YESTERDAY IN MELTON MOWBRAY

Who Walked Around in my House? I recently had reason to peruse the Conveyance Deeds of my family home over a small social and boundary issue which had cropped up in the neighbourhood.  In a quiet moment and with my deeds so infrequently exposed to day light, I chose to read again through the legalese of the pompously worded document. Little of much interest arrested my attention, but one astonishing fact did jump from the document to catch my attention was the price paid for the house, a standard three bedroom, pebble-dashed dwelling which had changed hands for the princely sum of 270 English pounds when it was first purchased on the 22nd day of September 1927 - more than the cost of buying a new front door today! to buy a new front door for the house would cost me twice that today!  I do know that today I would get around £200,000 This fact was to lead me to become curious as to who, just a few years after the end of the Great War, had paid out this then princely su...

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...

“A level-crossing system …” I n a recent blog - ‘ Melton to Oakham ’ - I outlined my account of the construction of Melton Mowbray’s railway road-bridge which today straddles the Leicester to Peterborough railway line and the River Eye - both are in close proximity - conveying the A606 road out of the town to our neighbouring town of Oakham and all points south.  I explained that the old stone bridge of around 1820 which had traditionally carried foot passengers and horses and carts for over 80 years, had increasingly become inadequate for its purpose since the arrival of the railways in 1847.  In later years and far more consequential to an increasing number of important winter residents, was the arrival of the new-fangled steam and petrol propelled motor-cars, albeit they being restricted to a speed of just 20 mph.  With access requiring to be controlled for the dangerous trains crossing the paths of unwary equestrians and pedestrians, a level crossing system was...

TIME FOR A CHANGE      I live within a stone's throw of the railway bridge at Burton End in Melton Mowbray which serves to convey traffic and pedestrians across both the Midland railway line and the River Eye which passes underneath on its way to join the rivers Wreake, Soar, Trent and finally into the River Humber on its winding way and wide estuary into the North Sea.  On many a Sunday morning I can be found to be scratching around beneath the large blue-brick and steel structure which was contructed over 100 years ago, or in and about the nooks and crannies of our railway station, or the hospital fields in an effort to discover how much the original topography of the area has changed since the dying days of the 19th century.  My curiosity was initially aroused when I first saw the now iconic - and very early - photographic view of the Burton End Basin and began to realise just how much the area has adapted to its more modern needs.  I...

Early Aviation around Melton Mowbray. The small market town of Melton Mowbray was once an important link in the aerial defence of these Islands, detached as they are from the mainland of Europe, at a time when even the concept of an airfield or aerodrome as we understand it today was but a mere whim in the fancy of an increasing number of enthusiasts who were tinkering with the mystery of the yet to be understood practicalities of the concept of powered flight, man in control of a dirigible machine which he could literally fly in the sky to wherever he wished to go.  But how forward looking were those daring young men at the time?  Around the turn of the last century, a non-stop saga of wars and related conflicts around the world were being created and exacerbated , often stirred by the increasingly confused politics of an expanding and competitive  Europe. Britain had ensured that Queen Victoria's red-coated troops were retained and widely  ens...