WHITHER LIE THE BODIES. During the middle of the 17th century, following years of civil disorder, the English Monarchy was being threatened as to its very existence as dissension spread apropos the political problems with Scotland; even the Baronies of the Northern English counties took to an armed conflict which frequently involved highly brutal and sanguineous affairs. As our local history tells us, Melton Mowbray was not to escape involvement in these violent times when King Charles I, in despair of his increasing hopelessness and in great anguish of his Monarchy being about to be overthrown, was to blow the trumpet in August of 1642 when the fighting across the land began in earnest. The Reverend J Ward, in his ‘ Melton Mowbray in Olden Times’ - 1879, has provided us with much useful information about the past in which he narrates moments of the Civil War, especially those of Leicestershire and Melton, in some detail. At the end of his descriptions...
A thrilling account of the exciting and chaotic hot summer’s day in Melton Mowbray in 1911, when many thousands of exuberant people turned out to witness for the very first time the ‘miracle’ of the heavier than air ‘flying machines,’ in flight together with their intrepid pilots. _______________________________________________ PROLOGUE The long awaited occasion of man’s first sustained flight in an heavier than air, powered aeroplane is pretty well known to the world as being recorded on a beach at Kitty Hawk, South Carolina in 1903, by the Wright brothers of that place. The stuff of dreams of many young boys across the decades, the veracity of this specific moment in time and the identities of the people involved in the event remains open to serious discussion to the present day and the actual truth is still argued openly and keenly. This is especially so amongst aviators and other interested parties in F...