My latest article for Central Bylines... Paddy Logan: Harborough’s radical Liberal hero

I've had another piece published on Central Bylines this morning. It looks at the career of J.W. "Paddy" Logan, who was Liberal MP for Harborough from 1891 to 1904 and 1910 to 1916.

Here he is speaking in the Commons in 1897:

In the Board Schools the children were not taught to curtsey to the squire or to the parson. In the Church Schools the children were taught to fall down and worship the great god of the Clerical party – the landowner. Hon. Gentlemen might laugh, but he knew what he was talking about. He saw it too frequently.

What the children were being taught in thousands of villages today might be summed up in the words: “God bless the Squire and the Squire’s relations/And make us know our proper stations.” … The Church had always been against progress.

Uncannily, I invented Lord Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans years before I read of Mr Logan's cottage home at East Langton.

J.W. Logan left an estate worth £13m in today's money

My hero J.W. Logan – nicknamed "Paddy Logan" for his strong support for Irish home rule – died in 1925. He had been Liberal MP for Harborough from 1891 to 1904 and from 1910 to 1916.

He left, reported the London Daily Chronicle (Monday 21 September 1925), an estate of £167,159.

According to an online inflation calculator, £100 in 1925 is worth £7,769.23 today. So, after consulting the University of Rutland's celebrated Department of Hard Sums, I can reveal that Logan left an estate worth almost £13m.

No wonder he was able to provide Market Harborough with swimming baths and sports and recreation grounds. He also bought the local paper to ensure good coverage for the Liberals - what Nick Gibb would call "impartial" coverage.

The Daily Chronicle report lists some annuities that Logan bequeathed to his staff, among them his gardener.

My suspicion is that Lord Bonkers has made similarly generous provision for Meadowcroft in his will, but is determined to become immortal – all those trips to Hebden Bridge to bathe in the spring of immortal life that bursts from the ground below the former headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors and all those bottle of cordial he buys from the Elves of Rockingham Forest – so it is never paid out.

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.

Your chance to own J.W. Logan MP's cottage home for the children of men injured on his works

I posted this photo to Bluesky this morning on the #AdoorableThursday hashtag. The door is to be found at Deene Cottage in East Langton.

Over to the Victoria County History entry for the village:

In 1898 Logan erected a cottage home for the children of men permanently injured on public works, with preference for the employees of Logan & Hemingway. The cottage home is now a private house called Dean Cottage.

In fact it's called Deene Cottage. An auction notice in the Midland Mail for 9 November 1917 suggests that is when it ceased being a children's home, as all the fixtures and furniture are being sold off.

If you want to know more, have a look at the Strutt & Parker website, because Deene Cottage is currently up for sale and there are lots of photographs of it there.

Incidentally, Dene Cottage was not the inspiration for Lord Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans. I had already dreamt that up when I discovered Mr Logan's establishment.

Later. It's sold.

Robert Smyth Academy has a house named after J.W. Logan's Suffragette daughters

My old school the Robert Smyth Academy, as it's now called, produces a Welcome to Your New School brochure. In it we learn:

Pastoral care and guidance is at the heart of our school system. Your child will join one of four established college groups and this community will include key staff who will support their progress through school.

Is the brochure aimed at pupils or parents? Anyway, these colleges sound like the houses the school had in my day.

And the good news is that one of the colleges is called Logan College:

Logan college is named in celebration of the lives and work of local sisters Isobel and Nora Logan, who were both heavily involved in women’s rights and suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Isobel and Nora were daughters of this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

I can remember when it was the Tories who repaired church roofs

When I go to St Peter's, Church Langton, to pay my respects to Paddy Logan, I also visit the grave of Colonel Hignett.

Hignett bought East Langton Grange, Logan's old home, in 1935, and was still around 50 years later when I got involved in local politics here. He was a Conservative of the old school.

I thought of him when Kemi Badenoch made her invaluable (to us) remark about the Liberal Democrats being the sort of people who repaired your church roof. As I once recalled here:

I came across him several times and he had an unnerving habit of starting telephone calls with "Now, look here...". Fortunately, this was generally followed with "...if I can be any help, you let me know."

When the church roof at Church Langton needed repairing and the estimate from the builders proved too high ("They could put that where the monkey put the nuts"), he organised the locals to do the job themselves and was filmed by local television as he directed operations up on the roof at the age of 90.

East Langton Liberal Club opened in 1889

I knew Paddy Logan had given a village hall to East Langton and maintained an orphanage there for the children of men killed on his works, but a Liberal in the village is news to me.

This report is from the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 8 January 1889 - two years before Logan was elected to the Commons in a by-election:

East Langton: Opening of the Liberal Club

On Thursday last the opening of the new Liberal Club at East Langton was inaugurated by a dinner provided by the members. Over 50 sat down to the spread, Major Gibson presiding, in the absence of J. W, Logan, Esq., who had met with an accident on the previous day. 

After the tables had been cleared, speeches were given by a number of the gentlemen present, and an enjoyable time was spent. There was a good contingent from Harborough amongst the guests.

Logan, a fearsome rider to hounds with the Fernie, may well have met with his accident in the hunting field.

We knew how to celebrate election victories in Harborough in 1892

This blog's hero J.W. 'Paddy' Logan gained Harborough from the Conservatives at a by-election in May 1891 and held it at the general election the following July.

The Leicester Chronicle (8 August 1892) reported the resultant celebrations:

On Saturday afternoon the Liberals of the Harborough Division visited the residence of Mr, J.W. Logan, M.P., at East Langton Grange, to celebrate the triumphant return of that gentleman to Parliament. 

An immense number of people were present from all parts of the division, long special trains running from Leicester. 

Tea was partaken of in the riding school, and in the evening a public meeting was held, when congratulatory speeches were delivered, to which Mr. Logan responded.

Mr Logan's hunter Lottery was named after the famous racehorse

A reader has kindly directed me to a document on the neighbourhood plan review for East Langton parish, which mentions the monument to J.W. Logan MP's favourite hunter Lottery. (It's hard to link to, so I have pasted the relevant extract above).

As I blogged a couple of days ago, this is widely claimed to be the grave of Lottery, the winner of the first Grand National in 1839, or at least a monument to him. But my discovery that Logan had a horse called Lottery makes that beast a much better candidate for the dedicatee.

Because the story about the Grand National winner ending his days at East Langton never really added up. Thoroughbred Heritage tells us (scroll down the page, because most of it's about this Lottery's father, who was also called Lottery) that the horse was foaled in 1829.

After detailing his many triumphs, the site records Lottery's final days:

The last race of his career was at Windsor in April, 1844. For some time after his retirement, he served as his trainer's hack. Later, he was sent to a Mr. Hall, who had a pack of harriers at Neasden, and it is said he was put to ploughing when he was "too much played-out to stand cross-country work." He was buried at Astley Grange Farm stud at East Langton, Leicestershire.

The greatest Grand National horse, Red Rum, lived to be 30, and I believe that is a typical lifespan for a racehorse. So there is no way in the world that this horse lived until 1886 - at East Langton or anywhere else.

Lottery's sad decline after the end of his racing career reminds me of the hero of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. I fear that when he became too old for ploughing, his next appointment was at the local glue factory.

Four quick points about the extract from the document above:

• I love the detail that Paddy Logan named his hunter after the great racehorse. I shall take this as authentic local knowledge.
• The same goes for this being a gravestone rather than just a monument, but it is, of course, dated 1886 and not 1896.
• I suspect the, surely untrue, sentence about the Grand National winner Lottery also ending up at East Langton is taken from an earlier blog post of mine.
• Why? Because they've used my photos from that post.

The idea that the winner of the first Grand National is buried at East Langton will probably prove one of those 'zombie facts' that keeps being repeated and will not die. I have played my part in passing it on, and I apologise.

But there is hope. The zombie fact that Reginald Gough, who was convicted of the manslaughter of Dennis O'Neill, later had his conviction changed to one of murder and his sentence lengthened by some unspecified process, is now specifically contradicted in the Wikipedia article on the case.

The Lottery buried at East Langton is not the winner of the first Grand National but a hunter owned by J.W. Logan MP

Later. There's a little more on Mr Logan's horse here.

I am reading John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, which is an earlier story about Kay Harker from The Box of Delights. Here Kay is tangling with his governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is also a witch and an acolyte of the villainous Abner Brown.

Early in the book, Masefield mentions "that famous horse Lottery at various stages of the steeplechase, the prints of which hung in the study". This name leapt out at me, because I once came across what Thoroughbred Heritage says is a monument to Lottery just outside the village of East Langton.

I set out to photograph it on my very first day out with a digital camera. Perhaps that's why I didn't take a better photo, though I do remember it was a baking hot day and I had to look south to take it.

Just now I searched the British Newspaper Archive for a story about the burial or commemoration of Lottery at East Langton. What I found was one that proved that this Lottery was not the winner of the first Grand National, but a hunter owned by this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

So here's the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 12 May 1939:

In view of the great interest taken by listeners acquainted with the Langtons. the writer of this thought the following particulars might be of interest to local readers of this paper. It was a pity no reference was made to Mr. Logan's famous hunter "Lottery." 

In the late seventies and early eighties, of the last century, every boy in the Langtons and adjoining villages could tell some amazing stories of this horse and Mr. Logan, his rider. “Lottery" was brought out of a plough team in Ireland by Mr. Logan, and it is said he never once had an accident or went lame, and never once missed his turn to carry Mr. Logan, who hunted and rode him till he was well on in his teens. 

One of his most amazing jumping feats was during a fast run of Sir Bache Cunard’s (now the Femie) Hounds. The fox and hounds had swam the canal and a field of two hundred horsemen and hunt staffs had go some distance round by a canal bridge. 

Mr. Logan was as usual, somewhere in the front rank of riders, left them and put his horse "Lottery." at the canal, and landed in the shallow water close up the towing path. With another spring he was out of the water and on the towing path, and went a few yards and then cleared the hedge, following the pack by himself and leaving the large field simply gasping with amazement. This happened in the Smeeton district and was the talk of the district all thot winter. 

It is said that several times “Lottery” jumped the Burton Overy brook, other riders following. and he could jump the country anywhere Of course, everyone knew that at that time Mr. Logan was one of the finest riders in the country and no one was surprised when a fair number of years later he won the House of Commons Steeplechase on "Chic.” 

During the later years of his hunting career Mr. Logan set a new fox covert which he called Home Rule Covert, though one never sees the name mentioned in foxhunting reports now.

I love Home Rule Covert, and it strengthens my theory that Logan's nickname of Paddy was given to him locally because of his pro-Irish sympathies.

Nottingham Victoria Götterdämmerung

This is a wonderful compilation of footage showing some of the last t rains to serve Nottingham Victoria station - the last of all ran on 4 September 1967 - and then its demolition.

Victoria was the city's main station on the Great Central Railway's London Extension, and opened to passengers on 9 March 1899. The site was cleared for the builders of the station by the railway contractors Logan & Hemingway - as in this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

A memorial to Covid victims in the churchyard at Church Langton

I went to The Langtons this afternoon. I wanted to try the reopened Bell at East Langton, believed by many to be an inspiration for the Bonkers' Arms, and to pay my respects at the grave of this blog's hero J.W. Logan at Church Langton.

This tree, planted as a memorial for the people from Church Langton who died from Covid, or at least during the Covid pandemic, is also in the churchyard at St Peter's, Church Langton.

Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire preserved lengths of the Great Central Railway to be reunited this weekend

Exciting news from the Great Central Railway:

Join us for this spectacular weekend as we reunify the Great Central Railway and the Great Central Railway Nottingham for a celebration of the 125th opening of the GCR London Extension. 

Our Rail Replacement Bus Service will reunify the two halves of our railway with a service between Quorn and Woodhouse Station and Ruddington Station to allow you to explore all of our attractions with one inclusive ticket that is valid for entry to all sites and includes train travel and the reunification bus service. Kids go for a Quid (aged 3-15 inclusive)

The weekend in question is 16-17 March, when the 125th anniversary of the Great Central will be celebrated.

The Great Central Railway was the last main line to be built, sending trains from Marylebone out to through Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield to Manchester.

Great Central Railway and Great Central Railway Nottingham are separated by a missing bridge and length of embankment at Loughborough. The video above gives you the latest news on the project to reunify the two lines.

Incidentally, the Great Central Railway Nottingham was originally constructed by the contractors Logan & Hemingway. That's Logan as in this blog's hero J.W. Logan, Liberal MP for Harborough 1891-1904 and 1910-1916.

A signed copy of Bryan Magee's Men of Ideas with a Market Harborough connection

I've blogged before about my discovery that the broadcaster Bryan Magee, who died in 2019, was evacuated to Market Harborough as a boy and lived literally around the corner from where I did as a teenager.

His television series Men of Ideas, in which he interviewed leading contemporary philosophers about the discipline's greatest figures, was broadcast while I was having my interviews for a university place to read philosophy, so it was wonderful preparation.

In his Growing Up in a War, Magee describes his time in Harborough. For most of it he lived in Logan Street (yes, it's named after this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP) with the Toombs family - like Norman Bowler, he was one of those children who were happier in their new home than back in London.

And his special friends was the Toombs's daughter Kath. Which probably explains this signed copy of the book of the Men of Ideas series that I got from a Market Harborough charity shop some years ago.

It wasn't my discovery. Someone I used to work with at Golden Wonder was volunteering in the shop and put it (and a couple of other signed Magee books) aside for me. And I'm very pleased I own it.

Later. Since I wrote this I've remembered my mother talking about a woman called Kath, whom she knew at least to say hello to. I think it's the same Kath.

The Bell at East Langton will reopen on Friday

At last some good news. The Leicester Mercury reports:

A pub in an idyllic village near Market Harborough which shut during the pandemic is preparing to reopen under new management. The Bell, in Main Street, East Langton, will be welcoming customers again from this Friday, October 13.

The pub, which dates back to the 17th Century, has been taken over by Neil and Steph Price who also run The George at Ashley.

While scholars agree that the model for Bonkers Hall is Nevill Holt Hall near Medbourne, East Langton is most often cited as the inspiration for the village to which Lord Bonkers often refers.

My hero J.W. Logan MP lived at East Langton Grange and established a cottage home in the village for the children of men who were killed on his railway works. I had already invented Lord Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans when I discovered this.

So The Bell must surely be the model for the Bonkers' Arms. It has a lovely beer garden in front and Mr Logan's cricket ground is across the road.

I wish the new management all the best in reviving what was until recently a thriving pub.

Kibworth Harcourt windmill and St Peter's, Church Langton, are hosting Heritage Open Days

This year's Heritage Open Days events are taking place between 8 and 15 September. Two venues near Market Harborough have caught my eye: Kibworth Harcourt Windmill and St Peter's, Church Langton.

The windmill, which is not normally open to the public, is offering guided tours on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September:

Built-in the early 18th century, Kibworth Harcourt Mill is the only surviving post mill in Leicestershire, with the oldest parts dating from around 1600. Visitors can see the working mechanisms of the mill, historic graffiti dating from 1711, and burn marks and witch marks added to ward off evil spirits.

In 2021-2, the mill was fully repaired by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings and its Mills Section, and we’re delighted that in 2022 it was removed from Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register. Today the mill is a Grade II* listed building, a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and a crucial part of our local and national milling heritage.

Tours must be booked in advance - see the link above.

And St Peter's is offering children's activities and guided tours on Sunday 10 and Sunday 17 September:

You will see carved medieval bosses, corbels and a figurine, a 17th century font cover and tomb effigy, an 18th century organ casing, and elaborate Victorian wood carving, Reid’s alabaster reredos carving of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ and decorative Swithland slate headstones including what is said to be the best gravestone image in Leicestershire. 

The stained glass has fine examples of Pre Raphaelite designs and quality Victorian glass. There are Minton floor tiles and of course, the music of Handel, as St. Peter’s held the first performance in a parish church in England of the Messiah on 27 September 1759. 

We also have one, of only two, prints of the Rector William Hanbury who organised the performance. A feast of creativity for all.

The children’s activities will include gravestone rubbing, making tissue paper stained glass windows, copying and designing tiles and searching games.

And in the churchyard you can see the grave of this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP. Again, places must be booked in advance via the link above.

The Heritage Open Days website has a searchable database of events, so you can find one near you.

Noel Coward took over Gracie Fields's orphanage

Embed from Getty Images

Lord Bonkers isn't the only politician to have had an orphanage: both Mr Gladstone and my local hero Paddy Logan had one too.

Now I am discovering that showbiz celebrities had them too. I blogged the other day about Noel Coward and The Actors' Children's Orphanage and I've now found that someone has written a book about this:

Here is a 2020 article from the Ham & High:

A little known aspect of the great playwright is illuminated in a new book by Kentish Town actor and author Elliot James.

While researching an article on the Brief Encounter and Hayfever writer he uncovered letters and records for The Actors’ Orphanage, a home for the abandoned children of struggling thespians.

Coward took over as President in 1934 and over 22 years turned it from a harsh institution into a place of love and laughter, drafting famous actors onto the committee and visiting with stars like Marlene Dietrich and Mary Pickford.

"I’ve always been a Noel Coward aficionado but this part of his extraordinary life has been forgotten," says James, who has appeared in several Coward plays.

"Doing some research I came across a picture of Coward walking along with these children and realised no-one knew this story. I got huge boxes of paperwork, letters and discovered many of the orphans are still alive in their 80s and 90s. When I interviewed them they said 'no-one's ever asked us about this'."

And I've also found that in 1962 the trust that ran this orphanage took over a building at Peacehaven in Sussex that had housed the Gracie Fields Orphanage since 1933.

I wonder how many more such establishments there were?

J.W. Logan was the first MP to hold both the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead

Despite what disaffected Conservative MPs are announcing, you cannot resign from the House of Commons.

Wikipedia explains:

To circumvent this prohibition, MPs who wish to step down are instead appointed to an "office of profit under the Crown", which disqualifies them from sitting in Parliament. 

For this purpose, a legal fiction is maintained where two unpaid offices are considered to be offices of profit: Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, and Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

But only one MP, to the best of my knowledge, has held both these offices.

Step forward this blog's hero J.W. Logan, who was Liberal MP for Harborough 1891-1904 and 1910-16.

His health was never the same after an accident in the hunting field, which was why he twice resigned his seat.

On the first occasion he applied to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead and on the second to be Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds.

Which, unless you know different, makes Paddy Logan the only MP to have held both these offices of profit under the crown.

Later. David Boothroyd has come up with two more MPs who have held both offices:

William Hall Walker - CH 3 December 1915, MN 18 August 1919

Sir Herbert Robin Cayzer - CH 27 November 1922, MN 29 June 1939

So Logan was the first, but not the only, MP to do so.

Little room for masterly inactivity in Market Harborough

Do the authors of this volume of the Cambridge Urban History know how gloomy a book they have written? Pessimism suffuses these pages from start almost to finish.

That was Andrew Saint, reviewing volume 3 in that series for the London Review of Books in 1981.

But things looked up later on:

It is often a corrective as well as a relief to read about local experience and activity. Thus Stephen Royle’s chapter on small towns, heavily based on Leicestershire, seems at first to paint a picture of stagnation (Hinckley’s ‘stinking state’ in 1840 etc) and cultural decline. 

Then abruptly he tells us that Edwardian Market Harborough, a town just short of 8000, boasted Sunday schools, friendly societies for young men and girls, a Church Lads' brigade, a Territorial Army branch, a debating society, a reading society, a choral society, an opera society, a brass band, an angling 'society', clubs for cricket, football, tennis, golf, polo, water polo, bicycling and point-to-point riding, a swimming-bath and a roller-skating rink, and regularly put on carnivals, flower, produce and horse shows and swimming galas. 

I abridge. There can have been little room for masterly inactivity in Market Harborough.

 I would only add that the swimming bath was given to the town by my hero J.W. Logan MP.

Could this be the reason I have a strong interest in Edwardian Liberalism? This is me in a sailor suit

Paddy Logan. Charles Masterman. Lord Bonkers. These are my political heroes.

But why am I so keen on Edwardian Liberals?

Browsing through the family photo albums, of which I'm now the custodian, I have found a possible answer. 

Because this is a photo of me in a sailor suit.

I'm not sure how common they still were in the early Sixties, but maybe the fact my mother has been in the WRNS and my father in the Royal Navy was an influence.

I remember my mother saying I used to get excited when she got it out because I knew that meant we were going somewhere.