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WHEELBARROW WARS

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 s...
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Here and there

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WITHER LIE THE BODIES?

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...
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THE 'GREAT FLYING RACE' COMES TO TOWN.

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...
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