STOP PRESS
According to the local paper, the Loughborough Echo, Loughborough has been awarded a gold medal in the Small City category of the East Midlands In Bloom competition! Well done to one and all!! And while you're looking at the webpage for the Echo, have a look at what one man, who lives near the Taylors Bellfoundry, and his friend managed to achieve.
Also in your local paper this week: A new display in the town library will be on Loughborough's lost houses: This was going to be a topic for a future blog post, but the volunteers in the local studies area of the library have beaten me to it! Be sure to visit: Open 10-12 and 2-4 each week day, although I think the display cabinets are accessible anytime the library's open.
As if that wasn't enough, there's also a plea to demolish the 1958 rectory, the library has been given a new name - Loughborough Community Library and Learning Centre - and yours truly appears in a picture!
Enough!!! On to the feature of my article:
SPOTLIGHT ON: All Saints Parish Church
All Saints parish Church |
A bit of background
Originally, the church was dedicated to St Peter, was later also dedicated to St Paul, and has more recently become known as All Saints. For quite some time this church was the only church in the parish, until Emmanuel was built in 1837. More recently, in the 1990s, the church of the other parish in Loughborough, Holy Trinity, closed and the two parishes merged, but what I call the Parish Church retained its title of All Saints Parish Church.
The current church, the construction of which started in
about 1330, is built on a site that has seen both an Anglo-Saxon and a Norman
place of worship, but over the years, the church we know today, has been
subject to lots of renovations and improvements, so it is sometimes difficult
to work out what’s what.
My visit
The verger showed me the big stone pillars, with signs of
smoke from when they had fires in the church during the time of the Civil War,
where it’s believed that the soldiers slept, and lots of carvings of
signatures, often done by children who were quite possibly bored by the lengthy
sermons, or where soldiers had sharpened their knives!
The verger then stood me in the nave, and faced me in the
direction of the Chancel and Sanctuary and the great East Window. From here we
could clearly see that the Chancel didn’t look straight! According to the
verger this was to do with the idea of Heaven and Earth: As the coffin and
funeral procession moved off down the Nave towards the Chancel, Earth, on the
left-hand side was most visible, but the closer one got to the Chancel, the
more one could see of Heaven on the right-hand side. Also, looking up from the Nave we could see a little window in the archway, which, apparently, was
thought to be the door through which the spirit of the deceased passed as it
was processed down the Nave towards the Chancel.
At this point, the Vicar arrived, and the verger was quick to introduce me: Anyone showing so much interest in looking around the church must surely be a potential congregation member!
The West End of the church is where the bell tower is situated. The area is enclosed by a set of wrought iron gates, which were put there in 1931 as a memorial to Pryce Taylor, a bellfounder, and member of the famous Taylor bellfounding family. The Vicar told me that the Taylor family had moved to Loughborough from Oxford with the specific purpose of recasting the existing church bells, and adding a further two, making a peal of 8. This was in 1840, and in 1889 they added two more bells. Wow! This was exciting stuff! And as if that wasn’t enough, the vicar showed me the most amazing memorial in the floor, made of bell metal! This consists of a circular border with words from Psalm 19 in, and the crest of the family in the middle. Pretty spectacular! There were also memorials to others of the Taylor family on the walls of the tower.
As the Vicar then went off about her business, I had a
little look around for myself, and was most taken with the Burton Chapel. This
is an area on the south side of the church, which is dedicated to Thomas
Burton, a benefactor to the town, who left money in his will to help create a
school. It is also a memorial to those former pupils of his school who lost
their lives during the First World War. What struck me was that most of the
area was made of wood, and was elaborately carved, and quite impressive.
Having spent quite some time looking around inside the church, I then took a walk around the outside of the building. Many of the headstones in the graveyard were made of Swithland slate: Some were taken from inside the church and were lying flat on the ground, whilst others were standing, erected in groups of closely arranged slates. Some were quite old, but there was nothing newer than 1857, as the new cemetery off the Leicester Road was built then, and the churchyard no longer used for the purpose of interment.
Detail of gravestone inscription |
There were also some quite elaborate tombs, although most were suffering from weathering and lack of maintenance. Where it was possible to read some of the inscriptions on the headstones, these were quite fascinating, and often gave a lot of information about the deceased, like their job and so on.
As I walked around the churchyard, my thirst to know more about the history of the area, led me to leave the church and make my way to the Old Rectory, where there is now a museum … a story for another day, perhaps!
Used to walk along the wall holding my mums hand as an infant and play cowboys and Indians around the gravestones in the 50s. Disgraceful behaviour when I look back
ReplyDeleteHello Castlegalloway! If you look carefully, you can see remains of the iron railings that used to run along the wall of the churchyard! Thank you for reading the blog, and taking the time and trouble to comment. Lynne
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