Summoned by Bells

Haven't a clue

'Explore the East Midlands,' implores a nifty East Midlands Railway poster, with its pleasing illustration of local lines and places of interest. Sheffield at the top of the plan, but no room for anything beyond East Midlands Parkway at the bottom. Curious. Sod that.

Loughborough. Twenty minutes down the (rail)road. Largely a mystery to me. Perfect.

A hop, a skip and a jump later and I'm disembarking at Loughborough railway station. I'm a man without a plan. A drifter. An urban dowser. An outlier.

A quick scan of a station notice board map of the local area later and I'm strolling towards the town centre, my attempts to find a suitable route away from the main road thwarted at every turn.

Nottingham Road leads me to a small bridge over the Leicester arm of the Grand Union Canal, which I make a mental note of to return to later. It's incredible to think that, if I were to follow this waterway south from Loughborough to its junction with the Grand Union mainline and then onward from there, it would eventually take me to the Thames at Brentford.

Decidedly less bucolic than the canal is the remainder of the approach to the town centre, but, just as my spirits are starting to dip slightly, a vision of beauty appears - the imposing edifice of what was originally a 1600-seater Odeon cinema, opened in 1936, and is now, after a stint as Beacon Bingo, The Junction Church.

The Junction Church was founded in 2012, when Roy and Lydia Todd 'had a heart to pioneer a fresh church community where people who don’t normally attend church could encounter God’s good news.' Phew! I was beginning to worry that there weren't enough avenues to explore in that respect. Anyway, Roy, Lydia and their associates have given renewed life to a building full of memories that deserves to survive, so good luck to them.

I stand at the road junction, trying to imagine myself sitting inside that huge auditorium surrounded by a packed house in the cinema's heyday, but the leap of imagination required is beyond me, so I turn away from the impressive, tiled façade to continue my wandering.

Loughborough's commercial centre is obviously a little down on its luck these days, but no matter. After a brief stop at an outdoor market stall for a top notch slab of millionaire's shortbread, I venture onwards and discover the rather lovely Queen's Park. Originally laid out in Victorian times, the icing on its municipal cake came in 1923, with the completion of an impressive 152 feet-tall Carillon tower, built as a war memorial.

On this extremely warm Sunday afternoon, the park is full of people enjoying the walks, the aviary, a free open-air cinema show laid on by Charnwood Borough Council, and Charnwood Museum.

I venture inside the latter for a quick tour of its pleasingly provincial contents before exiting the park and heading for the nearby parish church, All Saints with Holy Trinity, which I'd clocked earlier as a promising spot in which to eat my packed lunch.

All Saints attracted national attention during the Christmas of 2022 when one of its services featured a version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen that had been altered to be more inclusive, including, amongst other amendments, the following verse:

God rest you also, women,

who by men have been erased,
Through history ignored and scorned,
defiled and displaced;
Remember that your stories too,
are held within God's grace

As I pass the nearby Three Nuns pub, I glance through a window and am tortured by the sight of delicious-looking roast dinners - somewhat more appealing than the cheese sandwiches and Snaktastic Ready Salted Crisps in my backpack.

The churchyard has a bit of an unsavoury feel to it. Dodgy-looking individuals come and go, and I'm sure I witness some sort of drug deal. There only seems to be one bench, and that's occupied by one of the aforementioned dodgy characters. I circumnavigate the church, feeling a little uncomfortable at having to cross an area in which once-sacred memorial stones have been repurposed as paving slabs, but I can see no other seating options, so I perch on the perimeter wall and begin to eat my sandwiches, gradually becoming aware of an unpleasant smell that, it transpires, is coming from the rotting corpse of a crow about a metre to my right.

Lunch duly despatched, and with the rotting crow smell lingering in my nostrils, I venture onwards. I'm keen to retrace my steps to discover where the canal leads to and to try to find the premises of the famous Taylor's Bell Foundry, which is still in business today.

In Queen's Park, I'd come across the huge casting case of 'Great Paul' - at 16.75 tons, the UK's largest working bell* - which can still be heard at St Paul's Cathedral, and which was cast at Taylor's. More importantly for an ageing metal-head such as yours truly, I had learned prior to today's outing that AC/DC's 'Hell's Bell' had also been cast there - the same bell that can be heard on the Back in Black album. The original sound recording for the album was made at the foundry as well (though subsequently tinkered with).

There's a merciful absence of rolling thunder and pouring rain as a short walk takes me back to the canal bridge I'd crossed earlier, and I descend the steps to the towpath. The northward stretch doesn't seem to hold much promise, so I turn to the south, passing several anglers before reaching another old bridge that I hope will lead me to the general vicinity of the bell foundry.

After crossing the bridge and leaving the canal behind, the area in which I find myself is predominantly residential, but with distinct echoes of former glories. I pass the former Herbert Morris crane factory (the 'Empress Works,' which employed around 2,000 people at its height) and the Great Central Railway locomotive shed before finally finding what I'm looking for.

It's a surprisingly modest site for a company of such renown, but it's the world's largest working bell foundry and the last major bell foundry in Britain. It was founded in 1784 by John Taylor, and the many bells that it has produced include Nottingham's 10.5-ton Council House bell, Little John, whose deep tone can be heard up to seven miles away.

Nothing much is happening here on this sunny Sunday afternoon, so I wander around the perimeter of the site unmolested, marvelling at the unassuming nature of this factory that has been the birthplace of more than 25,000 bells made for places in Britain and over 100 other countries.

Finally, it's time for me to leave this curious corner of the East Midlands. There's always plenty of interest in our towns and cities if you dig deep enough, and I feel as if I've only scratched the surface.

I walk back to the second canal bridge and take a path that leads me past a wooded area, over the railway and between fields before it reaches the section of Nottingham Road to the east of the railway station. As I walk along this busy road, the footpath suddenly disappears at a point where the road goes over a bridge that crosses a brook. Taking my life in my hands, I scurry across the bridge as traffic hurtles around a blind bend towards me, and breathe a sigh of relief as I pass beneath the new Great Central road bridge (part of a project to link the two heritage railways to the north and south together to form one continuous 18-mile line) and reacquaint myself with the pavement.

Onward to the station and the vagaries of our beloved local train company.

Three clicks of the ruby walking shoes.

*In the UK, Great Paul is outweighed only by the Olympic Bell, which, at over 22 tons, was commissioned for the 2012 London Olympics and is now displayed on a metal frame outside London Stadium in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park