Hark! Hark! the dogs do bark, The beggars are coming to town; Some in rags and some in tags, And some in velvet gowns. Some gave them white bread, And some gave them brown, And some gave them a good horse-whip, And sent them out of the town. The Beggar’s Retreat During the final years […]
How safe is a safe? Occasionally, more so in the warmer months of the year than during the cold and wet months of Winter, I take a walk around my small market town, somewhat in the manner that I employed many years ago whilst serving there as a police officer. I like to observe the changes of the […]
The Leicestershire Archaeological Society. Some fifty years ago, The Leicestershire Archaeological Society in its 110th Annual Report published a list of some 450 ‘ordinary’ members, seemingly people who were in some way interested in or connected with learning of the history and archaeology of this East Midlands county. What did strike me as I glanced through this document which is currently held […]
‘Plecotus Auritus’ It so happens that I live equidistant between two of Melton Mowbray’s finest heritage treasures; from the front of my house I have witnessed over the past few years the metamorphosis of Craven Lodge from once being a decaying pile into what now exists as nine neatly landscaped and secluded new homes, whilst […]
FRAMLAND HOUSE – The Johnsons. Circa 1966 Recently re-visiting my rapidly increasing and creaking collection of photographs, I came across the above family image which brought back memories for me from some 50 years ago. My attention was arrested though, not by the people in the foreground (my wife with her father), but […]
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’ […]
Golden Days. As is well known to almost everybody who knows me, I once spent six years of my now extended life in the small islands of Bermuda; six of my most impressionable years and very consequential ones in that I was married on ‘the rock’ and created there my two much loved children. It […]
A Figure of Fun? When Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan sat down to write the ‘Pirates of Penzance’, the comic aspect of the British policeman – or ‘bobby’ – as a figure of fun was to be cruelly exposed on the public stage in an effort to show off the less serious side of law enforcement in […]
The House in the Park Most people living in Melton Mowbray today remember an old house which until quite recently, stood unoccupied and rather forlorn at the side of Asfordby Road and abutting the local River Eye at the rear. Known to locals within living memory of its later existence as ‘Six Elms’, they were […]
The Seven Rules of Pugilism John ‘Jack’ Broughton(The father of boxing)1704-1789 Long ago in Georgian England, prize-fighting, or ‘pugilism’ as it was known, was a very popular form of entertainment which attracted all social classes of followers, rich and poor. As with Cock-fighting which was to be made illegal around the 1830’s, the spectre of two […]
MELTON MOWBRAY - In My Mind. 