On the way back up from Rye we stopped for a night at a hotel in Leicestershire near Ashby-de-la-Zouche as the name is so delightful we felt it was place we had to visit.

Between the hotel and Ashby, however, we passed through the town of Coalville, of which I confess before planning the trip I had never heard.

It’s well worth a visit though – not as far as shops are concerned but for some of the architecture and its War Memorial.

This takes the unusual form of a clock tower* which dominates the town centre. It was erected in 1925:-

Clock tower with mining memorial in foreground. (As its name suggests Coalville has a mining heritage):-

Close-up of tower from below:-

*The only other clock tower I can remember seeing which also acted as a War Memorial is in the Dutch (or Friesian) town of Surhuisterveen. That commemorates the Second World War though and so will post-date Coalville’s.

Bragg was, along with his son, Lawrence, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography, which helps determine the chemical structure of solid compounds.

I found this on a wall in Market Harborough, Leicestershire:-

Market Harborough in Leicestershire was our next port of call.

Two Art Deco(ish) shops both with their eyes poked out:-