Newsletter: Malcolm Law 1948 – 2022

It’s with great sadness that we announce the death last month of one of the Heritage Centre’s longest serving volunteers and supporters Malcolm Law.

Malcolm joined the project to restore the Mountsorrel branch line as fund raiser in 2010, but quickly extended his help into pretty much all areas of the project. He was extremely passionate about our project to create the Heritage Centre, seeing the benefit it could bring to the well being of the communities in the area. Malcolm played a key role in obtaining grants totalling just over a million pounds to restore the railway and build the Heritage Centre. He wasn’t a wealthy man but he donated generously to many of the projects around the Heritage Centre site that we have developed since opening, so much so that much of what visitors enjoy around the site today simply would not be here were it not for his generosity and attention to detail with grant applications.

He was a familiar face volunteering around the site, you would find him laying track, cutting the lineside, building fences, running the garden railway, operating site tours, acting as a visitor guide to name just a few. What ever needed doing Malcolm would be there. All of this he did whilst suffering the effects of long term cancer and even as his battle was coming to an end, only a few weeks ago, he was out on the Granite’s patio operating his visitor information table.

His death has touched all of our volunteers, so much so that two of our volunteers, who have been with us since the beginning of the project, have decided to do a sponsored cycle ride to raise money for the Heritage Centre in Malcolm’s memory.

This is no ordinary bike ride though! Tony and Chris have decided to cycle all the way from London to Edinburgh! If that wasn’t enough they are then going to cycle all the way back to London again! That’s 945 miles in total!

WOW, but it gets even better! They are going to do it in just 5 days! No that’s not a typo! Just five days. That’s an average of 189 miles every day!

Tony and Chris are funding the bike ride themselves so all sponsorship money raised will go towards creating more of the wonderful things you enjoy at the Heritage Centre site.

It is such a wonderful and kind thing for them to do in Malcolm’s memory and I’m sure he will be looking down on them with a huge smile on his face. He would probably have some jokey comment about legs like spaghetti to spur them along as well!

The bike ride gets underway this weekend, Sunday August 7th. If you would like to sponsor Tony & Chris please do so via the GoFundMe page https://gofund.me/80ff64fa.

After they have completed the bike ride we’ll send a follow up news letter to let you know how they got on and whether they reached their £1000 target?