Here are 10 things you didn’t know about Western Park – brought to you by Western Park Beer Festival, which was held over September 14 to 15 at St Anne’s Church Hall, Letchworth Road, Leicester. This year we raised £10,000 for local causes Action Homeless, The Bridge homeless charity and…
Leicestershire has many claims to fame. One; it has the world’s largest private collection of grand prix cars. Two; it has the world’s largest private collection of WW2 military vehicles. Both have been on show at Donington Park in north west Leicestershire for many, many years. Alas, time moves on.…
It was the first day of the German spring offensive. The date was March 21, 1918 and the Kaiser’s boys were launching Operation Michael, an audacious bid to puncture Allied lines and seize the Channel ports that lay beyond. If they achieved that aim, Britain would be bracing itself…
On the edge of Leicester’s newest bar you’ll find a pink elephant, a gnome and two Trappists from Belgium. This unusual quartet is among 150 UK and international beers at Head of Steam in Market Street. The elephant, AKA Delirium Red, is a silky smooth cherry brew, the gnome is…
It’s Western Park Beer Festival on September 15 and 16. It’ll be ace. This year we’ll be spreading the love for Loros, the local hospice, and saluting the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Drinks-wise it means 16 cask, six keg, four ciders and liver-shaped swimming pools of gin…
Greetings one and all. I’ve been so busy and under the weather lately that I’ve been neglecting all sorts of things. My camera is like a swollen heifer ready for milking, and the contents, fret ye not, will be poured into these pages when time allows. Yesterday, I wrote two…
They say time is a great healer but a poor beautician. Try telling that to St Peter’s in Belgrave. At almost 800 years old, this 13th century stunner can turn the head of even the most hardened aesthete. St Peter’s is what you may consider the Kylie of the Diocese…
The suggestion came at the end of a terrifyingly large Greek meal. “We should do this again, but somewhere new,” said Emma. “…there’s Madeira a Vista in Woodgate,” I respond. At that moment it was settled. Our group of four had probably eaten enough after the second of five courses…
In classical parlance I am ‘knackered’. In recent days there’s been a double funeral in France, a christening in South Wigston, an orchestral concert and film on the Somme at Leicester Cathedral, and an archaeological dig at Castle Hill Country Park. Which is why I am sat in my comfies,…
Edward Ludlam’s name didn’t do the decent thing and die with its owner in the summer of 1776. Instead it emerged rudely triumphant more than 30 years after Edward – or Ned – was laid to rest at St Mary’s Church in Anstey. If the name rings a bell, it’s…
Simon de Montfort drew his last exhausted breath on a bloody Worcestershire battlefield. Outnumbered four to one, the powerful sixth Earl of Leicester had refused pleas to escape to safety as the Royalists continued their charge forward. “Our bodies are theirs, our souls are God’s,” he boomed as a hit-squad…
You’ve said it, I’ve said it, we’ve all said it: “Meet you at the Clock Tower, yeah?” It’s a sentence which has been doing the rounds for almost 150 years. And yet, apart from its role as Leicester’s most well known landmark – and a hub for noisy religious irritants,…
The 4th Leicesters had sat in trenches overlooked by the Boche on the Messines Ridge and at Hill 60. And now at Vimy the enemy were at the top of the ridge again thanks to those responsible for our shortage in guns and munitions. If you had wished to…
The entrance to the walled garden at Braunstone Hall… Braunstone Hall, if you didn’t know, was the seat of the Winstanley family. The last of their line expired a decade or so ago. What’s left is their old home, its stables and a walled garden with the most elegant magnolias.…
Leicestershire, through agriculture and industry, has always had fairly deep pockets. Which means we have quite a number of lovely homes nestled within the gentle gold and green of our shire’s undulating countryside. Kilworth House (Hotel and theatre) is one such place. Former home of genuinely lovely Black Sabbath guitarist…
Braunstone: It’s an old place name meaning brown stone and brown stones y’all can often be mistaken for poo. This scatological parallel fits well with the the general thinking on Braunstone Estate, AKA Braunstone or Brauny. But Braunstone, a name which anoints the housing estate, town and village, isn’t shit.…
With the annual French/Belgian battlefield experience rapidly approaching and Download rock festival soon after, my thoughts are currently turning towards Donington, which combines military on one hand and music on the Devil-horned other. Cue an article from 2012… Kevin Wheatcroft next to a German half-track Some people…
