YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

Scrapings of Discontent Burton Road in quieter days - outside Craven Lodge circa 1930 (With thanks to the Francis Frith Collection) I presently reside in Burton Road, Melton Mowbray, sometimes referred to as ‘Burton Hill’, which is actually the area centred abutting Craven and Victoria Streets.  After the establishment of Craven Lodge as the first residence to be built across the River Eye in Burton Road, dwellings of lesser proportions began to appear at the turn of the last century.  But these were not much ‘lesser’ in cost or design, as many fine houses began to appear on both sides of that road to Oakham during those first two decades of the 20th century, most of which were taken up by wealthy or prestigious people, many of them incomers to the town.  But like most newly developing neighbourhoods, a little acrimony mixed with petty jealousies occasionally bubbled to the surface, especially when matters of status needed to be settled. It was with some...

DOWN ASFORDBY WAY.    For my readers from out of town Wikipedia will explain that: Asfordby is a village and civil parish in the Melton District of Leicestershire to the west of Melton Mowbray on the A6006 road. The parish consists of Asfordby proper, Asfordby Valley and Asfordby Hill, all of which combined have a population of around 3000 residents. The villages are to the north of the River Wreake with Asfordby Hill situated east of Asfordby proper. Within Asfordby proper there are a few shops, mainly convenience ones. However you can find a fish and chip shop, an Indian restaurant, as well as a kitchen store and a Co-operative shop.' In a manner of speaking, Asfordby could be perhaps described as a 'satellite' of Melton Mowbray and it is likely not to be too long before it becomes joined-up; in many aspects, the village has shared much of our local history. Over the span of the last couple of centuries, the Asfordbys have produced several citizens of not...

A HIATUS AT THE HALL A century and a half ago, the summer of 1856 was reportedly an extremely good one in Melton Mowbray with dry and extended spells of languorous days and nights, a situation which was I am sure very much appreciated by the hard-working people of that town.  But the long warm days of that high summer were to be rudely interrupted by a series of dark events which would create grounds for grim anxiety amongst many of its inhabitants and perhaps even amusement for others.  Whilst an alleged murderer awaited trial for the vicious slaying of two people in the town and a local businessman was shot in the chest by a crazed young solicitor's clerk, members of the local high society were having domestic problems of their own in the form of an acrimonious domestic dispute in the nearby village of Goadby Marwood which would ensure that the town's magistrates were adequately engaged.   In its Saturday edition of August 30th, 1856, t...

Deuteronomy 5:21 tells us: “ You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife …”    The following report appeared in a Boston, England, newspaper in 1887 KISSING ANOTHER MAN’S WIFE. At Melton Mowbray Petty Sessions on Tuesday, before Mr A. Duncan, (chairman), Major Orme, and Mr R Dalgliesh. Richard D—-,  bricklayer, Asfordby was charged with assaulting Naomi M—-, married woman, of the same place on the 29th January.  Complainant stated that on the day named, she went into defendants house which joined hers, to pay her rent.  While there defendant gave her a box of figs, and as she was leaving he put his arms around her and kissed her.  She went home and told her husband.  In cross-examination by defendant, complainant says she ate some of the figs when she got home, and so did her husband.  She knew that sounds could be distinctly heard through the wall, and she remembered on one occasion rapping at the wall to call her husband....

'VULGAR AND DISGRACEFUL' As a filler, from my regular perusals of the old newspapers, can I offer you this short tit-bit, clipped from the Lincolnshire Chronicle of 1823 relating to a moment of 'high apoplexy' on the part of its exasperated Editor: who wrote ...     'We cannot but be disgusted by the blasphemy and impiety to which some of our Whig-Radical contemporaries have recourse, in order to endeavour to weaken in men's minds the love of the church through the medium of exciting a contempt for its ministers.  What can be more deserving of open and avowed indignation than the conduct of the editor of the Mercury in inserting into that journal the following vulgar and disgraceful paragraph:- "John Rolf, bellows-blower at the Bath Abbey Church, completed his 45th year of office on the 25th inst.  His salary is two guineas per annum: the bellows-blower in the pulpit below has  two thousand  per annum."   There is in political writi...

With thanks to Wikipedia In a local newspaper recently, I came across an intriguing historic report of 'special' court proceedings which had taken place at at my local Magistrate's Court during the time of the 2nd World War.  At the sitting, the evidence played out related to a seemingly trivial confrontation between a frustrated 'traveller' and a group of soldiers billeted in the town. Consequent research of the legislation allegedly breached on that occasion, opened up for me an extremely interesting period of political dissent at the time of the very birth of the Labour Party of Britain as we know it today.  My intrinsic interest at the outset is the Melton Mowbray connection and the part that a few young soldiers played locally at the time of a great world awakening, but in passing, I would like to touch upon the interrelationship of the statute allegedly breached, with the ideals of a nascent political party proposing to represent the working classes and i...