What would have happened if St Pancras station had been closed?

In 1980 the were serious proposals, and not for the first time, to close both Marylebone and St Pancras stations in London.

Jago Hazzard takes us through the plans and why they came to nothing. Before I go any further, let my suggest you like this video, follow him on YouTube and have a look at his Patreon page.

One thing he does not explain is how trains from the Midland Main Line would have reached Euston. There was no existing connection they could have used nor any obvious new one that could have been built.

I don't know what the London Amenity & Transport Association had in mind in 1980, but a post on RailUKforums tells us what British Rail had in mind when there were serious plans to close St Pancras in the 1960s:

The broad outline plan was that the Bedford Suburban services would be diverted from St. Pancras into Moorgate, much as it happened later with Thameslink. Main Line services were proposed to be diverted from Market Harborough over the now closed line to Northampton, and into Euston, with the lines involved electrified. It was also proposed at one point that the line between Market Harborough and Bedford would close, with Wellingborough and Kettering losing their rail services. 

For about four years the St. Pancras to Nottingham Newspaper traffic, and the remaining St. Pancras to Glasgow overnight service were diverted to run out of Euston over the Northampton to Market Harborough route, before reverting to St. Pancras around 1970 after the station at St. Pancras had been reprieved.

Several floors of the old station Hotel at St. Pancras, which had been in use as offices, were relocated elsewhere during the period when closure seemed certain. Even after it was reprieved there was a lot of vacant office space left empty, and walking about up there could be very spooky at times.

It's worth reading the whole thread there. Other contributors say Bedford to Market Harborough would have remained open or that only the line between Kettering (Glendon North Junction be be precise) and Market Harborough would have closed.

I like the idea, possible if the latter closure had taken place, of a regular semi-fast service from St Pancras to Leicester via Corby and Melton Mowbray.

Lord Harborough's Curve and Oscar Wilde's first biographer

Lord Harborough's Curve: photo by John Sutton

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.

Sidetracked adds some colour:

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.

Derbyshire bakery recruiting volunteer taste tester after pork pie furore

This just in... At a meeting this evening, the judges have awarded Headline of the Day to the Derbyshire Times.

Lord Bonkers suggests the bakery send a press gang to Melton Mowbray.

Liz Truss's drive for Stilton exports to Japan proved a flop

Reader's voice: Shall I say it?

Liberal England replies: Go on then.

Reader: That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Liberal England: Thank you.

Liz Truss flew to Tokyo to sign Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal five years ago this week. She took with her a small jar of Stilton cheese.

The deal was largely a rollover of the one the European Union already had with Japan, but Truss had fought for better access for Stilton and cheddar.

And, as a token of her appreciation of the liberalising of the Japanese market, she presented the Japanese foreign secretary Motegi Toshimitsu with the Silton as they signed the deal on 22 October 2020.

But, says Graham Lanktree on Politico, there has been no Stilton boom in Japan. He quotes George Hyde, the Food and Drink Federation’s head of trade:

 "The story for cheese exports, unfortunately, shows a clear decline in recent years. UK cheese sales to Japan peaked at £2.2 million in 2019, but have fallen every year since, and were down two-thirds in 2024 despite tariff advantages."

 So she won't be offered the Freedom of Melton Mowbray any time soon.

Titanic passengers ate Melton pies as one of their final meals

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to (who else?) the Melton Times.

The judges are anxious to point out that there is no reason to think the pies played any part in the sinking of the vessel.

Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, Melton Mowbray, opens tasting room

The Melton Times calls it 

the final feature in a major refurbishment of the historic Nottingham Street bakery site, which began 15 months ago and has seen the shop being made open plan, heritage displays installed and refurbished sales areas created.

Yes, Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, Melton Mowbray, is opening a tasting room - or. to be precise, The Tasting Room:

The Tasting Room, which is at the back of the shop in a unit in the adjoining Bell Centre mall, has seated areas where products ranging from Dickinson & Morris pork pies and Mrs King’s Traditional black pudding and Stilton pork pies to their vegetarian cheese and onion quiche can be sampled.

There is also an opportunity for customers to upgrade to a Sharing Platter, with cheeses, Scotch egg, locally-baked bread and deli meats, all accompanied by a fresh salad and chutney.

Think of it as Leicestershire soul food.

Drone footage of the remarkable Welland Viaduct

Something different from the Trekking Exploration YouTube account: drone footage of the mighty Welland Viaduct. This stands on the line between Corby and Manton Junction, which was built in the late 19th century as part of a quicker route from London to Nottingham.

Today the line is chiefly used for freight, though there is one passenger journey each way between Melton Mowbray and Kettering on weekdays. This is chiefly so drivers can learn the route - it's also used for diversions on the St Pancras main line if there's a pressing need to avoid Market Harborough.

This footage was shot by David Blower.

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Bid to slice Melton Mowbray pork pie zone refused

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this very Leicestershire story.

Bob Trubshaw on the ironstone railways of Leicestershire

A thorough survey of a vanished local industry and its associated railways. At 33:20 we visit Nevill Holt, which is believed by many scholars to be the inspiration for Bonkers Hall.

The last days of Melton Mowbray North

I posted this video on Liberal England a decade ago: it's so good I should repost it every six months.

Melton Mowbray North was the town's station on the Great Northern and London and North Western Joint line. From it you could catch a direct train to Market Harborough and on to Northampton. 

The Joint line carried lots of freight, notably iron ore destined for the steel plants of South Wales.

Regular passenger services were withdrawn 1953 - I once quoted John Baldock MP mourning them in the Commons - though summer specials from Leicester Belgrave Road to the East Coast resorts survived until 1962.

This film, YouTube says, features Mr Lilley, the last signalman, and his grandson Nigel. It was shot by Nigel's father, and he must have done so shortly before goods facilities were withdrawn in 1964.

There's a wonderful picture on Flickr of the decaying station taken in 1966.

Looking back at Simon Titley's writings for Liberator

The new issue of Liberator was posted on the magazine website this morning. You can download it free of charge from there - it's Liberator 422.

As well as Lord Bonkers' Diary, which I'll start posting here tomorrow, it includes an article by me on Simon Titley and his writings. The photo here was taken during our lunch in Melton Mowbray.

Does a decade make a difference?

Simon Titley was fond of claiming that he joined the Liberator editorial collective in the 1980s because it was the only way of ensuring that his articles were pasted down in the correct order. Whatever the truth of that, his individual take on politics soon became central to the magazine. He was well informed about machinations inside the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats, interested in new thinking from well beyond those parties and aware of the continuing importance of social class in British politics, when a more common view among his fellow Liberals and Lib Dems was that, yes, class existed, but it was rather bad manners to mention it.

Now that, incredibly, it is approaching ten years since Simon’s death, this seems a good time to look back at some of his contributions to the magazine. You can find a collection of them on the magazine’s website and I’ll give the issue number of those I mention so you can read more for yourself.

Let’s start with a characteristic article. In Liberator 351 Simon looked at Liberals’ fondness for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ and asked what they mean to us in concrete terms. He begins by quoting Ralf Dahrendorf’s account of being held in solitary confinement by the Nazi regime as a teenager and how he had found himself feeling “a visceral desire not to be hemmed in, neither by the personal power of men, nor by the anonymous power of organisations”.

It is that feeling, Simon goes on to say, that Liberal Democrat talk of ‘freedom’ consistently fails to convey:

It is because the Liberal Democrats have such difficulty talking about freedom in meaningful terms that I have been regularly referring to the concept of ‘agency’ in my writing. By ‘agency’, I mean the capacity of individuals to make meaningful choices about their lives and to influence the world around them. I define freedom in these terms because it is better to think of freedom as a practical ability than as a theoretical abstraction. Unfortunately, ‘agency’ is jargon in some professional circles but I shall stick with it because it encapsulates the meaning I seek better than any other word I can think of.

Defining freedom in these terms forces us to realise the extent to which the maldistribution of power is at the root of most of our political ills. It also forces us to realise the relationship between exercising freedom and wellbeing. We can then incorporate freedom as an integral part of our policies across the board, rather than tack it on as an afterthought or omit it altogether.

An insistence on agency also counteracts the classical liberal argument that market forces are the only legitimate means by which people may exercise power.

This emphasis on the importance of the lived experience of abstract ideas can also be found in an article about social class that Simon contributed to Liberator 345. In this case the experience was his own:

Rarely have I encountered worse snobbery than within the Liberal Democrats. The symptoms are wearily familiar; the snide put-downs, the supercilious smirks, the casual discounting of one’s skills or arguments. The low point came when a ‘fellow’ party member once addressed me as “your sort”.

My own experience is more benign. If I transgress the unwritten rules in something I write online, then I’m generally told a particular comment “is unworthy of me”, with the implication that I pass muster the rest of the time. I’ll admit the speed with which public school and Oxbridge ranks close is impressive, but it tells us much about why British society is the way it is.

Sometimes Simon chose less ostensibly political subjects. Here he is in Liberator 331 on the tyranny of ‘cool’, and in particular the British middle-class take on the concept, which gives us:

A world where it is no longer permissible to have hobbies or intellectual pursuits. A world where enthusiasm or erudition earns contempt. A world where, if you commit any of these social sins, you will immediately be slapped down with one of these stock sneers: ‘sad’, ‘trainspotter’, ‘anorak’, ‘anal’ or ‘get a life’.

The phenomenon of ‘cool’ has been examined thoroughly in a pioneering book, Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude by Dick Pountain and David Robins. Cool is essentially about narcissism and ironic detachment. Its modern origins can be traced to American black culture of the 1940s, when young black men adopted a defiant posture as a means of defence. It was then picked up by rebellious white icons of the 50s such as James Dean. During the 60s, ‘cool’ began to be exploited by advertisers as a means of selling consumer goods and in the 70s it moved from the counter-culture into the mainstream. But while ‘cool’ people today affect an air of rebellion, in reality they are conforming to commercially-driven norms.

Because he moved back to Lincoln a couple of years before he died, I was able to meet Simon three times in the East Midlands before he fell ill. Our last meeting was at a very Titleyesque event – the Melton Mowbray Food Festival – and it will be no surprise to anyone who knew him that one of his last articles for this magazine (Liberator 354) was concerned with the decline of the dinner party, suggesting that a turn taken by some television cookery programmes might be in part to blame:

The BBC’s Masterchef (“cooking doesn’t get any tougher than this”) promotes the mistaken idea that, for any dinner party host, nothing less than Michelin-starred restaurant standards will do. It makes people feel ashamed to offer a homespun casserole, even though that is much more practical for a domestic dinner party than Masterchefs labour-intensive, chefy food. Another disincentive is provided by Channel 4’s ‘Come Dine With Me’, which creates the impression that the average dinner party consists of incompetent cooking shared with a bunch of arseholes.

If you want to see Simon’s approach to politics summed up in a single piece of writing, then I recommend ‘Really Facing the Future’ (Liberator 349), which he wrote with another of the party’s original thinkers, David Boyle. It was written in response to ‘Facing the Future’, a paper from the Liberal Democrats that had failed to live up to its title. David and Simon described their article as:

an attempt to encourage Liberal Democrat policy makers to think more radically – partly because the challenges that lie ahead require more radical thinking and partly as an antidote to the idea that party policy is at its most effective when it tentatively suggests a few tiny changes that don’t threaten the status quo. 

Liberal Democrats believe the opposite is true. The justification for the party’s existence is to think radically, to force the political establishment to recognise the real world, and to put radical change into effect. If the party does not do that, it will find that people lose interest and the supply of committed activists begins to dry up.

The Simon Titley articles I enjoyed most were the ones that revealed the machinations of those on the right of the Liberal Democrats who saw political success much as Jeffrey Archer’s novels see success in business. To them, it was the result, not of new thinking and hard work, but of a clever trick, a new alliance or a bit of clever positioning. As many of these people work in public relations, as Simon did himself, he knew whereof he wrote.

So his review of Mark Oaten’s forgotten memoir Screwing Up gives us a pretty brutal portrait of the author:

Oaten … appears to have no fundamental political values but merely jumps from one bandwagon to another. In the 1980s, he joined the SDP but can justify his choice only in terms of it not being Labour or Conservative. In the 1990s, he was an überchampion of the Blairite ‘Project’ but can justify this only in terms of admiring Paddy Ashdown’s leadership. In the 2000s, he became defender of the classical liberal flame when he founded Liberal Future and the Peel Group, but can justify this only in terms of opposing the ‘nanny state’ (having presumably taken the opposite view in the SDP). In a Guardian interview on 8 January 2005, he admitted “I only really got a philosophical belief about three years ago” (i.e. nearly five years after being elected as a Liberal Democrat MP).

But Simon also discusses the book’s strange failure to mention Paul Marshall or Gavin Grant, who were important backers of Oaten’s varied projects. He also reminds us of the name of the Guardian journalist who penned a succession of articles which questioned the competence of various Liberal Democrat MPs while praising Oaten as a ‘rising star’. Who can have briefed her?

Simon also contributed a telling account in Liberator 339 of the reaction of some to the outbreak of Cleggmania that followed the first leaders’ debate in the 2010 general election campaign:

As Lib Dem opinion poll ratings soared, one cheerleader for the right-wing cabal running the campaign wrote on Facebook: “So... 26-34% in the polls, almost all the boost down to media skills and leadership not leaflets and target seats... I’ve got to ask... anyone missing Rennard...?” The complete collapse of the ‘surge’ to 23% on polling day, just 1% more than the party won in 2005, suggests there was no basis for such conceit.

To end, let’s go back to 2001 and the very first article by Simon on the magazine’s website (issue 277). Not for the last time, we find him asking why Liberals are so fond of apologising for being Liberal:

Liberals are often pilloried as timid and petty-minded. We sit on the fence and wring our hands. When we rebel, it is through self-indulgent individualism (for example, calling ourselves ‘Jedi Knights’ on the census forms) rather than confronting what matters. 

We have only ourselves to blame for acquiring this reputation. Why are Liberals so embarrassed? Why do we lack the courage of our convictions? One of the main reasons is our faith that everyone is reasonable like us. All we have to do is sit round the table and eventually we can reach agreement. If only that were so. In fact there will always be many people, probably a majority, who are not Liberals, who will never be Liberals, and whom we must confront. Beyond that, however, are groups so violent in their hostility that to tolerate their behaviour is to invite our own demise.

The contempt for Jedi Knights is an authentic Titley touch, but beyond that, I don’t know whether to be depressed or lost in admiration that his words are needed just as much today as they were all those years ago.

Drone footage of the Welland Viaduct

Thirteen miles downstream from Market Harborough, the River Welland passes under one of the least-known wonders on Britain's railways.

At 1275 yards (1166m), the Welland Viaduct is the longest masonry viaduct across a valley in the United Kingdom. It carries the railway 60 feet (18m) above the ground on 82 arches, each with a 40 feet (12 m) span.

It carries freight traffic every day and a single passenger working from Corby to Melton Mowbray and back so that drivers can learn the route. For a while Melton enjoyed two return services to St Pancras over the viaduct.

Drivers have to learn the route because it is often used to divert trains from Kettering to Leicester if there are problems on the main line through Harborough.

Melton Mowbray is the most unhappy place in Britain, says ONS

It's official. Melton Mowbray is the most miserable place in Britain.

The Office of National Statistics recently ranked all 393 local authority areas, taking into account anxiety levels, happiness, life satisfaction and the feeling that the things done in one’s life are worthwhile.

Melton Borough ended in 393rd place.

If I asked Lord Bonkers the reason, he would point to the depression in the pork pie trade and the aftermath of the Stilton miners' strike.

A resident who spoke to the Leicester Mercury, by contrast, said:

"I think it's the lowest scoring because of the town centre. There's not a lot going for young people really beyond some bars.

"But then again you have Leicester 30 minutes down the road. Also, you have Rutland nearby for days out, so there are options.

"Traffic is another problem, too, though. The ring road should help to address this but right now we're seeing a lot of homes being built but no extra facilities or infrastructure to support them.

"We only have one GP for the time being, too, which doesn't help things. Everyone always complains about not being able to see their doctor and the nearest hospitals are at Leicester and Nottingham.

"But I don't think it's fair to write it off - there's millions being spent on the town over the next few years. There's potential for Melton."

Searching for the canal in Oakham

North of Leicester the River Soar is joined by the River Wreake. The Wreake used to be navigable as far as Melton Mowbray, where there was a basin beside the railway station. From there a canal ran to another basin close to the centre of Oakham.

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre of Oakham School is housed in an old warehouse that stood beside that basin. I managed to get a couple of photographs of it on Saturday, though the theatre is now surrounded by other school buildings.

That was five years ago. Today I was in Oakham again, hunting for the canal elsewhere in the town.

I found it among new housing south of the Burley Park Way bridge and out in the fields beyond it. By the bridge itself you find an explanatory panel and a milepost from further up the canal. There's not much water and what there is looks stagnant, but the canal is still there.

The Oakham Canal ran to Melton Mowbray - there was a large basin in front of the railway stations, which is hard to imagine now. From there, the River Wreake was navigable to to the Soar, which it joined a little to the north of Leicester.

As I said five years ago:

There has been talk of restoring navigation to Melton, which certainly looks possible. Getting all the way back to Oakham would be more of a challenge.

You can read about these two waterways' history and the prospects for restoration n the website of the Melton and Oakham Waterways Society.

Melton Mowbray pork pie MBE man says he is a baker born and bred

Attracted by the local angle, the judges have made this BBC News effort our Headline of the Day.

Maybe the dead do speak to us, but in their own way

As Lord Bonkers might put it, the dead are Terribly Dead. I've had no sense of my mother's presence since she died, even though I've had a couple of naps in an armchair in the room where it took place.

But...

I was in Melton Mowbray last month and looked for the café where I had met Liberator's Simon Titley for the last time before I visited him as he was dying in hospital.

For a short while I couldn't locate it. It's on the first floor and I was confused because the shop below it is currently empty. But I soon found it and was glad I had.

Then as I turned the corner, the bells of St Mary's began to ring out See, the Conquering Hero Comes!

One of the hymns I chose for my mother's funeral was Thine Be the Glory. I chose it because it's sung to that tune, which she loved.

So maybe the dead do speak to us, but in their own way.

Freight Train: The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group

Skiffle was the punk of the 1950s. Suddenly anyone could form a band and play - you didn't need any formal musical education,

Chas McDevitt was the biggest name in skiffle after Lonnie Donegan, but look at the forces here. Yes, his bass player has a proper instrument when most made their own from a tea chest, but the four guitars are all about rhythm not melody and there is no drum kit, just the inevitable washboard. 

Even the vocal backing - humming and whistling - is home made.

This is a great record - the video comes from the 1957 film The Tommy Steele Story - and that greatness owes much to its singer, Nancy Whiskey.

Researching Freight Train, I discovered that she had moved to Melton Mowbray in the 1960s and could be found performing in clubs around the town until shortly before her death in 2002.

If you doubt the importance of skiffle to the music that came after it, have a look at a 14-year-old Jimmy Page.

And do read about the remarkable writer of Freight Train, Elizabeth Cotten.

Lord Bonkers' Diary from the April 1991 Liberator

It's time to look back30 [gulp] years and see what Lord Bonkers was doing in Liberator 196, the April 1991 issue.

We journey to the glory days of Ronnie Fearn, who was Liberal MP for Southport from 1987 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2001. Also present is a youthful Matthew Taylor, Liberal MP for Truro from 1987 to 2010. The exchange between them at the glee club was exactly as reported here.

Adopted at birth, Matthew was later revealed to be the great grandson of Sir Percy Harris, who was Liberal MP for Harborough from 1916 to 1918.

This was news to me, but I suspect Lord Bonkers knew it all along.

Saturday

Just as I am preparing to depart for Twickenham, a party of Cornish Primitive Methodist clergy arrives. They express the wish to pass a thoroughly miserable  day, so I can do no other than take themto the "Spring Conference" of the "Liberal Democrats" at Nottingham. 

The journey goes smoothly, with a stop at Melton Mowbray to mortify the flesh, and we arrive in time to attend a lunchtime fringe meeting. My guests enjoy it immensely because the room has particularly uncomfortable chairs.

In retrospect, my decision to take them to the glee club was not well advised. In particular, whilst I found Miss Fearn's  rendition of "If You Were the Only Girl in the World" to Master Taylor peculiarly moving, the appeared somewhat shocked by it.

"Is this really the well-scrubbed fellow we see at Sunday School every week?", they quizzed one another. 

I have to spend the entire journey home  explaining what Miss Fearn had meant when she indicated her tie and said "This isn't the only thing that dangles."

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Boating on the River Eye in Melton Mowbray

There's a nice story in the Melton Times about Melton Mowbray people taking to the town's River Eye:

With limited boating activities available at nearby Rutland Water, Melton Mowbray Town Estate is keen to encourage more people to take boats out on the Eye.

Town bailiff, Billy Boulding, said: “The river encompasses a large proportion of our parks.

“Boating enthusiasts can row or canoe the 1.5km loop around Egerton and Wilton Park, and enjoy the beautiful scenery the river provides.

“It has been underused over recent years but wouldn’t it be nice to see these family and community activities on the river again in the future?”

The article recalls that:

Decades ago, canoeing on the river was a regular sight and it was not uncommon to see many people appreciating the natural assets the town has to offer.

And I remember that in the 1980s you always saw boys swimming from the weir just past the railway station if you passed through Melton by train.

John O'Gaunt Viaduct, Leicestershire

John O'Gaunt Viaduct stands in East Leicestershire on the closed Great Northern and London and North Western Joint Railway

It was building that line that first brought this blog's hero, the railway contractor and Liberal MP for Harborough J.W. Logan, to Leicestershire.

Elsewhere on this blog you can see another video of the viaduct and film of the last days of the major station on the line, Melton Mowbray North.