Tur Langton in the springtime

I photographed this glorious horse chestnut back in 2010.

Somewhere beneath it is the only fragment that remains of Tur Langton's old church.

Lib Dems do limited deals with Labour in Milton Keynes and North East Lincolnshire

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News of what the Liberal Democrats have done on two councils where no party has a majority following this month's local elections.

From About Milton Keynes:

Milton Keynes Labour Party Leader Peter Marland and Lib Dem Leader Douglas McCall today signed a new 12-month Partnership Agreement. 

Under the new Enhanced Partnership, the Milton Keynes Labour Group will continue to run the Council in return for delivering the whole of the Lib Dem manifesto and giving the Lib Dems an enhanced role in formatting future Council policy. 

And from the Lincolnshire Reporter:

The Liberal Democrats group on North East Lincolnshire Council will support the Labour Party as part of a confidence and supply arrangement. 

This means the Labour group will continue to run the council as a minority-led authority but with voting support from the Liberal Democrats on key issues. 

Leader of the council, Ray Oxby, will now form a cabinet from the Labour group and support the nomination of Liberal Democrat councillors to hold key scrutiny board and select committee positions as part of the agreement.

Oakham School's theatre is an old canal warehouse

North of Leicester the River Soar is joined by the River Wreake. The Wreake used to be navigable as far as Melton Mowbray, where there was a basin beside the railway station. From there a canal ran to another basin close to the centre of Oakham.

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre of Oakham School is housed in an old warehouse that stood beside that basin. I managed to get a couple of photographs of it on Saturday, though the theatre is now surrounded by other school buildings.

There has been talk of restoring navigation to Melton, which certainly looks possible. Getting all the way back to Oakham would be more of a challenge.

The conventional wisdom has it that the Leicester to Peterborough railway was built along the bed of the Oakham Canal. But a well-informed thread on Canal World suggests this is not the case.

When a railway company bought up a canal in the 19th century it usually had more to do with removing competition and avoiding law suits arising from the interruption of water supplies than with taking over the exact route of the canal. So much of the route of the Oakham Canal survives.

Read more about the prospects for restoration on the website of the Melton and Oakham Waterways Society.

A Market Harborough ghost sign

Frank Taylor's fish and chip shop in Adam and Eve Street, Market Harborough, said the 1981 edition of Travellers' Britain, was the second oldest in the world.

I don't know where they got that from, and it didn't do the best chips in town, but it is remembered today by this ghost sign.

The building is now occupied by the excellent Duncan Murray Wines and Wine Bar.

Let's leave "gammon" off the menu

Let's say we get our way and there is a second referendum on Brexit.

Could we win it?

Maybe not, because so far we do not appear to have learnt the lesson of Remain's defeat in the first one. All we have done so far is to turn Project Fear up to 11.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post that cited various pieces of psychology research and concluded:

The implication of all this, I suspect, is that if we want to persuade people who are tempted to vote Leave to vote Remain, we should frame our arguments in terms of concepts like patriotism and the continuity of British history and not laugh at them and call them "fruitcakes" - as this blog is prone to doing.

Since then we have seen the demise of "fruitcake" and the rise of "gammon".

Gammons, we all know, are red-faced, racist and ridiculous. You see them participating in Question Time and leaving comments on the Daily Mail website.

Above all, gammons are what we Remainers are not like.

So the existence of the concept does wonders for our self-esteem. It's just that I do not believe it does anything to encourage anyone to vote for us.

If there is another referendum we need to do things like give Jeremy Clarkson a central role and make a concerted effort of engage older voters. 

No, we have to tell them, this is not the world you grew up in and it is not one you feel particularly at home in. But it is the one your grandchildren have taken to and shouldn't you think of them too when you vote?

Some will remain convinced that the good old days were better and believe that they can bring them back for those grandchildren, but some will be convinced by these sort of arguments.

Calling them "gammons" will not convince one.

Saxon and after: St Andrew, Brigstock

My tactic of getting off the bus at the first stop in a small town or village and walking into the centre paid off at Brigstock because I found St Andrew's by following a path beside a stream.

It is not Brixworth, but it is still a fine church with Saxon remains and a similar circular stair tower. You can read all about the architecture in its Grade 1 Listing.

Inside (besides the monument to a Liberal cabinet minister) there is a carved wood screen that is said to have come from Pipewell Abbey.

Outside in the churchyard there is a magnificent tree. Does anyone recognise the species? I assumed it would be a yew, but the leaves are wrong for that.

The Clash: Career Opportunities

Career Opportunities was a track on The Clash's eponymous first LP from 1977. But not this version.

The singers here are Luke and Ben Gallagher, the young sons of the keyboard player Mickey Gallagher, who played on the 1980 LP Sandanista! where it appears.

Mickey Gallagher was best known as a member of Ian Drury's Blockheads. I saw him playing with the The Animals and Friends with Spencer Davis when they played Market Harborough leisure centre.

You can see him playing keyboards below.

The Class 27 stabled a mile south of Leicester station

This locomotive in green livery appeared in the sidings at Knighton Junction, a mile or so south of Leicester station, a couple of weeks ago.

Whatever call it is, it was not a familiar sight on English rails in my trainspotting days.

Thanks to some helpful people on Twitter I can tell you that it is a British Railway Class 27 originally known as D5410.

Rather wonderfully, it is owned by Sandwell MBC. You can read all about it on Wikipedia:

D5410 was built by BRCW as Works No DEL253 of 1962. It was allocated to Cricklewood East in August of that year, working Tilbury Boat trains and Cross-London freight services. After re-allocation to London (Midland) in 1965 and Nottingham Division in 1968, D5410 moved to Eastfield Depot in Glasgow in March 1969.

In fact all the Class 27s were based in Scotland in the days when I cared about such things, which is why I hardly saw them.

These new siding at Knighton Junction, incidentally, were put in to replace the ones removed from Market Harborough to allow the new car park to be built.

I can see myself spending the next week or more trying to get a better picture of it than this.

Wallis's Mill, Brigstock

Here's an unexpected building to find in a rural village like Brigstock, even if its pale stone is characteristic of the place.

Pevsner says it was built for the clothing firm Wallis & Linnell in 1873-4 and notes that it was made thirteen bays long but only two wide so there was maximum light for all the workers.

He also says the building was converted to offices in 1982, but it appears empty today.

Happy St Pancras Day

As John Betjeman once wrote:

St Pancras was a 14-year-old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome by the Emperor Diocletian. In England, he is better known as a railway station.

Today is St Pancras Day.

What with that and its being Steve Winwood's birthday, it is no wonder 12 May is a public holiday here on Liberal England.

London Rock (1970)

A fantastic documentary featuring The Faces, Marc Bolan, Linda Lewis, Matthews Southern Comfort and Fairport Convention.

St Andrew, Brigstock, has a monument to a Liberal cabinet minister

Brigstock has a Saxon church. It's not Brixworth, but it's still worth a visit.

Inside you will find this monument to Robert Vernon, 1st Baron Lyveden, who held office under four prime minsters. Since you ask, they were Grey, Melbourne, Russell and Palmerston.

Vernon's original surname was Smith - he was a nephew of the great Sydney Smith. He was MP for Tralee 1829-31 and for Northampton 1831-59.

Despite what Wikipedia says, this is not his tomb inside St Andrew's. But in the churchyard you can find the family vault where he lies.

Six of the Best 790

"Come again – you mean, the sanctions regime that forces people to food banks, that leaves them without the basic means of providing for themselves – we agreed to that in order to get a plastic bag tax?" Caron Lindsay is not impressed by Polly Mackenzie's blasé revelations.

Andrew Page wishes we could stop talking about Tim Farron.

"The emergence of community politics owed itself directly to the aftermath of 1968. But sadly the counterculture has petered out inside the Lib Dems, and has become so much part of the background noise that nobody really notices it any more." David Boyle on the lessons of les événements.

Wayne Asher says plans for a Silvertown Tunnel show that government has learnt nothing from history.

It is so important for us to listen to and talk to Flat Earthers and to approach them as much with understanding as ridicule, argues Michael Marshall.

Imagine a man who dismissed W.G. Grace at cricket, captained England at football and drew with world champion Alekhine at chess. You don't have to: he really existed. John Saunders introduces us to Charles Wreford-Brown.

Market Harborough station before the line is straightened

The project has been slipping ever since the contractors Carillion went under, but it is likely that the new car park at Market Harborough station will open next month and the old one on the other side of the tracks will close.

Then work on straightening the S-bend those tracks take through the station will begin. This will enable the line speed to be increased.

When the work is complete, the train in the first photograph below will continue straight towards the camera rather than taking the curve you see there now.

I was at the station today and took some pictures of the way it has been for the last 40 years. The track that will be used on the new alignment through and beyond the old car park is already stacked ready for use.

The platform face where trains used to call on the way to Rugby or Northampton is still in evidence, and there may even be the remains of the bay platform that was squeezed in beside the station house to serve those LNWR lines.

A mile or more north of the station the Midland main line climbs over a flyover that was put in to avoid crossing the vanished LNWR lines (going north to Peterborough or Melton Mowbray) on the level.

There has been talk over the years of taking that flyover out to increase speeds through Harborough still further, but as this discussion on Rail UK suggests, that does not form part of the current programme of work.

Druid witch stabbed by neighbour angry at his noisy pagan rituals

Photo of a water mill at Alderholt from Geograph © Stuart Buchan

The Daily Telegraph wins our Headline of the Day Award with this tale of everyday life in a Dorset village.

The Brixworth Eagle

I escaped the men in black by going to church.

All Saints Brixworth is the largest Anglo-Saxon church in Britain and it used to be larger still. A monastery standing on a hill.

There is much Roman tile incorporated into it. Though there is talk of it coming from a local villa, tests suggest much was carted in from the Roman buildings of Towcester and Leicester.

The picture above shows an ancient sculpture of an eagle, known as the Brixworth Eagle. Pevsner says this is the Eagle of St. John, dating from the 9th century; others, says Sacred Destinations, think it could be a mason's mark or a reused symbol of a Roman legion.

Whatever the truth, I have turned the photo as the eagle currently lies on its right side just inside the church's porch.

While I was at All Saints a small coach party arrived. They turned out to be from Peterborough Civic Society and I was invited to attach myself to them and get a free cup of tea in The Heritage Centre.

Six of the Best 789

Mark Pack looks in more depth at the Lib Dems' local election performance last week: "the story is partly one of making progress against the government but finding it harder going against the main opposition party. That’s a familiar pattern from Liberal Democrat history."

Who needs Jordan Peterson when we have Ferdinand Mount? Ian Sansom celebrates an attractive Conservative thinker.

"Cosmetics and clothing played a key role in allowing queer men to identify each other in a society where same-sex relations were illegal." Carianne Whitworth on gay life and police persecution in 1930s London.

Owen Hatherley says developers' architecture too often forgets the value of public space.

"The film presents a collision between an ancient, rural way of life and the modern world, but manages to honour the people of both, repeatedly staging encounters where those on each side recognise a connection with the other and find something to respect." Eleanor Parker watches A Canterbury Tale.

Benton follows the footsteps of Richard Jefferies through Tolworth and provides a striking quote from the great man: "'Before a dandelion has shown in the meadow,' he remarks, 'the banks of the railway are yellow with coltsfoot.'"

Police seek naked Bridgnorth bridge runners

Our Headline of the Day, as so often, comes from the Shropshire Star:

Up to 12 naked men who ran back-and-forth on a town centre bridge are being sought by police.

My photograph shows the bridge in question, but I must emphasise that it was taken some years ago and I was almost certainly fully clothed at the time.

Brixworth and the men in black

I arrived in Brixworth this lunchtime to find the place thronged with men in a black uniforms. They seemed to be in every street - sometimes alone or in pairs: sometimes in groups.

A local later told me they were staff from the Mercedes engine research facility in the village, but I prefer my original theory.

Last night a flying saucer was brought down at Hanging Houghton and they were there to mop up.

Lewisham had a 70 per cent Remain vote

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As was widely expected, Heidi Alexander announced today that she is to resign as MP for Lewisham East to become Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for transport.

When I blogged about the likely by-election I said:

Heidi Alexander had a majority of 21,213 at last year's general election, with the Liberal Democrats in a distant third place. We did have a good second place here as recently as 2010.

But there is another, intriguing statistic that bears on the contest.

Lewisham Borough Council gives the 2016 referendum result for the borough as a whole. It reveals that Remain received 86,955 out of the 124,637​ votes cast across Lewisham. That is 70 per cent of the vote.

Could it be that this will a more interesting by-election than the pundits have forecast?