One clock tower ……..two angles …….. and a century and a bit

I promised myself that I wouldn’t take a picture of the Leicester Clock Tower, mainly because I was unconvinced I could do it justice, added to which heaps of people have already done so.

And that long list included an unknown commercial photographer who sold his image to Tuck and Son the international picture postcard manufacturers, who in turn added it to a series featuring Leicester landmarks in 1902.*

But on the day as we happened on the Tower by chance I snapped away, and since wish I had positioned myself in the exact same spot one hundred and twenty or so years after the original was snapped.

So, we are left with the tower from two different angles, but no matter, it’s the detail that me and the Tuck photographer captured which interests me.

According to the reverse of the 1902 card at the “modern centre of Leicester and the converging point of the main throughfares, is the memorial clock erected 1866 with statutes of four Leicester celebrities – Simon de Montfort the famous Earl of Leicester, William of Wyggeston who founded in 1513 the hospital which bears his name, Alderman Newton who built and endowed the Leicester Green Coat School and Sir Thomas White, Lord  Mayor Of London in 1553 who left money to Leicester and other towns to lend to poor people without interest”.*

Now I know the past is a different place where they did things differently but I won’t be alone in muttering “a clock tower adorned by four men, one of whom was really a French aristocrat and a very nasty antisemite” is hardly an image for a “modern Leicester even in 1866”.

And for those unclear about such things, Simon de Montfort expelled Jews from the city of Leicester; and cancelled debts owed to Jews through violent seizures of records.  A not unsurprising turn of events given that both his parents were equally ruthless antisemites.

To which some will cite his record of challenging Royal power and that heaps of others were equally antisemites.

All of which may be true but shouldn’t expunge his responsibility for what he did.

But hey ho, so far I can report that the other three who each made their wealth from textiles, served as mayors and did “good deeds”, so three out of four ain’t bad.

Although I do await a response from a more knowledgeable reader who knows where the bodies are buried.

And yes, there were women from Leicester of historical interest who predated 1866 of which I can think of Lady Jane Grey and Mary Linwood.

In the case of Lady Jane Grey it is less her ill fated run for the throne which lasted just a few days but more that she was according to one Victorian historian, a woman who had received an excellent humanist education, and had a reputation as one of the most learned young women of her day.**

While Mary Linwood “was an English needle woman who exhibited her worsted embroidery or crewel embroidery in Leicester and London, and was the school mistress of a private school later known as Mary Linwood Comprehensive School. In 1790, she received a medal from the Society of Arts”.***

So, that is it, no doubt on our next visit to the city I will take more pictures attempting to capture every angle of the tower.

Location; Leicester

Pictures; the Clock Tower, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and in 1902 from Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/history

*Clock Tower, from a set of six, published in 1902, issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/history

** Lady Jane Grey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Grey#CITEREFAscham1863

***Mary Linwood, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Linwood