This article was written by Neroli Whittle from a series of first-hand Mountsorrel interviews and published in the Leicester Evening Mail on 27th June 1935
Donated by Margaret Manning
ROMANTIC PAST OF THE GRANITE CENTRE
THE tenth in the series describing Leicestershire villages advances the claims of Mountsorrel to be considered the county’s ideal village. Mountsorrel is famous for its granite, and its sturdy quarry-workers have a national reputation for craftsmanship. The village has interesting links with the past, and there is a curious fable to account for the origin of the name Mountsorrel.
It has not fallen to the lot of many villages, as it has to Mountsorrel to be famed both in fable and history.
For those souls who do not know the fable, here it is briefly recounted. A giant named Bell, calling for his sorrel mare, mounted it at Mountsorrel, and in one leap, or Wanlip, arrived at Birstall, where he burst his saddle and girth, and came to his grave at Belgrave.
The chief singer and composer of Quorn, he who has sung in the choirs of Westminster and St. Paul’s, has made a song about this village tale, a most beguiling ballad.
Mountsorrel enriched the pageant of history with an eleventh century castle or baronial stronghold on Castle Hill, where our War Memorial points to Heaven. Though every vestige of the material castle has completely disappeared such is the strength of village tradition that, in our imagination, its granite walls and battlemented towers still command the situation.
Through our chief thoroughfare, knights and men-at-arms have glittered and jingled in all the brave array of battles long ago.
At a substantial farm-house in our main street, a coach-house in coaching days Oliver Cromwell is said to have spent a night.
Old houses, mellowed by time, brimful of historic interest, real antiquity, and architectural quaintness, are a feature of Mountsorrel.
St. Peter’s Vicarage for instance, a beautiful Adam house, has an oak staircase as lovely as a poetic flight of imagination.
From one ancient dwelling, beautiful with dark oak beams and ingle nooks, and sudden cupboards, an eighteenth century village woman departed for foreign parts, and later wrote a book describing her missionary adventures in the East,
“My people do not talk much,’ says the vicar, “but they work tremendously hard at anything they undertake.”
Our oldest church is the proud possessor of what we believe to be the oldest chalice in use in England. This church associates itself with the notable Bishop Beveridge, who had the Prayer Book translated into Welsh, and with an irreverent monarch, who is said to have stabled his horse here. In one of our chapels Dr Isaac Watts preached. Within another is to be seen oak furniture which is older than Nonconformity itself
Only One Oak Tree
Mountsorrel might appear to have two of everything, however, strange as it may seem, we have just one solitary oak tree! This is our Jubilee Tree.
Planted in the churchyard by a past vicar of St. Peter’s on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897, it has mounted guard over ten crosses taken from the graves of some of the boys we lost in France.
The Jubilee Tree is in turn overlooked by one of the prettiest parts of the village. This lovely corner of old Mountsorrel, known as “Post Office Yard,” is a picturesque spot, unspoiled by time.
It is a fit subject for artists. Here stand quaintly shaped and coloured old cottages, abutting on one another, peeping over one another’s shoulders.
Nearby stands an old whitewashed needle factory where steel needles for our stocking-frames were made by the man who surely was the most kindly soul who ever breathed, so good was he to the poor of the village.
Another object of great regard is our butter market. Charming though it is, we cannot but think of it as a substitute for our beautiful “Eleanor Cross,” which for safe keeping was removed to grace a lovely park in Swithland!
Standing as it did by the roadside, our lantern cross would no doubt have been shaken to its destruction by the heavy traffic which daily thunders through Mountsorrel between Manchester and London.
From our long curving main street we lift up our eyes to the hills once thought everlasting, but which proved, in the course of time, to be a rich mine of granite.
Quantities of Mountsorrel granite have been distributed all over England. There are no granite quarries in the United Kingdom where Mountsorrel men have not been, at some time or other.
The oldest sett-maker in the country is a Mountsorrel villager. He could make setts when he was ten, and being a quick worker, has made more setts than any man in England.
His brother began quarrying at the age of seven, and the two brothers have together had an unbroken connection with the quarry company for 90 years.
Our villager can remember how, fifty years ago, quarrymen took their wives and families to America. He says “the band played the first lot out of the village.’ They went to find work in quarries overseas. Some returned for the winter, when quarries closed down; others made permanent homes in the new country:
He was a quarrying for 57 years and describes it as healthy, open-air work.
It was hard work but he played hard too, being a professional cricketer for five or six years. Before so much off the hill was quarried away, there was room on it for several cricket pitches. There used to be three days’ matches during Wakes Week. How would the men work in summer time in order to earn extra money for the Fair! Some would scarcely go to bed, working from three in the morning, till ten at night
Another ex-quarryman helped to build the Statue of Liberty, New York.
There’s a jovial quarryman of to-day who is a talented mimic, and at local concerts has delighted his audience by barking, roaring, mooing, and clucking at them in imitation of farmyard and jungle inhabitants.
At one corner of Mount sorrel Green, beside our 300 year-old bakery, lives one who is remembered as a very fine singer in her earlier years.
She loves to think of the days when she went about singing, and recalls the chapel “love-feasts” of bread and water.
She remembers all the fun of the Fair, the wax-work shows, and “the pretty lady at the gingerbread stall”
The children brought their own maypole to the green, and the Nine Days Fair used to be comically proclaimed by one of the village wags who dressed himself and rode in a cart drawn by a donkey.
The Old Coach Days
Another villager was Crier here for two years. His father did over 3,000 cries in over 50 years. Folks used to keep pigs, and he would cry the sales. They were the “Pork cries.”
Our Crier can remember the coaches stopping at Rothley House, the stocks on the Green, and the erection of the telegraph wires. In those days there was scarcely a house without a stocking frame.
We count as one of our blessings a Boys’ Club, run by our young schoolmaster. This has already been imitated by other villages, making us feel that we are pioneers
At first blush, our village with its long mean street may appear monotonous, and dreary even to the point of ugliness. Let us hasten to assure you that the dreariness and ugliness of Mountsorrel are mere optical illusions.
Approach our village by the rivers entrance. Walk along the tow-path from Cossington and the astonishing secret beauty of Mountsorrel is revealed in the sun.