The Spencer Davis Group play South Wigston

When I saw the late, great Spencer Davis play Market Harborough leisure centre, there was a problem with one of the speakers. It was solved by having a roadie lie across it to hold the cable in.

"This is just what it was like in the Sixties," he told us. "We're giving you the genuine experience."

He also said that it was good to be in Market Harborough, because the Spencer Davis Group had come over this away often in their early days.

I've never found evidence that the Spencers played Market Harborough, but they did play South Wigston.

This advert comes from the Leicester Daily Mercury for 6 June 1964, which meant that Steve Winwood had just turned 16.

It's interesting to see them billed as the Spencer Davies Group. Davies was Spencer's real surname, but he changed it to Davis so the English would pronounce it correctly.

Dimples, their first single, was getting notice, at least in Birmingham, and they were obviously getting on television. Then John Lee Hooker's original version was released as a single and no more was heard of it. Eighteen months later they were topping the charts with Keep on Running.

And where was the Clarence Hotel Ballroom? This blog has already been there.

Harborough less affected by boundary changes than expected

HFM News has the news about the Boundary Commission's final proposals for Leicestershire. The idea of a radical redrawing of boundaries within the county has been dropped, with the result that the Harborough constituency will keep its spine of Oadby, Wigston, Kibworth and Market Harborough.

As the trend has been at many boundary views now, the proposals would mean more villages will be moved into other constituencies. 

Fleckney, Saddington, Husbands Bosworth and the Kilworths would move into the South Leicestershire constituency, while villages in the north of the District, along with Hallaton and Melbourne, would become part of a new Rutland and Stamford constituency.

I'm happy to see this. The original proposal was that the Harborough constituency would have the same boundaries as the Harborough local government district. But that is a swathe of rural Leicestershire with few transport links.

Keeping the traditional Harborough constituency much as it is will also encourage the Liberal Democrats. In 2005 we came within 4000 votes of winning here, and these boundary changes look favourable to us.

All we have to do now is return the Labour Party to third place and establish ourselves the clear challengers once more,

You can read the final proposals for Leicestershire and make your comments on the county council website.

A former shop in the back streets of South Wigston

You never know what treasures you will find.

The Marquis of Queensbury, South Wigston, and Gertie Gitana

I was in South Wigston to but a new cooker - where else would one go? - and this building was across the road from the shop.

The Greater Wigston Historical Society tells us:

The Marquis of Queensbury, formerly known as the Duke of Clarence and the Gaiety, is a relatively large two storey structure of red brick under a pitched slate roof. Although now converted to apartments, the building was constructed as a hotel with ballroom at first floor. 

Despite the building's size and commanding presence, it sits well within the street scene. The building has been awarded a Blue Plaque by Wigston Civic and Historical Societies.

That plaque is in honour of the music hall artist Gertie Gitana.

That Wikipedia entry records other memorials:

In the early 1950s, Frederic Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, was renamed Gitana Street in her honour;the street leads to the rear of the Theatre Royal in Hanley and the public house now called 'The Stage Door' (at the corner of Gitana Street) was at one time called 'The Gertie Gitana' and it still has her portrait over the door. Her name continues at 'Gitana's', a public house in Hartshill Road, Stoke-on-Trent. 

Her London memorial — 'The Nellie Dean' at the corner of Dean Street in Soho (renamed thus in her honour) — at one time had a shrine of her stage memorabilia. In Cockney rhyming slang, Gertie Gitana means a banana.

Her grave is in Wigston cemetery and some recordings of her singing have made it on to YouTube. Try My Dear Marie.

A tribute to Wigston South station

I was in South Wigston today when I came across this bus shelter. Why had it been made to look like a railway relic? And why were there more railway connections when I had a look at it?

The answer is that it stands on the site of the old Wigston South station.

This is not to be confused with the present-day South Wigston station on the Leicester to Birmingham line.

Wigston South was on the old Midland Counties line from Leicester to Rugby, which formed part of George Hudson's original route from London to York.

That station closed, along with the whole line, in 1962. Its demise may have been hastened by a level crossing over the A5 at Willey near Ullesthorpe that was notorious for delaying road traffic.