Coleorton Heritage Group.
This group is now meeting on a regular basis. The group has been interviewing some of the long standing residents of Coleorton and recording their memories of village life. We have also been collecting interesting photographs, which we hope will build into an archive of the village and its heritage.
The group is now specifically collecting details about the recent history of “Rotton Row”, which is now known as Lower Moor. This will be the start of a heritage trail for the village; the group has agreed to break up the task into manageable bites. If anyone has some interesting details, or photographs, relating to this area of the village we would be very grateful to add them to the collection.
Progress on feasibility for Coleorton Wood.
In a recent conversation with LLC they informed me that they had sent out letters to interested parties, which included an outline of the terms under which these properties would be sold. They are expecting the interested parties to have responded by mid-January 2010, at which time the Council will be able to make a decision on who would purchase Coleorton Wood.”
New Lount Reserve. It appears that there is limited interest in this reserve. Rob Oldham and me have visited the reserve with Sue Timms (LCC Senior Ecologist) and have discussed potential ways in which the reserve might be managed in the future. Rob and I are attempting to contact the Park Rangers who currently manage these two sites to discuss with them what the current issues are with both sites.
Collecting and collating Census information for Coleorton.
I have now completed the 1861 census information and have started on 1871.
Working with Ashby Museum on John Crocker material and research into the history of Coleorton.
The material has now been categorised and the long process of cataloguing all of it will commence in the New Year. The resultant archive will be an extremely valuable record of Coleorton’s and The Beaumont’s history.
Discussing a display board for Coleorton in Ashby Museum.
This board has now been completed and will be installed in the museum immediately after Christmas. The parish council have offered to support the museum with a contribution of £300.00.
Between the dates 8th March and 5th April 2010 Ashby Museum intend to run a special exhibition on the topic of “Coleorton and The Beaumont’s”. It is now hoped that the museum can combine the opening of this exhibition and the new display board into a single publicity event, in which they will be inviting the parish council to take part.
War Memorial Project.
The pilot project run by LCC has now been completed and handed in. Based on the findings from the results of the work carried out in this pilot a full blown project will be started in 2010 to cover the whole of Leicestershire and Rutland. I am continuing to collect information on those individuals listed on the war memorial, so if anyone has information on any of the names on the war memorial I would be most interested to receive it.
LCC’s Historic Buildings Dept. are currently collecting quotations to repair the memorial, and they are hoping that a large percentage of the costs can be supported through their own budget. The Parish Council have also offered to contribute to the cost of repair, so it is hoped that this work will be carried out in the next few months, once a contractor has been organised.
The research for this project has highlighted the fact that there are at least four names missing from our war memorial. I have yet to take a look at the war memorial in St George’s Church to see if there are other Coleorton names that should also be on the war memorial. If anyone has any details on names that they think are missing from the war memorial I would be interested to hear from them. Once we know how many names really need to be added we can investigate exactly how this can be accomplished and what the costs involved are.
John Macdonald
December 2009
