Leicester Chronicler - Leicestershire in 1948

"I have been invited to talk to you for a few minutes this evening about Leicestershire and what it means to me, and I do so with all the greater willingness because I have the honour of being a Leicestershire man, with roots struck deep in the past of the village of Anstey, three miles north of Leicester, on the way to Charnwood Forest.

It was early in the 1300's that the name of Robert Martin appeared there in a lay subsidy roll, along with Hugh the Miller, William le Tailleur and Ralph on the Grene; and at intervals through the intervening centuries the surname recurs in one connection or another. If, therefore, my spectacles should seem to you to be unduly tinged with rose colour, I can fairly plead long association in excuse for my partiality.

Leicestershire is in truth a typically English County, a representative sample of the England to which we all belong. It lies as near as may be in the middle of the country. The backbone of England runs through it, for it pays tribute of river water to Trent, Welland and Severn. From Bardon Hill, on the western flank of Charnwood Forest, with its modest 912 feet of height, you may see on a clear day the Black Mountains in South Wales, the Wrekin in Shropshire, Lincoln Cathedral and the Wash. There is, in fact, good ground for the claim that from the top of Bardon you can see into a quarter of the Counties of England.

The County does, as a matter of fact, possess a good deal more ground that might almost be called mountain than is often supposed to be the case. On its eastern side, Whatborough Hill, Robin-a -Tiptoe and Billesdon Coplow are all round 700 to 800 feet and the whole of that area affords a succession of delightful landscapes, with wooded hills and valleys, that "Top Country.," as it is called, over which the Quorn, the Cottesmore and the Fernie still hunt the fox, albeit in the modest style which alone is possible under the conditions of to-day.

It is, however, in the western half of the County, on the other side of the valley of the Soar, that a series of geological events of a very pronounced kind in the remote past has left us our most striking scenery. The Forest or Chace of Charnwood, otherwise Charley Forest or Chace, as the legal documents of the late 18th century called it, is an area some six miles by four, of steep-sided hills and valleys, many of the summits bare and rocky, clothed in the main with rough grass or bracken, though in a few places the heather still shows its purple bloom. With the exception of two or three flat valley bottoms the Forest was almost uncultivated until the increase of population in the latter half of the 18th century, and the consequent demand for more food, led to its survey and enclosure in about 1820, a piece of work with which my great-grandfather had a great deal to do. In the early Middle Ages the whole area was covered with woods and full of deer and game. The good monks of Ulverscroft and Charley Priories had no lack of savoury meat to supplement the fish from their stew-ponds.

I was lucky enough, a good-many years ago now, to have a first hand account of what the Forest was like before its enclosure from the last survivor of that time, the late Mr. John Whitcroft of Ulverscroft. He was born, lived his life and died in the same little house near Copt Oak church and was for many years a well known character in the neighbourhood. He told me a lot of interesting things about the days of his youth, when he used to drive sheep from off the Forest to Lichfield market, slipping them into some grass field after dusk for a night's feed and rest, and getting under way again before anyone was about in the morning, having slept himself in the ditch under an old sack.

One sentence of his has always stuck in my memory, from its vivid description of the Forest as seen before the enclosure. He talked, I should perhaps explain, in the old Leicestershire speech, now so seldom heard. "Ah remember," he said, "when Ah were a lad, as the Forest 'ad used to be that 'igh in goss and feen as Ah've often enoof bin down a'moost as far as Loofborough lookin' for me father's cows, and they was cluss at 'oom all the whoile".

He was a great hand at sheep-washing, and would stand up to his middle in the water all day, provided he was kept going with a periodical pint of ale. At the end of the day he would be topped up with a final quart and hoisted into his donkey cart. The donkey was then given the word and found her own way home, while John slept off the fatigues of the day. The County Council has recorded his name on the signposts at the two ends of the road on which he lived-known after him as Whitcroft's Lane.

The oak woods planted on many of the hill sides at the time of the enclosure are, alas, in many cases now disappearing through the country's urgent need for timber. Enough, however, still remains to afford a scene of rare beauty in the spring, when the first green is on the trees; and later on when the oaks and the bracken have taken on the golden brown of autumn.

Everybody who knows the Forest must have been glad to see that in the second report of the National Parks Committee, which came out a few months ago, it was one of the areas recommended for special treatment, in order that its peculiar charm may not be spoilt.

Leicestershire is by no means one of the larger Counties, but it has nevertheless had its place in the history of this country from very early times. Leicester was a Roman town of some importance, at the point where the great Fosse Road crossed the river Soar.

In Saxon times it was the seat, of a missionary bishopric in the kingdom of Mercia, removed afterwards to Dorchester, on the Thames at the time of the Danish invasions. Some 21 years ago the Diocese was revived, and the church of St. Martin's became the Cathedral.

In Norman times a meeting of barons was held in Leicester, which was the first open stage in the process which led up to the signing of Magna Carta. The parliament of Simon de Montfort in 1265 was the first in which burgesses from the cities and towns were included. It was at Bosworth Field in the south-western part of the County that the death of Richard the Third brought the Middle Ages, in the main, to a close. Cardinal Wolsey's eventful life reached its end at Leicester Abbey.

Lady Jane Grey, whose ambitious relations manoeuvred her on to the throne of England for nine days, and thence to the scaffold, was born and lived for most of her short life at Bradgate Park, a few miles north of Leicester, on the southern edge of Charnwood Forest Some twenty years ago, these 830 acres of deer park, lying round the ruins of the 16th century house of the Greys, were bought by the late Mr. Charles Bennion, helped in every way by the present representative of the Grey family, and given in trust to the City and County.

The park is a most lovely place, with rocky hills, pollarded oaks many hundreds of years old, a trout stream running through a narrow valley, red and fallow deer, foxes, badgers and birds, with a dry stone wall six miles long round it. Since then three or four, other generous people have followed Mr. Bennion's example, with the result that we now have nearly 1,200 acres safe and sound for all time.

The County had its share in the Parliament Wars. Charles the 'First called at one of the older houses, on his way north after his defeat at Naseby, and left there his embroidered saddle and silver mounted pistols. In the hall of another old house there are still to be seen two lay figures, one of them wearing the steel helmet and complete body armour of Hazlerigg's Lobsters," the regiment raised and commanded by the ancestor of our Lord Lieutenant.

I have always remembered with great pleasure the link which we have at Anstey with the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. When my grandfather was a boy, there was an old man there who, when a lad, had been captured by a foraging party of the Highland army from Derby. His experiences with the Scots had left no very pleasant impression on his memory. In his old age he became slightly dotty and used to wander about the fields. His grandchildren, when sent out to look for him, had an unfailing specific. They would get to windward of him and make a noise like the bagpipes. As soon as he heard this, the old man always legged it for home as fast as his feet would carry him.

Leicestershire has been prominent both in farming and manufacturing for a long time past. Our most famous farmer was perhaps Robert Bakewell of Dishley, near Loughborough, who, at the end of the 1700's, first developed the scientific breeding of stock. He changed the Leicestershire sheep from a raw boned, goat-like object to the rounded, well covered creatures of the present day. In his kitchen notable people from all over Europe used to assemble to talk over what they had seen on his farm, until, punctually as the clock struck ten, he knocked out his last pipe and went off to bed.

For many centuries Leicester has been one of the main centres of the wool trade, and to-day Leicestershire hosiery and shoes, and the wonderful machines which are made in the City and County to knit the one and to sew the other, are known all over the world. The County also has a coalfield, justly famed for its freedom from disputes and for its constant attainment of its target tonnages.

For 100 years and more the Leicestershire group of granite quarries has been famous among those who make and repair roads.

For many years I knew intimately this latter side of the County's life. I can still see in my mind's eye the blocker in Mountsorrel Quarry, with the arms and shoulders of a prize-fighter, lift his great 28 lb. hammer to deliver his attack on a stone weighing perhaps a couple of tons: he knew just where to hit it, and in what direction, so as to fit in with the grain of the stone, and it would split up before your eyes into the raw material of kerb-stones and paving-setts. In his little hut, the settmaker, whose skill descended from father to son, and sometimes to grandson, would convert the rough block into the finished paving-stone, hitting it here and there with his dressing hammer until, as if by magic, the edges straightened out and the ends became square, almost as if it had been sawn.

Among my most cherished possessions is a photograph taken in the quarry thirty years ago of all the men still at work who had been at Mountsorrel for forty years or more. There were 97 of them, and their years of service amounted to 4,522. The oldest of them had 75 years of work to his credit, and was still sweeping the yard and greasing wagons; he would have been very indignant if you had told him that he was too old to go on any longer. My cousin and I sat in the middle of them, with memories of our great-grandfather, who took the first lease more than 100 years ago.

Having been a County Councillor and Chairman of its Education Committee for a good many years, I cannot but say a word or two about that aspect of the Council's 'work. For 43 years, up to his retirement some 18 months ago, the County has been blessed with the guidance of the most distinguished of England's Directors of Education, Sir William Brockington. It was he who, more than 30 years ago brought into being for the first time in a country district the kind of school now known as Secondary Modern. Under his inspiration the Education Committee has built on the old foundation schools of the County a network of Grammar Schools equalled in any area of its size, besides three Technical Colleges to foster the industries of Coalville, Hinckley and Melton Mowbray. In Loughborough Engineering College, which has been the joint work of Sir William and Dr. Herbert Schofield, its Principal since 1914, the County has a possession which, though as Chairman of its Governors I perhaps ought not to say so, may justly be called unique. It has 1400 whole-time students, drawn from forty different nationalities: a greater proportion of them are in hostels than in any University except Oxford and Cambridge: its Teacher Training Department for men is the largest in the country. In its gymnasiums and swimming baths and on its J 00 acres of playing fields, more than 10,000 officers and men of the RAF, disabled in war service, were restored to health and strength by the RAF Rehabilitation Centre.

In the two great struggles for our national existence Leicestershire men have done their part. Its record in the last war has won for our County Regiment the distinguished title of the Royal Leicestershire. Our Yeomen and our Territorials took their full share in France and Flanders in the first war, and in the much wider and more diverse sphere of the second.

This then is the County, and these are the people, among whom my life has been spent, in peace and in war. If I have succeeded in any degree in conveying to you something of their character and of their atmosphere, you may perhaps understand why I am able to say of Leicestershire, in the words of the Latin poet, "Ille terra rum mihi paeter omnes Angulus ridet," "It is that corner of the world above all others which has a smile for me." Or, in the words of an older poet in the Psalms of David, "The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground, yea I have a goodly heritage."