Costa del Engineering

It's time for another holiday bulletin.  On Monday I took a proper excursion - a bus trip to market day at Bakewell.  Rather like the once-a-week buses of my own childhood, bringing villagers in to the markets, this afforded only a short while actually in the town, taking almost as long to get there and back again.  In the modern day, however, the distances covered are much greater.  The market was heaving, with stalls of every kind and countless stalls and shops offering a wide variety to eat and drink, including of course the 'original' Bakewell Tart - from at least two competing outlets!

I had time to visit the parish church, which has an immense south transept, but no matching one on the northern side.  I was taken by the use to which this has been put.  Completely partitioned off - probably noiseproof - it now forms a large schoolroom.

After a day's rest on Tuesday, leading up to a football match in the evening, yesterday found me back on the railway trail, with a visit to the Great Central Railway at Loughborough.  One of the outlying stations was 'set' to wartime, the era of 'make do and mend', 'digging for victory' (with vegetables replacing flowers beside the platform!) and so on.  The boards carried suitable public information posters, luggage was piled up in those big brown suitcases, and all the windows carried cross-tapes to minimise damage from flying glass in the event of a bombing raid - it was all very convincing!

The main station contained the refreshment room, and the inevitable book- and gift-shop, but also - even worse from the point of view of my holiday budget - there was an 'Emporium' of railway and steam nostalgia, to soak up yet more hard-earned pounds!


Today's expedition to find the Notts. section of the GCR was less fruitful, for not only is it less developed than the Loughborough prservation, it wasn't open to the public today.  Instead I was thrilled to find the Ruddington Framework Knitting Museum.  If you've read Margaret Dickinson's book 'Tangled Threads', you can imagine what this place is like.  For me, it brought her descriptions vividly to life.  A demonstration of one frame-knitter at one-sixth speed gave a good indication of how deafening a score of them must have been all running full-bore in a small room for fouteen or sixteen hours a day!  The courtyard, with its workshops, privies, and four knitters' cottages - and even the erstwhile Methodist Chapel across the road - was saved from demolition in the late sixties by a group of villagers who wanted to preserve something of their own heritage.  This yard, at its peak would have accommodated about 35-40 machines; in 1881 the whole village recorded around 400 people involved in the industry, at least half of whom were Framework Knitters, other associated occupations being given as seamers, hosiers, frame makers and so on.

And the holiday isn't over yet.  What else will I discover?