1808 - 1892

Thomas Cook was undoubtedly Harborough's most famous resident - born in Quick Close, Melbourne, Derbyshire, he started work at the tender age of ten learning the trade of market gardening. This was followed by woodturning, then printing, but it wasn't until he was 33 that he embarked on a career that would revolutionise the way people travelled around the world. A member of the Temperance Society in Market Harborough, and former Baptist minister, he invented the idea of Travel Excursion. It came to him one day while walking through Kibworth Harcourt, on his way from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a Society meeting - no mean feat, as that is a thirty mile round trip there and back! The thought flashed though his mind that he would organise a train to carry people from Leicester to Loughborough to attend a religious festival. So, on July 5th, 1841, the very first excursion took almost 600 people by train, in nine open carriages on the ten-mile journey. By the 1870's, his excursions had reached worldwide proportions. Long after his death, by the end of the 20th Century, his empire had travel agents in most countries in the world.