It was Samuel Lloyd who began the transformation of Corby from a sleepy village, in Rockingham Forest, into a modern industrial town. Lloyd arrived here in the 1880s and, over the next 50 years, developed the new ironstone industry. Large-scale mining of ironstone was carried out at Earlestrees Quarry, now largely covered by this leisure complex. Lloyd’s Ironstone Company, later Stewart & Lloyds, dominated life in Corby until its closure in 1980.
Photographs of leisure developments.
Top: Stewarts & Lloyds gave this First World War army hut, on the corner of Lloyds Road and Rockingham Road, to their workers, who used it for social gatherings and as a cinema, until it was replaced by the Odeon cinema (above) that opened nearby in 1936. The Odeon, in its turn, closed in the 1970s.
Photographs and text about schools in Corby.
The text reads: Corby’s first school was built in 1834, and paid for by the successful wool merchant William Rowlett. The original building, in Meeting Lane was enlarged in the early 1880s and rebuilt in 1914. The town expanded rapidly and Samuel Lloyds School later opened in Rockingham Road.
Top: Rowlett School, c1880
Above: The class of 1907 at Rowlett School.
Photographs of the first football teams.
Top: This picture of a Corby village football team takes us back to 1882, and is the first known photograph of the village’s sporting heroes.
Above: The Swifts, another of the village’s early teams, but we are now in the Twentieth Century, 1905 to be precise.
Photographs of youth services.
Top: The Corby Charter Band in front of Corby House, built in 1906 by local employer James Pain. Stewarts & Lloyds later gave the house for the use of Uppingham and Corby Boys Club.
Above: The Training Centre gave local youth a valuable apprenticeship, and produced qualified engineers whose services were in demand worldwide.
Photographs of ‘The Steelmen’.
The text reads: Corby Town Football Club was formed in 1948, playing its first home game at Occupation Road. Since the mid-1980s, ‘The Steelmen’ have played their home matches just a short walk away from these premises, at Rockingham Triangle.
Top: Corby Town FC in 1951
Above: The Steelmen in 1952.
External photograph of the building – main entrance.
If you have information on the history of this pub, then we’d like you to share it with us. Please e-mail all information to: pubhistories@jdwetherspoon.co.uk