The programme talks about the wider castle site, not just the wonderful Norman great hall you see above.
If you want to know more about the archaeology of this fascinating site, you can listen to an online lecture by Matthew Morris from University of Leicester Archaeological Services, who has led digs there.
Writing on Oakham Nub News, Lawrence Fenelon, chair of the Friends of Rutland County Museum and Oakham Castle, says:
At March last year RCC's accounts showed over £39m of usable capital reserve. Why can't a small bit of it be used to get the Sea Dragon back in Rutland? If it is not spent by March 2028 it will go to the new combined authority and be lost to Rutland.
Our council is in danger of missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring a major attraction to Oakham.
A BBC News story about the campaign for the fossil to be displayed Rutland says:
The authority told the BBC risings costs meant it could no longer afford to proceed with its original plan, but confirmed the petition would trigger a debate on the issue at a future full council meeting.
Readers of Lord Bonkers' Diary, whether in Liberator or on this blog, will have known all about the Rutland Water Monster long before 2021.
Oakham Nub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for a worrying story from Rutland.
Ever fair-minded, the judges point out that though
the document exposes pervasive administrative backlogs, repeated statutory failures, severe asset mismanagement, and critical operational risks.
everything else about the body is tickety-boo.
Long-term aspirations could see native animals including Eurasian brown bears, lynx and wolves reintroduced inside holding pens, according to developers.
Planning documents said the project would showcase "the wonder of British wildlife" if given the go ahead.
Lord Bonkers is all in favour (I suspect he may he an investor om the project). When I ask what would happen if the brown bears, lynx and wolves escaped, he merely replies that the Rutland Water Monster would soon devour them.
I remain unconvinced that the locals will take such a sanguine view, as too many of them will remember the sudden demise of the Bonkers Hall safari park, even if the old boy "still maintains that those nuns were the authors of their own misfortune".
But seriously folks, this sounds rather fun.
Oakham's Big Pop Flop
say the headlines. And:
Organisers blame fantastic rumours of a rowdy and dangerous evening for failure
This is the Stamford Mercury for Friday 26 August 1966, reporting events the previous weekend:
The much publicised big beat show on Saturday night Oakham proved to be very much off-beat. With The Kinks as the star attraction, supported by three other well-known "pop" groups, the promoters hoped for a crowd of between five and six thousand on the agriculturkl show ground, but only just over 2,000 turned up.
"It was a financial failure and we're bitterly disappointed. We had hoped to raise a considerable sum for Langham village charities, Mr Tony Ruddle, one of the organisers, told the Mercury.
Special trains were put on, including one calling at Market Harborough, but they not enough to override the bad advance publicity, at least as the organisers told it.
Now, to anyone who knows their pop history, the conjunction of the Kinks and Rutland will ring a loud bell. Here's Ray Davies talking about the genesis of the song David Watts:
As Ray Davies confirmed in The Kinks: The Official Biography by Savage, "David Watts is a real person. He was a concert promoter in Rutland." He goes on to relate how the real Watts was gay and demonstrated an obvious romantic interest in his brother Dave Davies. In this light, lines such as "he is so gay and fancy free" and "all the girls in the neighbourhood try to go out with David Watts... but can't succeed" provide a second level of interpretation based on this ironic in-joke.
The band members were invited back to Watts' home for a drink one night after a concert. Ray Davies recalled to Q magazine in a 2016 interview: "My brother, Dave, was in a flamboyant mood and I could see that David Watts had a crush on him. So I tried to persuade Dave to marry David Watts because he was connected with Rutland brewery. See, that's how stupid my brain was."
If we're talking about the Kinks meeting a Rutland pop promoter, it must surely have been at the failed Oakham event.
So I searched the local papers for the name David Watts and came up with nothing - the organisers mentioned were all members of the Ruddle family. (Ruddle's beers had a vogue in the Eighties, so much so that they became easier to find in London than Rutland. Then the Ruddle family sold out to Watney's and their brewery at Langham was closed and demolished.)
There was one tantalising glimpse of a David Watts though. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, the dart players of Oakham competed for the David Watts Trophy.
And then I found an online obituary for a Major David Watts.
David Watts, who died on 16 September 1990, joined the 3rd Hussars at Sarafand in Palestine in 1946, having recovered from being severely wounded while serving with the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in Normandy.
He was one of those men of whom it is true to say that he was devoted to his Regiment.
Although he carried out two appointments on the staff with competence and flair, he was first and foremost a Regimental soldier with the 3rd Hussars, The Queen’s Own Hussars and very happy and successful as Training Major with the Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry.
And so on until you reach:
After retiring, he lived in Rutland and worked in the brewing industry for a short time before going back to Devonshire where his family have lived for many years.
I don't know how much truth there is in Ray Davies's recollections, but this Major must be our man.
For a few days I felt very pleased with myself, then I discovered that a Kinks Facebook page had got there three years before me. I knew how Captain Scott felt when he reached the South Pole only to find Amundsen's Norwegian flag flying.
I am just going outside and may be some time, so I'll leave you with the Kinks.
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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McDonald’s has thwarted attempts to stop it opening new outlets by stressing that it sells salad, promotes “healthier lifestyles” and sponsors local children’s football teams.Public health experts claim the fast-food firm uses a “playbook” of questionable arguments and tough tactics to force local councils in England to approve applications to open branches.The disclosures, in an investigation published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), set out how McDonald’s gets its way, especially when it appeals against councils’ decisions to block new openings.Since 2020 it has lodged 14 such appeals with the Planning Inspectorate. So far it has won 11 of them and lost only one, and there are two others ongoing, the BMJ reported.
It’s very undermining in the role of local government in being able to shape a healthy environment. We haven’t got the resources that the likes of McDonald’s have got to be able to get into any legal battles with this. It’s David and Goliath."
This week's remarks suggest that Labour seems to think this slowdown is because capitalism has been restrained by stupid government or by a defective working class. Which is not much different from the Tories blaming the deep state or bureaucratic class.Both parties seem to have the Scooby Doo theory of capitalism: "I'd have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids."There is, however, an alternative possibility. It's that capitalism itself has developed forces which reduce growth.
When Market Harborough first competed in the Leicestershire chess league in the mid Seventies, a stalwart member of our team was the Reverend Fisher from Husbands Bosworth.
He was a kindly man - everyone's idea of a country vicar. I wish I had known he was called Ruggles (as more people should be), but he was always the Reverend Fisher to me in those days.
I knew he had retired to Oakham and had lived to celebrate his 100th birthday. When I thought of him again today, I found his obituary in the Church Times. He died in December 2022 at the age of 102.
The early part of the obituary is very much about his chess:
On his retirement from parish ministry in 1982, he joined the Clergy Correspondence Chess Club. After winning the clergy championship for three consecutive years, in 1985, 1986, and 1987, he retired, returning to compete against Canon John Morris and winning another three consecutive times, in 1993, 1994, and 1995 ...
He went on to win again in 1997 and 2000. Fittingly, the 2000 win was jointly with Canon Morris, for whom it was also his final win. Fisher remained a member of the Club until his death.
But there was more to his life than that. He fought in the Burma campaign with the Royal Norfolk Regiment and retired from the Army with the rank of Major.
Church Times suggests his longevity made him "a direct connection to a now-lost era". This was for two reasons.
The first was that his father, the Revd Steward Travers Fisher, served as a chaplain in the Boer War - my Revd Fisher was the fourth generation of his family to be a Church of England clergyman.
And the second was that his grandfather, like his grandson the Revd Thomas Ruggles Fisher, "was a signatory to the Remonstrance in response to the decision of the Privy Council in Hebbert v. Purchas in 1871".
Thanks to Wikipedia, I can tell you that John Purchas was an author and Church of England clergyman who was prosecuted for ritualist practices:
Purchas introduced the use of vestments such as the cope, chasuble, alb, biretta, etc., and used lighted candles on the altar, crucifixes, images, and holy water, together with processions, incense, and the like.
He lost on every point of the case when it reached Pricy Council, but as he had put his property out of his hands he couldn't be pursued for costs. And he continued to conduct services as he chose until his death the following year.
I don't know if the signatories were supportive of his Romish practices or simply wished to defend the autonomy of individual clergymen.
One other point... If you were a chess player called 'Fisher' in the Seventies then every opponent would make a crack about your name, convinced that he was the first to do so. The Revd Fisher bore it with the patience of a saint.
The Oakham Team Ministry site gives the programme for the festival. On Friday there will be school visits to explore the connections between Queen Edith, All Saints Oakham, Oakham Castle and the Anglo-Saxon burgh of Oakham.
On Saturday there will be:
A celebratory exhibition and other activities in and around All Saints church. Outside there will be Anglo-Saxon re-enactments, while inside there will be something for all ages – an exhibition of the life of Queen Edith, an actor playing Queen Edith herself dressed in royal costume, craft activities, and local artisans demonstrating their work. ... You are invited to come dressed in Anglo-Saxon costume if you wish!
Sunday will see a special service at All Saints.
The website also tells us more about Edith:
Queen Edith is woven into the history of Rutland as the last Queen to hold many of the manors of our county as her personal possession. Her legacy gently echos down the centuries to the present day, with her name preserved in one of the Rutland villages she held, Edith Weston.
Successive Queens in the Anglo-Saxon era were awarded the income from a wide variety of estates and manors in order to fund their household and interests. Rutland was a key part of this dower land, which may explain why it escaped being fully merged into the major counties which were being established around this time.
It was Simon Titley who said that all double-barreled English village names sound like American newscasters, "except Mavis Enderby".
I feel sure he would have accepted Edith Weston as another exception to this rule.
This is the plan I blogged about at Christmas, quoting the Leicester Mercury:
Bears, wolves and even lynxes could be on the doorstep of Rutland Water if plans are approved. The move, if successful, would see wildlife return to the area for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.
The plan, which is to be formally proposed in the New Year, would see a new nature reserve created in Rutland’s Oakham, with 1,000 acres of land stretching from Burley Wood to the Oakham bypass transformed.
The end result would be called Wild Rutland and could see the likes of Eurasian brown bears and lynxes, which were once native to the UK, make the reserve their home.
The Wild Rutland website says a pre-planning application for a 1000-acre nature reserve on the Burley Estate was sent to Rutland County Council in December and a full proposal will be submitted later this year.
Bears, wolves and even lynxes could be on the doorstep of Rutland Water if plans are approved. The move, if successful, would see wildlife return to the area for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.
The plan, which is to be formally proposed in the New Year, would see a new nature reserve created in Rutland’s Oakham, with 1,000 acres of land stretching from Burley Wood to the Oakham bypass transformed.
The end result would be called Wild Rutland and could see the likes of Eurasian brown bears and lynxes, which were once native to the UK, make the reserve their home.
No, the plan doesn't belong to Lord Bonkers but to two generations of farmers, James and Joss Hanbury. I don't know if they are descendants of William Hanbury, who once had equally grand (and arguably safer) ambitions at Church Langton.
It is true, however, that Lord Bonkers wrote this in one of his most recent diary entries:
Later. A reader has kindly sent me the link to a Daily Mail article that tells you all about the Hanburys:To London for the annual general meeting of the National Trust as I am seriously considering opening the gardens at the Hall to the public next year. The ill-feeling occasioned by the sudden closure of the Bonkers Hall Safari Park appears at last to have abated – really, you have one coachload of nuns involved in an unfortunate incident and you never hear the last – so perhaps it is time to dip a toe in the stately home racket again.
Harrow-educated hedge fund manager whose father is a friend of Prince Charles wins £110MILLION by betting Britain would vote for Brexit and the pound would tumble
- Rising star James Hanbury guessed Britain would shock by voting Leave
- Decided to take the risk on basis there was a lot to gain and little to lose
- The fund manager, 36, has doubled his clients' money in the last five years
- He is the son of Prince Charles's millionaire hunting pal Joss Hanbury
It's a lovely village and, as there is really of historic narrow boats this weekend, there was even more to photograph than usual on the canal. I have good memories of Braunston more than 50 years ago and some family snaps to go with them, so they will probably turn up here too.
And I found a tin tabernacle and connections with two of my favourite writers, so there will be plenty to blog about.
But for today, let's return to Oakham and two pairs of substantial semi-detached houses I came across last Friday. As the badge shows, they were provided to officers in the Rutland force.
You get the feeling that constables were expected to be fat and jolly with lots of children in those days. I met one of the last of that breed when I took part in a (very good humoured) demonstration against opencast coal mining in what is now Andrew Bridgen country at the end of the last century.
He accompanied us on our march (it was more of a ramble, to be honest) and his advice before we set off was: "If you start any trouble, just run. I'll never catch you."
And when a local councillor was invited to say "a few words", he treated us to a loud aside: "If she does say a few words, it'll be the first time."
Now that's what I call community policing, though it was exceeded by the PC (a friend of our victorious candidate) who took it upon himself to ring Tony Greaves with the result of a local by-election because he had decided we were all too drunk from celebrating.
We doubt that we will see canal boats once again making the passage from Melton to Oakham, but a footpath is definitely achievable.
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.
Despite their fearsome reputation, the judges of our Headline of the Day Award can be a sentimental bunch. The local connection was enough to win this tale of Jeffery Hudson's trousers today's award, despite its questionable grammar.
"Did the story tell for £10k?" they asked, and "Can one be said to have owned a pair of trousers 'sold for almost £10k' if that sale did not take place until centuries after one's death?" Oh, and "Why have they used 'dueling', which is generally seen as an American spelling?"
Still, well done to the Leicester Mercury.
There's more about Jeffery Hudson on Strange Company blog. You can find his cottage near the railway station in Oakham.
At Rutland's 2019 all-out council elections, the Conservatives won 16 of the 27 seats. Today, thanks to by-election defeats and defections, they are down to 6.
It's all happening in England's smallest county: there's going to be another by-election.
Oakham Hub News reports the resignation of Ian Razzell, one of the members for the Oakham South Ward. He was elected as a Conservative in 2019, but earlier this month announced that he had left the group to sit as an Independent.
He was the council's armed forces champion and has told Oakham News Hub:
"Principally, the values and standards of a 37 year career in the Army are binary and at odds with the actions and plans of a number of elected members."
The by-election has not yet been called.
You would need the combined services of a Kremlinologist and an expert in irrational numbers to fully understand Rutland politics these days.
But as far as I can make out, the Conservatives won 16 of the 27 seats at Rutland Council's 2019 all-out elections. Since then, defections and by-election defeats have seen their group shrink to 6.
The other two councillors for Oakham South are Liberal Democrats, and we won a by-election there in August of last year by polling two-thirds of the votes cast.
Last night Paul Browne won a Rutland Council by-election for the Liberal Democrats, polling two-thirds of the vote in the Oakham South ward and gaining it from the Conservatives.
People soon started tweeting that he had fought a seat for the Liberal Party at the 1970 general election.
The trouble was that no one said which one it was. I checked, and it wasn't the Rutland and Stamford constituency that existed in those days.
Thanks to a comment on last night's post, I can now reveal that Paul fought Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire. He came third and the seat was gained from Labour by a promising young Tory called Kenneth Clarke.
Great news from Rutland tonight! The Liberal Democrats have gained the Oakham South ward of Rutland Council from the Conservatives.
The result:
Lib Dems: 886 (67.8%, +9.8%)
Conservatives: 420 (32.2%, -9.8%)
The percentage gained or lost is a comparison with the last time the ward was fought, which was May 2019.
And if you're wondering how this can be a Lib Dem gain, the answer is that Oakham South is a three-member ward and we put up only one candidate against a slate of three Tories.
The Lib Dem (Joanna Burrows) still topped the poll and tonight we took the seat of one of the Tories, who recently resigned from the council over a planning issue.
Andrew Teale's preview of this weeks local by-elections will give you more background on the contest. If you follow local elections you really should be reading him every week.
Anyway, congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillor Paul Browne.
