Town in Leicestershire, England
Loughborough
The great bell that booms out from St Paul's Cathedral was cast in a Leicestershire market town better known for producing sprinters, locomotives and the first package tour.
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Key information
- County
- Leicestershire
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 60,000 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Bell founding, Loughborough University sport, the Carillon tower, the Great Central Railway
- Famous people
- John Taylor, Thomas Cook, Sebastian Coe, Paula Radcliffe
- Football clubs
- Loughborough Students FC
About Loughborough
The town that makes the bells
Loughborough is home to John Taylor & Co, the bell foundry that has been casting in the town since 1839 and is widely regarded as the largest working bell foundry in the world. Its best-known product is Great Paul, cast in 1881 for St Paul's Cathedral in London. It weighs nearly 17 tonnes. The foundry's work hangs in towers and cathedrals around the globe. Taylor's also has a museum on site, so you can learn how a bell goes from molten bronze to a perfectly tuned note. The town's own war memorial is a showcase for the craft.
A war memorial that plays tunes
In Queens Park stands the Loughborough Carillon, a tower of about 46 metres opened in 1923 as a memorial to the town's fallen of the First World War. It holds 47 bells, played from a keyboard of wooden levers, and its tunes carry across the park. It is a Grade II listed war memorial, and the bells were cast, naturally, by Taylor's down the road. A small museum sits at the base of the tower.
Why the lace left for Devon
In 1816 Luddites broke into John Heathcoat's lace factory in Loughborough and smashed 55 of his lace-making machines. Heathcoat took the hint, packed up and moved the whole business to Tiverton in Devon, where it thrived. It was a rare case of a Leicestershire industry being exported wholesale. Loughborough carried on, though, turning to hosiery, engineering and heavy industry.
Locomotives, trams and a steam railway
The Brush company at Falcon Works made its name building trams and locomotives, and for generations engineering was the backbone of the local economy. That heritage lives on at Loughborough Central station, where the Great Central Railway runs steam and diesel trains south towards Leicester. It is the only heritage railway in Britain with a double-track main line, which means you can watch trains passing each other in full flow.
The sporting capital of the East Midlands
Loughborough University began in 1909 as a technical institute and is now one of the world's best-known sporting universities, with its own national training centre. Sebastian Coe studied here, and Paula Radcliffe graduated in modern languages in 1996. Generations of Olympians and Paralympians have trained on its tracks and in its pools. The town has plenty of its own teams too. Loughborough Students play football, have a famous rugby club, and Loughborough Lightning are a leading name in netball.
A fair, a first and a temperance outing
Loughborough Fair has been a charter fair since the 13th century, and every November the funfair rolls back into the town centre, turning the streets into a riot of rides and lights. The town also features in travel history. In 1841 Thomas Cook organised a train trip from Leicester to a temperance meeting in Loughborough, an excursion that is often credited as the start of his travel empire. The River Soar and the canal wind through the town, and Charnwood Forest, with its ancient rocks, sits just to the west.