Churchwarden Gwyn Bates welcomed visitors from Boston, Massachusetts who had come to find out a little more about their family name....

'I was delighted to welcome John, Tod, Margaret and Rachael Loofbourrow to All Saints on 26 May along with Lynne Dyer who some of you may know as her alter ego of "Lynne about Loughborough".

Tod had emailed us to request the visit during the time when he and his father John were in town researching their family tree, as they were keen to see as much of the history of the town at the same time.

 Tod explained that his ancestors, then known under the surname Wade, had emigrated from Loughborough to the USA in 1685 . They were Quakers who at that time were oppressed and barred from many parts of public life. On arrival in the USA, Tod believes his ancestors adopted the name of their home town as their surname, changing the spelling to ensure it was pronounced correctly! 

With help from experts at Loughborough Library, the family were able to gain quite a lot of information about their family history. They loved their visit to All Saints, during which I explained some of the challenges of maintaining a medieval building. In particular they were interested to see some of the memorial tablets on the walls of our church which came from the 1600s when their family were living in Loughborough. Local historian Lynne Dyer was extremely useful to have with me to put into context what they were seeing and to answer questions about the great and the good who's story is told by some of those monuments. They loved seeing the old Swithland slate gravestones around the parish green and Lynne also took them though the wildlife garden to see the Old Rectory.

We later had a lovely email addressed to myself and Lynne from Tod which said 

"Thank you so much for an incredible tour and for our time together.

My dad was over the moon about what we learned, and about your amazing knowledge and hospitality."

Well the pleasure was all ours, and of course all the thanks for the amazing knowledge go to Lynne for helping out with her expertise. They left us with a lovely thank you card and some flowers which we have displayed in church for everyone to enjoy. Below is a photo of John and Tod at the South door during their visit. As a parting gift we ensured our visitors had learnt the real way of pronouncing the name of our town... suggesting a more helpful spelling might perhaps have been LUFBRA!'