South Luffenham - Out and About

Out and About

Around the village are a number of old lanes little used now as they were of old. Cannonball Lane leads up to Morcott Spinney, so called because it is handed down that Cromwell’s men set up his cannons in this spinney from which to fire on North Luffenham.

Shocky Balke (baulk meaning a strip of grass between cultivated strips) leads southwards from the top of Pinfold Lane on to the common, where there was a pond. From this point, the track became Hangman’s Lane up to the gallows, sited there, it is said, to discourage the poor who would collect their wood and feed their geese on the common. The point is marked today by some fir trees.

The common originally stretched from Barrowden Lane to Fosters Bridge. The Earl of Ancaster exchanged his fields, on which the allotments and recreation field now stand, for the 400 acres (1.6 km2) of common on which he built Luffenham Heath golf course which opened in 1911. In January 1921, fire destroyed the workshop, showroom, and caddy’s hut at the Golf Cub, having been started by a spark from a stove in the workshop.

At Christmas 1793, a tribe of gypsies and their king were camping at the ‘Follies’ near Fosters Bridge. The gypsy king, named Edward Boswell, had a beautiful daughter, Rose, the Princess. She was just 17 and dying of consumption (tuberculosis). When the time came to move on, she was too ill to travel in a jolting caravan, and so the gypsies stayed a further two months on the cold bleak heath. When she died, the churchwardens of South Luffenham would not have her buried in the parish because she was not a Christian. The curate, the Rev. Bateman, finally overruled his parishioners and she was buried in the south aisle. A few weeks later, a marble slab arrived from London, and was placed over her remains, subscribed by the many gypsies who converged from afar to express sympathy with their king. The slab is still faintly discernible in the church:

“In memory of Rose Boswell, daughter of Edward and Sarah Boswell, who died February 19th, 1794, aged 17 years. What grief can vent this loss, or praises tell, how much, how good, how beautiful she fell.”

Of other road tracks, Clay Lane leads to the fields below the cemetery, and for those following the main road to Morcott, there used to be a footpath along the north side, but some years ago, the Council widened the road and absorbed the path. On the south side of this road stands a brick barn, this being built in Victorian times to serve as a dance hall for the two villages.

The village green was once surrounded with white posts and chains, with a seat in the middle. The fence was put up so that the children could play within without being disturbed by wandering cattle. The posts were removed in the 1930s.

In the 1920s, the Asphaltic Slag & Stone Co. Ltd set up a quarry and erected an office on the Stamford road, opposite the entrance to the recreation ground. Twenty men were employed but not from the village. The quarry business only lasted some four years as the stone was quarried out. Nothing survives as the site has been levelled.

In 1919, ironstone pits were opened on the road to Pilton; there were extensive sidings to service the pits, which closed in 1968.

Another quarry opened up at the north east of the parish and was served by a rail line connecting with the main line near Foster’s Bridge. It is recorded that in October 1920, ‘Arthur Waterfield was killed by fall of earth, while engaged at the Luffenham Lime Stone Works’.