Fighting breaks out at Kibworth vs Gumley cricket match in 1873

At Kibworth library today in connection with a thing, I came across this report from the Leicester Chronicle (2 August 1873):

The cricket match which took here on Saturday between the Kibworth and Gumley Clubs was wound up with a scene - we might almost say a tragedy - which, with the exception of occasional poaching affrays, is happily seldom heard of in the rural districts.

It appears that a quarrel arose through some objections taken as to the fairness of certain individuals engaged in playing quoits. High words were soon followed by blows, and the pugilists were speedily reinforced by their friends on either side. The fight went on for some time until at length a perfect riot took place, and bats which for some time had been flourished in the air, began to alight on the nasal organs of the combatants.

Seven or eight men are reported to have been on the ground together and the disputants ultimately became so fighting or thrashing mad as to rush into the melee and knock down irrespective of friend or foe any person who came within reach.

The scene which beggars description went on until all appeared to have had enough, the office bearers of the Kibworth club utterly powerless to restrain the "dogs of war". Those who figured most conspicuously in the fracas we are told were from Gumley and Smeeton. Kibworth was also fairly represented. 

The greater proportion of the rioters were apparently maddened by drink; and their conduct will probably induce the members to forswear the future admission of intoxicating drinks on the ground.

I like to think that Kibworth vs Gumley remains a needle match to this day. Gumley cricket ground, incidentally, has a feature that must disconcert visiting teams.

From Foxton to Smeeton Westerby via Debdale Wharf

If you are one of the dwindling band of survivors of the 1985 Liberal Party Assembly at the Caird Hall in Dundee, then this is where your programme was mailed from. It used to be the post office for the Leicestershire village of Foxton, and that was where the assembly was organised from - in two semi-converted narrow boats, naturally.

This afternoon I went for a short walk along the canal from Foxton to Debdale Wharf and then along a glorified farm track to Smeeton Westerby. Incidentally, the King's Head at Smeeton is in new hands, well stocked with Langton Brewery beers and deserves your support.

Here are some photos from the walk.

Two Leicester exhibitions: Ladybird Books and the Imperial Typewriters strike

I braved the rain and went into Leicester today to visit two exhibitions.

The first was The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists at the museum and art gallery on New Walk.

On the walls was some of the original artwork from the Keywords books with which my mother taught me to read before I went to school.

They first came out in 1964, so they must have been the latest thing when she bought them.

And I learnt that most Ladybird history books were a collaboration between sometime Liberal candidate L. Du Garde Peach and the Leicestershire illustrator John Kenney.

A plaque in the latter's honour was recently put up in Kibworth, though a letterhead in the exhibition has him living in Smeeton Westerby.

On to the Newarke Houses museum and the exhibition remembering the Imperial Typewriters Strike of 1974.

It began when an Asian worker at one of the company's Leicester factories was mistakenly given the pay packet of a white friend and discovered she was being paid more.

A BBC News report says the Transport and General Workers Union refused to support the Asian strikers because its local negotiator believed they had "not followed the proper disputes procedure" and "have no legitimate grievances".

The strikers stayed out for 14 weeks, but a shutdown of the factory by its American owners ended the strike. A year later they closed the factory and a few years after that manual typewriters were museum pieces.

This exhibition is well put together, with lots of video interviews with people involved. It's themes of race and gender and white resentment resonate today.

And you can still find Imperial Typewriters' main factory on East Park Road.

Leicestershire landscape

The road from Saddington to Smeeton Westerby.

Christ Church, Smeeton Westerby

It may look older, but Smeeton Westerby church was not built until the middle of the 19th century. The site it occupies is situated between the original settlements of Smeeton and Westerby, which makes the village feel more like one place today.

The Victoria County History says: "A large arch which is incorporated in the west wall of the nave suggests that the addition of a west tower was contemplated at some future period."

That may well be so, but some Victorian church architects were fond of effects like this arch, which can be appreciated only from a distance. At nearby Tur Langton, the windows on the side of the church that is seen across the fields are much larger than those that face the main street of the village.

The framework knitters of Smeeton Westerby

The Leicestershire village of Smeeton Westerby was originally two hamlets: Smeeton and Westerby. Today it (just) retains separate from Kibworth Beauchamp and the smaller Kibworth Harcourt...

But you know all this.

Because you will have seen Michael Wood's television series The Story of England (which was really the Story of Kibworth), read the book and watched the DVD.

Today I was in Smeeton Westerby to look at this building in Pit Hill, which is very much at the Westerby end of the village. It was originally the poorhouse, established under the Gilbert Act of 1782. Later it was split into individual dwellings and occupied by framework knitters.

By 1844 the men who followed that trade were facing hard times. Wood quotes the evidence to a Royal Commission by a John Lover of Smeeton Westerby:

There is no race of people under the sun so depressed as we are, who work the hours we do, for the money we get. It would be my delight to bring my family up to a school; I cannot bear the thought of bringing a family up in ignorance, so as to not read a little.

The allotments in front of the old poor house, I learn from Stephen Butt's Kibworth Through Time (which I bought at The Bookshop in Kibworth afterwards), were established after sand had been extracted from the site around 1886. Before that the land had been occupied by cottages, so perhaps Westerby was larger then than it is today.

Later. I have been watching my own Story of England DVD. Originally, Smeeton was a Saxon settlement and Westerby was Viking. Elements of this rivalry can still be found today...

Smeeton Westerby by night

Smeeton Westerby is a village near Market Harborough that has so far escaped the attention of this blog. But it does feature in today's Leicester Mercury:

People in a village where the street lights have been turned off to save cash say they have not really noticed the change.

Leicestershire County Council's highways engineers have adapted 39 of the 44 lamps in Smeeton Westerby, near Market Harborough, so they are unlit from midnight to 5.30am ...

Kelvin Capell, of the King's Head pub, said: "I can't say that I notice the difference."

I would like to see such a policy implemented widely.

It would save money - the Mercury says that by cutting night-time lighting in seven villages and along 50 rural roads the county council will save up to £700,000 a year.

And it would also enable more people to experience the night sky as their grandparents did. Back in 2005 I quoted Timothy Ferris of NASA, who said:

"The loss of the night sky is most troubling for children. Whole generations of kids in cities and suburbs are growing up seldom if ever having seen the Milky Way and what a sky full of thousands of stars might look like."

"People often describe to me in glowing terms their experience in viewing the night time sky as if they'd seen something extraordinarily exotic ... something akin to observing Victoria Falls or the south pole. And I'm afraid that's the case for many people ... that they can count on the fingers of one hand the times they've seen a good night's sky."

Others will regard the policy as a way of reducing carbon emissions, but I prefer environmental politics that are based upon a reverence for the natural world rather than a fear of it.