When Peter Lee took 8-13 for Great Bowden

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Peter Lee, the former Northamptonshire and Lancashire seam bowler, has died at the age of 80.

He grew up near Market Harborough in the Northamptonshire village of Sibbertoft and made his debut for that county in 1967. 

But it was when he moved to Lancashire in 1972 that his career really took off. He twice took 100 wickets in a season for them in an era when the feat was already becoming vanishingly rare, but never won test selection.

A trawl of the British Newspaper Archive reveals this story from the Leicester Daily Mercury, 6 August 1980. Great Bowden is nearly, but not quite, part of Market Harborough:

Bowden's Secret Weapon Shocks Wigston

Wigston Town cricketers had a nasty shock in their match against Great Bowden for they found themselves facing Lancashire pace bowler Peter Lee.

After Great Bowden had made 131. Wigston were blasted out for 88 with Lee taking 8-13.

Lee hails from a village called Sibbertoft which is just over the border in Northamptonshire and has two brothers in the Bowden team.

He has been injured recently and his guest appearance was part of his build-up to regain full fitness.

Wigston were on the receiving end another top-line bowler some years ago when Harold Rhodes took all 10 wickets against them for just 11 runs in a match at Matlock.

The Doom painting at St Peter and St Paul, Great Bowden

Yesterday I went into the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Great Bowden for the first time, and here's the Doom painting on the north wall of its north chapel. I photographed another one in Wycliffe's church at Lutterworth a few years ago.

They were doing coffee in the church, and one of the women in charge was a friend of mine. Not only that. Her husband, who I was at school with back in the day, had written the words for the plaque explaining this fine Edwardian stained glass window.

Perhaps we really are the grown ups now?

Rewilding Harborough project attracts interest from government and national organisations

Representatives from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Anglian Water, Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust and the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts were in Market Harborough today to hear about Harborough District Council's Rewilding Harborough project. 

They attended a briefing at the council offices before visiting the rewilding site, which lies to the north and east of Great Bowden.

The Harborough Mail quotes Cal Hatley, Harborough DC's director of communities and wellbeing:

"Establishing effective partnerships is going to be the key to making this rewilding project successful. I am looking forward to welcoming these organisations and showing them that we are taking action to address the nature crisis in the region with the engagement of local communities."

And Mat Carter, chief executive of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, said:

"This project is an opportunity to restore nature and create a landscape where people and wildlife can thrive. We work best together and are delighted to welcome our partners to see this project."

Harborough DC is run by a Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green administration - my old Liberal and Lib Dem council colleague Phil Knowles is its leader.

The wildlife trust owns land adjacent to the council's land at Great Bowden and I've walked that land with one of their team. I intend to write something about Rewilding Harborough when I've got my head round the project properly.

Straightening the railway through Market Harborough

Time to see how they are getting on with straightening the railway through Market Harborough.

The HST in the photograph above is using the existing rails and the Midland arch of the bridge. Already we can see that when the work is complete trains will used the LNWR arch instead.

Once trains between Northampton and Nottingham (via Melton Mowbray North) and between Rugby and Peterborough used  rails that ran under it.

A little way north of Market Harborough the St Pancras main line climbs to a flyover across the LNWR trackbed. 

In the 1970s there was talking of a more radical straightening scheme that would see the flyover removed, but it will survive the current work.

Closer to Market Harborough station the vegetation and lineside bank has been cut back to make room for the new tracks.

The first photograph was taken from the slightly rickety footbridge by Great Bowden recreation ground. You can see it in some of the later ones.

A mud-walled cottage in Kibworth

We have seen mud walls in Great Bowden, Little Bowden and Tur Langton.

This, from Kibworth Beauchamp, is one better: it is the front wall of an old mud-walled cottage. It is situated close to the centre of the village and now serves as an outbuilding to a modern house that has been built behind it.

It reminds me of the Outer Hebrides, where you will often see an old house standing next to a modern bungalow and either being used for storage or falling into decay.

Threat to common land near Market Harborough

Thanks to the reader who alerted me to the fact that the Open Spaces Society has objected to a proposed development that would encroach on common land at Great Bowden, just north of Market Harborough.

The proposed development would see houses built on land at Fernie Hunt Stables, Nether Green, Great Bowden. One of the proposed gardens would be on registered common land, yet the Society says that the developers fail even to mention this in their application.

Kate Ashbrook, the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, says:

"We have objected most strongly to this development, in support of our member Great Bowden Parish Council. We are dismayed that the developers propose to destroy an area of registered common. Their development will be unlawful unless they obtain the consent of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for works on common land. 

"It is deplorable that the developers fail even to mention the common in their application. They seem not to realise that common land has its own laws and is a special and ancient land type. It is relatively rare in Leicestershire, where many commons were stolen from the people during the inclosure movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

"The development will also interfere with the public’s right to walk over this common. "It appears that the planning authority, Harborough District Council, has not warned the developers of the requirement to obtain special ministerial consent for works on common land. This is despite the fact that the Open Spaces Society wrote to all planning authorities a few years ago to point out that, if a development threatens common land, they must warn the applicants that their works may be unlawful. 

"We have written both to Harborough District Council and to the developers, explaining the law relating to common land. We have urged the council to reject the application to ensure this valuable piece of common is safeguarded."

The mud walls of Great Bowden

Wartime Housewife's household sale last Sunday was in Great Bowden, a rather horsey village which, unlike my home of Little Bowden, has managed to keep itself separate from Market Harborough. This is, in part, because Liberal and Liberal Democrat councillors have put a lot of work in opposing development of the fields between

I thought I knew Great Bowden well, but thanks to the district council's village trail leaflet I was able to make some new discoveries.

The best of them is this splendid mud wall, which lines the path from the churchyard to the village's Nether Green. The leaflet says:

Mud walls need "strong boots and a good hat"; that is a stone or cobble plinth and a coping of thatch or pantiles. The mud boundary wall to the churchyard and the adjacent footpath were rebuilt in the 1980s with clay pantiles, hand made at Barton Upon Humber.

My best friend from school lived near the far end of this footpath in the 1970s, but I can't remember ever using this path. There was then a mushroom farm at the end of the path; in fact, I even wonder if there was a right of way along here in those days.

Lovers of mud walls should also visit Little Bowden and Tur Langton.

In which I meet Wartime Housewife

This afternoon I walked to Great Bowden and a household sale organised by Wartime Housewife, a fellow member of the Market Harborough school of blogging. She turns out to be just as sensible and pleasant in real life as on the screen, taking the power cut that had affected the village in her stride.

I came away with a homemade cake, a John Major novelty alarm clock and a copy of Uncle by the Revd J.P. Martin. What more could you ask for?

Also present was "The Father of My Children" who often features on the Wartime Housewife blog. He turned out to be Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England.

We talked about the School Prints from the Goldmark Gallery in Uppingham and I learned that it was he who fetched them back from Germany. They were still in the wrappings in which they had originally been shipped all those years ago.

As a philosopher once remarked, it is a small world.