14/02/2025
This Valentine's day we explore the relationship between Quorn and Woodhouse station and the early 20th Century romantic author D. H. Lawrence.
Born in September 1885, Lawrence grew up in the Nottinghamshire mining town of Eastwood, studying at University College, Nottingham where he trained as a teacher and met Louie Burrows.
The pair became good friends and both trained as teachers. In 1908, Lawrence left his childhood home and moved to London, and Burrows went to her family home in Quorn, where in 1911, she became the headmistress of Quorn Infants School (now Quorn Village Hall & Old School)
During the period between 1908 and 1912, Lawrence visited Burrows regularly, taking the train from London Marylebone to the relatively new Quorn and Woodhouse station.
Their relationship blossomed and on the 3rd December 1910, Lawrence proposed to Louie on a train coming into Quorn and Woodhouse. In their compartment were several others who all got off at Quorn, Louie, overcome with emotion, continued her journey to Loughborough to be with Lawrene before getting the next train back to Quorn.
Louie inspired Lawrence's poem "Kisses in the train" which he wrote a year later in 1911:
"I saw the midlands
Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
Stretching bare,
And sheep on the pasture
Tossed back in a scare..."
Lawrence continued to visit Burrows regularly, his regular train being the 6. 25 off Marylebone, but this wasn't to last. He called off the engagement on the 4th February 1912 quoting ill health, but we know the following month he met Freida Weekley who he later married.
Louie stayed devoted to Lawrence and visited his grave following his death in 1930.
The photograph of DH Laurence attached was taken in 1912 shortly after his courtship with Burrows and his time at Quorn and Woodhouse station.
This page is to promote the history and present day goings on at Quorn & Woodhouse station on the preserved Great Central Railway.
