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Memories of The Green-No1

This is reproduced from a newspaper article titled:

’Write up your Street. Tales from the Past. Wendy Miller visits The Green Mountsorrel’.

The date or the newspaper is not known.

Rosemary Mee at No. 8 had her own criticisms. “The parish council shouldn’t have stopped the children playing on The Green”, she said, “though I suppose it was for their own safety as they might have run on to the road”.

“I think that The Green itself is very nice, though I have seen Sorrel Court built and the shop on The Green change hands. The caravan site at the back of Gordon House has also appeared. Where the chemist shop now stands, there was once a Baptist hall and it was also an artist’ s studio. We’re handy for the recreation ground here. The bus shelters have been built on The Green and I think that they all fit in nicely while the new seats are lovely”.

“We heard the old quarry a lot when we first moved there, but now that has moved we can hardly hear it. The buses stop right outside my house for both Leicester and Loughborough, so that’s really handy”.

“You don’t often hear of people moving from The Green. It doesn’t change.”

“I think we are going to be very happy here”, was Mrs. Nancy Jones’s comment. “We moved into No. 6 about a month ago and originally we came from Coventry and liked the area so we moved here. I like the house and it’s very handy for all the local shops.”

Another relative newcomer is Mrs. Edna Black, who now lives at No. 30. Together with BBA_067 (10)her husband Campbell, they ran the Prince of Wales pub on the main road for 14 years.

“My husband bought the house, but it was in such a state that he wouldn’t let me see it until all the work had been completed. All the beams had to be uncovered and we’ve spent a lot of money doing it up,” she remarked.

“I think that this is the best part of Mountsorrel. Living on the main road was terrible because of the traffic.

NOT SO QUIET

“We came to The Green 11 years ago and it was really quiet, but since the road has been improved we can hear cars turning and motorbikes up the footpath at half-past-two in the morning,” complained George and Winifred Clarke at 36.

“We’ve actually seen a mini trying to get up the footpath now that the road to the Memorial has been made one-way. We have complained to the council but we get nowhere.”

The Clarkes used to live in a cottage on the site of Sorrel Court. “The Green is a lovely place,” Winifred said, “but we were sorry to leave the old place as we were there for 28 years”.BBA_067 (9)

“Dodsons the bakers was there. When they knocked it down they took away an old table and sent it to a museum in Leicester. It was believed to be about 200 years old”.

“I think that its right that the seats on The Green should be made of granite as this village is famed for it. I do wish that the children wouldn’t swing on the trees though, you forever have to keep an eye on them.”

NUMEROUS CRITICS

In common with several other people I spoke to, Mrs. Kate Mee at number 39 was very BBA_067 (8)critical of the decision not to let children play on The Green. “Even very small children and babies can’t go there. But I used to live at number 30 and number 73 and I’ve stayed on The Green all my life. My parents have always lived here. I wouldn’t like to leave it”.

“We do get some annoyance from people in the bus shelter, but that’s just one of those things. The noise starts after 10 at night though, that’s the trouble”.

“The main change here was when they knocked down about 20 cottages on the corner to build Sorrel Court.”

No one could call Mountsorrel one of the prettiest villages in Leicestershire, the A6 has seen to that. But The Green is one part of Mountsorrel that preserves the old character of the village.

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