The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Loughborough, Leicestershire*

Loughborough, Leicestershire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• The little street behind Mcdonalds that leads to the church is pretty and has an olde-worlde feel to it, but the best building in Loughborough has to be the HSBC on the Market Place. It looks like a huge Bavarian castle, and seems almost out of place, like it's been transported from Nottingham or Leicester and dropped in between much smaller shops. I love the pretty, Victorian train station and the adjacent Brush factory with its huge edwardian turbine hall, lit up in neon at night, and I'm a big fan of Hazlerigg-Rutland hall on the University campus and the nearby 'Bastard's gate'. Oh and Towers hall, the bizarre 1960s eggbox-style concrete tower whose 20-storey mass dominates the town and welcomes you to Loughborough from all directions.
• erm....tower in queens...could do without the bell ringing though.
• Curzon
• subsub
• Coffin shaped halls
• safeway, at night, the shop aint that great but theres a cool little group who hang round there at night.
• The Lloyds TSB bank. If you look at it properly, its actually really nice.
• Charnwood musium in Queens Park
• Where KC's Computers used to be on Pinfold Gate. It's a shithole, but it's also a piece of history. *sniff*
• The Swan of course!
• woolworths has got a seventies squareness about it
• church
• Butler Court Block B
• Hazelrigg at the uni
• Well my house!! And the cariilion, and the public library and Burleigh and Garendon and Holywell etc.
• THE BRICK ONE
• my favourite building is the libary
• hazlerigg-rutland hall, a fantastic tudor thing which, surprisingly, they still let students live in.
• The showboat with Secret Squirrel
• Woolworths. it is a work of art, wonderful hanging baskets outside and lots of sexy staff inside.
• The Warehouse.
• The Carillon, although the bell ringers should choose something other than Westlife to play...
• The Carillon
• HSBC bank, the optimum of every drunks night. we all love the feeling of cashing a cheque the next day when we know full well the cashier quite possibly has viewed the cctv film from the night before to a synchronised floor show of 8 of us after opening the inside of the bank up with our cards. why we havent been barred i dont know.
• Butler Court.
• The library font of wisdom that it be.
• The Midland Bank in Market Place is nice if you like OTT Gothic kind of stuff. The Carillon in the park is a nice building because it's a bit different. The train station's pretty and in near-original state, if a bit of a dump these days General Hospital is a welcome change fromthe normal concrete tower blocks. Otherwise much of Loughborough seems to be Art Deco- type buildings (Curzon Cinemas, bingo hall, newspaper offices) which all look the same after a while.
• New Sports Hall on the University Campus is quite impressive as a sports facility.
• The best building is blockbuster video, its well smart. It has a milenium feel to it!
• Field House(mixed boarding house)

Demolish It Now Building

• There are some pretty awful architectural crimes but i think the building that houses Argos and the Pulse nightclub is pretty awful. Then there's the similar building with Riley's pool hall a bit further along. the Carrilon Court shopping centre is hideous and needs to be destroyed but fortunately most of it is hidden behind older buildings.
• ALL OF THEM ON SHARPLEY AND HERMITAGE RD/S
• the high school....
• Shelthorpe, more than one building i know, but yeah.
• PULSE!
• the high school
• the council offices and where ever the traffick wardens reside....
• the venus temple, just to piss of the farmer. whenever u try to cross his field to get to it, he fires his fucking gun! wanker, if it was demolished, that would really piss him off, and it would be funny, moohahahaha!
• The Rushes. God, what a white elephant that is. What is that monstrosity in the centre all about?
• Get rid of 'The Rushes' shopping centre. What a load of crap. No good shops and its a complete eyesaw!
• The new Pri Mark in the Market place
• Pulse and all Mcdonalds.
• loughborough university
• The Rushes - joke of a multi miullion pound "shopping Centre" like some twisted Butlins superstore for Gits.
• What has happened to Loughborough recently? I am at uni elsewhere at the mo, and every time I come back there is some kind of collosal space age stylee building that has arrived at the uni, and another load of samey four storey apartments in the town centre. Please dont ruin my town....it was perfectly alright before!
• The old Lada garage, before the kids finish the job!
• the university n get rid of them get ur cok out pint over the head rugby students, but the gimpy engineers arent much better, is the uni still full of hockey playin shot puttin dykes like it was in my day.
• garendon high school
• the council building, we need more space for the skate park
• The Charles Block of Loughborough High School - "the building that God forgot"
• The Maltings, EVERY charity shop
• Any N J Humphries buildings. These people are ruthless thieves!!
• Towers at the uni
• LIBRARY
• the rest of the campus. it looks fucking awful.
• the council
• Loughborough Grammar School and all of the ponces in it.
• The loughborough student union building - it sucks so much!
• griffin
• BURLEIGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE,because I go there, and it sucks cock
• The Motor Repair Centre at opposite Sainsburys. What an eye-sore!
• Uni Halls of residence
• Sainsburys
• Garendon... the number or arseholes they employed as teachers when I was there was untrue... although there was the odd one who should be elevated to cult like status immediately. Burleigh would probably come a close second.
• The Griffin Inn. Do us all a favour and turn it into a car park.
• The English Department.
• Towers hall, University campus (The architect needs to be shot at dawn) Anything built after about 1950!
• Towers Hall is an eyesore on the University campus and it's demolition would make good footage for one of those Channel 5 type programmes "When building's collapse".
• The bloody CO-Op. And quickly, if you please

The Best Things

• I spent a few years here with my ex-GF and though i now live in a big city, i miss the small-town appeal of 'L-boro'. Nothing beats lazing in Queens Park in the summer, feeding the ducks as the carillon chimes out another poor rendition of some long-forgotten 60s chart-topper, jostling through pensioners on a Saturday for cheap fruit n' veg on the market, or risking life and on the rickety rides at the November Fair (which is far friendlier and safer than the Goose Fair). Towers Hall rules and always will, the view of Ratcliffe power station and East Midlands Airport from the upper floors takes some beating. And the Christmas lights put many big cities to shame, on market day throughout November and December you could just as easily be in Munich or Lincoln.
• BEEFEST can't believe it's not been mentioned. annual beer day at three nuns. did i miss it somewhere on ths site? tickets thru left legged, one whole day and night beginning of july usually. bouncy castle, bearded men, vodka jelly, bearded ladies :S live bands...some suck, some r really good, 2004 played host to splitters. gotta lv them. skate ramps in the car park...skate offs, broken bones. sigh...twas all good fun til someone lost a finger....back this year!! GO
• Big enough to find stuff to do, but small enough to know pretty much everybody
• Nottingham and Leicester are easy to get to, taxi drivers are friendly and reasonable, ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
• The high school!
• easy girls
• the ability to gain quite good drugs most places
• The countryside on your doorstep. Bradgate Park, Beacon Hill and the woods and general green things. Also that everyone knows each other, but could be good or bad! It is nice being able to go out at night and bump into lots of people you know and recognise most faces.
• The amount of culture
• Wu-tan at Limehurst school.
• Nice town centre, good for shopping if you can't be arsed to go to Leicester or Nottingham
• The women at Uni here are quite good looking, despite being totally up themselves. But then if you knew you could act like a cow and still have 200 blokes chasing you with their tongues hanging out, you could afford to be too...
• it makes u get out of there as soon as possible (no disrespect to u sad bastards that r still there)
• fit lads
• Loughborough is small but packed so you don't have to go fare to get anywhere.
• Just Music, Geoff's Toys!, My House, the ROAD OUT!
• Tuesday nights @ Pulse
• The students, we arn't all stuck up or scrubbers you know, the odd one or too of us are just normal people...shock!
• Queen's Park - Loughboroughs lucky to have it!! Really beautiful all year!! I'm not kiddin - hot day - it's packed. Freezing day - snow makes it look magical!! Also being close to lots of facilities and also lots of countryside!!
• the best thing about Loughborough is you know everyone and everyone knows you.
• MC DONALDS BIRDIGE BMX
• Loughborough has a good market, but not enough people use it.
• The unexpected sight of a 17 year old male boardie pushing a pink kiddie's pushchair around the time in his bestest shirt, shoes and trousers, (to protect his identity we will refer to him as Lee Skellington), oh.....did I forget to mention that he couldn't resist spending his money on women's sanitary wear?
• Err....When there were free parties down the old train lines many years ago. Nothing else though.
• the bes things apart from me? the queen park
• vice versa, sock man. the gorgeous male sports students!!! what would we do without u!!
• Queens Park!!! Apart form all the drug dealers hiding under the bushs
• Some of the people. The University Students with out which it would be the dullest town one could image.
• The Students!! Everyone seems to hate them! Loughborough would be a very very boring place without them.
• Very few. Probably the countryside, the restaurants
• Everybody knows each other
• You can get served (almost) anywhere... heh heh heh
• Skateboarding and Alchol and girls
• I've lived here for 25 years. (Or is that worst!) Although many people have no idea where Luffy is, it has a good atmosphere, townies and students seem to get on OK. Enough industry to keep it lively, without too much to make it nasty.
• SUMMER - when the students go home
• The nite life in Loughborough can be great. All you need to do is get together with a group of like minded freinds and trawl through as many pubs as you possibly can, having a laff along your (increasingly) merry way. Experienced tactitians will want visit the 1 o'clock liscenced pubs last, thus extending possible drinking time. Kick off around 7 and wake up the next morning smiling (possibly in a strange feild, but smiling).
• I LOVE LOUGHBOROUGH. I WAS BROUGHT UP THERE. UNTIL I CAME TO NZ. I REALLY MISS MY FRIENDS.
• Student birds that will do anything for a pint of snakebite and black
• Lots of in effective cheap drugs.
• The countryside is right next door. The university provides the town with something of interest, otherwise it would be a truly dire place. The University students are really good looking and intelligent, by far the cream of the country's academic elite. And they kick arse at sport.
• JUST A SHORT BLAST AWAY IS BIKE NIGHT @ THE OLD DURHAM OX ON THE SIX HILLS ROAD. THIS PLACE ON A TUESDAY NIGHT OR A FRIDAY NIGHT IS WELL WORTH A VISIT.ON A WARM SUMMERS NIGHT TO SEE TWO THOUSAND BIKES AND THEIR RIDERS IN THE CAR PARK IS A SITE TO BEHOLD. NOT JUST FOR BIKERS TO APRECIATE BUT WELL WORTH A LOOK FOR SPECTATORS ALIKE.
• It's all before your very eyes there's not much walking needed to explore the town.
• Stability, predictability, 'niceness'.
• Skateboarders constantly being in the local free-paper, as we are "terrorising the local comunity".
• It is close to some nice places like Charnwood Forest, which is rather beautiful in a cosy English lush coutryside sort of way. Not too far away from Leicester, Nottingham and Derby too, but public transport to these places is rubbish.

The Worst Things

• Annoying fucks that stop you and ask you to 'spare 5 minutes' to part with your hard earned cash for their charity (99% for them 10% for their charity) / Lloyds TSB staff / Town hall cafe prices / Empty library shelves / Caged birds in the park (let the buggers go for God's sake / OAPs on market day (move the fuck out of the way!)
• Chav-dodging in Shelthorpe and Thorpe Acre, and the Kinch buses that link the two with the centre. Wearing Burberry should be a capital offence.
• THE INBRED PEOPLE....THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!!!!!
• the 'locals'.....
• The Chavs and dickheads in general. all those rudies riding around on their "bees in tin cans" scooters which are really pathetic.
• dense townie slags an the lack of normal people who arnt messed in the head
• Garendon High School a completely facist/military style school. Thankfully psycotics like Mr Gardener have left, and Jebbo's retired, eccentric Mrs Bailey (she was cool though!)has retired. But Mike Cahill still resides over as Headmaster, and Mr Singh continues to perv, and ofcourse there is still Hagrid the dinnerlady!
• Overrun with tarty girls, sports students (urgh!), nowhere classy to go out, no decent clothes and shoe shops, thank god I have a car!
• the occasional bad egg (ashlie harman to be exact) does seem to pass through our humble community but all in all we're not a bad lot us loughbrorian/librarians/loughborough folk.
• Worse things about Loughborough are students who are rude and obnoxious especially in groups. Closely followed by the locals complaining about students all the time!
• NOw ay are hte girls slappers, a large amount of them go to the private convent and loughborough high school. They may a bit desperate as they have to go to shcool without boys but come on thats a bit harsh!
• easy girls...the big ones and theres plenty of them
• just like everywhere else, the town is bloody overrun by those towny, scally chav bastards, but like someone else said, theyre not real ones cos they run away. but up at burleigh we got loads of knife fights, so parents if u want ur children to be safe, at burleigh they will learn survival of the fittest.
• The bloody sock man
• I think the comments about the Griffin being rubbish, which were written in 1999, are now completely out-dated. In fact, Saturday night in the Griff is probably the best in town.
• Public Toilets most of them are discusting.
• Too many stoo-dents, too many hertberts and chavs
• matts bar
• Ugly townies in track suits and caps that walk around like they're got a 2 foot rod up their ass. And the girls - if you can call them girls - are too busy pushing their babies around and eating at mcdonalds to wash their hair and learn ENGLISH!
• there is no skatepark and the cinema is gay.
• Pissed up rugby blokes who can't handle their beer, and make life hell for those who don't roll around in the mud chasing an oddly shaped ball.
• i went bak recently n the town centres been painted purple
• cold
• these mofo skateboarders think they are bad, there just a waste of space, im telling you they wear thier trousers so the belt bit is at thier knee's......sick tings go on lol
• no skate shop
• the sock man
• The population sport the most badly drawn tatoos I have ever seen in my life. And the men are as bad.
• The locals with six fingers.
• the skag heads who nick off you and give the town a bad reputation. get rid of the tramps.
• townies, everywhere u look.Argh ! You're not 'ard so get over it.
• RUDE MUGGAS INIT
• Loughborough has to be the most boring and incestuous town (apart from shepshed) in the UK. I am so glad I got out of there before I fell into the trap of taking smack and stealing cars like most people of my age have started doing.
• all the "oi mate yea's" i.e. townie lads!
• the sock man. garendon high school. limehurst . wookbrookvale
• having to spend 7 months a year in this godforsaken shithole.
• when the students go home!!!!!!!!!!!
• Having to live with my mispent childhood in Loughborough
• returning to loughborough
• everything you possibly could think of
• The peckers from Sharpley Road thaqt think they are as hARD AS FUCK IN A GROUP, BUT RUN WHEN ALONE. wANKERS!!!
• The present Council. They seem to be keep on having Road Repairs on every road in the town. They also have raised the Community charge by 4% which is above inflation. Of course what can one expect from those in the Labour Party.
• Everybody knows each other
• Old people moaning about skateboarders
• Everything. I was seriously glad to get away from loughborough.
• Police, Security gaurds and Girls who think they are beutiful but they are actually butt ugly
• STUDENTS ( i managed to write my name on a GCSE paper so I'm important ) If the milkman dies I'll notice if they all died....
• ALL THE BLOODY SKATEBOARDERS. Oh yeay, and all the 'big hard' townie boys.
• As with almost everywhere these days, Loughborough seems to have a full complement of townie idiots with attitude. Busters and Pulse seem to be the worst affected areas. At least in Loughborough, they're only playing at being bad so you won't get shot or anything.
• Arrogant students who think they are the dogs bollocks because they can catch/kick/throw a ball around. Get a grip people!
• Wordsworth Road, used to be a nice area but getting worse all the time. Some of the residents are very strange, can be an entertaining area in the Summer when the neighbours get drunk and entertain everyone!!!!
• The Griffin: I used to love it as a customer (many years ago) but now as a long-suffering member of staff, I fucking hate it. The hours are long and poorly paid, the customers in the day (when there are any at all) are criminals, moneylenders, drug dealers, bored students, snobby retired old bastards, lazy college kids, underage drinkers, mad people, and one or two decent citizens, although these are few and far between. The evenings are dull from Monday - Thursdays, with more students, some good and some bad. Fridays are the worst day for underagers, with the age range being between sixteen and about twenty five - not great, eh? Saturdays are the worst day for mutants, with all kinds of dregs of society making nuisances of themselves, getting far too pissed and behaving like twats. Sunday afternoons are quiet, while in the evening is the quiz, full of decent students and townies alike (usually), and it is easily the only night of the week worth going to the Griffin. Try the Orange Tree or the Hobgoblin instead.
• Student birds that smake you in the gob if you try to get them to do anything after buying them a pint of snakebite and black
• Far too many purple people (uni sports students)
• All theatrical productions staged at Loughborough Town Hall, particularly anything by the ESNA players, whose contributions to the local culture have been lamentable. Queen: The Magic Continues and other tribute bands have appeared at the Town Hall, as has blue Aussie comic Mark Little. However, in 1969, an up and coming R 'n' B band called Led Zeppelin reportedly went down like a...well...lead zeppelin, I suppose. Lastly, the annual Loughborough schools revue, which once upon a long ago took the form of a surreal Sgt. Pepper style cabaret, and later featured an early performance by "seminal" local band Cinnamun, who featured one Joanna Koolman. Where is she now, Nicky?
• Lots of ineffective overpriced beer.
• The rapidly emerging yob culture after dark.Purple tracksuits, busstops,lampposts,bollards... You name it (What the f**k has purple got to do with anything?)Litter, potholes, yobbos & all the usual shit. How the hell is that stupid f**king statue supposed to reflect the history of the town? Answers on a postcard please! Some f**k-ugly buildings
• There are far, far, far, far, far and away too many to even begin to mention. This is one fucked up place, readers. And yet...here I still am, after all these years.
• The locals. They are all supremely stupid and ugly, unlike the university students. When they're not beating up the town's students (who they're jealous of) they're sniffing glue. The local girls are all complete slappers, who insist on wearing the shortest skirts imaginable in the middle of winter. They make the university's hockey lesbians look like a good prospect.
• THAT F**KING STUPID STATUE OF A BLOKE NEAR THE MARKET WITH A LEAF OVER HIS BALLS IT LOOKS PATHETIC AND COST THE COUNCIL 20
• Pigs that have an irrational hatred of skateboarders.
• On the University campus you have to be really careful, as people try and OutPiss on you from the upper storeys of buildings. I was walking to a lecture, when someone Outpissed on me out of the 17th floor of Towers Hall, it really hurt as it hit me on the top of the head and ruined my hair. I wish people would not do things so stupid, suppose it is another stupid craze like 'Road Rage'.
• Worst thing is the annual Loughborough Fair which comes to town and which always brings the worst weather and floods with it. And yes I'm afraid that the uni students are to be avoided at all costs, they are known to be either sporty (in pukey purple tracksuits) or completely sad engineers.
• The student population; either a totally homogeneous bunch of middle class school bullies, tracksuits and sensible haircuts at the University, or a totally homogeneous group of fashionably depressed Levellers Tshirts and nose rings from the Art College (who are in fact just as middle class as the University students, but you'd have to put them on a rack to get them to admit it.) The average University student never speaks to the average art college student and vice versa, because each thinks the other is a stuck up tosser. They are probably both correct.
• Execrable town planning in the sixties, seventies and eighties...not showing many signs of let-up in the nineties. Small-minded parochialism (same as most market towns).

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Last updated: 2008-05-15