The Line That Never Paid: Memories of the Bishop's Castle Railway

This treasure found on YouTube this evening combines footage of the remains of the Bishop's Castle Railway with the memories of people who remembered it in operation. It closed in 1935.

When was this film shot?

The 'Craven Arms and Stokesay' running in board at the end dates it to before 1974 and the first photo of the station without any buildings, as it appears here, dates from 1972 - see the Disused Stations site.

However, the start of the film shows the Six Bells in the town and it is a Wrekin Brewery pub. A story on the revival of the name says that brewery closed in the early 1960s.

I suspect that that early footage of the town is some years earlier than the footage of Craven Arms station at the end.

Whatever the truth of this, it is a wonderful find.

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The Offie and Clarendon Books, Leiceser

My exploration of the more pleasant shopping streets of south Leicester on Saturday took in an established off licence as well as a new pub.

The Offie in Clarendon Park Road stocks 500 beers from around the world, as well as ciders wines and spirits.

And, as you can see, it sits next door to a secondhand bookshop. There used to be one of those among the Stoneygate shops too, but it closed some years ago.

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The Real Ale Classroom, Leicester

I spent yesterday exploring to pleasant suburban shopping streets in the south of Leicester. They were the Stoneygate shops and Queens Road in Clarendon Park.

Though the former has probably seen better days, there is something pleasing about finding quality shops set in a red-brick terrace.

One reason for going to Stoneygate was to try The Real Ale Classroom.

A write up in the Leicester Mercury last year began:

Two teachers have taken inspiration from the classroom and mixed it with booze to create a new educational ale house in Stoneygate. 

Steven Tabbernor, 40, from Clarendon Park, and Ian Martin, 41, from Rutland, are hoping to bring real ale-ducation to the masses with a new micropub set to open next month. 

The Real Ale Classroom, in Allandale Road, was successfully granted a liquor licence last week and now the race is on fit out the unit in time for Christmas.

The compact bar will stock a selection of beers, ciders, stouts, ales and perrys from around Leicestershire - as well as bordering counties - with educating drinkers on the finer points of locally brewed booze as its main aim.

I tried a bitter brewed somewhere near Melton, but they had just tapped a cask of Citra from Oakham Ales (actually brewed in Peterborough) so I had a taste of that too.

The Real Ale Classroom is like a smaller version of Market Harborough's own Beerhouse, which makes it well worth a visit if you are in Leicester.

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Six of the Best 574

Eric Avebury, the Liberal Democrat peer and Liberal victor in the famous Orpington by-election, has died. Lib Dem Voice has an interview about his life that he gave to his son John and Seth Thevoz last year.

Emran Mian says we should not harangue Google for paying so little tax in Britain but globalise taxation.

"At Petworth we can walk through the realised dreams of the landlords: a glorious country estate that projects the power, prestige, even the seeming naturalness, of the aristocracy. The history of our more humble ancestors ... are smoothed over, buried, obscured." Mark Hailwood goes for a walk in the country.

Nicholas Whyte has been to the Royal College of Physicians' exhibition on John Dee - "scholar, courtier, magician".

"John Perry was heard crying out for assistance in the garden. When help arrived, he was found alone but in a state of some agitation. He claimed that, while working in the garden, he had been unaccountably set upon by two men dressed in white, who had assaulted him with their swords." Alwyn Turner examines what sounds very like a 17th-century UFO abduction.

Historic England presents nine breweries of architectural distinction.

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