Devotion, death and dissolution in Leicestershire 1

Here is the latest of Jim Butler's Hidden Histories videos.

It's about devotion, death and dissolution in Leicester and there's so much of them that it's divided into two parts. This is the first.

A plaque for Thomas Babington Macaulay

Historian and reforming Whig politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay is one of Leicestershire's greatest sons.

He was born and lived in the county at Rothley Temple, now the Rothley Court Hotel. When I visited it I was chiefly concerned with its inglorious place in English cricket history.

'The Whig view of history' has been out of fashion for as long as anyone can remember, and the past few years have been enough to cure anyone of the notion that progress is inevitable.

Nevertheless, if you dip into Macaulay's works you will find them full of good things.

Today Charnwood Borough Council put up a plaque in his honour at his birthplace.

Terry Sheppard chair of the Rothley Heritage Centre unveils the plaque on what would have been Lord Macaulay of Rothley's 219th birthday. pic.twitter.com/9KBnQ98oVp

— Charnwood Borough Council (@CharnwoodBC) October 25, 2019

A hard life: The Grange, Rothley

Once I had photographed the Saxon cross at Rothley I found myself running out of energy. It was the precursor to a nasty bout of man flu I have been down with this week.

But I did photograph another building, It looked as though it had at one time been noble, suffered a hard life and was now preserved (with a touch of the mortician's art being used).

I was more or less right.

The Grange began life as a farmhouse in the 18th century and was enlarged to become a large country house at the end of the 19th.

In 1950 it became the headquarters of Barrow Rural District Council - as in Barrow upon Soar. The authority proceeded to surround it with "tasteless modern outbuildings".

It was in this condition that it was taken over in 1974 by Charnwood District Council, a new authority centred on Loughborough. They leased space on to other statutory bodies.

In 2008 The Grange was bought from the council by William Davis, who converted it into flats and built some more around it.

Rothley Parish Council has some pleasing photos of the buildings in a derelict condition awaiting restoration and redevelopment.

The Saxon cross shaft in Rothley churchyard

Rothley has a station on a steam railway, a street once found to be the most expensive in the East Midlands and a hotel that used to belong to the Knights Templar where Mike Gatting lost the England captaincy by entertaining a barmaid in his room.

But today I wanted to see the Saxon cross in its churchyard.

Here is its billing on the Rothley Parish Council page:

The cross stands on a small, grassy mound close to the path. Geological experts believe the shaft stones are made from highly quartzose, millstone grit of a kind found in Derbyshire east of the River Derwent between Bamford and Cromford. 

Closer examination by visitors will reveal the intricate carving on all four faces of the shaft which are divided into four panels on each side. The entry in the Schedule of Ancient Monuments describes the carved decoration as "mainly of interlaced plaitwork and plant scrolls including whorls of foliage with elongated leaves. One panel on the south side is believed to include a carving of a winged beast or dragon with an interlacing tail". 

The south face is severely eroded which is a great pity as its lack of clarity involves not only a loss of artistic expression but also creates difficulty in giving a close date to the style of carving. 

There has been no recent evaluation of the monument and some academic doubt remains as to whether the carvings are 9th or 10th Century in origin. An "official" date given by English Heritage is mid 9th Century thereby placing them in the Saxon pre-Viking period of history.

Rothley: The Knights Templar and Mike Gatting

Visiting Gaddesby last year I mentioned the unsubstantiated theory that the Knights Templar from Rothley were responsible for the extraordinary south aisle at St Luke's.

Today I was at Rothley Court Hotel, which includes a chapel erected by the Templars when King Henry lll granted them the Manor and Soke of Rothley in 1231. You can see the chapel foreground of the photograph with the main hotel range further from the camera.

As I also mentioned in that Gaddesby post, the hotel has another claim to fame. It was here in 1988 that Mike Gatting lost the England captaincy because he had a late-night drink in his room with Louise Shipman, a barmaid, during the Trent Bridge test against the West Indies.

Cricinfo reminds us of the wider context. Gatting had alarmed the authorities, first by his on-field row with the Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana the previous winter and then by publishing his controversial autobiography Leading from the Front. From then on, those authorities were keen to get rid of him.

The story continues on Cricinfo:

Common sense suggested that West Indies would have given the selectors an excuse to sack Gatting sometime during that summer anyway - the draw at Nottingham was never going to be more than an brief interruption to their winning run. His record was poor enough - the two wins in Australia were the only ones in his 23 Tests as captain - and his form with the bat was also on the slide, his average a modest 25.80 since his spat with Shakoor. But common sense at and English cricket have never gone hand-in-hand.

Gatting gave his side of events to the selectors, who were acting on behalf of the TCCB. He admitted taking Shipman into his room but denied anything untoward had happened. Three days after the incident, the TCCB summarily dismissed him.

And then Peter May, the embattled chairman of selectors, offered the media an explanation which left him and his board ridiculed. We don't think he slept with the barmaid, was the gist of May's explanation, but he shouldn't have invited her to his room. Gatting had effectively been sacked for having a late-night drink with a female.

But then Peter May's tenure as chairman of selectors was not a success. You can see why. He once replied to a journalist's suggestion that people thought he was out of touch with "Really? I haven't heard that."