On New Year's Eve 1892 Saddington played Kibworth at cricket on a frozen reservoir

Here's a another story I discovered when I visited Kibworth Library last week. This report is from the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail (3 January 1893), but the story appeared in newspapers across the country.

A Novel Cricket Match. Saddington v. Kibworth

Teams representing the respective cricket clubs of Saddington and Kibworth, met in an extremely novel encounter on Saddington reservoir on Saturday, when an amusing match on the ice ended in a draw. 

The match was played on skates, and the ice being in splendid condition, the leather hunting was very considerable, and consequently there were many boundaries scored. The wickets were a combined structure, so that the fall of one occasioned the toppling over of the lot, but despite its drawbacks the game was a very interesting one. Smith, one of the Kibworth players, took four wickets in one "over," while on the opposite side Capell and Richardson were very conspicuous for their good fielding. 

Saddington batted first, and though the wicket of their first player was lowered by the very first ball, they were not dismissed until they scored over 200 runs. Owing to the failing light stumps were drawn before Henson and Badcock, the first two Kibworth men, had been separated. A large number of spectators witnessed the match.

The final score was: Saddington 205, Kibworth 95-0. Match drawn. My photograph shows Saddington Reservoir on a warmer day.

Fighting breaks out at Kibworth vs Gumley cricket match in 1873

At Kibworth library today in connection with a thing, I came across this report from the Leicester Chronicle (2 August 1873):

The cricket match which took here on Saturday between the Kibworth and Gumley Clubs was wound up with a scene - we might almost say a tragedy - which, with the exception of occasional poaching affrays, is happily seldom heard of in the rural districts.

It appears that a quarrel arose through some objections taken as to the fairness of certain individuals engaged in playing quoits. High words were soon followed by blows, and the pugilists were speedily reinforced by their friends on either side. The fight went on for some time until at length a perfect riot took place, and bats which for some time had been flourished in the air, began to alight on the nasal organs of the combatants.

Seven or eight men are reported to have been on the ground together and the disputants ultimately became so fighting or thrashing mad as to rush into the melee and knock down irrespective of friend or foe any person who came within reach.

The scene which beggars description went on until all appeared to have had enough, the office bearers of the Kibworth club utterly powerless to restrain the "dogs of war". Those who figured most conspicuously in the fracas we are told were from Gumley and Smeeton. Kibworth was also fairly represented. 

The greater proportion of the rioters were apparently maddened by drink; and their conduct will probably induce the members to forswear the future admission of intoxicating drinks on the ground.

I like to think that Kibworth vs Gumley remains a needle match to this day. Gumley cricket ground, incidentally, has a feature that must disconcert visiting teams.

Blakey off of On the Buses and radical theatre

In Kibworth the other day, I visited Daker Books and bought a second-hand copy of John Russell Taylor's Anger and After, a book about the British theatre in the late Fifties and early Sixties.

I think the Fifties were a more interesting decade than we now imagine - the centrality of live theatre to the culture being just one reason. 

As Sebastian Millbank pointed out in an article on The Critic, it's noteworthy that the modern left shows no affection for a decade that saw full employment, widespread union membership and rising wages.

When I got Anger and After home, I looked up one minor writer in the index and was directed to a pleasingly chunky passage:

Another improvisation along rather the same lines was Stephen Lewis's Sparrers Can't Sing, a lackadaisical picture of Stepney life revolving round the return from jail after nearly ten years of the paterfamilias to meet again the wife he hit with a poker. There was no plot to speak of, but the characters who wandered in and out, particularly the two old derelicts locked in deadly combat with the National Assistance, made pleasant enough company while they were around and lent a certain colour to the assertion by their ex-electrician's mate creator that "The world as seen through the bottom of a pint pot is much more entertaining than that usually seen through opera glasses, and less distorted." 

The play, after a not very successful transfer to the West End, became the basis of Joan Littlewood's first foray into the cinema; slightly retitled as Sparrows Can't Sing and almost completely reworked by Joan Littlewood and the author, it emerged as the story of a randy young sailor's return from the sea to find his pretty young wife living with a bus driver in a rebuilt East End of towering modern flats, most of the material about the old people, the National Assistance and so on having disappeared somewhere along the way. 

Subsequently Stephen Lewis has written Wagger, a subdued television piece in a very similar style about a crippled cobbler and the tentative beginnings of his romance with a girl who works in the baker's across the road, sat against a background of bitter family bickering.

Stephen Lewis could act as well as write. He appeared at Stratford East and the Royal Court, and his turn as the caretaker of a new block of flats who relishes all the regulations he has to enforce is one of the best things in Sparrows Can't Sing.

Anger and After was written before be became famous as Blakey in On the Buses.

Market Harborough's town centre banks are now part of history

In a few short years, bank branches have gone from being a key part of any high street to curious relics. So it's no surprise that three former banks in Market Harborough town centre have been added to Harborough District Council's list of non-designated heritage assets.

My photo above shows the Nat West branch, which shut up shop in January of last year. The former HSBC and Barclays branches are also now on the list.

The former Kibworth railway station and the airfield at Husbands Bosworth, reports HFM News, have been added too.

This list is intended to ensure that the significance of any building or site on it is considered if it is likely to be affected by a planning application.

Harborough District Council may add more buildings to its list of heritage assets

Harborough District Council, reports the Harborough Mail, has launched a consultation on adding a number of historic buildings to its list of heritage assets.

• Former Nat West, Barclays and HSBC banks in Market Harborough
• Former Station, Kibworth Beauchamp
• Husbands Bosworth Airfield, Sibbertoft Road, Husbands Bosworth
• Tollgate Cottage, Lutterworth Road, Bitteswell
• Village Shop, Springbank, Medbourne
• Auburn Place, Bitteswell Road, Lutterworth
• Engineering Factory, Fairfield Road, Market Harborough

The consultation will run until 27 February. The council has been run by a Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour coalition since last May.

Work begins in Kibworth to stabilise mud wall

This just in from Kibworth Beauchamp Parish Council:

An emergency footway closure and prohibition of waiting and loading is required on High Street, Kibworth Beauchamp for approx. 15m either side of no.70 on the 15th September 2023 for however long it takes to stabilise the mud wall (The TTRO lasts for 6 months)

The Temporary Traffic Regulation Order will be implemented for public safety for Leicestershire County Council and associated contractors to facilitate safety zone around unstable boundary wall whilst works are undertaken.

As you can see from the photograph above, this wall used to form part of a cottage. There are photos of that cottage, and an account of previous work to conserve the wall, on the Kibworth Village website.

Looking at this photo again. it reminds of the Hebrides, where it is common to see an old house, perhaps now used as a store, decaying next to the new one that has replaced it.

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.

Harborough District Council goes to No Overall Control

Gold would have been a Liberal Democrat majority on Harborough District Council. We didn't manage that, but did win silver by depriving the Conservatives of a majority.

The balance of the new council looks like this:

Conservatives 15 (-7)

Lib Dems 13 (+2)

Labour 3 (+2)

Greens 3 (+3)

Two gains elsewhere in the town were balanced by our losing two seats to the Greens in Market Harborough Welland ward - they also captured the one Tory seat there. This was the result of excellent targeting and, in the longer term, of social and boundary changes. 

Meanwhile, Labour's residual strength in Lutterworth resulted in two gains in the town for them.

But we did win new seats in Lubenham and Fleckney, and came close to gaining two more in Misterton and Kibworth.

I'm not party to the negotiations, but I imagine the non-Conservative parties will now look to run the council between them.

Market Harborough buses under threat from Conservative chaos

Some bus routes serving Market Harborough could be scrapped because of the the budget crisis facing Leicestershire County Council.

HFM News, with a clip from an interview with Liberal Democrat councillor Simon Galton, reports:

The authority has warned its financial outlook is ‘dire’ and ahead of budget proposals being made public next week, some details have been shared with councillors.

Cuts could be made to bus services subsidised by the authority, which include the number 33 town service in Market Harborough and route 44, which links the town with Foxton and Fleckney.

Conservatives are now a complete shambles. Only last year the government announced a £3bn scheme to improve bus services outside London.

We were promised hundreds of miles of new bus lanes, fares with daily price caps so people can use the bus as many times a day as they need, more services in the evenings and at weekends, integration with train tickets and that all buses would accept contactless payments.

The Guardian caught the rapturous tone of the announcement:

The DfT said it expected to see local authorities and operators working together to deliver bus services so frequent that passengers could just "turn up and go" - no longer needing to rely on a traditional timetable and no longer having to wait more than a few minutes.

Boris Johnson said: "Just as they did in London, our reforms will make buses the transport of choice, reducing the number of car journeys and improving quality of life for millions."

Leicestershire County Council did put in a £58m for more government funding for bus services earlier this year, apparently because it "lacked ambition".

How things have turned out is a classic illustration of Boris Johnson's ability to identify issues that matter to voters and his inability to be arsed to do anything about them, and also of the damage done by too many changes at 10 and 11 Downing Street.

Because Market Harborough is not alone in facing cuts to its bus services. 

Back in July, the Guardian reported that at least 135 bus routes across England were due to be cut or scrapped altogether.

And in case you thought "levelling up" would save the North of England from cuts, 25 routes in Liverpool and 40 across the North East were affected.

But that's the modern Conservative Party for you. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing, and you can be sure that, if it ever finds out, it will do its best to stop it.

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.

Kibworth Books in its new home

I visited Kibworth Books in its new premises today. You will find them at The Barn, 29 High Street, Kibworth Beauchamp, which is three times the size of the old shop.

That shop, at 52 High Street, will reopen soon as a secondhand bookshop.

There's more about Kibworth Books in the Harborough Mail.

Welcome to Fox Books of Leicester

My trip into Leicester on Wednesday meant I was able to visit the city's new independent bookshop, Fox Books.

You will find it in St Martin's Square, which feels a good location for a bookshop. The stock is small but well chosen, and I came away with Catherine Belton's Putin's People. This is currently the subject of a libel action in the London courts, which tends to support her argument.

When I was a teenager, in the old days, in the Seventies, I had a circuit of Leicester bookshops (new, second-hand and remaindered) to follow.

Even in the Nineties, national chains like Dillon's, Ottakar's and Sherrat & Hughes had shops in the city, But the triumph of Waterstone's and Amazon has left it with a single branch of the former. 

So I wish Fox Books well.

Other independent bookshops in the county include Quinns Bookshop in Market Harborough and Kibworth Books.

The history of Kibworth is The Story of England

Good news. The BBC is repeating Michael Wood's series The Story of England, which uses the history of the Leicestershire village of Kibworth to tell that story.

The first episode will be on the red button at 4pm tomorrow and shown on BBC4 on Wednesday at 8pm. The first episode is already available on the BBC site. I own the DVD of the series but will probably watch it on Wednesday.

Let's end with a bit of trivia.

I remember reading long ago of a Manchester Grammar School production of King Lear in which Lear was played by Robert Powell, the fool by Russell Davies and Cordelia by Michael Wood.

There is partial confirmation of this online.

Two Leicester exhibitions: Ladybird Books and the Imperial Typewriters strike

I braved the rain and went into Leicester today to visit two exhibitions.

The first was The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists at the museum and art gallery on New Walk.

On the walls was some of the original artwork from the Keywords books with which my mother taught me to read before I went to school.

They first came out in 1964, so they must have been the latest thing when she bought them.

And I learnt that most Ladybird history books were a collaboration between sometime Liberal candidate L. Du Garde Peach and the Leicestershire illustrator John Kenney.

A plaque in the latter's honour was recently put up in Kibworth, though a letterhead in the exhibition has him living in Smeeton Westerby.

On to the Newarke Houses museum and the exhibition remembering the Imperial Typewriters Strike of 1974.

It began when an Asian worker at one of the company's Leicester factories was mistakenly given the pay packet of a white friend and discovered she was being paid more.

A BBC News report says the Transport and General Workers Union refused to support the Asian strikers because its local negotiator believed they had "not followed the proper disputes procedure" and "have no legitimate grievances".

The strikers stayed out for 14 weeks, but a shutdown of the factory by its American owners ended the strike. A year later they closed the factory and a few years after that manual typewriters were museum pieces.

This exhibition is well put together, with lots of video interviews with people involved. It's themes of race and gender and white resentment resonate today.

And you can still find Imperial Typewriters' main factory on East Park Road.

Wilfred Owen died 100 years ago today

Wilfred Owen, now the most celebrated of the war poets, died on 4 November 1918, a week before the end of the first world war.

Benjamin Britten set eight of Owen's poems, along with words from the Latin Mass for the Dead, to form his masterly War Requiem. It was commissioned for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and first performed there on 30 May 1962.

This clip features Britten's setting of Owen's At a Calvary near the Ancre. The photographs is uses are unusually well chosen.

You can find a wonderful recording of Britten rehearsing the many forces involved in the work for its first recording the following year. It reveals a sense of humour that the biographers often mention, but is rarely found in the public record.

I learnt this afternoon, thanks to someone on Twitter, that the granddaughter of Owen's mentor Siegfried Sassoon lives in Kibworth.

When Bill Maynard finished fourth in a parliamentary by-election

Earlier in the week I learnt an interesting fact about Bill Maynard and thought of writing a blog post about him.

And now he has died. It's Bob Appleyard all over again.

The interesting fact was that Maynard had played the baker in the famous Hovis television commercial. (Despite the Northern vibe, it was filmed on in Dorset - on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury to be precise.)

But there are many more interesting facts, some of them confirmed in an interview he gave to Harborough FM. He was well into his anecdotage, but we do learn that he did a lot of straight acting as a younger man.

From a local point of view, Maynard was born Walter Williams in Surrey. His family soon moved to Leicestershire, and he grew up in poverty in South Wigston and won a scholarship to Kibworth Grammar School.

I recall reading once that he had a job with R. & W. Symington, the Market Harborough corsetmakers, before he went into show business full time, but I cannot find a source to confirm that. His Guardian obituary confirms he was in the rag trade though.

But let's go national with three top Bill Maynard facts:

• In 1957 he finished fourth in A Song for Europe, the British eliminator to choose our entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. You can hear him on Youtube. His son led the band Ryder who represented Britain in 1986 and came seventh.
• In 1984 he stood in the Chesterfield by-election as an Independent Labour candidate to protest against the candidacy of Tony Benn. He finished fourth with 1355 votes in what was then a record field of 12 candidates.
• In 1989 he married Tonia Bern, the widow of Donald Campbell. Campbell had died in 1967 when his craft Bluebird crashed on Coniston Water as he tried to break the world water speed record.

Kibworth Harcourt windmill is on Historic England’s At Risk Register

It's not just the Turret Gateway at Leicester Castle that has seen better days.

The Leicester Mercury has the full list of county buildings on Historic England’s new Heritage at Risk Register.

Among them is the windmill at Kibworth Harcourt, which is suffering the ravages of time and now requires comprehensive repairs.

Government announces that the Midland main line will not be electrified north of Kettering

We will see more disappointing news like this around the country as HS2 eats up all the funding for rail investment.

That's what I wrote last December when it was announced that planned access improvement at Market Harborough station were to be postponed.

Reading between the lines of that post, it should already have been clear that today's announcement that there will be no electrification of the Midland main line north of Kettering was inevitable.

The transport minister Paul Maynard had declined to confirm that work north of Kettering would take place. 

And BBC News had quoted his boss Chris Grayling:

He said that rather than passengers from Northamptonshire having to board trains coming from the further north down to London, they would have a service originating from Corby and Kettering.

So services on the Midland will be operated by hybrid trains that use the overhead wires from St Pancras to Kettering and then switch to diesel to get to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.

The photograph below was taken in Kibworth Beauchamp (between Market Harborough and Leicester) and shows work being carried out to rebuild a road bridge to give room for overhead electrification to be installed on the railway.

This was done to numerous bridges north of Kettering and now turns out to have been a waste of money.

What appears to have happened is that the electrification of the Great Western line took too long and cost too much, with the result that the government felt it had to postpone the work on the Midland.

That in turn meant that the government was going to have to order hybrid diesel-electric trains to run on the Midland.

And if they had those, reasoned the government, then there was no need to electrify the line north of Kettering at all.

Note, incidentally, how intimately the government is involved in the running of our 'privatised' railways.

The railways had far more autonomy in the days of the nationalised British Rail.

The Old Manor House, Kibworth Beauchamp

After watching the cricket at East Langton on Saturday I ended up in Kibworth.

The bookshop was closed, but I found that the Old Manor House in Kibworth Beauchamp high street was undergoing pretty far-reaching renovations.

Pevsner describes it as

C16 to C17, with two symmetrical gables. Stone below with mullioned windows, timber-framed and stuccoed above.

But it was clear on Saturday that there is still a lot of wattle and daub involved too.

The Rose and Crown, Kibworth

The Kibworth Harcourt Trail leaflet says the Rose and Crown was once:

the most famous coaching stop in Kibworth, with up to twenty-four coaches a say stopping day and night for passengers' rest or refreshments, or to change horses.

It was open as a pub into the 1990s and as an Indian restaurant after that.

The leaflet says it is believed in was built in the 18th century but, externally at least, the building I photographed today looks Edwardian. The Francis Frith site has a postcard of it in the 1950s.

It bears a sign saying it has been acquired for clients, but I will be surprised if it is not razed to make space for housing one day soon.