The former temperance hotel near Market Harborough station

The radio station Harborough FM - which these days provides the best local news service - reports that 16 more buildings and locations are to be added to the district's list of "non-designated heritage assets".

Those on this list are deemed worthy of protection because of their historic, architectural or archaeological interest.

Among the new 16 is a former hotel in St Mary's Road near the railway station, which Harborough FM describes as a:

grand two-storey building has likely links to Thomas Cook, who lived in Market Harborough, and the former Temperance movement, a major societal movement in the 19th Century.

The building's history used to be more apparent. Back in 1984 I took this photograph of a now-vanished ghost sign. It could be found, if I recall correctly, to the right of the front door.

Thomas Cook's statue outside Leicester station

Tomorrow's Guardian will report:

Thomas Cook was heading into insolvency on Sunday night as the world’s oldest holiday company faced a collapse that will strand 150,000 UK holidaymakers overseas and put 9,000 British jobs at risk.

The company is the victim of technology - who needs a travel agent when you can do it all online yourself? - and of the uncertainty and weak pound caused by the expectation of Brexit.

Meanwhile, the company's founder appears to be taking things philosophically.

Thomas Cook's daughter died from carbon monoxide poisoning

This sad story on BBC News

Holiday firm Thomas Cook "breached its duty of care" in the case of two children who died from carbon monoxide poisoning while on holiday in Corfu, an inquest jury has concluded. 

Jurors returned a verdict of unlawful killing of Bobby and Christi Shepherd, who were aged six and seven. 

The children had been overcome by fumes from a faulty hot water boiler at their hotel in October 2006. 

Their mother said she would always blame the company for their deaths.

reminds me of one of my explorations of Leicester.

The photograph above shows Thomas Cook's house on London Road, Leicester. When I blogged about it I wrote:

There is a tragedy associated with the house. On 7 November 1880 Cook found his only daughter, Annie Elizabeth, dead in her bath. She was 34 and had died from inhaling carbon monoxide poisoning from one of the first gas water heaters to be installed in a house in Leicester.

Thomas Cook's grave in Leicester

Leicester's Welford Road cemetery opened in 1849 on what was then a hillside overlooking the city. I wandered round it this afternoon in the autumn gloom as, down below, the Tigers prepared to defeat London Irish.

With the help of a display board I found the grave of one famous citizen: Thomas Cook. One of the other family members buried here is his daughter Annie Elizabeth, an early victim of carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas water heater. She died at the family home in the London Road.

Thomas Cook's Leicester home

We have seen the statue of Thomas Cook near Leicester station and the plaques to him in Market Harborough and Kibworth.

Since then a reader has told me of another plaque in Barrowden in Rutland, and there is a significant building in Leicester with Cook connections that is under threat. I shall show you that one day soon.

In the mean time, here is Thorncroft, the house in London Road, Leicester, where Thomas Cook lived with his wife Marianne towards the end of his life. It is now the headquarters of the county's Red Cross.

There is a tragedy associated with the house. On 7 November 1880 Cook found his only daughter, Annie Elizabeth, dead in her bath. She was 34 and had died from inhaling carbon monoxide poisoning from one of the first gas water heaters to be installed in a house in Leicester.

Thomas Cook is also commemorated in Kibworth

We have seen that Thomas Cook is commemorated in Leicester and Market Harborough. He is commemorated in Kibworth Harcourt too.

The photograph above shows the village's Congregational chapel, which closed a few years ago, and the neighbouring manse.

As an old article from the Kibworth Chronicle tells the story:

One day in 1841 the world famous traveller, Thomas Cook, was walking from his home in Market Harborough to a Temperance Meeting in Leicester. As he passed the Chapel he had a brilliant idea for his first railway excursion. From this small beginning Thomas Cook went on to establish one of the largest travel organisations in the world.

Sure enough if you peer through the gates of the old chapel, now a private house, you will see a plaque similar to the one in Adam and Eve Street, Market Harborough...

Thomas Cook remembered in Leicester

Market Harborough remembers Thomas Cook with a discreet plaque. In Leicester he gets a whole statue outside the railway station.

Thomas Cook commemorated in Market Harborough

The other day, as shares in the Thomas Cook Group plummeted, I pointed out that Thomas Cook was living in Market Harborough when he first hit upon the idea of organising excursions.

What I didn't know until I researched that post is that this fact is commemorated by a small plaque high on the wall above the entrance to Quakers Yard in Adam and Eve Street. It is next to the excellent Duncan Murray Wines.

The moral is that I should look up more often.

Thomas Cook in Market Harborough

Today's events have sent me to my bookshelves and Bygone Days in Market Harborough by John Bland, published in 1924.

Bland writes:

Whilst upon the subject of Railways it would be well to mention that the late Mr. Thomas Cook, the founder of the firm of Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son, carried on a chair making and turning business in Adam and Eve Street. 

Mr Cook was a great enthusiast in promoting the cause of Temperance and soon after the Midland Counties Railway was opened for traffic in 1840, he walked from Harborough to Leicester to speak at a Temperance Meeting there. 

During his long walk he meditated on the possibilities of the new railway serving the cause he had so much at heart, and the thought flashed across his mind that if special concessions could be obtained from the Railway Company it might attract people to attend another large Temperance Meeting to be held later. 

When he made his speech at Leicester he introduced this subject and the meeting appointed him to go into the question with the Railway Company. Mr. Cook approached the Company the following day, and succeeded in inducing them to run a special train from Leicester to Loughborough, 11 miles distant, at a return fair of one shilling. 

This was the first excursion train, and led to the founding of the world renowned firm of Thomas Cook & Son.

The book incidentally was printed in the town by Charles R. Knighton and published by Green & Co., a stationers that lasted into the 1980s.

Broken angels and weed-choked cherubs

The BBC reports:

Work has started on a three-quarters of a million pound restoration of a 150-year-old Leicester cemetery.

The Welford Road Cemetery scheme, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, will include repairs to driveways and the replacement of fencing.

Welford Road is already well cared for, and so short of the broken angels and weed-choked cherubs you look for in a cemetery, but it is a good place for a walk. You can see it beside the railway a little way south of Leicester station.

There are some nice views of the cemetery here and a guide to its occupants here. Many are long-forgotten Liberal worthies whose activities led to the city being known as "radical Leicester" in the nineteenth century. Look too for Thomas Cook, the pioneer travel agent.