Day Sixteen

Monday 11 January 2010 – Leicester to Loughborough.

I was about to spend most of my day back on a towpath, this time alongside the River Soar Navigation, about which more in a bit. From Leicester’s Clock Tower, I walked North along Churchgate, one of the ancient routes into and out of the City. Although Churchgate itself is mostly given over to pedestrians these days, its continuation beyond the inner ring road is a main commuter route. Rush hour traffic was stamping and cursing at the traffic lights as I scuttled off down to the towpath, which I almost immediately diverted from because I wanted to renew acquaintance with Abbey Park. This is a typical late-Victorian civic park, with a boating lake, picnic areas, a couple of caffs and, just over the bridge across the Soar, the remains of Leicester Abbey. A fairly short history lesson follows; to avoid it, skip to [*]

“Leicester Abbey was founded as a community of Augustinian Canons. The abbey was one of the largest and most influential land owners in Leicestershire, thanks to contributions by important patrons such as the Earl of Winchester, Simon de Montfort, Alan la Zouche, Ernard de Bosco and, finally, the Crown. The abbey certainly held more manors than any lay lord. The abbey is perhaps most famous for its connection to Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, who was for a time the most powerful man in England, second only to the King. In spiritual terms, his power even surpassed that of the Archbishop of Canterbury (the Primate of England). Wolsey, at one part, was a candidate for the papacy. And yet, he fell out of the King’s favour in 1529 and was forced to return to his Archdiocese of York. A year later he was accused of high treason and ordered to return to London. On the way, he stopped at Leicester Abbey. As he arrived, he told the abbot, ‘I am come to leave my bones among you.’ The archbishop died that night. He was buried within the walls of the Abbey church, and today a monument stands on his supposed resting place. From the disgrace of Wolsey, the path to schism from Rome was short, and the inevitable fall of the Abbey of St Mary de Pratis of Leicester.”

[*] Now if you skipped the above history lesson, you missed the reference to Cardinal Wolsey. The next sentence of the lesson (courtesy, as usual, of Wikipedia) reads, “The clothes manufacturer Wolsey is based nearby in Leicester and the company is named in honour of Cardinal Wolsey.” Alas no more. As a cycle path took me back to the towpath, I could look across the canal at the bulldozed remains of the Wolsey factory. Thus are the mighty cardinal, and the mighty hosier, fallen.

The River Soar Navigation, the Northern extension through Leicester of the Grand Union Canal, is a bit of a mishmash. Sometimes canal and river are the same, sometines they run parallel a few yards apart, and sometimes the river wanders off out of sight, leaving the canal, and the towpath, to run a straightish course. Canalisation, I was surprised to read, started in the 17th Century, and was completed in the 18th. Spotting which was river and which was canal was easy – the river has a flow, so does not tend to freeze. This area North of Leicester is a giant flood plain, much of which has been leisurified as Watermead Country Park.

It was here that the two men had fallen through the ice three days ago, with fatal consequences. Another consequence was that the whole area was a forest of notices warning of the dangers of the ice. I cynically wondered whether they had been erected before or after the tragedy.

I walked past a fishing lake called King Lear’s Lake. I daydreamed about the King doing a bit of coarse fishing on alternate Saturdays when Leicester City Football Club were playing away (he wouldn’t have been able to travel to away games, of course, while the three girls were young, so fishing would provide an alternative break from the demands of kingship). My musings were all tosh, of course, but the reason for the name is scarcely more believable. Apparently legend has it that Lear (or Leir) was buried, alongside Cordelia, in an underground chamber under the river. I prefer my explanation, on balance.

I passed several villages, set back from the river. This was because I was on the flood plain, and the village-builders sensibly chose higher ground. Mountsorrel is an exception, lying immediately alongside the canal, probably because the produce from the nearby quarry was shipped out by water. A conveyor from the quarry is still marked on the map, crossing the river on a handsome redbrick bridge. The next village, Barrow-upon-Soar, looms over the river on top of what is almost a cliff.

Soon after Barrow, the river wanders off again, leaving the canal to slip unnoticed into Loughborough, under a cast iron bridge which used to carry the Great Central Railway. The last of the great North-South main lines, the Great Central ran from Manchester to Marylebone in London (I live about 200 yards away from Marylebone, which nowadays mostly serves only Metroland, with occasional forays into the Midlands). The Great Central was completed at the end of the 19th Century, and after a mere 60 years its destruction began, with final closure in 1969. Today the name lives on in the form of the steam railway from Loughborough to just North of Leicester. The surviving main line, the Midland, was to carry me back to Leicester and on to London.

Loughborough Station is dominated by the Brush works. They don’t make brooms, they make electrical equipment, and have done for over a century. They’ve had their ups and downs, but the factory appeared to be in full swing as I supped my coffee on the station platform. This posting seems to have contained an unconscionable amount of historical guff; the management trusts that it hasn’t unduly spoilt your enjoyment.

Here is a link to a map showing my progress to date.