18 June 2024

On what promised to be a lovely summer evening, 17 of our members gathered at The Cross in Quorn to embark on a guided tour of this lovely village, led by well-known local historian Sue Templeman.

Sue described how, many years ago, the main road through the village was an important coaching route from London to the north.  That south-north route crossed the old Salt Way (from East Anglia to the Midlands) at Quorn Cross.  A number of nearby coaching inns reflected the importance of this route.  We were shown the White horse public house nearby and many other ex-coaching Inn sites as we walked around the village.

Today, Quorn (or Quorndon as it was originally called), comes across as a pleasant residential area with a very thriving café and pub culture but, years ago, the scene was very different.  In the Centre, close to today’s very informative Millennium Map, the presence of tanneries and a chandler resulted in unpleasant smells of mutton fat, urine, and dog ‘poo’ (courtesy of the hounds at the once famous Quorn Hunt).  All of the latter were being used in candle or leather production.  Add to these the activities of the night-soil man and the presence of open sewers and factory chimney smoke, and the image is not a rosy one.  Noise and pollution, from Wright’s Mill, which produced heavy duty elastic webbing for the military, added to a very noisy, smelly, polluted environment in the late nineteenth century.

Quorn was also famous for lacemaking (a local man even held a patent for lace evening gloves!) and a lace workshop was located on the spot which the Church Rooms now occupy.

In a more peaceful setting, surrounded by a very large cemetery, is Quorn Parish Church which has been central to life in Quorn since it was built, of pink local quarry granite, around 1150, (although it only became a parish church in 1868).  The church is the only one in Leicestershire which has a family chapel with its own exterior door, separate from the main entrance.  It is owned by the trustees of the Farnham family of Quorn.  John Farnham was a courtier of Queen Elizabeth the First, and, although Farnham’s descendants now live in Leicester, the family’s ashes still have a place in the chapel, which can be viewed, through a locked gate, from inside the Church.  The Farnhams were Quorn’s principal family and they held land from the 1200s until they left Quorn in 1993.

Outside the church we were shown many amazing gravestones, all standing (or lying) in their original positions.  The clarity of their messages, inscriptions, and pictorial engravings (see the attached photo of a ‘Belvoir Angel’ on one of the headstones) owed their longevity to the amazing slate from which they had been hewn.  Many were made of Swithland slate which was tough but very hard to split; others were of Welsh slate which was available when transportation became easier.  A visit to Quorn Churchyard is a must!!

Beyond the churchyard, we passed a number of small attractive cottages before arriving at Rawlins Academy.  Thomas Rawlins, an ex-Londoner, had founded a small school in Woodhouse Eaves in 1691.  This closed in 1864 and a new school opened in Quorn in 1897, funded by The Thomas Rawlins Trust.

Passing the Quorndon Fox, an important coaching inn in the 1700s, we walked along High Street where our Guide pointed out an important building, the premises of local chemist William Shuttlewood from 1905 to 1909.  Shuttlewood’s Chemists was short-lived but his superb, high-quality plate photographs of Quorn and its landmarks survive today and are widely used by historians.

Sue Templeman proved to be an excellent, knowledgeable guide who had obviously researched the history of Quorn over many years.  She is a valuable asset to the village.  Unfortunately, “our lovely summer evening” became a torrential downpour but our group had enjoyed their guided tour of Quorn.