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An extraordinary meeting of Harborough District Council has voted unanimously in favour of a parish council for Market Harborough, reports BBC News.
This vote, which took place on Monday, followed a public poll in which 86 per cent of those who voted supported the establishment of a new council. I was one of them.
The BBC report makes great play of the fact that only 24 per cent of those eligible cast a vote, but I wonder if this is such a bad figure for such a poll.
Given the possibility that Market Harborough will be governed from Glenfield in future – it would be Nottingham if Labour had its way – the existence of a forum where the town to debate and decide what it needs is vital.
The passage below is from W.G. Hoskins' Midland England. Published as part of Batsford's The Face of Britain series, that book captures the charm of this part of the world better than any other I know:
There is, for example, the green deserted country around Knaptoft in the south of Leicestershire, where the pastures of central England hardly touch five hundred feet above the sea and yet they are the watershed between Trent and Severn; and streams gather here that end in the Humber, the Wash and the Bristol Channel.
This, more than anywhere, is the very heart of England: Knaptoft, with its ruined church, its font under the trees, its village under the sheep-pastures since Henry VII's time, its medieval manor house marked only by a rectangular island within a drying moat, and the later Elizabethan hall itself falling into slow ruin at the top of the field.
Once full of life, a thriving village of plough-land and meadow in the thirteenth century, the squire within his moat and the parson in the newly built church, now it dreams its life away in the autumn sunshine, deserted by all save occasional blackberry-pickers.
This video takes us to Thringstone in west Leicestershire to walk the disused Charnwood Forest Railway, which once terminated at Loughborough Derby Road station. It's a walk I've thought of doing myself.
There are glimpses of the short-lived Charnwood Forest Canal, which also ran towards Loughborough, though not quite far enough to reach the River Soar, so it was connected the wider canal system by a wagonway.
And then we reach the ruins of Grace Dieu Priory. The Friends of Grace Dieu will tell you all about them.
Ever since I was a councillor in the Eighties, the reopening to passengers of the line from Leicester to Coalville, Ashby and Burton upon Trent has been high on the agenda of transport campaigners in the East Midlands.
Which makes this video following the line between Coalville and Burton concerning. No train has run west of Coalville for a couple of years and, as a result, that section of the line is rapidly being reclaimed by nature.
This is doubly worrying because, though what people in Coalville want is a train to Leicester, it is this section between Coalville and Burton that the authorities now talk about reopening.
Anyway, thanks to Our History Underfoot. Like and subscribe. my children. Like and subscribe.
"Why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?" Noel Titheradge investigates a continuing scandal.
James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."
Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.
"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.
Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.
"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.
The former England cricket captain M.J.K. "Mike" Smith died yesterday at the age of 92. He was a middle-order batsman with Leicestershire and then Warwickshire, and also a rugby union player. He won a single England cap was at fly half against Wales in 1956, making him the last man to play both sports for England.
His even-tempered approach was one of the keys to his success as a skipper not just with England, whom he led between 1964 and 1966, but with his county, which he captained from 1957 to 1967.
Although the product of a traditional public school and Oxbridge background, he was unusual for the time in having a classless accent, an egalitarian outlook and a relaxed attitude to convention. Rank and file players loved him for it, and would do anything to support his cause.
The Guardian also reveals that Smith was the son of a Leicestershire hosiery manufacturer and grew up in Broughton Astley, a village in the Harborough District.
I would say that Smith's test career was before my time, but when I was a boy the England selectors loved their recalls. So, six years after his last cap, Smith was picked to play in the first three tests of the 1972 home Ashes series.
His batting made no impression on me, but I do remember a catch he took on the boundary. It was on the second day of the series and dismissed the Australian captain Ian Chappell first ball off a bouncer from Tony Greig. You can see the catch in the video above.
Later. There are some nice tributes in Smith's Cricinfo obituary – he was the England manager on Atherton's 1994-5 Ashes tour:
Mike Atherton, who captained that tour, paid tribute to Smith in The Times. "MJK's good humour and easygoing demeanour was a wonderful antidote to the occasional stress and pressure I felt as captain," he wrote. "He was utterly unpretentious and saw cricket for what it was – which is to say not a matter of life and death."
Geoffrey Boycott, England's former opener who played alongside Smith in 18 Tests between 1964 and 1972, wrote in the Telegraph that he had "a great sense of humour, no edge and was never officious. He was just a good man, a good gentle guy and you wanted him to do well. He gave you freedom to play and was not a martinet."
Bob Trubshaw is our guide. He says in his YouTube blurb:
As with all areas of Britain there are certain wells in Leicestershire and Rutland known as "holy wells" and several dedicated to saints. Almost invariably such holy wells have reputations for clean water and for never running dry.
Leicestershire and Rutland once had over thirty documented wells called "holy well" or dedicated to saints. But few survive. In addition there are some wells that were probably once thought of as holy but aren't reliably documented as such.
This is The Old White Cottage in Desford, a village west of Leicester that I visited today. Having found myself agreeing to do so at a heritage fair held at the University of Leicester a few weeks ago, I went on a guided walk of the place.
I'm glad I did, because there were several exceptional buildings to see and a lot of interesting history to hear. Visit the Desford Heritage website to see more.
Our History Underfoot – like and subscribe, my pretties – takes a break from the railways to explore the enticing remains of Grace Dieu Priory in the west of Leicestershire.
Being a well-prepared visitor, I brought the Harborough District Council leaflet about Great Easton with me yesterday.
And here's an interesting snippet from it about a nearby reservoir:
For several months in 1943 up to a dozen Lancaster bombers regularly used Eyebrook Reservoir as a training ground prior to setting off on the famous Ruhr "Dam Busters Raid".
Initially the low flying night flights caused considerable disturbance to the surrounding villages. However local residents, who recognised their sleep would be interrupted, regularly congregated around the lakeside to witness the spectacular rehearsals.
Practice flights took place from the 3rd May 1943, with a full ‘dress rehearsal’ on the 14th May of 14 Lancasters "attacking" the Eyebrook Dam.
The reservoir, which straddles the border between Leicestershire and Rutland, was built between 1937 and 1940 by Stewarts & Lloyds to supply water to its Corby steel works.
I ventured out into the Notswolds today. By changing at Corby, you can reach Great Easton by bus (though only on Wednesdays and Saturdays).
It's a pretty village, though perhaps without quite as much character as Hallaton or Medbourne, and it still has a pub and a little coffee shop. So it was well worth the visit.
In this episode of Lost Railway Towns, we travel to Coalville, Leicestershire – a town built on coal and railways. Once thriving when coal was king, Coalville was at the heart of Leicestershire’s industrial revolution, its collieries and railway lines powering Britain’s factories and furnaces.
We uncover the story of Coalville’s lost railways, the lines that once linked the town to Leicester, Ashby and beyond – and explore what remains today. Despite decades of talk about restoring passenger services, Coalville’s station remains closed, a ghost of a once-busy transport hub.
Joined by Steve, a lifelong resident of Coalville, we hear his memories of life in a town shaped by coal. I also revisit my own memories of Coalville railway open days – a nostalgic look back at the engines, exhibits, and excitement that inspired my love of railway history.
The problem with the Leicester end of this line, which they discuss at the beginning of the video, it that it meets the Midland main line at Knighton Junction, which is south of Leicester station, pointing south.
There used to be a curve at Knighton that pointed north, and would have enabled trains to get to Leicester station without reversing, but that has been built on.
I took some photos of Oliver's Crossing – a disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville – when I was there a couple of years ago.
Agnes Bowker, the Market Harborough woman who claimed on 16 January 1569 that she had given birth to a cat, is the subject of the latest short podcast in the BBC's Secret Leicestershire series.
The photograph shows the ruined church of St Mary in Arden by Market Harborough railway station, where the story begins.
Many railway enthusiasts will know the story of the Battle of Saxby and Lord Harborough's Curve, told here by the Leicestershire Museum Collections site:
In mid-November 1844, railway surveyors were making their way slowly through the Leicestershire countryside. George Stephenson had sketched out his preferred route for the Syston & Peterborough Railway and now they were taking the levels.
Four miles east of Melton, near the village of Saxby, they reached the estate of Lord Harborough, whose ancestral home of Stapleford Hall stood nearby. His Lordship hated the very idea of railways and had put up signs warning the surveyors to keep off his land.
The railway men attempted to avoid causing offence by following the towpath of the Oakham Canal, but this added insult to injury, as Lord Harborough was a shareholder in the canal, which faced ruin if the railway was built. His servants and estate workers set about removing the surveyors by force, leading to four days of fighting between the two sides.
Pistols were allegedly drawn by surveyors, clubs and iron pointed staves carried and bare fists used. Artillery was even mentioned! The estate Fire Engine was deployed as a primitive water cannon and the railway company was threatened by letter that:
"We have barricaded the towing path and have in readiness a few cannons from Lord Harborough’s yacht. If you force us to use them, as a last resort, the blood will be upon your hands."
Lord Harborough won his dispute with the railway company, so its engineers were forced to construct a tight curve in order to avoid his land. "Lord Harborough's Curve", as it was known, remained in use until 1892, when a route through Stapleford Park was finally built. You can see the wooded embankment of Lord Harborough's Curve in the photograph above. But the title died with him, as he did not father any legitimate children.
In another part of the forest, I have noticed that whenever I search for pictures of Market Harborough in photo libraries, portraits of a writer called Robert Harborough Sherard come up. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde and his first biographer.
Sherard's father was the Revd Bennet Sherard Calcraft Kennedy, who turns out to have been one of three illegitimate children that our Lord Harborough had with an actress called Emma Love. Through his mother, Sherard was also a great grandson of the poet William Wordsworth.
Sadly, he is not an attractive figure. His books on the poor of England generally lay the blame for their sufferings at the door of Jewish landlords.
Still, we have our Trivial Fact of the Day: Lord Harborough who won the Battle of Saxby was the grandfather of Oscar Wilde's first biographer.
The Leicester & Swannington was one of the first railways of the steam age, built to bring coal to Leicester from the mines in the north west of the county.
This amateur film shows the last days of the line from Leicester West Bridge to Desford Junction. The Wikipedia entry for the Leicester & Swannington reckons it closed in 1966, not 1964 as the commentary says. Passenger trains to Leicester West Bridge had ended as early as 1928.
Here's bit of history I didn't know. The caption for this photograph on Getty Images says:
Emergency services at work in a bomb damaged street in Dublin, Ireland, the day after a German air raid, which killed 34 people, 1st June 1941. The cause of the raid on neutral Ireland remains unclear.
Wikipedia – it's strange how the advent of AI has changed that site from a near embarrassment to the last online redoubt of human judgement – explains what happened:
In the early morning hours of 31 May 1941, four German bombs fell on north Dublin. That night, a large number of German aircraft were spotted by Irish military observers and searchlights were put up to track them. It was noted that the aeroplanes were not flying in formation but independently in a meandering manner and some appeared to be circling.
After the German planes did not clear the airspace over Dublin and continued erratically flying over the city, the Irish Army fired warning flares, starting with three flares representing the colours of the Irish flag to inform the pilots they were over neutral territory. followed by several red flares warning them to leave or be fired on.
After fifteen minutes had passed, the order was given to open fire and Irish anti-aircraft guns began firing at the bombers. Local air defences were weak and the gunners were poorly trained. Although they had shells capable of destroying bomber aircraft, they failed to hit their targets.
Eventually, some of the German planes dropped their bombs. The first three caused many injuries but no fatalities:
The fourth and final bomb, dropped about half an hour later, fell in North Strand, killing 28 people, destroying 17 houses and severely damaging about 50 others, the worst damage occurring in the area between Seville Place and Newcomen Bridge. Ninety people were injured, approximately 300 houses were destroyed or damaged and about 400 people were left homeless.
An article on the Maynooth University site agrees with the figure of 28 fatalities, so I have used that in my headline.
Though some saw the bombing as a warning to Ireland to remain neutral in the war, the most likely explanation is that the bomber crews thought they were bombing Belfast. There were also the inevitable conspiracy theories that Churchill had somehow caused Dublin to be targeted to save British cities from being attacked. Uniquely, in this case Churchill seems to have been their source himself:
After the war Winston Churchill said that "the bombing of Dublin on the night of 30 May 1941, may well have been an unforeseen and unintended result of our interference with 'Y'". He was speaking of the Battle of the Beams, wherein "Y" referred to the direction finding radio signals that the Luftwaffe used to guide their bombers to their targets.
The technology was not sufficiently developed by mid-1941 to have deflected planes from one target to another and could only limit the ability of bombers to receive the signals.
You can learn more about this "Battle of the Beams" from the links in my recent post on the secret RAF base at Charley in Leicestershire.
Slightly north of Coalville in the Leicestershire district of Charley are the remains of a secret RAF base which foiled Nazi bombing raids during WW2.
The RAF 80 Wing was formed in 1940 and comprised a team of specialist wireless operators who sent radio signal beams to throw German pilots off course, tricking them into releasing their bombs away from their intended targets.
Charley was one of those specially chosen sites, being close to the important manufacturing centres of Leicester, Derby, Coventry, Nottingham and Birmingham. That secret RAF team was nicknamed "The Beambenders".
You can read more about this operation in the Wikipedia entry for Battle of the Beams, and there's more about the site at Charley on the parish council's website.
Rupert Matthews, the Conservative turned Reform police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, faced a police and crime panel meeting at Leicestershire County Council on today to answer questions about a complaint.
BBC News says the complaint was made after Matthews sent an "unsolicited" email to a serving officer. It was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which found no evidence to indicate a criminal offence had been committed.
And the exciting news is that BBC News has been leaked a copy of the report the panel was considering:
The report states the complaint was referred to the IOPC on 4 September 2025.
It said Matthews "sent an unsolicited email to a police officer within Leicestershire Police, asking her to organise for him to have a photo taken with a horse for his next election leaflet, referencing a photograph of Russian president Vladimir Putin posing shirtless on horseback".
Rupert Matthews's office told BBC News that he had lodged a complaint about the leak of the report and that he is
extremely frightened of horses and ... would never seek to work with them out of choice.
