A journey along the disused Market Harborough to Newark railway

It was building the Great Northern and London & North Western Railway (GN&LNWJR) that brought my hero J.W. Logan MP to the Market Harborough area. You can see, from the sturdy bridges that remain to this day, that Logan & Hemingway knew how to build railways,

Borders and Beeching traces the disused line from Welham Junction, just north of Market Harborough, to Newark, though the stretch through Melton Mowbray is missed out.

As Eastern Leicestershire is not heavily populated, the GN&LNWJR was always more of a freight line, serving many local ironstone quarries and also bringing coal from the East Midlands to London via Market Harborough and Northampton. There were coal concentration sidings at Welham. 

Despite what the caption suggests, Medbourne station was not on this line but on a short curve that joined it to the line to Stamford. And when I used our new on-demand bus service to get to Hallaton recently, it set me down and picked me up from the old station site, even though it's a little way out of the village, as though it were meeting a train.

Passenger services officially ended in 1953, but unadvertised trains ran until 1957 and the GN&LNWJR branch to Leicester Belgrave Road saw holiday trains to Skegness as late as 1962.

Goods services ended in 1964, but odd fragments of the line continued to see workings for some years after that. It's worth reading the Wikipedia entry on the GN&LNWJR to get a clear picture of the life and death of this interesting line.

And there's more border collie content in a recent post on this blog.

Back to Bottesford station

When I posted a video about Bottesford station (the least used station in Leicestershire) the other day, I said I would also post my own photos of it. And here they are.

For the most part it is uninteresting, even though the station house survives, with bus shelters and a recently installed footbridge.

But it does have staggered platforms and a derelict house that must once have accommodated the keeper of its level crossing.

I also recommend the path from the station to the village church.

Elton and Orston: The least used station in Nottinghamshire

We left Geoff Marshall and friend walking from the least used station in Leicestershire to the least used station in Nottinghamshire.

Leicestershire's Bottesford, well placed to serve a large village, is quite busy for a least used station. But across the border, Elton and Orston is one of those kept open with a minimal service because that is cheaper than going through all the formalities of closing it.

It would be worth the walk from Bottesford just for those two road signs on the bridge.

Bottesford: The least used station in Leicestershire

For a few miles the Nottingham to Grantham line cuts through the peninsula that forms the northern tip of Leicestershire.

And that stretch is home to the least used station in the county, Bottesford.

You can see it in this video, which may inspire me to post some photographs I took of it a couple of years ago.

For the time being, enjoy the path from the station to the village.

The Bottesford pub kept by Stan Laurel's sister

As Stan Laurel is everywhere this week, I thought I would revisit the first week of my holiday.

Waiting for the bus in Bottesford, I amused myself taking photos of this pub from a distance.

What I didn't know then was that the Bull Inn was once kept by Stan Laurel's sister.

Not only that. When Laurel and Hardy appeared at the Nottingham Empire to do a Christmas show in 1952, they stayed at the Bull.

The Nottingham Post has a photographs of them behind the bar and enjoying a drink with their wives.

"Wicked practise & sorcerye": The Witches of Belvoir

Before I went off to Shropshire for a week - hence my break from blogging - we visited the tombs of the Earls and Dukes of Rutland in Bottesford church.

There I wrote that one of the tombs has some dark history attached to it.

That tomb is the grandest one in the church: the tomb of Francis Manners, the sixth Earl, and his two wives and children.

And you will see above that the inscription on the tomb attributes the deaths of two of those children to "wicked practise & sorcerye".

Witchcraft tells the story behind this:

The Witches of Belvoir were three women, Joan Flower and her two daughters, Margaret and Philippa, who were accused of witchcraft in eastern England around 1619. The story has many classic elements of witchcraft trials, and much of the evidence revolved around various alleged familiar spirits. 

A Bottesford woman named Joan Flower and her two daughters, Margaret and Philippa, were employed as servants by the Earl and Countess of Rutland at Belvoir Castle near Grantham, Lincolnshire. 

Joan Flower in particular was unpopular and feared in the local community. She was an unkempt woman, with sunken eyes and a foul mouth, who boasted of her atheism, and of consorting with familiar spirits. 

Margaret was dismissed from the castle for stealing and, not long after, the Earl’s whole family became sick, suffering extraordinary convulsions. Although most of the family recovered, the eldest son, Henry, Lord Ross, died, and the Earl and Countess became convinced that Joan Flower and her daughters were to blame. 

All three women were arrested at Christmas of 1617 (or 1618) and were taken to Lincoln jail, where they were examined.

Joan Flower died in prison and her two daughters were tried, convicted of witchcraft and hanged.

A dreadful tale of the sort I came across some years ago at Husbands Bosworth.

The only positive factor I can see is that Joan's familiar was a cat called Rutterkin. And you have to admit that is a terrific name for a cat.

The tombs of the Dukes of Rutland in Bottesford church

St Mary the Virgin, Bottesford, is a beautiful church, known as "The Lady of the Vale" - the Vale of Belvoir, that is.

But it is devoted more to the glory of the Dukes of Rutland than to the glory of God.

So much so that the altar has been moved to near the chancel arch. After that it is tombs all the way. 

The result is a wonderful collection of 17th and 18th century sculpture after that the dukes were buried in a mausoleum at Belvoir Castle.

One of the tombs has some dark history attached to it, which I shall write about another day.

Back to the chancel arch.

It is impossible to miss the arms of Queen Victoria (who, even in Bottesford,outranked the Duke of Rutland), but there is also has a faded medieval doom painting of the sort I photographed in Lutterworth.

Approaching St Mary the Virgin's Church, Bottesford

Yesterday I was locked out of a church full of monuments to the local aristocracy - Exton in Rutland.

Today I got into St Mary the Virgin's Church, Bottesford, where the Dukes of Rutland are buried.

More of their tombs another day. For tonight, let's just enjoy the view of the church's 212ft spire as you approach it across a field path from the village's railway station.

The Bonkers tombs in St Asquith's are very fine too, of course.

Belvoir Angel wins Publication of the Day

The winner is a parish magazine from Leicestershire called the:

According to the Leicester Mercury:

About 500 copies of the magazine, from the nine churches which make up the Vale of Belvoir benefice, are distributed in villages between Bottesford and Long Clawson. It is either put through doors of people who request it, or left in churches for people to collect.

Later. It has been pointed out to me that if I explain that Belvoir is pronounced beaver then a) this story will make more sense to people who do not live in Leicestershire and b) it will get more hits.