyMill is clearly shown by the cartographer JohnDoharty on the north side of the Pool, although heomitted to show the water source and this hasbeen added by the writer. The Harley milllithograph although held in the village for manyyears was never subject to question as the laternew mill, built just inside the present SheetHedges granite quarry – east of Groby Pool – wasthought to have replaced the earlier mill building, reusing thesame site. However the availability of the 1757 John Dohartypre-enclosure map in the mid 1980s has caused a re-think onthe Groby mill locations and the water supplies necessary todrive mill wheels. Surprising as it may seem documents fromthe Grey archive show that Groby Pool was in fact not used asa power source until sometime after the year 1818.

Not knowing this fact when the investigation first began itseemed improbable that the obvious, ever present watersource, Groby Pool would not be used and this fact alonecertainly distracted more than one mind from consideringother water supplies. The facts that no streams emanate fromBarn Hills (a wooded area directly behind where the earlymill building stood), and that the edge of field ditches closeto what is now the Newtown Lane never carry enough waterto drive a mill wheel, initially caused any other source thanthe Pool from being considered.

The answer to the power source puzzle came from readingthe landscape and realising that the pre-enclosure road, nowa footpath, which at one time allowed horses and carts to

travel between Newtown and Groby close to the north sideof the Pool never crossed a continuous mark in the greenfields south of the old road.

The field mark is in fact the remnants of an old waterchannel, or leat now almost indistinct which links the oldGroby mill site c.1800 at 107’ above sea level – itself now afaint depression in the ground – with Old Wood which liesroughly in a north-westerly direction close to the stable ruinsof the second Bradgate House, near Markfield. Even thissource has such a limited water flow at the time of writingthat it would be considered and dismissed if an assessmentof its potential were to take place today. This may be due tothe large land fill containment area which now restricts theflow of water reaching Old Wood from the slightly higherLawn Wood at approximately 130’ above sea level close tothe A50 at the Groby/Field Head boundary.

Once the leat had been established it was necessary to re-visit the known facts about Groby Pool as so often it hasbeen described in Leicestershire promotional leaflets as, “thelargest natural sheet of water in the County”.

(i) The Domesday survey of 1086 does not mention a largestretch of water or fishponds in Groby.

(ii) The first mention of the present Groby Pool is in 1127after the death of William de Ferrers of Groby. Aninquisition taken of his possessions at the time of deathrefers to two pools and two water mills. (2)

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The location puzzle of the old Groby MillDavid Ramsey

The early Groby Mill site from the John Doharty pre-enclosure map of 1757 shown with the water channelsenhanced. The dotted white line indicates the possible run offfrom a small holding pool at the rear of building ‘A’ towardsthe second Water mill located closer to the Ashby/LeicesterRoad. (1)

(iii) A paper by Carol David who carried out research intothe age and composition of the sedimentary layers atGroby Pool can be found in the LoughboroughUniversity, Department of Geography working paperNo4 of 1989. The conclusions drawn in the paper are thatboth sediment stratigraphy and pollen counts show thePool to be of relatively recent origin, possibly createdduring the 12th century A.D.

Carol David’s findings fit neatly with the documentaryhistory previously outlined and the recent location of the leatsupplying the early Groby Mill suggests that Groby Pool

was formed by men working on Lord Ferrers estate after theconstruction of the mills referred to in the inquisition takenon the death of William de Ferrers in 1127.

Close examination of Old Wood (OS SK 513091) shows aconsiderable amount of effort has been made to ensure themaximum amount of water is collected on the hillsidebetween the former Bradgate House and Old Wood. Thevarious water sources are then directed towards a singleoutlet from Old Wood which is tapped for the early GrobyMill – a much slower run off percolates into the west end ofGroby Pool.

31


The ancient leat, which fed water to the old Groby mill site. It is now nearly 200 years since this 1,000-yard leat, or channelcarried water from the Lawn Wood into Old Wood, close to the second Bradgate House and then onwards, graduallydescending to the mill on the north side of Groby Pool.

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Groby/Newtown used the pre-enclosure road north of the Pool at ‘Y’ until c. 1790. The section of the road at ‘X’ was usedboth pre- and post-enclosure and the erosion on this sector is almost certainly due to damp ground and scouring by theconcentrated traffic at this point between the years 1127 and 1900. The latter date being when tarmac was used to surfacethe section of the road between Sheet Hedges quarry and Groby village.

Once the early channel leading the Groby water mill was established the Bradgate water mill, close to the house ruins in thecentre of Bradgate Park was reassessed. There is now good reason to believe the Bradgate leat was cut behind All Saintschurch, Newtown Linford so that the driving force was not lost and that a dam was not required within the park to lift the waterlevel again.

This postcard shows the Park c. 1900 and the water channel is very obvious just to the left of the oak tree, the roots of whichhave spread into the now dry cutting. There was no entry to the Park from the Newtown Linford church area until the housewas vacated in 1739 (3).

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3. Breakfast at Bradgate, David Ramsey 1996 ISBN 1-898884-09-9 Explains the early Bradgate entrances.

Acknowledgements:To Richard Burrows for permission to use the Groby Milllithograph and doing the initial exploration to find the watersource.

To the late Victor Geary for information on road surfacesaround Groby c. 1900 and his experiences and observationsas a granite quarry worker 1905-1955.

Further reading: -1. The Landscape of a Leicestershire Parish by Stephen

Woodward, Leicestershire Museums Art Galleries andRecords Service ISBN 0 85022 1676 – LeicestershireMuseums publication No 58 – 1984. Gives details on thesecond Groby water mill location at some distance fromGroby Pool.

2. The making of the English Landscape – Leicestershire.W. G. Hoskins (An illustrated Essay on the History ofthe Landscape) The fishing in Groby Pool – “the largestnatural sheet of water in the county” – had been worth40/- per year in 1288 but by 1445 it had fallen to 2/- ayear. Page 27.

Within and close to the Old Wood, Groby. Opposite bottom left: A dried up leat which gives an indication of the former leat width3’ throughout its course. Opposite bottom right: A culvert within Old Wood which has granite sides and a slab of slate top. Earlygranite spoil workings above the slate. Above: Before joining the stream out of Old Wood the early spoil heap has beendeliberately stopped prior to the leat cutting.

Postscript: -

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Some of the most popular museum collections in theCounty are now accessible on the Internet atwww.leics.gov.uk/collections. The Heritage Lottery

funded and County Council supported Open Doors project,which was officially launched in July 2005, has enabled thecreation of an innovative service that will provideinformation about the County’s most popular museumcollections to local people and to a worldwide audience.Collections included in the Open Doors project are coalmining, toys, Auster aircraft and highlights from the fashioncollections comprising the designer fashion, Symington andNEXT collections.

These collections are accessed online through a series ofinformative exhibitions and themed categories, and by usingthe search facility to look for material that relates to specificinterests or objects. Extensive glossaries and other sourcesof information are provided on the site, along with detailedinformation about the collections. The online object recordsare a mine of useful information and include images,detailed object descriptions, production information, place,date and method of each find, materials, measurements,credit, reference and availability, indicating for examplewhether the object is for study by appointment, or is onpublic display in one of the museum galleries. Members ofthe public can also contact Museum staff directly to enquireabout the objects featured on the website.

Descriptions of the information and items to be found onlinein the Museums Open Doors web pages are as follows:

Coal MiningLeicestershire County Council’s coal mining collectionscontain a rich variety of objects, buildings and machinerythat represent the working life of Leicestershire’s miningcommunities from 1450 to 1997. The collections are focusedaround the former Snibston Colliery site which, dominatedby the impressive ‘Stephenson’ Shaft Headgear of 1915,includes a now rare set of post-Nationalisation collieryoffices and workshops, with a medical centre, showers, andan extensive library on geology and coal mining. From theunique woollen coat dating from around 1550 found at theopen-cast mine site at Coleorton, to pay slips and talliesfrom the last days of the Snibston Colliery in the 1980s, thecoal mining collections represent a significant body ofevidence for over 500 years of local mining. Themedsections include: Coal Winning, Coalfield Communities,Environmental Control and Testing, Health, Safety andWelfare, Late Medieval and Early Post Medieval Mining,

Lighting and Lamps, Management and the Unions, Trainingand Education.

Toys and gamesLeicestershire County Council’s toy collection covers a widerange of toys and games dating from the late 16th century tothe present day. Highlights include a collection of late16th/early 17th century street toys and an extensivecollection of toys, games and dolls made by Palitoy inCoalville and its sister companies, such as Kenner andParker. These include items from famous toy ranges such asAction Man, Pippa, Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake.Many toys from this collection are displayed in the Toy Boxgallery at Snibston Discovery Park while others can beaccessed by special appointment.

Auster AircraftThe Auster is a light, highwing monoplane designed forprivate flying and club use, but also successfully adapted formilitary and other purposes. They were built at Thurmastonand Rearsby in Leicestershire between 1939 and 1965.Leicestershire County Council has a collection of 5 planesrepresenting the development of the Auster and extensivearchives relating its design and production.

Designer FashionThe collection of 20th century and more recent designerfashion has been developed over the last 15 years in anattempt to represent the work of designers and companieswho have made a significant contribution to fashion. TheCouncil tries to acquire garments which are typical of adesigner’s work or are of a type for which that designer isfamous. Most of the items have been purchased, some withthe support of the Friends of Leicester and LeicestershireMuseums. The Council continues to add to this growingcollection which charts some of the changes in fashionabledress over the last 100 years. Designers whose work isrepresented in the online collection include: Chanel,Christian Dior, Jean-Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, RalphLauren, Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood and ZandraRhodes.

The Symington collection of Corsetry, Foundation &SwimwearThe Symington collection was created by the MarketHarborough company R. & W. H. Symington, which beganto make corsets for fashionable Victorian ladies in the1850s. The company eventually grew into an internationalconcern and one of its most famous products, the LibertyBodice, was produced for almost seventy years. This uniquecollection was presented to Leicestershire County Council’sMuseums Service in 1980. Although it includes some pieces

Online sources for Historians – Treasure atyour fingertips – Leicestershire Museums

“Open Doors” ProjectDebbie Richards

Whilst being of use for a wide variety of historical research,the online collections will also be of interest to schools withthe specially developed education resources to support keystages one, two and three of the National Curriculum.

The online collections are available through LeicestershireCounty Council’s web site. The Internet address for OpenDoors is www.leics.gov.uk/collections.

Acknowledgements:The screen illustrations and part of the text are fromLeicestershire County Council’s web site and are reproducedhere by permission of Leicestershire County Council.

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made by their competitors, the collection essentially tells thestory of the Symington company over a period of onehundred and thirty years. It includes garments andsupporting advertising material, which provide an insightinto the development of corsetry, foundation garments andswimwear from the late 19th century through to thebeginning of the 1990s.

NEXTLeicestershire County Council began to collect clothing fromNEXT in the middle of the 1980s, when the company was stillin its infancy. In 1992 the Council entered into a formalarrangement with the company whereby a male and femaleoutfit is presented to the collection every season. Thecollection grows by at least four complete outfits every yearand these are supported by valuable background information,promotional literature and the NEXT Directory. Items fromthe early years of the NEXT company have been acquiredthrough the generous gifts of NEXT customers andemployees. The collection represents not only the products ofan international fashion retailer but also helps to tell the storyof a company with its headquarters in Leicestershire. Thecollection, which is one of the very few high street fashioncollections in a British museum, continues to grow every year. Online description and image of a woollen coat from the

online Coal Mining collection.

Online summary record and image of an undergoundtelephone used at Snibston from the 1960s to 1985. Fromthe online Mining collection.

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Members of the Enderby Heritage Group, during theirresearch into the Church at Aldeby, have founddocumentation that reveals that the creation of the

Manor of Enderby 800 years ago may well have been theresult of a debt incurred by the Earl of Leicester several yearsbefore the event.

The Charter Roll of 16th Dec 1204/5 states: “Grant to Oliverde Albiniaco and his heirs of the land of Enderby, whichPetronilla, Countess of Leicester, gave him for his homage andservice”, whilst John Nichols writes in his History andAntiquities of Leicestershire “On the same date King Johngranted to Oliver de Albeny and his heirs all that land, atEnderby, which Petronilla Countess of Leicester gave to thesaid Oliver de Albeny.” The difference in names is in thetranslation of the Latin of the charter where he is calledOlivero de Albini.

The story which starts over a centuryearlier is complicated by inter-twiningrelationships and varying historicaccounts, making possible at least oneinterpretation of some of the events.

The land associated with Enderby wasgifted to Hugh de Grentesmaisnel andhis heirs for his part in the NormanConquest of 1066 by William I. Hughde Grentesmaisnel was a Norman Lord,who became one of the most powerfulfeudal lords in Leicestershire, holding the most extensive landsin the county by 1086. In 1093 he was succeeded by his sonIvo who was to die while on an overseas pilgrimage and who,according to one source, had mortgaged his property to Robertde Breteuil, Count of Meulan before setting out, leaving hisheir unable to inherit his English lands. If this is the case, thenthe English holdings of Ivo, including Enderby appear to havepassed from the Grentesmaisnels to the de Breteuil family. Analternative theory is that the land associated with Enderbyremained in the Grentesmaisnel family until after the loss ofNormandy in the early part of the reign of King John, when thefiefs of knights who had estates both in England andNormandy were seized into King John’s hands. It is knownthat the Grentesmaisnel family held land in England andNormandy.

It was Robert de Beaumont, son of Robert de Breteuil who wascreated the first Earl of Leicester (1107), and the title remainedin the male Beaumont line until 1204. He was succeeded byhis elder son to the earldom of Meulan, and by his second sonRobert le Bossu (Hunchback) to the earldom of Leicester. Assecond Earl of Leicester (1118–1168), Robert became one ofHenry I’s most eminent subjects, and is best known in

Leicester’s history as the founder of Leicester Abbey in 1137.As part of this he gave the Church at Aldeby and the Chapel atWhetstone to Leicester Abbey.

His son, Robert Blanchmains, the third Earl of Leicester(1168-1190) married Petronilla (also referred to in somesources as Countess Parnel), great-granddaughter of HughGrentesmaisnel, thus restoring the connection of the landassociated with Enderby with the Grentesmaisnels according toone version of events. Both Robert and Petronilla were greatsupporters of the church. When Thomas Becket was murderedat Canterbury in 1170, the Count and Countess took part invarious attempts to overthrow King Henry II mainly fromFrance for which they both served periods as prisoners of theKing, whilst the town of Leicester also suffered seriousrepercussions as a result of their disloyalty. Robert laterregained royal favour under Richard I and was to die in 1190

on his way to the Holy Land and isburied in Greece.

His son Robert Fitzparnel becamethe fourth Earl of Leicester(1190–1204), having been investedwith the Earldom by Richard I atMessina. What has been discoveredis that in 1194, the fourth Earlborrowed money totaling 1357marks from Aaron, a moneylenderof Lincoln. The loan was secured bymortgage on some of the Earl’s

lands, including Enderby. However, Richard I’s successor,King John had a purge on the usurers (moneylenders) andseized the estates and mortgages held by them and took themfor his own profit. This left the Earl of Leicester in debt to theKing with the king now holding the land associated withEnderby.

In 1204, in the fifth year of the reign of King John, Petronilla,mother of Robert Fitzparnel, took the opportunity to regainpossession of the mortgaged Honour of Grentesmaisnel fromthe King, paying a large sum of 3000 Marks (£1000) at theCourt of Exchequer for its return. In order to recover some ofthis money Petronilla gave Oliver de Albeny who came from arich Northamptonshire family the land in Enderby, and inreturn received the fiefs from the estate.

King John subsequently granted Oliver de Albeny the right tobe called Lord of the Manor in December 1204. Oliver DeAlbeny did not however come to live at Enderby, and in 1220gave the Lordship to his nephew Ralph de Neville who was tobuild the first manor house in Enderby. It was also Ralph deNeville who built the chapel at Enderby in 1225, which he wasto use instead of the church at Aldeby.

Did Enderby become a Manor in order tosettle a debt?

Mark Carne

The Enderby Heritage Group was among anumber of the county’s local history andheritage groups whose activities were featuredin the 2003 edit ion of the LeicestershireHistorian . The group has recently beensuccessful in applying for a grant of £500 fromthe Leicestershire Archaeological and HistoricalSociety towards its research activities into theChurch at Aldeby, the outcome of which will bewritten up for a future Society publication. Oneof the by-products of the Group’s work to dateis an insight into the creation of Enderby Manor.

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Around the middle of the nineteenth century asubstantial number of county societies devoted tothe study of antiquities and history were formed.

Such a society was founded in each of our two neighbouringcounties of Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire in 1844 withother counties following in the 1840s: Bedfordshire (1847),Buckinghamshire (1847), Sussex (1847), Lancashire andCheshire (1848) and Somerset (1849). The formation of acounty society in Leicestershire came slightly later, probablybecause there already existed the Leicester Literary andPhilosophical Society, founded in 1835, which included thestudy of history and archaeology within its activities. In factthe Lit and Phil set up a number of sectional committees in1849, one of which was devoted to archaeology. However, itwas clearly felt that the study of the past was not beingcovered sufficiently by the Lit and Phil and talks took placein 1854 with a view toestablishing a society forLeicestershire devoted to thestudy of architecture (historicaland mainly church), history andarchaeology. In due course, onthe 10th January 1855 a meetingwas held in the Guildhall and aresolution passed to form theLeicestershire Architectural andArchaeological Society. ThomasIngram, a local solicitor whosename is still commemorated inthe firm of Harvey IngramOwston, was one of the firstsecretaries, and the local newspaper proprietor, historian andauthor, James Thompson, was one of the first members ofthe committee. The name of the society reflected thenineteenth-century interest in church architecture and it wasnot until the time of the First World War that the wordarchitectural was dropped, when it was felt that the termarchaeology included such matters as architecture, and so thesociety became the Leicestershire Archaeological Society.The last change in name occurred in 1955 when it wasagreed to add the word historical and so we are now theLeicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society.

It was some time before the society took the plunge andbegan to publish its own annual journal to be known, as itstill is, as the Transactions. Originally the volume did reportthe transactions of meetings and the work of the officers andcommittee, but gradually over the years papers appearedwhich had not been presented to members at one of theirmeetings and today few of the papers are truly‘transactions’. The first part of volume I appeared in 1862and there has been a publication almost every year since,even during two World Wars (for a few years in the 1900sthe society published biennually, but always a double part).Some volumes were split into parts so that a single volume

number might cover several years. This is why the numberof the volume which will appear in 2005 is 79 when onemight expect it to be 144.

Contributors to Transactions, have included many eminentscholars some of whom were also members of the society;for example, A. Hamilton Thompson’s name appearsfrequently in the index as does W.G. Hoskins. Among localpeople such names as Col. Bellairs, George Farnham,Thomas North, S.H. Skillington and James Thompson havemany articles listed against their names in the first publishedindex which appeared in 1951. In the soon-to-be-publishedindex covering the period 1951-2000 some of those namescontinue to appear along with a new generation of authors,local and national. I doubt whether anybody can beat therecord of our member Dr Levi Fox who published an articlein volume 19 of Transactions way back in 1936. The newindex to be published in 2005 will give members a valuabletool for searching through the pages of Transactions goingback to the nineteenth century.

In addition to Transactions the society currently publishes aNewsletter twice a year and since 1996 an annual edition ofthe Leicestershire Historian, which is probably not as well-known around the county as it should be. This publicationwas started by the Leicestershire Local History Council, butwhen that body ceased to function in 1996 the societydecided to take over its publication in order to fill aperceived gap in the society’s range of publications. Thecommittee is keen to continue with its publication and is alsolooking at ways of improving the quality of illustrations andproduction. It is to be hoped that more members will writearticles for future editions.

The society has produced occasional books or monographsincluding Greenhill’s Incised Slabs of Leicestershire andRutland (1958) and Whitcomb’s Medieval Floor-Tiles ofLeicestershire (1956), both of which are still available. AHamilton Thompson, wrote two which the societypublished: History of the Hospital and the New College ofthe Annunciation of St Mary in the Newarke, Leicester(1937) and The Abbey of St Mary in the Meadows, Leicester(1949). More recently the society produced GeoffBrandwood’s Bringing them to their knees: church-buildingand restoration in Leicestershire and Rutland 1800-1914(2002). In this anniversary year a special volume devoted toLeicester Abbey will be published alongside the normalvolume of Transactions.

Over the years the society has been involved in excavationsand fieldwork, but this has not been a major activity and hasoccurred when the need arose. In the nineteenth century thesociety excavated at Kibworth, the Cherry Orchard villa inKing Richard’s Road (known today as the Norfolk Streetvilla), the Jewry wall (1863) and in Melton Mowbray. The

150 years and still going!Alan McWhirr

Thomas Ingram.(Photo:Harvey Ingram)

society initiated excavations at Leicester Abbey in the1920s, and when David Clarke was Keeper of Antiquities,members helped in a number of rescue excavations whichLeicester Museums conducted. David Clarke was HonorarySecretary for many years and the driving force behind thesociety during his time here in Leicester.

The main activity which brings members of the societytogether is the annual programme of lectures. There havebeen periods when numbers attending have not been great,but currently we nearly always fill the room we use at NewWalk Museum. The W. Alan North memorial lecture held inMarch every year is a highlight of the programme. The trustfund set up by Mrs Joan North specifies that the lectureshould be on a topic related to the RomanRepublic and Empire and this March was theseventeenth occasion on which the societyremembered the life and work of AlanNorth. The list of speakers reads like a‘who’s who’ in archaeology with over halfbeing professors.

In 1955 the society celebrated its centenaryand held several events to mark the occasion.It also produced a 44-page booklet detailingits first one hundred years. A more detailedhistory of the society covering its onehundred and fifty years is being compiled byRobert Rutland and will be published laterthis year. Our celebrations were launched in

October 2004 with a visit from HRH Duke of Gloucester.He came to the Guildhall and met vice-presidents andmembers of the committee before seeing some of thearchives which are housed in the library at the Guildhall.Then on foundation day, 10th January 2005, membersenjoyed a reception and entertainment at the Guildhall whereit all started in 1855. Mr Lars Tharp proposed a toast to thesociety and entertainment was provided by Sue and RobertIngle in the guise of Dr Mary Royce and Thomas Cook.

The society looks in good heart at the moment, but is notcomplacent. It needs to move with the times and ensure thatit provides what members want.

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Society excursion to Rockingham in 1904.

HRH the Duke of Gloucester meetingmembers of the Society’s committee andtheir partners during his visit in October2004.

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LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND: GENERAL

BATTLEFIELDS OF LEICESTERSHIRETrevor HickmanStroud: Sutton, 2004 192pp illustrated ISBN 0750936584

In his introduction, the author describes how his interest inthe battlefields of Leicestershire grew from his SecondWorld War childhood through National Service to become alifelong hobby. It is clear that this is a very personal bookand the culmination of many years of research. With 192pages, and illustrations on almost every page, this bookbegins with the arrival of the Romans in Leicestershire andends with the Leicestershire Regiment becoming the RoyalLeicestershire Regiment in 1946. The illustrations are allblack and white and each one is accompanied by text.Perhaps there are too many illustrations in some parts whichgive the book the appearance of a collection of photographs.This tends to provide too great an interruption to the maintext. That apart, this is still a very readable book. Theauthor’s interest and attention to detail is clear throughout.There is an index but only of selected battle sites andparticipants. A more inclusive index would have made iteasier to dip into the book, making it more accessible tolocal historians interested in a specific geographical area.This book will interest local historians but it will have moreinterest for those people whose interest is in historicbattlefields, specifically in historic battlefields ofLeicestershire.

Pat Grundy

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: ALEICESTERSHIRE SCHOOLBOY’SRECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE DURING WORLD WARTWOStanley BlackmoreBognor Regis: Woodfield, 2004 ii+142+[13] pp.illustrated ISBN 1903953642

This ‘gently nostalgic’ book, as itis described on its cover, is avery readable interweaving ofpersonal recollections with thenational context of the war, andincludes a number of colourillustrations. On the day that warwas declared, the author’s familywere literally in transit betweenDevon and Leicester following aholiday. He spent much of thewar itself in Bottesford, wherehis father was a clergyman, close

to the airfield occupied at various points by the RAF and theUSAAF. The interesting Epilogue recounts the work of theWar Memorial Committee in the village, which raisedsufficient funds for a Memorial Hall as well as fulfilling theoriginal plan for a memorial plaque in the church – designedby the author himself during his training as an architect.

Cynthia Brown

HOW TO WRITE AND PUBLISH LOCAL ANDFAMILY HISTORY SUCCESSFULLYBob TrubshawWymeswold: Heart of Albion, 2005 xviii+262 ppillustrated

This is an extended version of Bob Trubshaw’s earlier book,How to Write and Publish Local History. It is a verypractical and readable guide, grounded in the author’s ownlengthy experience of writing and publishing local history.The first section focuses on how to research your history andwrite it in an accessible but well-referenced style, rather than‘taunting’ the reader with ‘exotic terms’, using ‘four wordswhen one would do’, or producing family history that islittle more than ‘ancestor worship’. It then deals clearly andreassuringly with some of the legal issues aroundpublication, such as copyright, plagiarism, moral rights andlibel. As well as outlining the main provisions of the law, itis full of such common sense advice as keeping a note ofyour sources at the time of using them – because ‘if youthink you’re going to remember exactly what came fromwhere in a few months’ time then you need to take a seriousreality check…’.

Information technology has extended the option of self-publishing to a much larger body of people in recent years,but the results in terms of design, layout and reproduction ofimages can be variable. Other sections of this book deal indetail with preparing illustrations, optimising their qualityand presenting family trees. Designing and typesettingbooks, and creating attractive, accessible and informativewebsites, are also well covered in separate chapters. Thebook concludes with advice on promotion and publicity, and‘the hardest part’ of the self-publishing operation: sellingyour book, CD or other products. As the author notes, only afew commercial distributors are interested in local historybooks, and it requires a certain determination and knowledgeof how booksellers operate – such as how much discount tooffer – to ensure success. Overall this is a comprehensiveand very informative guide, of value for complete beginnersand the most seasoned writers or publishers of local andfamily history alike.

Cynthia Brown

Recent publicationsEdited by John Hinks

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Fieldworkers Group written by Peter Liddle. We are thentaken on an archaeological tour of Leicestershire coveringall periods from prehistory to the post-medieval era. Thesepapers bring up to date the three volumes published by themuseums service under the general heading of‘Leicestershire Archaeology – The Present State ofKnowledge’. Although not claiming to be a comprehensiveaccount, this volume does an excellent job in presenting areview of what was known in 2001 and is essential readingfor all involved with Leicestershire’s past at whatever level.

Alan McWhirr

LEICESTERSHIRE LEGENDS‘Black Annis’Wymeswold: Heart of Albion, 2004 xiv+99pp illustratedISBN 187288377X

This is an interesting idea, using ‘Black Annis’, one of thelegendary characters of local folklore, to re-tell otherLeicestershire legends, with the benefit of early twenty-firstcentury knowledge such as ‘the road from Loughboroughto Ashby de la Zouch, the one they now call the A512’.This is not simply another recounting of legends which maybe more than familiar by now to many readers. Its mainpurpose is an attempt to recreate the oral tradition throughwhich such legends have been transmitted from onegeneration to another, by rendering them into writing asthey might have been spoken. As the author notes, thedialects of the East Midlands in general and Leicestershirein particular have been little studied by comparison withother areas of Britain, and there are many variations indialect – defined here as ‘all aspects of dialect, accent andpronunciation’ – within Leicestershire itself. Does it work?I found it very readable, and the dialect has the echo ofauthenticity. For the benefit of those less familiar withLeicestershire speech, it also has a guide to Leicester dialectbased on Clifford Dunkley’s Let’s Talk Leicester, withexplanations of such ‘variations from standard English’ as ‘itowny sempt like yesterdah’ and ‘ay’d abaht gin yuh up’. Seepage ix for a translation – and enjoy what follows.

Cynthia Brown

PLACE-NAMES OF LEICESTERSHIRE: PART 3:GOSCOTE HUNDREDBarrie CoxNottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2004xxx+373pp ISBN 0904889688

Have you ever wondered what the name Cotes means? OrHoby? Then this would be a book that may help. ProfessorCox looks at the place names of the Hundred of EastGoscote and their origins. The book not only includesdetails of the villages but also the field names. Whereappropriate the names of the streets and public houses havealso been included. Each place has a list of the documentsin which the name first appears, with the original spelling

LEICESTERSHIRE EVENTSMalcolm ElliottChichester: Phillimore, 2004 xii+132pp illustrated ISBN1860772803

LAHS member Malcolm Elliotthas brought together a selectionof significant events from boththe city and county to produce abook which successfully blendsinformative text with a goodrange of illustrations. It is notthe familiar picture book withbrief captions, which seems tobe flooding the market, but asone would expect withMalcolm Elliott’s background,it is a well-researched bookwhich will be a very useful resource for local historians. Itcovers events from prehistoric times up to 2002 and theillustrations which accompany the text are on the whole verygood. The chapter headings include the early history ofLeicestershire, nobility and notoriety, fox hunting,Leicestershire at leisure, crime and punishment and severalmore. It is indexed and has a useful bibliography. With somany picture-books appearing on the market one becomesaccustomed to seeing the same group of photographsappearing time and time again, but in this book, without theresources of Leicester Mercury, we find some which do notappear to have been published before.

Alan McWhirr

LEICESTERSHIRE LANDSCAPESPaul Bowman and Peter LiddleLeicestershire Museums, 2004 vii+171pp illustrated£19.95 ISBN 09548200002

One of the great successes ofLeicestershire’s archaeologyhas been the work of theLeicestershire MuseumsArchaeological FieldworkGroup which was formed in1976. To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2001 thegroup organized a conference atwhich those involved with thearchaeology of the city andcounty spoke on the latestdevelopments in their particularfield. This volume publishesnearly all the presentations made at that conference and so wehave in print an extremely valuable summary of recentthinking about various periods of our past. There is a goodintroduction by Tim Schadla-Hall who provides a survey ofcommunity archaeology which sets the Leicestershire caseinto a wider context. This is followed by an account of theformation and development of the Leicestershire

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and follows this up with the evolution of the name. There isan excellent index, which allows you to find the name thatyou are interested in very easily. As well as this there isgood glossary explaining the terms and the languageinvolved in the elements of the names that are not personalnames. The book is very well researched and gives details ofall the sources that have been consulted. This volume wouldappeal to those with an interest in the history of the area aswell as those with an interest in language and thedevelopment of place names. The book is comprehensiveand makes interesting reading, certainly a book that you candip into and a worthy addition to any bookshelf. (Cotesmeans ‘the cottages’ and Hoby is ‘the farmstead at theheadland’.)

Lois Edwards

SOUTH-EAST OF LEICESTER: EVINGTON,STOUGHTON AND BEYONDHelen BoyntonOadby: the author, 2004 100pp illustrated £10.00 ISBN0954632044

Dr Helen Boynton has nowwritten a range of books onvarious parts of Leicester and inprevious editions of theLeicestershire Historian I havereviewed several and commentedon a number of matters whichconcerned me at the time. Thislatest volume on the south-easternpart of Leicester extending intoStoughton and slightly beyond,shows the way in which the layoutand production of these books hasimproved over the years. We have a good general plan toshow the area covered by the book, as well as several othersin the text, which helps the reader follow the narrative. Inaddition to the black and white pictures scattered throughoutthe text there are sixteen pages of colour pictures groupedtogether in the middle of the book. Quite a number of thepictures are duplicated as the author clearly wanted anillustration to be at the appropriate place in the text andtherefore had to be in black and white. She also wanted thesepictures to be shown in colour and so we have quite a numberrepeated in the middle colour section. It is good to have colourpictures and one can understand the economics of groupingthe colour pictures together but it may seem to some rather aluxury to have well over a hundred pictures reproduced twicein one book! However, that is the author’s choice.

The area covered includes North Evington in which ArthurWakerley was so heavily involved and here we find acollection of photographs to illustrate some of his projects.For industrial archaeologists there are details of a limeworksin what was later to become Gwendolen Road, firstdescribed in the journal of the Leicestershire IndustrialHistory Society some years ago. The quality of the pictures

is good and there is an index. With every volume which DrBoynton writes and publishes the overall quality seems toimprove and here we are given an insight into part ofLeicester and beyond which has an important story to tell.

Alan McWhirr

WRITINGS OF THE LUDDITESKevin Binfield (ed)Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004xxviii+279pp ISBN 0801876125

The Luddites occupy a key position as forerunners of muchof the often violent unrest which characterized the IndustrialRevolution and, as is well known, their activities wereespecially prominent, in the early days at least, inLeicestershire and Nottinghamshire. This book is animportant contribution to studies of the Ludditephenomenon. The American author, who is – perhapssurprisingly – a literary scholar rather than a historian,presents here a very useful range of texts written by Ludditeactivists themselves, or in some cases by their supportersbetween 1811 and 1816. The texts include letters, polemicalpieces, diary extracts and reports on Luddite meetings andactivities. A number of threatening letters are included –they were, as the foreword reminds us, a hallmark of Ludditeactivity, as they would be in the later ‘Swing’ riots.

It is interesting to note that poetry and song played animportant part in the Luddite movement, just as they did inlater radical phases, notably the Chartists. The collection oftexts – which appear to be very competently edited – isdivided geographically into documents from the Midlands,the North-West and Yorkshire. The context of thedocuments is discussed in a substantial and perceptiveintroductory chapter (also divided into the three regions).The foreword by Adrian Randall (author of Before theLuddites…: 1776-1809, CUP 1991) makes the importantpoint that there was no overarching Luddite movement. Aswith so much working-class radical activity, especially inthe early nineteenth century, local groups were largelyisolated from each other. However, as historians nowrecognise, written and printed documents played animportant part in providing disparate radical groups not onlywith a record but also with a shared identity. This importantselection of documents, very ably presented and introduced,will become a standard work for years to come.

John Hinks

Other recent publications

NOW AND THEN RUTLANDChristine and John NowellStamford: Zodiac, 2005 127pp illustrated ISBN190456609X

RUTLAND AND STAMFORD CURIOSITIES

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David BrandonWimborne: Dovecote, 2004 108pp illustrated ISBN1904349250

CITY OF LEICESTER

IMAGES OF LEICESTERLeicester MercuryDerby: Breedon, 2004 192pp illustrated ISBN1859834442

This book of photographs and other images from thearchives of the Leicester Mercury covers the period up to the1970s. The section entitled ‘Before 1900’ begins a littleconfusingly with photographs of twentieth-century museumstaff working on Roman pavements and other artefacts, andincludes engravings and photographs of buildings pre-datingthe twentieth century, among them a remnant of themedieval walls, the old Bow Bridge, and the town’s railwaystations. There is also a view of London Road in 1866showing the ‘Marquis of Granby’ pub – a scene that in otherrespects is quite unrecognisable today. Many of thephotographs may already be familiar from other localpublications, but there are some less familiar scenes such asthe Huntingdon Tower in High Street during its demolitionin 1902, and the Methodist New Connexion Chapel built in1861 on the site of what is now London Road railway stationand rebuilt in Dale Street when the station displaced it in1892. Not surprisingly, demolitions also feature strongly inthe section on the 1960s, not least in some of the veryinteresting aerial photographs. As may be expectedconsidering their source, the quality of the photographsthroughout the book is also very good.

Cynthia Brown

LEICESTER’S TOWN HALL: A VICTORIAN JEWELDerek SeatonLeicester City Council, 2004 64pp illustrated £3.00ISBN 1901156230

With the expansion of Leicester during the nineteenthcentury Leicester Corporation wasfinding that the facilities providedby the Guildhall where they werebased, were insufficient foradministering the city and a sitefor a new Town Hall was sought.Derek Seaton tells the story behindthe choice of site and the selectionof the design from a number ofarchitects. The building wasformally opened in 1876. He thengoes on to describe the variouschanges which took place over theyears and brings the story right up to date. It is a fascinatingstory, well researched and written. There is a good range ofillustrations including a couple from The Builder magazine,

a very useful resource for those researching the history ofsignificant buildings. Derek Seaton and Leicester CityCouncil are to be congratulated on producing an excellentsynopsis of Leicester’s Town Hall at such a reasonableprice.

Alan McWhirr

THE ORIGINS OF A LEICESTER SUBURB: ROMAN,ANGLO-SAXON, MEDIEVAL AND POST-MEDIEVAL OCCUPATION ON BONNERS LANE(BAR British Series 372)Neil FinnOxford: Archaeopress, 2004 vi+175pp + 74 illustrated£30.00 ISBN 1841716146

This volume presents the result of excavations carried out onthe south side of Bonners Lane, Leicester, in 1993/4, andalso includes a very valuable discussion on the results ofother excavations carried out in the suburbs south of earlyLeicester between 1993 and 1997. The work was carried outby the local archaeological unit, originally the LeicestershireArchaeological Unit (LAU) which in 1995 was transferredto the University of Leicester to become the University ofLeicester Archaeological Services (ULAS). Neil Finndirected the work in Bonners Lane and has been responsiblefor bringing this volume together. With the pace ofredevelopment in Leicester many sites have been examinedover the years and it is unlikely that we will see all of thesesites reported in this way in the future. This report is avaluable contribution to the archaeology of Leicester.

The first part deals with the results of the excavation inBonners Lane outlining what was found. There then followsa discussion of other sites in the southern suburbs ofLeicester and anybody with an interest in the growth anddevelopment of the city should read this section. The findsfrom the excavation are then dealt with in traditional formand for those wishing to find comparative material this partof the report will be a particularly useful resource. The finalsection deals with environmental material, bones, fishremains, evidence of parasites, plant remains, an area ofarchaeological evidence which has mushroomed insignificance over the past couple of decades and so it is goodto see the results of this work in print. At £30 not everybodywill be rushing to buy this book which is a pity as it containssome important evidence for the origins and development ofone of Leicester’s suburbs from the Roman to post-medievalperiods. Neil Finn is to be congratulated in bringing thisvolume to print.

Alan McWhirr

WARTIME LEICESTERBen BeazleyStroud: Sutton, 2004 192pp illustrated ISBN0750936711

This is a well researched book, as you would expect fromBen Beazley, that looks at Leicester during World War II

and how it affected the lives of the people living in the cityat that time. The book is illustrated by many photographsthat bring the text to life. The book is well written andmakes interesting reading. The chapters are arrangedchronologically, interspersed by chapters that look at otheraspects of the city at war, such as the role of women in thewar, and the effects of rationing. One chapter deals with theheavy damage inflicted in 1942 and the book concludes wellwith a short chapter looking at Leicester in the post warperiod. The text brings to life what it was like to live inLeicester between the years 1939 and 1945. This book,which will appeal to those with either a general interest inlocal history or in the history of Leicester, deserves a placeon any local historian’s shelf.

Lois Edwards


SPIRIT OF AYLESTONEJ J ParkerLeicester: Spirit of Aylestone Festival Committee, 200448pp illustrated

TOWNS, VILLAGES AND HOUSES

DIARY OF A HUNDRED YEARS, OR, WHATHAPPENED IN BIRSTALL BETWEEN 1900 AND 2000 Birstall and District Local History Society, [2004] 100ppillustrated ISBN 0951360744

This book by John Kilby is subtitled ‘random jottings of thetwentieth century’ but actually takes the form of achronology of Birstall from 1900 onwards, placed in a widercontext by references to national or international events, andaccompanied by some illustrations.

Thus it begins with an account of Lt. Arthur Crisp Clarke,the son of Joseph Crisp Clarke of Birstall Hall, who wasthen serving in the South African (Boer) War, and whose‘triumphant’ return home in a decorated trap is noted in1903. The entry for 1923 describes the demolition of BirstallHall itself, ‘done single handed by one man, Jim Wardle…He was able to build a house for himself and his wife Cissieby using the materials from the Hall’; while that for 1932records a ‘Rat Hunt’ at which representatives of the ParishCouncil ‘witnessed the extermination of eight rats’. Laterentries are more extensive because the author incorporateshis own and others’ memories of the village. There is also anappendix relating to the demolition of Wanlip Hall, and a listof radio shows from the 1940s and 50s which will no doubtprompt a few more recollections. The book gives aninteresting overview of Birstall during the last century, and –unlike many local history publications – it has a good indexwhich would be particularly valuable for family historianssearching for specific names or events.

Cynthia Brown

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HISTORY OF RATBY (VOL 1)Doug Harwood (ed)Ratby: Local History Group, 2004 [iii]+112pp illustrated£8.00 ISBN 0954799402

There are many local historysocieties beavering awayresearching their own localities,but all this activity is of limiteduse unless the results aredisseminated to a wideraudience. It is thereforegratifying to see that the RatbyLocal History Group has decidedto embark upon a series ofvolumes documenting the resultsof its work. Volume 1 contains aseries of articles includingSamuel Deacon the clockmaker and his son, two on Ratby’srailways, memories of Desford Lane Corner 1920-1945 andRatby in 1770 on the eve of enclosure. It is well illustratedwith photographs of varying quality; this is always adilemma when publishing local history books as to whetherthe only surviving picture of poor quality should be includedor left out. If it is the only known picture there is always thetendency to include it, and there is some justification fortaking that course of action in a book of this sort. There aresome helpful annotated figures including one on the outsideback cover. Doug Harwood is to be congratulated inbringing this volume into print and hopefully he is workingon the next one!

Alan McWhirr

HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF BAGWORTHBob Austin and Frank GregoryBagworth: the authors, 2004 85pp illustrated

This is the third in a series of histories of Bagworth by thesame authors, who are both members of the Bagworth LocalHistory Group. It focuses, as the title suggests, on its people,who are identified through such sources as hearth taxrecords, census returns, electoral registers and local tradedirectories. The extensive entries for the nineteenth centurywill be invaluable for family historians without the time tomake their own searches of the relevant records. There arealso a number of photographs, though the quality of thereproduction makes some of the detail difficult to see. Forme, the most interesting section is that based on recordedinterviews from the ‘Living Memories’ project in Bagworthin 1991, supplemented by some more recent material. Theseinclude accounts of the General Strike and of working in themines before nationalization, along with memories of theJollies Concert Party and of Manor Farm.

Cynthia Brown

LOUGHBOROUGH AND SHEPSHED(Images of England)Graham KempsterStroud: Tempus, 2004 128pp illustrated £12.99 ISBN0752432524

This is a collection of over 180 photographs taken from thefiles of the Loughborough Echo and reproduced in a singlevolume as part of the ‘Images of England’ series. There is anintroduction by a recently retired editor of the Echo. GrahamKempster’s part in this has been to select and organise thephotographs into clearly defined chapters with appropriateheadings and to provide an informative piece of text toaccompany each photograph. Most of the collection relatesto Loughborough, with one chapter containing images fromthe surrounding villages and two with images of Shepshed.Some photographs illustrate important events while otherssimply illustrate life in the town. Together they show thechanges that have taken place in the town over the lastcentury. For people who have spent their whole lives in thetown, some of these photographs will bring back memoriesof buildings and people no longer here. For others it gives aglimpse of a Loughborough that we have never experienced.

At £12.99 this is a reasonably priced book that can beenjoyed over and over again. It is the type of book that youcan dip into whenever you feel like a walk down memorylane. It would also have a limited use for local historians,providing one or two images on most topics and sometimesgiving the reader useful clues to follow up in other sources.My only criticism is that perhaps a bit more credit couldhave been given to the photographer, Harold Woods, and toother unnamed photographers, without whom there wouldhave been no book.

Pat Grundy

LOUGHBOROUGH WAR YEARSTed SharpeLoughborough: Reprint, 2004 15pp illustrated

This is a small, locally published reprint of a book of justfifteen pages plus illustrations, which include a ration bookand a public information leaflet. It is a shame that there isno index to these illustrations. The text is a very personalaccount of the war from someone who was only five when itbegan but it provides a picture of what life was like forordinary people. Despite the fact that Loughborough was notthe nightly target of German bombers the author paints apicture of a variety of hardships and difficulties whichpeople had to endure. This is a short contemporary accountof life in Loughborough during the war, written in an easilyreadable style. At £3.50 it is inexpensive and would interestanyone in Loughborough with an interest in the town’s past.It would also provide a useful source for a school historyproject.

Pat Grundy

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MARKET HARBOROUGH: A HISTORY ANDCELEBRATION OF THE TOWNMatt HowlingSalisbury: Frith, 2004 119pp illustrated £14.99 ISBN1904938388

This is a glossy hardback book of 119 pages, packed withillustrations that are both black and white and coloured,reflected in the price of £14.99. This is a history of MarketHarborough but set out in a format that is easy on the eyeand written in a style that is easy to read. It begins with anaerial photograph of Market Harborough and a timeline thatsets the history of Market Harborough against the history ofthe United Kingdom. As well as illustrations the pages arepeppered with interesting facts encased in boxes entitled‘Did you know?’ – yet the pages do not appear cluttered.What is missing, and would be useful for local historians, isan index. The book is divided into five chapters coveringroughly a thousand years and titled appropriately but localhistorians might want to find a quick reference to something.They would certainly want to access some of the historicphotographs and documents that are reproduced in the bookand there are few references. Only at the back of the book dowe learn that many of the photographs belong to the Frithcollection and those can be ordered on a special order formwith one free print as a special offer. Despite the lack ofindex it is an interesting book that will appeal to MarketHarborough people and especially to those with an interestin local history. Above all it is an enjoyable read.

Pat Grundy

OAKHAM PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIESBryan WaitesSalisbury: Frith, 2003 94pp illustrated £9.99 ISBN1859376126 (paperback)

UPPINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIESBryan WaitesSalisbury: Frith, 2004 94pp illustrated £10.99 ISBN1859376142 (paperback)

These two books are more thanthe usual collection of oldphotographs with short captions.Bryan Waites writes anintroduction to each and supportseach picture with a paragraph ormore of background information.All the photographs come fromthe Francis Frith Collection andinclude some taken as recently asthe 1960s. They are, as one wouldexpect from a professional photographic organization, ofgood quality throughout, and individual copies of thoseproduced in the books can be purchased separately (orderforms in the back of each book). Both books begin with astandard introduction outlining the history of the FrithCollection. Francis Frith took many pictures himself before

he died in 1898, but those in thesetwo books date from the twentiethcentury and are clearly not thework of Frith himself. Thoseincluded in these two books aremainly of buildings and streetscenes and people do not featureextensively – for car enthusiaststhere are some early exampleshere and there! It is good to seepictures from this collectiondisseminated to a wide audience especially as this reviewerseems to recall a time when the collection was under threatand possibly heading for the tip. Bryan Waites has done agood job with these two volumes.

Alan McWhirr

WIGSTON AT WARPamela WardLeicester: P Ward, 2004 305pp illustrated ISBN0954759109

This is a book of a personal quest by Pamela Ward to findout more about the names on the war memorials of Wigstonand South Wigston – to put faces to the names. It is a wellresearched book and a fitting tribute to those who gave theirlives in a time of war. It gives short biographies of the menand puts their lives in the context of what was happening inthe area at the time. The stories are a touching reminder ofthe men who never returned. Not every man on thememorial has a biography as not all the families could betraced. The book is let down by the quality of thereproduction of the images, which is a shame as the book isotherwise of a high standard. There are useful appendiceswhere the names on the memorials are listed with the basicinformation, where it is known, of rank, regiment and placeof death. This is a book which will appeal to those interestedin the history of Wigston and its area, as well as thoseinterested in the families of Wigston.

Lois Edwards


DONISTHORPE AT WARJ A WrightLoughborough: Reprint, 2004 129pp illustrated

KIBWORTH TO SMEETON: A STROLL DOWNMEMORY LANEPhilip J PorterLeicester: Matador, 2004 xviii+92pp ISBN 1904744850

LEICESTERSHIRE VILLAGES PHOTOGRAPHICMEMORIESMichael KilburnSalisbury: Frith, 2004 120pp illustrated ISBN185937655X

NAMES AROUND BIRSTALLStuart Liquorish and John KilbyBirstall and District Local History Society, 2004 [33]ppillustrated ISBN 0951360760

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW MARKETHARBOROUGHSalisbury: Frith, 2004 58pp illustrated ISBN 1845670485

WARTIME MEMORIES: LUTTERWORTH JUNIORSCHOOLThelma LaughtonLutterworth: the author, 2004 [40]pp illustrated

RELIGION AND PLACES OF WORSHIP

ADVOWSON ANCHORED: THE STORY OF THEPATRONAGE OF ROTHLEY CHURCH Terry SheppardRothley History Society, 2004 12pp illustrated

A VICARAGE LIFEMary MantonRothley History Society, 2004 12pp illustrated

The Rothley Chronicles series, ‘designed to allow short runpublications of brief well researched topics based on Rothleyand of material transcribed from local and national archives’,is an excellent idea for gathering and generating material andoffering encouragement to members who might wish toundertake a short topic of relevance. These well presentedA4 pamphlets are produced in a standard format using Wordand digital photocopier. More titles are in preparation. AVicarage Life was written initially for family consumption.Mary Manton, whose father, the Reverend Becher, was vicarfrom 1938 - 46, looks back at her girlhood spent in arambling vicarage, mother and father devoted to good worksand she and her brother allowed to run wild. Most of thepamphlet is a description of the vicarage and its grounds,outbuildings and environs. There is a not very clear sketchmap and plans of the inside of the house and a few sketches.The description is interspersed with incidents rememberedby the author many of which are really family happenings.We do however get a flavour of village life; the vicar tryingto please the ‘posh folks’ up at the Ridgeway as well as thereal villagers, his wife employing someone to do thecooking, which she hated, in order to give time to parishaffairs, and trying to make ends meet by working for anaccountant and letting out rooms. This is a unique account ofa time not so long ago but when life was very different. Itwould have benefited from editing and a better sketch mapand additional photographs would have made it moreaccessible, particularly to the non-Rothley reader.

Advowson Anchored is the story of church patronage. This isa fascinating piece of research well complemented by acalendar of events and people: patrons and vicars up to 1955(why was this not up-dated ?). It also contains a substantial

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list of sources. The starting point was that, when appointinga new vicar in the 1960s, the Church Pastoral Aid Societyhandled the arrangements, and this set people wonderingwhy. The story is told of how the advowson (ownership ofthe right of patronage), originally in the gift of the Lord ofthe Manor, was sold or passed from hand to hand until it wasbought finally by Sir Charles Harman. He had set up theMartyrs Memorial Trust in 1914 ‘to acquire advowsons as ahedge against the Romanising influence at work in thechurch of England of the day’ and to perpetuate the memoryof the Martyrs - Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper andFerrrer. He died in 1939 and his widow gave the Rothleyadvowson to the Martyrs Memorial and Church of EnglandTrust. In 1952 the Church Pastoral Aid Society undertookadministrative responsibility. In telling a straightforwardstory of the Rothley patronage, this pamphlet also toucheson some fascinating issues: how so many younger sons ofLords of the Manor became vicars but also how trading ofadvowsons was influenced by societies intent on promotingtheir type of churchmanship as well as those who bought thepatronage to give their candidate in effect a rest home forretirement. This shows how one piece of local research canopen windows to social as well as local history. An excellentshort account and a worthy project, we look forward toothers in the series.

Jennifer Sandys


GUIDE TO UPPINGHAM PARISH CHURCHS Cotton and A ArmstrongUppingham: the church, 2004 20pp

HISTORY OF EBENEZER BAPTIST CHURCH,COALVILLEDenis Baker[Coalville, the author], 2004 50pp illustrated

PARISH AND COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST MARYDE CASTRO, LEICESTER: HISTORY AND GUIDELeicester: T Doughty, 2004 12pp illustrated

ST ANDREW’S CHURCH AYLESTONE: A SHORTHISTORYAylestone, St Andrew’s PCC, 2004 20pp illustrated

THE VIEW FROM THE HILL: A GUIDE TO THEFEATURES AND HISTORY OF BLACKFORDBYCHURCHM J PennyBlackfordby: the author, 2004 22pp illustrated

WARTNABY PARISH AND CHURCH OF ST MICHAELAND ALL ANGELS: A HISTORY OF THE CHURCHAND VILLAGEWartnaby: the author, 2004, 25pp illustrated

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HEALTH, WELFARE AND EDUCATION

OUR LADY’S CONVENT SCHOOL,LOUGHBOROUGH: A BRIEF HISTORYLoughborough, the school, 2004 14pp illustrated

INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT

BANDED TOGETHER: LEICESTERSHIRE’SWORST MINING DISASTERVol. 1: The accident and what followedLesley Hale and John ColledgeCoalville: Whitwick Historical Group, 2004 ii+108ppISBN 0953197336 £6.00

This book is a reprint of the first part of the book BandedTogether, first published in 1997. The first volume coversthe details of the actual accident, which was the worst inLeicestershire’s mining history. The second volume willdiscuss the families involved and will have additionalinformation that has subsequently come to light. Volume 1has, by the admission of one of the authors in theintroduction, little to add from the first edition. That said, itis an excellent book. It is well researched and well written.Its larger format allows the well produced illustrations to beeven clearer than in the original. It is puts the disaster in thecontext of mining in the late ninetieth century. It will appealto those with an interest in the history of North WestLeicestershire, mining or just in a story that still has the powerto move people over one hundred years later. If you did notpurchase Banded Together when it first was published then thisis a book that is well worth adding to your collection. At £6.00it is well worth the price. I look forward to reading the nextvolume with its additions when it is published.

Lois Edwards

PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE N WLEICESTERSHIRE AND SOUTH DERBYSHIRECOALFIELDAlan E SherrattHartshorne Local History Society, 2004 [102]ppillustrated £7.00

Over the past twenty years or so, much work has been done onthe history of the North West Leicestershire and SouthDerbyshire coalfield. Colin Owen has published on the historyof the industry down to 1900. Colin Griffin has written on theminers over a hundred-year period. Archives have beenidentified and exploited and working exhibitions established.Alan Sherratt has now provided a new and timely dimension,with his volume of photographs. Clearly there is a stress onpeople and places but this is by no means all: the techniquesand technology of coal mining are well illustrated; the triumphsand disasters are well represented, especially the Whitwickunderground fire of 1898. Strikes and lockouts illustrate thetensions in the industry, for example 1926 and 1972, and coalnationalism in 1947 finds a place. Mining was not just a job – itwas a way of life. There are photographs of miners’ houses atMoira, provided by the then coal owners, the Hastings family.

A silver band at Snibston stands proudly in uniform, withattendant instruments and prizes. An ostler smiles affectionatelyat a pit pony. Above all, the camaraderie of the miners shinesthrough, whatever their ups and downs. A brief history of thecoalfield with a map and geological section’s, is provided. Theauthor has wisely sent copies of his book to schools in the area,and one hopes the younger generation will take an interest intheir industrial past.

Robert Ward

WELL-HEELED: THE REMARKABLE STORY OFTHE PUBLIC BENEFIT BOOT CO.Brian Seddon and David L BeanChichester: Phillimore, 2004 118pp illustrated ISBN1860773133

The first Public Benefit Boot Shop was opened in Hull in1875 by William Henry Franklin, who built a nationalnetwork of 200 stores over the next thirty years. TheLeicester connection with the company was through itspartnership with Lennards Ltd. – the Lennard brothersoriginally being local suppliers of stock and managers of theLeicester branch of the Public Benefit Boot Co. Theysubsequently entered into an agreement with Franklin to usethe same trading name across its own stores in other parts ofthe country. The Leicester branch was situated on the cornerof Cheapside, close to the Clock Tower, and the companyalso had manufacturing works in Welford Place between1896 and 1911. Lennard Brothers itself – trading later in thecentury as Liberty Shoes and Tandem Shoes – went intoadministration in the early 1990s, and its shops were takenover by Stead and Simpson or Shoefayre. This is a part of thewider history of the footwear trade that the book illuminates,both in terms of manufacture and retailing. As well asanalysing the impact of the two World Wars, changingfashions in footwear, and the nature of advertising, it paysparticular attention to the mergers and buy-outs of the 1950sand 60s, including the acquisition by Charles Clore of theSears/Trueform groups and the emergence of the BritishShoe Corporation. It is well illustrated and very readable.

Cynthia Brown


CONTOUR AND CREAM: FROM TABLE CREAMS TOCORSETS: THE MEMORIES OF FACTORY WORKERS[at Symington’s]Sophy Wright (ed)Harborough District Council, 2004 [32]pp illustrated

HISTORY OF R & W H SYMINGTON & CO LTD OFMARKET HARBOROUGHIan C SymingtonStone: I C Syminghton, 2004 98pp illustrated

HISTORY OF THE CHARNWOOD FOREST RAILWAYM HelseyLoughborough: Reprint, 2004 [ii]+45+[10]pp. illustrated

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ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORT

LEICESTER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: A HISTORYAND CELEBRATIONNeil CrutchleyLoughborough: Reprint, 2004 115pp illustrated

ST PHILIP’S DRAMATIC SOCIETY: A BRIEF HISTORYJudith StevensonLeicester: the author, 2005 26pp illustrated

SPEEDWAY IN LEICESTER: THE HUNTERS ERAAlan JonesShepshed, A Jones, 2004 167pp illustrated

PEOPLE

SUSANNAH WATTS 1768-1842Shirley AucottLeicester: the author, 2004 58pp illustrated £5.95

Leicester was renowned as a stronghold of opposition toslavery, a movement in which women are now recognised ashaving played an outstanding role. One such was SusannahWatts, one of Leicester’s ‘bluestockings’ – a staunchabolitionist who used her considerable abilities and energynot only to write about slavery and other injustices but alsoto become actively involved in a number of local charitablecauses. She worked tirelessly to relieve suffering andpoverty in Leicester, though her prime concern was theending of slavery. Her charitable and abolitionist activitiesalone would have merited a biography of Susannah Wattsbut she is also remembered, quite rightly, as the author ofthe first guidebook to Leicester – A Walk through Leicester:being a guide to Strangers, containing a Description of theTown and its Environs, with remarks upon its History andAntiquities – first published, anonymously, in 1804(reprinted 1967). Shirley Aucott has done a fine job in thisbiography of Watts and she makes good use of the primarysource materials, which were not exactly over-abundant. It isessential reading for anyone interested in opposition toslavery, the ‘bluestockings’ and Leicester life in the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The illustrations, ofWatts and other ‘bluestockings’, of Dannetts Hall (whereWatts lived), and of a good variety of other material,complement the text well. The book as a whole (just 58 pages,plus a fold-out map from Watts’s guide) demonstrates the highstandard that can be achieved by an imaginative author with(one assumes) a sympathetic printer. It is excellent value at£5.95 and is available from Browsers and other bookshops,city and county museums, and from the author.

John Hinks


PRINCE WIGSTON’S LEGACYJ T GarnerWigston: Two-Steeples, 2004 xii+185pp illustratedISBN 0954688309

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Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society

Research Fund

Guidance notes for those applying for grants

A research fund was established in 1923 and since that date additional sums of money have beenadded to the initial investment. The original trust deed speaks of using the income arising fromthe fund for “...such work of archaeological or antiquarian research as the Trustees think fit.”

The Society welcomes applications for grants from this fund along the following guidelines:

1. Applications are invited for research which focuses on the archaeology and history ofLeicestershire or Rutland. Research which places evidence from these counties into abroader regional or national framework is also welcome.

2. Non-members of the society are eligible to apply for funding.

3. Applicants would be expected to disseminate the results of their research to members ofthe society by giving a lecture to the society and/or publishing in one of the annualpublications which the society produces. On big projects, progress reports would beexpected as a condition of an award.

4. Grants from the Society should be acknowledged in any publication or display thatresults.

5. Average grants in recent years have been in the region of £200-£500. Larger sums thanthis can be considered where an exceptional case can be made.

6. Applicants should complete a form which can be obtained from the Honorary Secretaryand submit this along with any supporting documentation in time for Trustees to considerthe application at their March or October meeting [1st February for the March meetingand 1st September for the October meeting]. The Trustees may at their discretion considerapplications at other times depending upon the number considered at each of their normalmeetings.

8. Applicants will be expected to name one or two people who can write in support of theresearch project with one named as the primary referee.

9. Trustees are keen to support primary research. Applications might be for travel to do fieldwork or visit archives, costs of equipment and consumables, such as finds bags orexcavation tools, or work connected with preparing reports for publication, such asdrawings and photographs. Grant will not be made for fees or living expenses for studentswriting theses.

Further details and an application form can be obtained from the HonorarySecretary, 37 Dovedale Road, Leicester, LE2 2DN

or email [email protected]

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