tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-329928822024-03-13T04:40:19.271+00:00Circle of the YearRowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.comBlogger380125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-58353782248930482982016-09-05T11:36:00.000+01:002016-09-05T11:36:37.625+01:00A Big Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This post is something of a departure for me as I don't usually write about football! The big day was my granddaughter's not mine though I found it rather exciting as well:) Kaitlyn now plays for Sheffield United Girls Under 11 team and yesterday all the women's and girl's teams went to Bramall Lane to have team photographs taken - the first time the women have been allowed this privilege. Stephen wasn't able to take her so I stepped in instead. We arrived very early as although I know the way to the ground from my own house I've never done it from my son's house so I wanted to have time to get lost! As it happened I didn't get lost at all but went straight there. This gave me chance to take one or two photographs without lots of other people milling about. So here is Kaitlyn about to go in through the Players Entrance. This was pretend but in fact that's the way we did go in eventually.
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The statue is of Derek Dooley a much loved and respected former Director and Chairman of Sheffield United who died in 2008. <br />
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Kaitlyn's team sitting in the dug out waiting to go onto the pitch for the official photographs. Two of the girls are missing as they were away on holiday. Kaitlyn is third from the right on the front row.<br />
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Walking down from the dressing rooms through the tunnel and out onto the pitch.
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The Kop which is where my sons and I always sat on our regular outings to watch Sheffield United when they both still lived in Sheffield. We still go occasionally and hopefully will manage to get to a few games this season. I must say I never expected to walk down the players tunnel and out onto the pitch and see the Kop from this perspective though.<br />
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These elephants are all over Sheffield at the moment, they are part of a huge public art event and I've seen them in the city centre , the railway station and Weston Park Museum as well as this one. There are 72 of them altogether.<br />
However back to Bramall Lane which is a very historic ground - the oldest football ground in the world as a matter of fact. It was built as a cricket ground in 1855 and is one of only two grounds (the other being the Oval) which has hosted England football internationals (five games prior to 1930), an England cricket test match (a single Test, in 1902, against Australia) and an FA Cup Final (the 1912 replay, in which Barnsley beat West Bromwich Albion, 1–0). W.G Grace played here in 1872 and it was one of Yorkshire's County grounds until 1973. The cricket pitch is now under the South Stand which is behind the girls in the dugout photo. The first football match was played here on December 29th 1862 between Sheffield FC and Hallam FC. Sheffield FC was founded in 1857 and still exists,it is the oldest independent football club in the world. So there you are - some sporting history as well as an exciting morning for Kaitlyn and Granny:) Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-1155980510957261402016-08-25T10:10:00.002+01:002016-08-25T10:10:41.150+01:00Waiting<br />
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For me August has always been a month of waiting - waiting for the first small signs of autumn. It is the crown of the agricultural year but still it is my least favourite month. I think the only place to really enjoy August is by the sea relaxing on a sandy beach and exploring rock pools or walking along the cliffs. I live quite a long way from the sea and to me this time of year always seems tired as though the Earth Mother is exhausted after the exertions of the spring and summer and, like me, is just waiting for the renewed energy that the autumn brings.<br />
The photo shows the field across the lane from my son's house in Suffolk which has just been harvested and is also waiting. Soon the plough will be turning the stubble and preparing the field for sowing the next crop.<br />
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There are those who <i>do</i> enjoy August though especially on hot sunny afternoons when they can play in the paddling pool.<br />
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Rowan berries - always the first of the autumn berries to ripen and always a welcome sight, a lovely splash of colour among the greens and browns that are the dominant colours in the countryside in August.</div>
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Blackberries are beginning to ripen now and there seem to be a lot of good sized ones around this year. <br />
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Autumn is my favourite of all the seasons but the one thing I don't enjoy about it is the procession of spiders that come into the house looking for a warm place to spend the winter. I have no problem with snakes, mice, frogs, slugs etc but I'm absolutely terrified of spiders. Nevertheless I do admire the beauty of the intricate webs that some of them spin.</div>
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Up on Blackamoor some of the bracken is beginning to turn to the lovely warm golden tones of autumn.<br />
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August often brings hot, humid days that don't suit either me or B Baggins. I try to walk in woodland where there is access to streams where he can cool off and have a drink on days like we've been having recently. This is on Blackamoor but the lower part which is wooded and where we pass three streams evenly spaced apart, this makes a big difference to his ability to do this walk.
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B Baggins is coming up for 131/2 now and with only three legs he does well to still be able to manage it. There's a pretty steep climb up Lenny hill but it's at the beginning of the walk and once he's at the top it's all flat or downhill the rest of the way. So here he is - he's waiting too, not for autumn but for a treat to appear from my pocket:)Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-33962993923357999582016-08-06T15:31:00.000+01:002016-08-06T15:31:00.240+01:00Bakewell Show<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Wednesday my friend L and I made what may well be our last visit to Bakewell Show which has been declining steadily over the last few years until it now has very little to do with either agriculture or horticulture. I've been going every year since around 1976 and have been a Patron for the last 25 years or more and it's changed out of all recognition until now it's not much more than a big fairground with most of the stands selling tat of one sort or another and very little sign of any animals other than horses - showjumping is the main thing as I believe some of the classes are qualifying classes for the Horse of the Year Show. There are still a few things worth seeing though including the chap with his birds of prey. Above is a beautiful Harris Hawk which was probably my favourite. <br />
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Another contender was the beautiful Barn Owl. I took lots of photos of him while he was perching on the trainer's arm but every time I pressed the shutter he looked away so I had to be satisfied with this one taken when he was put back in his box.<br />
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The WI marquee is always worth a visit too and we always have coffee and a little something munchy halfway through the morning - cheese and herb scones and a lovely fruit teabread in this instance.<br />
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The WI have themed competitions for both cookery and crafts each year for the local Derbyshire WI groups. This year the theme was Shakespeare Plays in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of his death in 1616 but there were very few entries for either the home economics or crafts. This was the winning home economics entry which has to consist of two savoury and two sweet dishes plus a floral exhibit illustrating the theme.<br />
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Someone really knew their Shakespeare and this was a very clever exhibit. Each item had a card like the one above with a quote from the appropriate play. I must say that these walnut and honey tarts looked rather delicious in spite of the quote! I rather think that even if there had been a lot more entries this one would still have won.<br />
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Vintage cars - always a favourite with me. I would absolutely love to own and drive one these elegant 1930s cars.<br />
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Another beauty - a Talbot 7 seater limousine. You could have bought it brand new for £850 in 1935! <br />
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Seeing the heavy horses have always been my favourite part of Bakewell Show and there is always a good entry for these classes - these are the handsome Shire horses belonging to The Co-operative Funeral Care.<br />
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Of all the heavy horse breeds these are my absolute favourites - the wonderful Suffolks frequently known as the Suffolk Punch. They are the oldest breed of heavy horse in Great Britain dating back to the 16th century. All the ones alive now trace their trace their male line back to a stallion called Crisp's Horse of Ufford who was born in 1768 - apparently he was never given a proper name, he was just known as Crisp's horse! The Suffolks became very rare indeed though the numbers are now beginning to increase slightly. They are still an endangered breed though. I'm a member of the Suffolk Horse Society though I have no chance of ever owning one. Speaking of Suffolk that's where I'm off to next week to spend a few days with my son and his family. Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-44437006248346472552016-08-01T06:06:00.000+01:002016-08-01T06:06:07.513+01:00Lughnasadh - The Wheel Turns Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Month of August...blithesome the bee,<br />
Full the hive; better the work of the sickle<br />
Than the bow.<br />
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Welsh 15th century
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Lughnasadh is one of the great festivals of the Celtic year, it's the midpoint of the summer halfway between May (Beltaine) and November (Samhain) and from now on the days will begin to shorten noticeably as we move towards autumn and winter. The all important grain harvest begins at this time and in the past it was also a time of revelry, feasting and the great Lammas Fairs where the general idea was to have a jolly good time:)
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An old tradition connected with Lughnasadh is the making of the Corn Dolly. It was believed that the Corn Spirit retreated before the oncoming reapers and eventually took refuge in the last of the standing corn. This was cut and fashioned into a Corn Dolly where the Corn Spirit could rest through the winter months. In the Spring the Corn Dolly would be returned to the fields when the new crop was sown in the hope that as a reward for keeping the Corn Spirit safe through the cold, dark days of winter she would bring a good harvest in the coming year. Making a Corn Dolly is something I'd like to try and I've located instructions for a simple one and a supplier of straw though if I can get some wheat while I'm in Suffolk during August that would be even more authentic. My son's house is surrounded by arable farmland and wheat is one of the crops that is grown in them. Whether my craft skills are up to this challenge remains to be seen!
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One of the important harvests crops of course was barley - essential for the making of beer! The old traditional folk song about John Barleycorn belongs to this time of the year. These are the first few lines:<br />
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There were three men came out of the west,<br />
Their fortunes for to try,<br />
And these three men made a solemn vow,<br />
John Barleycorn must die.<br />
They've ploughed, they've sowed, they've harrowed him in,<br />
Throwed clods upon his head,<br />
And these three men made a solemn vow,<br />
John Barleycorn is dead.<br />
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If you'd like to listen to it all <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icyPFsIcAV0">here</a> is a rather good version by Traffic. Happy Lughnasadh!!
Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-49146736159845690532016-07-10T20:50:00.001+01:002016-07-11T06:29:28.599+01:00Salmagundi Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Salmagundi is a 17th/18th Century salad made from cooked chicken,hard boiled eggs, anchovies and all kinds of salad leaves, vegetables and herbs. These are beautifully arranged on a large platter and the finished dish is quite something. But basically it means a mixture of all sorts of things:) I used the title originally in 2007 for <a href="http://circleoftheyear.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/salmagundi.html">this post</a> if anyone is interested. The two babies mentioned in that post are on the left of the photo above and are now 9 and 10 years old:) DH and I both turn 70 this year so we had a small 1920s/30s themed family celebration last weekend and the photo shows us with our five lovely grandchildren. DH had his birthday a couple of weeks ago, mine isn't until September but last weekend was the only one this summer when all three of my children and their families could make it at the same time.
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This last week has been our village <a href="http://circleoftheyear.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/well-dressing.html">Well Dressing</a>, the theme for the main board was the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. If you click on the link it will take you to a post also from 2007 which explains a little about this old custom. <br />
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The main part of the picture is illustrating Romeo and Juliet of course though Juliet's hair seems to be rather a bright yellow for someone who is supposed to be Italian:} There are bits and pieces from other Shakespeare plays too and this photo shows not only Shakespeare's head but also the donkey which Puck transformed Bottom into in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Yorick's skull from Hamlet - 'Alas Poor Yorick' is about the only line from Shakespeare that I can quote other than 'Once more unto the breach dear friends' from Henry V! I've been so busy this week that this is the first chance I've had to go and take photographs and sadly the other one done by the local Guides had already been taken down. It's a pity as it was marking the 450th anniversary of the Great Fire of London and was actually much better than the main well dressing this year.<br />
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I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm a member of our local archaeology group Time Travellers. Earlier this year we were awarded Heritage Lottery Funding to dig at a local Romano-British site on Whirlow Hall Farm. It was discovered in 2011 but it has taken all this time to get funding for further excavation. The Brigantes Group (four of us - everyone else is into Roman or Industrial archaeology!) were asked to put together some information boards about life in the Iron Age. This area would have been under the control of the Brigantes tribe during the Iron Age. It's just a temporary exhibition which is on the wall in the cafe.<br />
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This board shows the exterior and interior of a roundhouse, a beehive quernstone which would have been used for grinding grain to make bread, some of the colours that were achieved using natural dyes (the Celts were very snappy dressers and loved colourful clothes), a weaving loom and some of the food that would have been available to them. If you click and enlarge the photos it might be possible to read the information.<br />
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A lot of children visit the farm as it is an educational trust so we thought that a board showing the nearest equivalents to Iron Age animals would interest them.<br />
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The dig was a definite success with lots of finds of both Roman and Iron Age pottery, a quern stone and a couple of gaming pieces among other things. I was only able to go up a couple of times and didn't do any excavating. My job was washing and cataloguing some of the finds. The line of stones on the left of the photo are the foundations for a Roman timber building. On the right is a ditch and those stones are the top of a revetment wall. It was a farmstead so not in need of the large ditches that would have surrounded a military site.
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This is the revetment wall. The really exciting thing though was the discovery of a Roman signal station right at the top of the farm's land. Only about 50 are known in Britain so it's an important find. It was found using geophysics and then an exploratory trench was put in to check that the features that should have been there did exist. I saw the geophiz and it was quite clear even to me. You can see for miles from up there and the signal station stands between the Roman forts of Templeborough (now under the Magna Centre in Rotherham) and <a href="http://circleoftheyear.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/walk-in-peaks.html">Navio</a> in the Hope Valley. Following the link will take you to a post I did which included some info about Navio. This is from 2007 as well, I seem to have been busy that year!<br />
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Now I know that this doesn't look very exciting but for those of us who are Brigantes it's very exciting indeed - the small dark circle is an Iron Age post hole!! Of course they only got down to the Iron Age layer right at the end of the dig so I shall have to hope for more lottery funding so that the rest of the site, which is a large one, can be excavated and more postholes found. Personally I'm sure it must indicate that an Iron Age roundhouse stood there - I suspect that the professional archaeologists working on the site wouldn't agree with me though:) <br />
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Friday was the final day of the dig and in true Time Team style we had a celebratory drink and some very good cakes to finish things up. It's been really fun and exciting to be part of something like this and another new experience to add to my list.
Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-18741276118466583632016-06-29T18:38:00.001+01:002016-06-29T18:38:50.346+01:00A Moorland Walk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On a coolish morning under a sky filled with heavy clouds a small group of Time Travellers (our local archaeology group) set off on a walk which began with a short but very steep climb up a narrow rocky path onto Birchen Edge in the Peak District. This was the view from the top looking out over the Derwent Valley. The little brown dots in the field are cows which gives you an idea of how high above the valley we were - about 900 feet above sea level at this point.<br />
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As we walked along there were great sheets of heath bedstraw stretching out in every direction, it's low growing and likes acidic soil so up here on the moors is a perfect habitat for it. Heath bedstraw is related to sweet woodruff and goose grass and as it's name suggests it was once used for stuffing straw mattresses. It's apparently also useful for staunching bleeding.<br />
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Most of the group arrived at Nelson's Monument well ahead of me. Since I'm usually messing about taking photographs I'm almost always racing along trying to catch up with any groups that I'm with:) The Monument was built in honour of Admiral Lord Nelson after his death and victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. A local man called John Brightman paid for it to be erected in 1810 thirty years before Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square was constructed.<br />
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These three huge gritstone boulders are known as The Three Ships. Each one has the name of one of Nelson's famous ships carved onto it - Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin. It's not my spelling that's a bit dodgy by the way - it's the chap who carved it who had his own interpretation:)
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This one is Victory, you will probably need to enlarge the photo to see it properly.<br />
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This great boulder contains a basin which forms a drinking trough and must be used by many birds and wild creatures. I think this one is a natural formation but in the early 1900s a wealthy local businessman called William Wilson had seventy five drinking troughs carved into large boulders all across the grouse moors that he owned in this area - the idea being apparently to encourage the grouse to stay on <i>his</i> moors and not migrate to any of the neighbouring estates!<br />
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Now we are moving into the prehistoric landscape on the moor, there was a surprising amount of activity in this period and the moors around my area are thick with burial cairns, stone circles, barrows etc.You will need to use a good deal of imagination here but take my word for it that you are looking at the entrance to a Bronze Age roundhouse. one large stone on the left and the one which Robert is standing on mark the entrance which faces south east as was usual during this era. Two pits were found inside, one near the entrance and one in the centre, both of which contained burnt bone and were possibly cremation burials. The stones will have formed the foundations for a timber framework filled with wattle and daub and thatched with reeds or turf.<br />
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This is a superb example of prehistoric cup and ring carving - or at least it's an excellent resin replica of the original which now lies buried to protect it from further erosion. No-one really knows what these carvings were for but as they are often found near important prehistoric paths and field boundaries they may mark territorial boundaries.<br />
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This however,though smaller and less impressive,is the real thing.<br />
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This standing stone is about 4000 years old. It was erected around 2000BC and stands over 2 metres high. It is deliberately slanted towards the south and it's believed to be an astronomical marker connected with the midsummer sun.
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We passed a lot of this flowering moss which looked really attractive.<br />
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Gardom's Edge is part of the Dark Peak named for the dark Millstone Grit which overlies the limestone in this area. It's a rather bleak and forbidding landscape but provides some fantastic views even on a day of heavy cloud as this one was.
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We saw many other things including a really well preserved neolithic barrow which was obvious when you looked at it but didn't show up well in a photograph. So here we are nearly at the end of what was a really interesting and enjoyable walk. One thing I (and everyone else in the group) did learn in addition to all the history - never ever go on the moors in summer without insect repellent however dull and cool it is! I ended up with something like 25-30 bites on my face,neck and hands and spent a very uncomfortable few days until the itching finally stopped. Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-27807230648071296992016-06-20T13:09:00.001+01:002016-06-20T13:09:07.483+01:00Arkwright's Mill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week my friend P and I went on a guided tour of Arkwright's Mill in Cromford, a small village which lies in the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. Richard Arkwright was born in Preston in 1732 and was the son of a tailor. From humble beginnings and with a pretty rudimentary education he went on to become a very wealthy and successful man. In 1786 he was knighted by George III.
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This is the mill yard, Arkwright's first mill is on the right, it was built in 1771 and was originally five stories high. Cotton spinning continued here until sometime in the 1880s and after that the buildings were used for various purposes including two laundries and a brewery. From the 1920s until the 1970s it was occupied by a chemical works and during their tenure a great deal of damage was done to the site from pollution caused by the chemicals and by a couple of fires( one of which destroyed the top two floors of the original mill) and general lack of care of the buildings. <br />
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The rescue of this important industrial site began in 1979 when a local charity, The Arkwright Society, bought it. Over £7 million pounds has been spent decontaminating the site and restoring the buildings. Many of these are now occupied by cafes and shops which help to bring both life and revenue to the site. The whole of the Derwent Valley is now a World Heritage Site though perhaps not quite as glamorous as the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra! The water is the head race taking the water from the Bonsall Brook to the wheel pit of the second mill .<br />
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This is a scale model of the invention that changed the face of industry forever - the spinning frame. Prior to its invention spinning and carding had been done by hand in people's homes but this machine allowed the factory system to be developed as it was now possible to spin 128 threads at a time and the machines could easily be worked by women and children. At first Arkwright set up a factory in Nottingham and the frames were powered by horses but it was obvious to him that water would be a much better source of power and so he built the mill at Cromford. In 1776 a second mill of seven stories was built and the expansion continued all along the Derwent Valley. He also licenced other mills to use his spinning frame especially in Lancashire and it was the royalties from these licences that made him wealthy. To his credit he built not only mills but also good quality housing for his workers, each house had a large garden for growing vegetables and a pigsty. He also built the Greyhound Inn in Cromford village and a Sunday School as well as founding friendly societies and clubs.
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This is the wheel pit for the second mill built in 1776, the water comes from the Bonsall Brook via the head race in the earlier photo and in the centre you can see the recess for the vertical drive shaft which transmitted the power to the mill floors above. The tail race on the left of the photo drained eventually into the River Derwent which is about half a mile away.<br />
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This weir was built around 1777 as part of the development of the second mill but in the 1790s it was adapted to take water to the nearby Cromford Canal.</div>
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Once the tour had finished P and I opted for a short walk along the Cromford Canal as it was both dry and fairly warm - not a combination often found in recent days! This is the narrowboat 'Birdswood' built in 1938 and now enjoying a new lease of life taking passengers on relaxing trips along the canal.<br />
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The path along the canal is a good deal better than I was expecting, in my young days canal towpaths tended to be decidedly muddy places.</div>
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As we walked under the bridge we noticed these grooves in the wall worn into the stone by the towropes of countless horse-drawn narrowboats being pulled along the canal.
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The coming of the railways signalled the decline of the canals and trade had declined significantly on the Cromford Canal by 1888.It struggled on until being pretty much abandoned in 1944.Since 1968 it has been gradually restored and this is still a work in progress.
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There were several big clumps of comfrey growing along the canal bank and according to a notice at the beginning of the towpath there are water voles here though we didn't see any signs of them.
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We did see this though, I think it's a little grebe. It took several goes to get a photo as it was constantly diving under the water and reappearing several feet away from its original position. We had a very pleasant and interesting afternoon and were really lucky with the weather as within minutes of getting back to the car it started to rain heavily and carried on for the rest of the evening. Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-23788149240347088452016-06-13T15:55:00.000+01:002016-06-13T15:55:08.448+01:00History In A Quilt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last weekend our local History Group had a stand at Dronfield History Fair which was being held to highlight the recent rescue and restoration of Dronfield Hall Barn, a wonderful medieval barn that stands in the centre of the town. The Fair itself was held in a rather uninspiring Victorian building which was formerly a Methodist Chapel but is now used as a community centre. Since there were four of us on the stand we were able to take turns to go across to the restored barn and see the Dronfield Heritage Quilt which we had all heard of but none of us had actually seen. To be honest I wasn't expecting anything very wonderful but it turned out to be a real gem. It was made over a period of twelve months by a group of about 30 ladies (at least I think they were all ladies!). The theme of the quilt was the medieval history of Dronfield. Inspiration for the colour palette and design came from fragments of medieval glass from the original East Window of the parish church. At some point in the past these had been gathered up and used to form a border and three roundels in one window and a kind of jigsaw of random pieces that had been set into a second window.
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The effect of the whole quilt is that of a stained glass window, this little panel shows the barn as it would have looked originally and a woman cutting cloth to make a garment. In fact the barn was originally built as a Hall or small manor house for the agent of Lady Alice Deincourt who had leased the Manor of Dronfield in 1406 and held it until her death in 1433. <br />
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Here is Lady Alice, she was a wealthy woman and connected by birth to two of the most powerful families in the North of England at the time - the Nevilles and the Percys. She spent a great deal of her time at court as she was was governess to Henry VI who became king in 1422 when he was only 9 months old. Lady Alice probably never spent any time in Dronfield at all as her main estates were in Lincolnshire.
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Dronfield was a very rural parish and the quilt illustrates many of the seasonal activities connected with farming including this one of a pig about to be dispatched with an axe! These images are taken from contemporary illustrations of The Labours of the Months.<br />
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This illustrates another important aspect of medieval and Tudor life in Dronfield and in fact in the whole of this area - lead smelting. Lead has been mined in the limestone areas of the Peak District since Roman times and probably earlier than that.
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Dronfield Hall Barn as it looks now after its restoration. It was converted onto a stone clad barn in the early 18th century.
I gather that eventually at the back there is going to be a garden filled with plants from the medieval period but this is still a work in progress. The quilt actually shows several medieval medicinal herb plants, in fact the more you look at the quilt the more you see - a tiny plague rat for instance because this of course was the era of the Black Death.<br />
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The interior of the barn's roof, the original building was a box frame with a king post roof. All the beams are original apart from two which had to be replaced. However the replacement beams are of the same age (1430) though they came from a barn in France that by a happy coincidence was being demolished at just the right time. <br />
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This is the only surviving original principal post which supported the medieval roof structure. Dendrochronolgy puts its felling date at 1430 and as oak was used unseasoned it dates the original building pretty accurately.
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The Blue Stoops is almost as old as the Hall Barn. It was built in 1596 as an inn and has served that purpose ever since although sadly it appears to be closed now. Apparently the name comes from the custom of painting the door posts blue to indicate to travellers that it was an inn.
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This datestone is on the front wall of the Blue Stoops - I can't believe that permission was given to place the extractor fan right over the top of it though! As a result the 6 looks like a 0 but in real life it's possible to see the upper stroke of the 6. <br />
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A pretty little cottage garden caught my eye as we walked back to the car. In case you are wondering why our history group was involved in an event at Dronfield - until 1844 both Dore(where I live)and Totley(which has the history group)were part of the parish of Dronfield and there are many graves in the churchyard of people from what were then these two small Derbyshire villages.Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-553243242688818292016-05-31T13:08:00.000+01:002016-05-31T13:08:02.345+01:00Berlin - A Food Tour, Some Street Art, A Light Show And The Berlin Wall - Part Two<br />
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Once we had eaten we decided to stroll over the bridge to the other side of the river and see what this Festival of Lights was all about - Bastien had just said that some of the main buildings were illuminated. The Festival takes place every October and turned out to be a lot more spectacular than we expected! I have to say that my photographs don't begin to do it justice. Above is the Berliner Dom which is the first building we came to, it wasn't just a static affair as we'd been expecting but a constantly changing art show achieved with video and lasers. Many of the world's leading lighting artists take part in the festival.
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Here it is again......<br />
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.....and again. <br />
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This is the front of Humboldt University - you can just see the statue of Hermann von Helmholz who was a famous German physician and physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University in the 19th Century. Humboldt is a very prestigious University, Albert Einstein was a professor here and it has produced twenty nine Nobel Prize winners.
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The Altes Bibliotek in Bebelplatz just across the road from the University.
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I wish I could have got a better photograph of this,it was fantastic - the dragon appeared through a window then seemed to fly across the front of the building and in through another window. It happened so quickly each time it was impossible to catch the whole dragon in one photo. <br />
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At the end of Unter den Linden of course was the Brandenberg Gate. Like all the other buildings and monuments this had constantly changing images. There were literally thousands of people out on the streets but the atmosphere was always friendly and happy.
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As we walked back over the bridge we saw this illuminated boat sailing along the river. The whole thing was a really enjoyable experience and if Bastien hadn't mentioned it to us we'd have missed it altogether.<br />
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Our final day in Berlin was bright and sunny and as our return flight wasn't until early evening we were able to spend several more hours looking round. We wanted to go back and have a proper look at the site of the Berlin Wall among other things. After an early breakfast we left our luggage at the hotel and once more crossed the river and walked down Unter den Linden. <br />
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This is the longest section of the Berlin Wall that is still standing. I'm old enough to remember the Wall both being built and being pulled down. I was a young teenager of 15 when it was built in 1961 and 43 when it was finally demolished in 1989. After the end of WW2 the city of Berlin was divided into four sectors each controlled by one of the four occupying powers. The Wall was built by the government of the German Democratic Republic to separate the British, American and French sectors of Berlin from the Communist controlled Soviet sector.<br />
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Directly in front of the Berlin Wall are the cellars that lay below the Gestapo and SS Headquarters between 1933 and 1945. The buildings at street level were destroyed by bombing but the remains of the cellars now house an open air exhibition giving an overview of the historic location and the site’s use during the Nazi period and the postwar era.
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These are the remains of the cellars which have been excavated - I dread to think what appalling things happened here in the past. It's rather a chilling experience to walk along here even with the blue skies and sunshine.
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The demolished and abandoned piers with remnants of the metal fittings from the main driveway to Gestapo Headquarters were left in place when the site was cleared between 1957 and 1963. All prisoners destined for the Gestapo 'house prison' passed through here.The 'house prison' was where prisoners were brought for 'interrogation'.
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One of the information boards from the exhibition, the explanations below the photographs are given in both German and English. The horses are ploughing in Gendarmenmarkt where the Konzerthaus stands and where we had finished our guided walking tour a couple of days earlier.<br />
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On a lighter note here we have the Trabi which was the most common car in East Germany during the Cold War and apparently they are now quite collectible. Production began in 1957 and it was produced for the next 30 years with virtually no changes. With its two stroke engine it wasn't exactly a racing model:) It's possible to go on a Trabi-Safari of Berlin which might be rather fun I think.
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The 'Berliner Mauer' plaques are set into the ground at intervals and mark where the Berlin Wall once stood.<br />
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Finally the infamous <a href="http://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-should-know-about-checkpoint-charlie">Checkpoint Charlie</a>which is a replica of the original guardhouse which is now in the Allied Museum.
I would love to go back to Berlin, there is so much to see and do and we barely scratched the surface during our 4 days there. I want to see the head of Nefertiti for a start!Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-56480091300963015382016-05-23T17:48:00.002+01:002016-05-23T17:48:35.143+01:00Berlin - A Food Tour, Some Street Art, A Light Show And The Berlin Wall - Part One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here I am finally finishing the story of our trip to Berlin last October. It will be a long post but I've decided that it's better to get it done than start splitting it into two.
Saturday morning was the day that we'd booked places on the Berlin Food Tour and the photo above shows the group with our guide Bastien who owns the Berlin Food Tour company. We were nicely international with an Israeli couple, three Americans, a Scottish couple and four of us from England. I'm right in the middle in case you're wondering:) All the photographs will enlarge if you click on them.</div>
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Our meeting place was Katjes Cafe Grun-Ohr on Rosenthaler Strasse. After introducing ourselves to each other we started our tasting with lovely freshly baked Brownies and also Katjes vegetarian bunny gummies both of which were delicious, in fact I bought packets of the gummies for my grandchildren.
A little further down the street was Lindners where among other things we tried Berliner Frikadeller which was really tasty. These are a sort of flat patty made of ground pork and beef seasoned with crispy bread, eggs and onions. There was also a sample of Leberkase which translates as liver cheese, this was the only thing on the whole tour that I really didn't like. However the piece of butter cake that followed was fantastic. Bastien later sent me a recipe for butter cake though I confess I haven't tried it yet. Note to self - must find it and give it a go:)<br />
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At this point Bastien took us down a narrow alley to show us some of the street art that Berlin is famous for - this delighted my daughter as street art was something she had particularly wanted to see. More of this later as we returned after the food tour finished. The face on the wall is Anne Frank by the way.<br />
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Next on the list was Doner kebab at All in One which apparently does the best Doner kebabs in Berlin and quite possibly the best anywhere. I confess that I had never had this before as it never looks very appetizing when I've seen it in this country. I'm glad I was persuaded to try it though, it was fantastic. What looks like a large orange lamp at the back of the photo is actually a 60 kilo piece of beef which rotates on a spit all day. There was plenty of choice of nice fresh looking salad to go with it as well.<br />
A bakery called Hopfisterei was our next port of call and here we tried German rye bread and some delicious fresh pressed organic apple juice. The bakery dates back to 1331 and once served the Bavarian Royal family<br />
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Hackescher Hofe, reached through an arched entrance on Rosenthaler Strasse, is a series of eight interconnecting courtyards dating from 1906. It was,and still is,a mixture of apartments, bars, shops,restaurants and businesses. It's a rare example of art nouveau architecture in Berlin and is both extremely pleasant and very interesting to walk through. Our foodie stop here was Eat Berlin which is a wonderful deli where I bought some pistachio honey for myself and a bottle of Berliner Senfsauce for my husband which was very warmly received indeed:) I could have filled a suitcase with goodies from this shop.
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This was my favourite shop! Eisenbergs have the most fabulous pastries including wonderful macarons in all kinds of flavours. Other tastings on the tour were coffee - incredibly strong rather like Turkish coffee - a wine tasting, cheesecake at Barcomis which is famed for its American baked goods, curry wurst - in my case just wurst as I don't like curry at all but it was extremely good just on its own - and finally a refreshing beer at Brauhaus Lemke. This is a small micro brewery but they do food as well and as it happened Juliette and I had eaten there the previous evening and already knew how good the beer is:) We really enjoyed this tour and we were with a very nice and friendly group of people which made it even better.<br />
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Along with food we learnt some history, I had no idea that Martin Luther King visited Berlin in 1964. Not only West Berlin but also East Berlin which is the part of Berlin where we were staying and where the food tour took place. This board outside the Marienkirche commemorates his visit to deliver the evening sermon to a packed church on September 13th 1964. I believe that the American Embassy had confiscated his passport to prevent him from visiting East Berlin but at Checkpoint Charlie the border guards recognised him as the famous Civil Rights leader and let him pass when he showed his American Express card as identification. How true this is I don't know of course but since he certainly was in East Berlin it sounds quite likely. I have a lot of time for Martin Luther King, his death was a sad loss to the world.<br />
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Grosse Hamburger Strasse was one of the main streets of Berlin's Jewish quarter and outside the city's oldest cemetery stands this little memorial representing a group of Jews being led to their deaths. The cemetery dates back to 1672 and looked very tranquil and beautiful. It would have been nice to have looked round it but there wasn't time nor are tour groups allowed inside though individuals can wander round quite freely.
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We came across many of these small brass plaques set into the pavement. They are called Stolpersteine - stumbling stones. They are set outside the homes of people who were victims of Nazi oppression and although most of them commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust there are also Stolpersteine commemorating Romani people, black people, homosexuals, mentally or physically disabled people all of whom were victimized by the Nazi regime.
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Once the Food Tour was over Juliette and I returned to Rosenthaler Strasse so that she could have a proper look at the street art. This isn't really my thing so while she wandered round I went into a tiny museum which is also situated on this little alley. It tells the story of a man called Otto Weidt a visually
impaired broom and brushmaker who employed many Jews at his workshop at 39 Rosenthaler during the 1930s. I believe that Otto Weidt is the man in the centre of the front row behind the lady who is sitting on the floor. The museum is in the building where Otto's workshop was and the rooms are preserved pretty much in their original state.<br />
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As tensions in the country grew, Weidt endeavoured to protect his mostly blind and deaf employees from persecution and deportation, bribing the Gestapo, falsifying documents, and eventually hiding a family behind a backless cupboard in one room of his shop. Otto survived the war and established an orphanage for the survivors of the concentration camps but sadly he died of heart failure in 1947 aged 64.<br />
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This is a view from the window of 39 Rosenthaler in the 1930s.....<br />
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.....and the view from the same window today.<br />
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Outside they were preparing for Halloween. <br />
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There were three or four flights of stairs inside one of the buildings and every surface all the way up was covered with art. I gave in and was persuaded to go and look at it all, I was informed that I needed to broaden my horizons:) We also paid to go into a sort of show? experience? in a cellar. It was pitch dark and the floors were a soft rubbery material both of which affected my balance which is fine in daylight but rubbish in the dark so Juliette had to hold my hand to make sure I stayed upright:) It was actually great fun as it was filled with automatons that suddenly appeared out of the darkness and did all kinds of things. The artists who built them were undoubtedly very clever and much to my surprise I really enjoyed it . <br />
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By this time it was beginning to get dark so we decided to go back to the hotel to have a short rest before going out for the evening. Bastien had told us that was some sort of Festival of Lights on so we thought we might as well have a look at it.
Right, I've decided to give in and make this two posts! I shall go back to the title and add Part One to it:)Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-89216071206622137592016-05-19T22:01:00.001+01:002016-05-19T22:01:51.349+01:00Ratty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's a good while since my last post but recently one or two people have left comments on older posts and I've decided to try and get back into things again. I'm starting with this photo of a water vole seen last week when out walking on the moors with my friend P. The banks of this small moorland stream were full of holes which are the entrances to the homes of water voles. I was aware that they live in this area but never expected to actually see one. I was really close to him (or her!) and he certainly knew I was there but he seemed quite unconcerned and I was able to take several photos. If you enlarge this one you will be able to see his little paws holding what I think is a piece of reed that he is eating.
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The water vole is of course Ratty from Kenneth Grahame's wonderful story 'The Wind In The Willows'. Here he is with his friends Mole, Badger and Mr Toad of Toad Hall. The illustration is by Inga Moore who is my favourite of all the artists who have illustrated this classic book.
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I didn't take many photos on the walk as is often the case when I'm with someone else. This is cotton grass which is actually a sedge, it grows in the boggy hollows of the high open moors and is a very attractive sight in May and June in what is often a rather barren landscape.<br />
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Towards the end of our five mile walk we were looking down onto the Wyming Brook which is rather spectacular and beautiful, and there is a lovely three mile walk along its banks which we've done in the past.
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I never did get the final post from my trip to Berlin done so I think I'll try and do it over the next few days. This is another of the chocolate sculptures from Fassbender and Rausch's wonderful shop. It will be rather fun to go back through the photographs and try and remember where they all were!<br />
<br />Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-21692602955375296312015-10-27T20:43:00.001+00:002015-10-27T20:43:09.323+00:00Walking Berlin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Friday morning we made our way to Hackescher Markt where we were to meet our tour guide Jess for our walking tour of Berlin. Jess was a young man from the USA with a degree in ancient and classical history who is currently studying at Humboldt University in Berlin. The weather was cold but dry with the promise of some sunshine later in the day. I should say now that some of these photos show clear blue skies and this is because we went round many of the places a second time early on Sunday morning to spend more time looking at the various buildings and also to take better photographs of some of them. It isn't easy to take decent photos when you are constantly chasing after a tour group:) So here we are at our first stop on Museum Island which is a genuine island in the middle of the River Spree. It came as a surprise to learn that Berlin is built on a swamp and its origins are here on Museum Island where five of the major museums of Berlin now stand. The one in the photo is the the Neues Museum which was opened in 1855. It was very badly damaged during the bombing of Berlin in WW2 and after the war was left as an abandoned bombsite.<br />
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Restoration work didn't begin until 2003 and was done by an English architect called David Chipperfield. He used as much of the original building as possible and the scars left by shrapnel and bullet holes were left visible rather than being patched over. The parts that needed to be completely rebuilt were done in modern brick so that the difference between old and new is very obvious. This in itself tells the story of the building. It must have been a very difficult engineering feat as the Museum is built on thousands of wooden foundation piles because of the swampy ground that it stands on. Although I knew that the Museum houses a collection of Egyptian art I didn't realise until too late that the collection includes the beautiful head of <a href="http://www.egyptian-museum-berlin.com/c53.php">Nefertiti</a>. I can't believe that I missed a chance of seeing that! <br />
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The Berliner Dom also stands on Museum Island and contains the tombs of the Hohenzollern family who ruled the kingdom of Prussia from 1701 and then the whole of Germany between 1871 and 1918. Like so many other buildings in Berlin it suffered severe damage during WW2 and it remained closed until 1993. It has now been fully restored and is in use both as a church and a venue for concerts.It is apparently well worth seeing the inside but sadly we didn't have time on this visit. <br />
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The Altes Museum, built in 1830, stands at right angles to the Berliner Dom overlooking the Lustgarten which started life in the 16th century as the kitchen gardens of the Berliner Stadtschloss or Palace. It was on the central steps leading up to the Altes Museum that a platform was built and from here Adolf Hitler addressed mass rallies of up to a million people. It's almost impossible to imagine those dark events in today's peaceful surroundings.<br />
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The row of black blobs above the Doric columns are actually eighteen Prussian eagles. The Black Eagle was the coat of arms of Prussia from 1229 until 1947. <br />
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From Museum Island we moved on to Unter Den Linden probably the best known and most elegant street in Berlin. It began life in the mid 1500s as a bridle path leading from the Royal Palace to the hunting grounds in what is now the Tiergarten. Its name comes from the double row of lime trees planted in 1647 by the Grand Elector Frederick William. The original trees had all gone by the end of WW2 and the ones that are there today were planted in the 1950s. The rather splendid equestrian statue is of Frederick the Great who was King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.<br />
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This is a 20th century sculpture called Mother With Her Dead Son by Berlin artist Kathe Kollwitz who lost her own son in WW1. It stands inside a building on Unter Den Linden called Neue Wache which was originally built as a royal guardhouse between 1816 and 1818 but in 1931 it was turned into a memorial to the fallen of WW1. After the reunification of Germany it became a memorial to all victims of war and tyranny. Under the granite slab that the sculpture stands on are the ashes of an unknown soldier, a resistance fighter, a concentration camp prisoner and soil from battlefields and concentration camps. It's a very compelling memorial standing in the centre of a large empty stone lined chamber and above it is a circular skylight open to the elements.<br />
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Just off Unter Den Linden is Bebelplatz which contains The Staatsoper, Berlin's Opera House, St Hedwig's Cathedral and the lovely Baroque building in the photograph which is the Altes Bibliothek or Old Library which was built about 1775. It's now part of Humboldt University.<br />
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Bebelplatz is a very attractive place especially in the early morning sunshine but this too has a dark history. On May 10th 1933 the centre of this pleasant square was the scene of the burning of over 20,000 books by authors deemed to be enemies of the Third Reich. These included works by Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque (who wrote All Quiet On The Western Front), Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein and Leo Tolstoy. The photo shows the monument created in 1995 which commemorates this event, it's a window set into the cobbled surface of the square and to begin with you can see nothing then you realise that below are rows and rows of empty bookshelves - enough to hold the 20,000 books that were burned. <br />
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The Hotel Adlon - the most luxurious hotel in Berlin. This is where Queen Elizabeth stayed during her State visit to Germany earlier this year. The original Hotel Adlon was built in 1907 and became the social centre of Berlin, famous people who stayed there include Czar Nicholas II, Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich.It survived WW2 virtually undamaged but was destroyed in 1945 by a fire started by drunken Red Army soldiers! The current Hotel Adlon was re-opened in 1997.<br />
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Right at the end of Unter Den Linden stands what is probably Berlin's most famous landmark - the Brandenburg Gate. It was built in the late 18th century and stands on the site of one of Berlin's old city gates.<br />
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The Quadriga stands on top of the Gate but it hasn't spent all its life here nor has the goddess Victory always carried the staff bearing the Prussian Eagle and the Iron cross . During the Napoleonic Wars Berlin was occupied by the French for a few years and Napoleon took a fancy to the Quadriga and had it taken to Paris. It remained there until 1814 when it was returned to Berlin after Prussian, Austrian and Russian troops occupied Paris. It was on its return to Berlin that the Prussian Eagle and Iron Cross were added.<br />
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If you pass through the Brandenburg Gate and then turn left onto Eberstrasse you will come to the Holocaust Memorial which has only been there since 2005. It commemorates all the Jews killed by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 and consists of 2711 concrete slabs of differing heights - the Field of Stelae. It is a daunting and to me a very claustrophobic place when you walk into it. An underground information centre holds the names of all known holocaust victims. By a rather grim coincidence I received a text from my eldest son who was in Poland that day visiting Auschwitz which he described as 'a challenging experience'.<br />
From there we were then taken to see the site of Hitler's Bunker which is now a car park, had a brief look at the Berlin Wall and were marched smartly past Checkpoint Charlie with the scathing remark that the whole thing was a complete sham and not even in quite the right place but how accurate that statement is I've no idea:)
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Our tour ended in Gendarmenmarkt outside the Konzerthaus, it was interesting and we learned a lot but there was no time to linger or actually go inside places. These tours do give you an idea of what there is to see and the layout of the main part of the city though. By this time it was nearly 2pm and we'd been walking since 10.30 with just a 15 minute break which gave time to either have a quick bite to eat or visit the restroom and buy a quick drink. We chose the second option! By now we were ready to eat and ready to sit down for a while and we knew the perfect place to do both just a stone's throw away. <a href="http://www.slowtravelberlin.com/fassbender-rausch/">Fassbender and Rausch</a> was on out list of must visit places anyway so we decided to have a leisurely and rather belated lunch there. <br />
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A little appetizer on the house while we waited for the main course - we were halfway through it before I thought of taking a photo. Cream cheese with chocolate - delicious! Everything in the cafe involves chocolate in one way or another.
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A nice healthy salad of wild herbs with goat's cheese pralines - except that the salad is served in a basket made of chocolate:)<br />
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Dessert - an orange brittle mini torte that was incredibly rich. My daughter had a Mozart Symphony. All washed down with a glass of Prosecco. By the time I'd finished I felt that I never wanted to eat again:)<br />
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When we eventually got back downstairs we saw the Brandenburg Gate again - Fassbender and Rausch are famous for their chocolate sculptures. I regret to say that we spent rather a lot of euros in the shop and, even worse, I've discovered that they have an online shop that ships to all countries in the EU. I see lots of pralines and truffles in my future!<br />
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I'm off to Suffolk for a few days on Thursday but when I get back I'll post about out Food Tour of Berlin and more about the Berlin Wall which we revisited on the Sunday. By the way have you noticed that many of the outdoor photos have a crane in them? There is still much rebuilding going on in East Berlin.Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-50579961384561891912015-10-16T16:08:00.000+01:002015-10-16T16:08:08.471+01:00A Trip To Berlin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My daughter and I arrived in Berlin on a grey, wet and rather cool Thursday morning and after leaving our luggage at our hotel - the Adina Apartment Hotel - we went for a wander round and a spot of lunch. Check in time was 2pm so we had a couple of hours to fill.
The hotel is in East Berlin and close to Hackesher Markt and the River Spree which runs through the centre of Berlin eventually joining the River Elbe and then flowing into the North Sea at Hamburg. The building in the centre is the Berliner Dom.<br />
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This is Hackescher Markt, the market square was originally laid out in 1750 and the area around here is absolutely awash with places to eat and small independent shops and is apparently a pretty 'in place' these days. On the right you can see the entrance to the railway station and the railway itself runs behind the top of the ornate brick facade which I found rather attractive.</div>
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The one place I really wanted to visit was the Pergamon Museum so after settling in to our hotel off we went. The Museum was only a few minutes walk and I had booked tickets in advance for the 4pm entry so we were able to go straight in. The Pergamon houses antiquities from the Classical world and the Ancient Near East and also the Museum of Islamic Art. My objective was to see the Ishtar Gate and I'm afraid that this is a really bad photograph of it, I couldn't stand square on or far enough back because of the number of other people who were also taking photos but you get the general idea:) <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150302-ancient-babylons-greatest-wonder">The Ishtar Gate</a> was the main entrance to the city of Babylon (in what is now Iraq) and was built by King Nebuchadnezzar around 575BC - or perhaps I should say was built <i>for</i> him, I rather doubt that he had anything to do with the actual construction:) It was excavated by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey between 1902 and 1914 and the material was brought back to Germany and used to make a partial reconstruction. It was originally a double gate but it was so enormous (over 38 feet high) that only the smaller frontal part is on display, the second gate is in storage. The Pergamon is undergoing extensive refurbishment at the moment so parts of it were closed and there was a lot of background scaffolding etc visible that wouldn't normally be seen.<br />
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The Gate was dedicated to Ishtar the Babylonian goddess of love and war whose symbol was the lion. One hundred and twenty of these lined the Processional Way which led from the inner city through the Ishtar Gate to the Bit Akitu or 'House of the New Year's Festival'. The festival lasted for twelve days and began after the first new moon following the Spring Equinox. The lions were there as a symbol of protection.The corridor in the Museum which leads to the Gate is lined on both sides with these striding lions in a recreation of the Processional Way<br />
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The Gate itself was decorated with alternating rows of bulls and dragons symbols of the weather god Adad and the most important Babylonian god Marduk. The animals were made with brown and yellow glazed tiles surrounded by blue tiles made of lapis lazuli which was highly prized in the ancient world for its intense colour. The only source at that period was Afghanistan so it was both rare and expensive. The 'dragon' has the head and forked tongue of a snake and the hind feet of a bird.<br />
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Here we have the reconstructed Market Gate from Miletus a wealthy Greek trading city in what is now Turkey. It's absolutely enormous - over 98 feet wide (c30metres) and 54 feet high(c16 metres) so the photo shows only the central portion. It was built in the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian - he of Hadrian's Wall fame - as Greece was of course a part of the Roman Empire at this time.<br />
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The relief above is carved on basalt and depicts a lion hunt. It dates from about 750BC and comes from the palace of Kapara in Tell Halaf , north east Syria. By the 9th century BC this area had become part of the Assyrian Empire. Does anyone else remember learning the lines from Lord Byron's poem?<br />
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The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold<br />
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold<br />
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea<br />
When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee<br />
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I must have learned that when I was about 9 or 10 years old and I've never forgotten it.
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This enormous 9th century BC statue of a bird, probably a griffin, is also from the palace at Tell Halaf <br />
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I think this was probably my favourite of all the exhibits. The jewellery, made of gold, carnelian and lapis lazuli, was found in the Royal Graves of the ancient city of Ur and dates from about 2600BC. It was worn by the female attendants of Queen Puabi with whom they were buried. When the Queen died her attendants died with her and I don't think they asked for volunteers! The Royal Graves were excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and the <a href="http://withart.visitphilly.com/artworks/queen-puabis-headdress-and-beaded-cape/">jewellery</a> that the Queen herself was buried with is even more stunning but I believe that you will have to visit the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology to see it. Ur was a city in ancient Mesopotamia which is now southern Iraq. I would really love to travel in Iraq and Syria and visit some of the wonderful archaeological sites that are there though there isn't much chance of that at present.</div>
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Finally we moved into the section of the Museum devoted to Islamic Art. This is part of the Aleppo Room and it is apparently the oldest surviving and most valuable painted wall panelling from the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml">Ottoman Empire</a>. It was made about 1600AD for the reception room of a house in the Syrian city of Aleppo. There are glass screens in front of it hence the reflections.<br />
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A detail of one of the panels showing a little picture of courtly life, a lovely bird and some of the intricate floral designs.
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These are really beautiful, a carved ivory casket from 11th-12th century Sicily and an equally beautiful carved ivory drinking horn - at least I think it's a drinking horn.
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This was just stunning - a prayer niche from the Maidan Mosque in Iran dating from 1226. A prayer niche is the focal point of the interior of a mosque and would be oriented towards Mecca.<br />
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I have no idea how old this is or where it came from but I love the shape and simplicity of it. My daughter was getting a little restive by this stage so I didn't linger long enough to read the explanatory label. She was doing the Pergamon in exchange for me going with her to look for street art later on:) This was a really good day to spend time here as the Museum is open until 8pm on Thursdays so even though we didn't go in until 4pm we had plenty of time to look round and it was also a very good way of staying out of the rain which was pretty heavy. After a brief return to the hotel we went out for dinner and then had an early night - we'd been up since 3.30am as our flight from Manchester left at 7am so exhaustion was definitely setting in by this time and a lot of walking lay ahead of us over the next couple of days.
Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-16134255430345063122015-10-04T22:01:00.001+01:002015-10-04T22:01:58.034+01:00Snowshill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On the way home from our Time Travellers weekend we visited Snowshill which is definitely the most unusual National Trust property that I've ever been to. The house itself is a pleasant enough Tudor manor house but as soon as you step inside you are almost overwhelmed by the sight of the literally thousands of artefacts collected by a true English eccentric called Charles Padget Wade.
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Photography is very difficult because of the very low light levels in the house. Until the National Trust took it over in 1951 there was no electricity in the house at all as Charles Wade preferred to use candles and oil lamps. The light levels are kept low so that the atmosphere is as it was during his ownership. In the photo above you can just about see the item that began Charles Wade's lifelong love of collecting - his grandmother's Cabinet of Curiosities.
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The collection of Japanese Samurai armour is amazing, Charles Wade acquired 26 suits of armour from various parts of England between 1940 and 1945. They date from the 17th to the 19th centuries and Charles arranged them to give the impression of a party of warriors sitting round their campfire in the gloom of the evening. All the armour is set behind a perspex screen which explains the slanting line across the top of the photo. I must confess that I'm intrigued to know how so much Samurai armour came to be in this country at all and especially in a plumber's shop in Cheltenham which is where two of them came from!
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I really love these pen drawings on old playing cards. They were done c1826 by an elderly gentleman called Eric Gill. I hope that you can enlarge them enough to see more detail because they really are brilliant.<br />
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One of the rooms is devoted to all kinds of musical instruments, there is everything from Irish harps, clarinets and flutes to a 19th century coaching horn and three hurdy gurdys.
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Of all the things we saw these were without doubt my favourite, they are a series of one eighth scale models of farm wagons from various areas of the country. This one is a Wiltshire wagon. They were commissioned by Charles Wade and were made by Mr H.R.Waiting between 1932 and 1938 from existing examples of the real thing. That's just a taste of what there is to see, I don't think I really liked it very much although I'm glad I've seen it. There was so much in every room that my senses were overwhelmed eventually. The garden on the other hand was exactly the kind of thing I like.
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Walking up through the orchard the age of Snowshill is much more evident than it is from the classical style of the front of the house. The Manor of Snowshill (as opposed to the manor <i>house</i> which is a quite different thing) was owned by Winchcombe Abbey from 821AD until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. The manor house was built around 1500 and was altered and extended about 1600. By the time that Charles Wade bought it in 1919 it had become a semi derelict farm. Charles completely restored the house preserving as much of the old panelling and stonework as possible. He then set about filling it, the house was never intended to be lived in but was bought purely to house his collections. He lived in The Priest's House, a cottage near to the main house.
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Not only was Charles Wade a keen - or perhaps obsessive would be a better word! - collector he also loved gardening. When he arrived the house was surrounded by nettles, brambles, broken crocks and all manner of other debris but once the house was restored Charles set to work outside. <br />
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I really liked this water feature, it had a very tranquil feel to it.<br />
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In the little garden house - a former cow byre - is a apparently a Flemish chariot dating from 1839 though I must confess that I'm not entirely sure what a Flemish chariot is!<br />
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The garden was full of paths and steps and walls made of beautiful mellow Cotswold stone. It was a delight to wander round and I could have spent very much longer there if we'd had time.<br />
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Although it isn't immediately obvious from the outside this is a medieval dovecote. As well as old farm wagons I'm also greatly attracted by dovecotes:) <br />
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There are nestboxes for 380 birds inside, in medieval times doves and pigeons were an important food source especially in the winter months, they were kept for both their eggs and their meat. The little white blobs are a couple of the white pigeons that live there now.
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Here are more of the residents of the dovecote in the Armillary Court. The stone column is topped by a gilded sundial.<br />
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Another hidden delight in the garden is Wolf's Cove an imaginary model Cornish fishing village made by Charles Wade. It originally included a working model railway and canal. It seems to have more or less disappeared over the years but has now been excavated by archaeologists and is being restored by volunteers. Charles Wade was a skilled carpenter and model maker and delighted in projects such as Wolf's Cove. I would love to see it when the restoration is finished.<br />
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A close up of some of the model buildings - my favourite bit is the little set of stone steps leading down to the quay.<br />
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Finally a view from the garden looking down over the orchard and onto the countryside beyond. The stone building on the right is the dovecote. I would really love to go back to Snowshill one day just to spend more time exploring the garden and also to look around the village which I believe is very pretty. I'm off to Berlin for a few days on Thursday - my first ever visit to Germany so I'm looking forward to it.</div>
Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-67913430352919815862015-09-24T13:18:00.000+01:002015-09-24T13:18:12.788+01:00Roman to Regency<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's back to the Time Travellers weekend for this post and as you can see the weather wasn't great when we arrived in Bath for our guided tour of the Roman Baths which is the building on the left of the photograph.<br />
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We had an hour or so before our 12pm tour so Rosemary and I decided to have a look inside Bath Abbey which dates from the late 15th/early 16th centuries and was the last of England's great abbey churches to be built. Underneath the current Abbey lie the remains of the Norman Abbey and before that an Anglo Saxon convent founded in 676AD stood on the site. In 757AD a monastery was built and for a while the convent and monastery may have existed side by side. Certainly the board listing the Priors of Bath Abbey named two Abbesses - Bertana and then Bernguidis - at the top of the list..<br />
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The beautiful fan vaulted ceiling above the nave. The guide book says that the famous dandy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Nash">Beau Nash</a> is buried in the nave but other sources claim that after an elaborate funeral funded by the City Corporation he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave which is hardly likely to be in the nave!<br />
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The Abbey is absolutely stuffed full of memorials and an amazing number of the people named on them either came from or had spent many years abroad. Rosemary and I wondered whether they had come to Bath to take the waters and had died there either in spite of or because of this! Though in all fairness to the waters of Bath a good many of them had lived to a ripe old age even by modern standards.<br />
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Prior Birde's Chantry Chapel - before the Reformation the Abbey was part of a Benedictine monastery. William Birde was Prior until his death in 1525.<br />
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Finally the view from the choir looking down the nave towards the West window. <br />
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Bath is famous for its thermal spring which produces over a million litres of water every day. It reaches the surface with a constant temperature of 45C (113F) but quickly cools to a pleasant 34C(93F). It also contains 42 different minerals and has been regarded as a healing spring since the 9th century BC - long before the Romans arrived in Britain. It was a sacred site dedicated to the Celtic goddess Sulis and the Romans combined Sulis with her Roman equivalent Minerva and built a magnificent temple and an equally magnificent bath house around the spring. The photograph shows the sacred pool of Sulis where the water rises before being channelled into the bathing pools. People would throw votive offerings, including over 12000 Roman coins, into the water and 130 lead curse tablets have also been found on the bottom of the pool. Some of the curses ask for very specific and unpleasant punishments for the person being cursed! These were all discovered when the spring was temporarily diverted in 1979/80 so that archaeological excavations could be carried out.</div>
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This is the pediment from the Temple of Sulis Minerva that was discovered under the present Pump Room in 1790. Some sort of clever lighting has been used to fill in the missing pieces and also to indicate the fact that originally it would have been brightly painted. If you look in the bottom righthand corner of the central stone you will see a small owl which was the symbol of the goddess Minerva.<br />
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In case you have as much trouble spotting it as I did here it is:)
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This is the Great Bath which was the centre of a large bathing complex with changing room, warm, hot and cold rooms as well as three pools for swimming. It was a centre of social life as well as a place to get clean, people played board games, gambled, ate and drank and generally had a good time. Can you spot the Roman soldier?<br />
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Perhaps he is just coming off duty and is looking for his friends:) <br />
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This isn't the first time that I've visited the Roman Baths but it's a very different place now than it was when I last saw it many years ago. A great deal of excavation has been done some of it very recent. This is the Temple of Sulis Minerva which is located I think beneath the street outside the modern entrance to the Baths. The Roman street level was much lower than it is now.
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This inscribed stone pedestal stands pretty much in the place where it was found close to the altar. The inscription reads<br />
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Deae Suli<br />
L Marcius Memor<br />
Harusp<br />
D D<br />
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and translates as<br />
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'For the goddess Sulis<br />
Lucius Marcius Memor<br />
Haruspex<br />
Gave this gift'.<br />
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It's thought that the gift would have been a statue of some sort. Oh, you want to know what a haruspex is? He is a priest who interpreted omens by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals! Well, you did ask:)<br />
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There is an excellent mueum as part of the complex which has some really superb objects in it but this is the piece de resistance as far as I'm concerned - the wonderful gilded bronze head of Sulis Minerva. It was found in 1727 when workmen were digging a sewer beneath Stall St which is right outside the Roman Baths. It would have been part of the cult statue that once stood inside the Temple and the rest of it must be somewhere not too far away. Perhaps one day it will be found.<br />
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After our tour of the Baths Rosemary and I decided to wander round the streets and look at some of the wonderful architecture.It happened that our visit coincided with a Jane Austen weekend and Bath was full of people in Regency costumes - some more authentic than others:) This little group is outside the Assembly Rooms. In spite of several attempts I have never yet managed to get inside the Assembly Rooms as they have always been closed for a function or refurbishment. This was no exception as there was a wedding taking place! The Assembly Rooms opened in September 1771 and became the centre of fashionable society life in Bath during the Georgian era.There is a magnificent ballroom, a tea room and a card room and one day I hope to actually see them! This is where Beau Nash, a celebrated dandy and leader of fashion, was Master of Ceremonies. He was also a notorious gambler which is why he ended up in a pauper's grave. It does seem very odd that the Corporation were happy to pay for a splendid funeral but didn't provide money for a grave and headstone.
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As you can see from the clear blue sky the weather had improved dramatically by mid afternoon.This is The Circus with its lovely Georgian town houses which were built between 1754 and 1768. Thomas Gainsborough lived at No 17 for 16 years. There are three curved sections of houses which together form a circle with three roads leading out of it. In the 1800s the central area which is now grassed over was a railed garden and the majestic London Plane trees that are growing there now must be all that is left of it.<br />
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The Royal Crescent built between 1767 and 1774 is probably the most famous landmark in Bath. No 1 Royal Crescent is now a museum showing how one of these houses might have been furnished and lived in by a wealthy 18th century owner. We didn't have time to go inside as we needed to get back to the Park and Ride bus for the hour and a quarter drive back to Birdlip. There was so much more to see and Rosemary and I are thinking we might go and spend a day there in the Spring - apart from anything else we never got to <a href="http://www.sallylunns.co.uk/history/the-london-bath-bun/">Sally Lunn's teashop</a>!Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-26567411817149220932015-09-21T10:47:00.000+01:002015-09-21T10:47:09.004+01:00The Wheel Turns<br />
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A few days ago I received a comment on a post called 'The Four Seasons' from 2013 and when I went back and looked at it I thought that it was worth repeating and that the Autumn Equinox was an appropriate time to do it. Bilbo Baggins had four legs and a lot less grey in his muzzle two years ago but he still loves doing all the walks that are shown in the photographs.</div>
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Breezes blow through the woods in springtime<br />
Roots drink deep from the wakened earth<br />
The young leaves shine in the quickening sunlight<br />
Dance the song of the new year's birth<br />
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The dance goes on and it's never ending<br />
The circle turns and the singer sings<br />
The year turns round but the woods in springtime<br />
Do not care what the winter brings.<br />
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When the leaves are long in the days of summer<br />
And the light drifts through them cool and green<br />
The great trees stir in their dreaming sleep<br />
And sing slow tales of the years they've seen<br />
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The dance goes on and it's never ending<br />
The circle turns and the tale unfolds<br />
The years turn round but the wood in summer<br />
Has no thought of the winter's cold.<br />
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Blackberry, hazel, and elderberry<br />
Hang heavy and ripe in the shortening days<br />
Bright as a banner the autumn leaves <br />
Burn red in the old sun's dying rays<br />
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The dance goes on and it's never ending<br />
The circle turns and returns again<br />
The year burns on but the wood in autumn<br />
Gathers itself for the winter's pain.<br />
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When winter bites and the leaves are falling<br />
Through the hawthorn cold winds run<br />
Through the dwindling day the cruel-leafed holly<br />
Keeps safe the memory of the sun<br />
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The dance goes on and it's never ending<br />
The circle turns and the singer sings<br />
The year grows old but the winter wood<br />
Still holds the memory of the spring.<br />
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The Four Seasons By Brian Pearson (From the album "Tam Lin")<br />
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I discovered this song only recently on a CD called The Dance Goes On by Blanche Rowen and Mike Gulston. I absolutely love the words, they are precisely what my blog is all about. Originally I couldn't find the song on Youtube but when I looked again there it was - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjOmEtStzcY">The Four Seasons</a>Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-73186884819230137402015-09-16T16:05:00.000+01:002015-09-16T16:42:59.454+01:00Time Travelling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last weekend a group of us from the Time Travellers, our local archaeology group, went down to the Cotswolds for our annual weekend away visiting sites of historic and/or archaeological interest. The photograph above might give the impression that we were at a fairly modern site but that is far from being the case. In 1864 a gamekeeper discovered pieces of <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/article/498/">Roman tesserae</a> on land belonging to Lord Eldon. At the time Lord Eldon was a minor and it was his uncle and guardian James Farrar, who fortunately had an interest in antiquity,
who organized a team of workmen to excavate the site which turned out to be Chedworth Roman Villa. When Lord Eldon eventually came of age ( in 1866) he also was interested in the villa and carried on with the conservation work that his uncle had begun. This is the Victorian shooting lodge and museum which he built on the lower part of the villa site. Chedworth Roman Villa was acquired by the National Trust in 1924.<br />
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A model of the villa showing the layout as it would have been in the fourth century AD. To the left is the west range containing the main dining room and the bath house, at the top is the north range and nearest the front is the south range . No-one has been able to work out exactly what the various rooms were used for but the south range certainly contained the kitchen and the latrine suggesting that this was at least in part a service wing.<br />
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<span style="text-align: start;">Here we are beginning the tour with our guide who </span>was a retired forensic archaeologist. He was brought in specially for us as it was assumed - not necessarily correctly:) - that we all knew more about what we were seeing than the general run of visitors. As well as the enthusiasts there were one or two wives in the party who were just along for the ride rather than because they had any real interest in archaeology. In my case the assumption was correct though as I did Classical Studies 'A' Level many moons ago and Chedworth was one of the Romano British villas that I studied. We are walking along the front of the north range which faces south so the main reception rooms would be along here including what is thought to be the summer dining room which would have taken advantage of the sunlight and the lovely view in the warmer months.The climate in Britain was much better during the Roman period than it is now.</div>
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Pillars of the underfloor heating system in a room labelled cautiously 'Multi purpose heated room' which translates as 'we have absolutely no idea what this room was used for' :):)</div>
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This is part of the bath house which shows both the proper floor level on the left in the tepidarium or warm room and also the pilae which supported the floor of the caldarium or hot room. At the back is the semi circular hot tub. Outside the wall on the right was a furnace and the hot air entered through the opening that is just visible at the bottom right. It was circulated under the floor through the open spaces between the pilae.The hot room was nearest the furnace so was hottest, it had cooled down somewhat by the time it reached the warm room and I think there would also be a hypercaust under the changing room which would be third in line and so just comfortable. <br />
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All the rooms in the bath house would have had mosaic floors, this is the frigidarium or cold room. Bathing was a very important part of Roman life and was quite a prolonged and complicated affair. You would go into the baths and undress in the changing room before going into the cold room. I wouldn't imagine you would linger there too long before moving on to the warm room for a while. Then it's on to the hot room where there was a boiler or basins filled with hot water to provide steam and you could sit in the hot tub if you wanted.The steam opened the pores and released the dirt and then it was back to the warm room where you would have a massage with scented oils and then all the oil and dirt etc would be removed using a strigil. Back to the cold room for a dip in the cold plunge bath before returning to the changing room feeling clean and refreshed. This would have been a daily ritual not something you did once a week or once a month or - as happened in later centuries - once a year! <br />
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This is the cold plunge bath.</div>
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I scanned the really neat little sketch from the National Trust's excellent guide book to Chedworth Roman Villa which will help you follow what I've written about bathing. All the odd bods trotting about are the slaves who would assist you when required - folding your clothes, fetching towels, doing the massage and wielding the strigil.</div>
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In the north west corner behind the villa is a nymphaeum - a shrine built over a natural spring which was channelled into an octagonal basin, This was a religious site where a water goddess would have been worshipped but also from here came the water supply for the villa. Since traces of iron age round houses and an iron age burial of a child have been found nearby it is almost certain that the spring will already have had a native British goddess who would have been combined with a Roman equivalent. I should perhaps say here that the family who lived in this villa will have been wealthy Romano-Britons not Romans. Very few 'Romans' ever lived in Britain, the administration was largely carried out by Romanized high ranking Britons and the military men came from all parts of the Roman Empire. After 25 years service a soldier would gain Roman citizenship and a parcel of land and might well settle permanently here. You can also banish any visions of chaps wandering about wearing togas, only Roman citizens were allowed to wear togas and as they were distinctly cumbersome even those who were entitled to wear them probably only did so on formal occasions. <br />
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By the time we left Chedworth it was quite late in the afternoon so the four of us who were travelling together decided to visit Cirencester as it was close by. Cirencester was once known as Corinium Dobonnorum and was the second largest town in Roman Britain. The second part of the name comes from the Dobunni who were the local British tribe. The photo shows the fantastic yew hedge in Bathurst Park which is the family seat of the \earls of Bathurst. We knew that we didn't have much time but decided to have a quick look in the Corinium Museum which has a large collection of Roman antiquities.<br />
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Among the exhibits is a recreation of a Roman garden which was full of familiar plants - borage, myrtle, bay, roses, lilies, cyclamen and many others most of which were introduced to this country by the Romans. <br />
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Members of the Dobunni tribe - Corinium was their tribal capital which had evolved from the vicus or settlement that grew up around the 1st century Roman fort that was built here. The garrison was transferred elsewhere by 75AD.<br />
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This is the lower half of a Corinthian column capital - the largest ever found in Britain. It came from the site of the <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/article/24/">Basilica</a> in Corinium and the column that it stood on would have been 13 metres high.<br />
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Part of the 4th century Orpheus mosaic that was discovered just outside the centre of Cirencester. There's quite a lot more of the mosaic left and the portrayal of the animals is really appealing. One day I shall go back to this museum, we only had 45 minutes before it closed and it deserved a far longer visit than that. It's one of the best museums that I've visited - light, spacious, beautifully laid out and the information about the exhibits was both clear and interesting. Cirencester itself would be worth exploring as well I suspect. A town as old as this must have a lot of history.
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So off we went to our hotel in Birdlip, the rooms were not especially wonderful - no shampoo or shower gel for a start! The bed was comfortable though and the food was truly excellent - the salted caramel tart I had on Saturday night was heaven on a plate:)Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-20346488925711928372015-09-06T21:17:00.001+01:002015-09-06T21:17:55.945+01:00Life in the Old Dog Yet!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On a beautiful early Autumn morning I thought I would see whether Bilbo Baggins could still do the walk up to Piper House Gate, across the top to Devil's Elbow and back down to Short' s Lane. On Wednesday it will be a year since his leg was amputated and he's twelve and a half years old now but he's still fit and enjoys life. We always park opposite this field on our walks on Blackamoor.<br />
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The first part down the lane and along the river is either slightly downhill or flat as far as the stepping stones where we make the decision about whether to cross the river and go up Lenny Hill or to continue up to Piper House Gate. This is a long steep uphill climb and the path is quite narrow in parts. We passed this burdock plant which has finished flowering and is now producing its sticky hooked seed heads which are dispersed by attaching themselves to the fur of passing animals. We always called them sticky bobs. If you click on the photo to enlarge it you should be able to see the little hooks.<br />
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As we climbed above the tree line we started to see clumps of heather growing by the side of the path, the moors are beautiful at this time of the year with huge sheets of purple in many areas around here.<br />
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Almost at the top now, you can see for miles from up here and B Baggins is doing fine so far.<br />
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There are masses of bilberry bushes up on the moors but tucked in among them is the lovely bright red cowberry or lingonberry which is just as edible as the bilberry though nothing like as prolific - at least not round here.<br />
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The rowans are wonderful in the autumn with their huge, generous clusters of berries, they will grow in the most inhospitable of places - another of its names is Lady of the Mountains. <br />
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We are back in the woodland now on our way across to Devil's Elbow. As you can see B Baggins is still going strong and looking back to see why I'm lagging behind:)<br />
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Here we are on the third leg of the walk, the bracken is everywhere and grows shoulder high in many places - at least it's shoulder high to me but at five feet two and a half I don't present a huge challenge really:) My husband has just read the first bit of this and burst out laughing when he saw 'the third leg of the walk' under a photo of B Baggins with his three legs. This was entirely unintentional on my part:):)<br />
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Back on Shorts Lane with the hawthorn berries ripening against the background of a beautiful blue sky. B Baggins made it without any problem at all - just as well since at 30 kilos I certainly couldn't have carried him if he'd given up half way!Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-17077289971291639312015-09-02T13:16:00.000+01:002015-09-02T13:16:38.486+01:00Cider With Rosie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By the time we arrived in Painswick the sun was finally shining for the first time since we left home.I haven't been to Painswick for several years and it struck me as being much quieter with fewer shops than on my previous visit. Certainly we had no problem finding a space in the car park. St Mary's church is renowned for its yew trees - ninety nine of them were planted in the early 18th century and there was a legend that if a hundredth one was planted then the Devil would pull it out. I gather that there are now one hundred and three so draw your own conclusions:) The churchyard is also famous for its many table tombs belonging to the clothiers and merchants of the area who became wealthy as a result of the thriving Cotswold wool trade. In the 15th century when the Lord Chancellor's seat was created in the House of Lords it was made of Cotswold wool and became known as the Woolsack and the name continues to the present day. </div>
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The 15th century nave of St Mary's. The original Norman church is mentioned in the Domesday book but nothing is left of it now.<br />
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The north aisle which you can just see on the left of the previous photo was built in the reign of Richard II who was king from 1377-1399 and on two of the stone corbels are carved heads of Richard (above) and his Queen Anne of Bohemia.<br />
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My favourite thing in this church was the wonderful model of the 'Bonaventure' the flagship of Sir Francis Drake when he saw off the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1588. I believe that it replaces a much older model which was badly damaged during the Civil War when Royalist soldiers threw hand grenades through the church windows to drive out the Roundhead soldiers who were sheltering inside. <br />
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In 1643 a Puritan soldier passed his time while imprisoned in the church by carving this graffiti on one of the stone pillars in the nave! It included a rough quote from Edmund Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' - Be Bold, Be Bold, But Not To Bold. The spelling mistake is his not mine:)<br />
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By this time it was early afternoon and we were hungry so we looked for somewhere to have a spot of lunch, Juliette spotted a little cafe called 'The Patchwork Mouse' so we went in there and had an excellent toasted sandwich and a cake. Afterwards we had a stroll round Painswick but I don't seem to have taken any photographs for some reason. I don't know why as there were a lot of lovely Cotswold stone houses and cottages. Before we left I wanted to go and see if we could find Tibby's Well which was down a long and very steep lane. It was once the main source of drinking water for the village and is rather attractive. The climb back up the lane was just the thing to work off lunch! <br />
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Not far from Painswick is the village of Slad. We wanted to see the place made famous by Laurie Lee's book 'Cider With Rosie'. It tells of his childhood in a remote Cotswold village in the early years of the 20th century - he was born in 1914 and came to Slad at the age of three. Although he eventually left the village at the age of 19 he returned to Slad in his later years and is buried in the churchyard more less opposite the Woolpack Inn where he apparently spent a lot of his time! The inscription at the bottom of the headstone reads 'He lies in the valley he loved'. Incidentally the name of the village comes from the Old English word 'slaed' which means a damp valley - it's well named I think. <br />
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I didn't immediately realise that there was more on the reverse side of the headstone - these lyrical words come from his poem 'April Rise'<br />
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If ever I saw blessing in the air<br />
I see it now in this still early day<br />
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips<br />
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.
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This is the memorial window to Laurie Lee in the church, it isn't a very good photo but it was the best I could manage. The church was very dark and there was quite strong light outside. It's a shame as it's a very attractive window. The violin is in one of the panels because as well as being a poet and writer he was a talented fiddle player and he earned money in both London and Spain by playing his violin after leaving home in 1934.<br />
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The 16th century Woolpack Inn which is still an unspoilt country pub, it's a pity we didn't arrive in Slad a bit earlier because we could have had some lunch here. Apparently the food is very good. We didn't go inside but I wish now that we had. Laurie Lee lived very near to the Woolpack and spent a <i>lot</i> of time in here:)<br />
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The Old School House is across the road from the Woolpack and this is where Laurie went to school in his early years before moving on to Central Boy's School in Stroud when he was twelve years old. It's a private house now of course, so many of the old village schools no longer exist. I would really like to go back and spend several hours in Slad as there is what looks like a lovely and interesting four mile walk around the area which is still idyllic. By now it was quite late in the afternoon and we needed to start heading back to Evesham but instead of taking the main road we went across country along narrow winding lanes that went on for miles and were literally just the width of our car. I don't know what would have happened if we'd met something coming the other way as passing places were pretty much non existent. <br />
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Eventually we came to the attractive little village of Duntisbourne Abbots with its simple but beautiful 12th century church. I had a particular reason for wanting to stop here.<br />
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We had with us an old guide book to the Cotswolds and in a small paragraph about Duntisbourne Abbots it said that in 1875 the villagers had disturbed the neolithic Jack Barrow when ploughing and had reinterred the bones they found in the churchyard. They marked the spot with a cross made from stone of the original barrow megaliths. It didn't say where the grave was but I found it quite quickly by just looking round for stone that looked different from the rest of the gravestones in the churchyard.<br />
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Proof that I'd found the right grave from the worn but still fairly legible inscription.</div>
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Much of the original Norman church is still there in spite of some restoration in Victorian times. I should perhaps say here that my daughter's enthusiasm for visiting churches is very minimal indeed and my interest in them is purely because in general that is where the history of most places is to be found. She is kind enough to indulge me in this:)<br />
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The final photograph is of the late Norman font beautifully decorated with flowers. We think that there might have been a recent wedding and that was why the flowers were there. This font must have been here for nearly 900 years. There are so many lovely places in the Cotswolds to visit or revisit. I feel sure we shall be returning for a few more days next year.Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-20622906892406188182015-08-30T13:00:00.001+01:002015-08-30T13:03:52.999+01:00Belas Knapp <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Our main objective on the third day of our trip was to visit the neolithic longbarrow of Belas Knapp but on the way we passed through Winchcombe where we stopped for a quick look round. The photo above shows a 15th century merchant's house which is now a restaurant, the whole town is full of historic buildings. It is Anglo Saxon in origin and the layout in the centre of the town has remained virtually unchanged since medieval times. If I'd known how interesting it was going to be I'd have allowed more time to look around but we'd only taken an hour in the car park so only had time for a quick sprint round.</div>
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We decided that the church sounded interesting and that we would spend what time we had in there. St Peter's dates back to 1470 but stands on the site of an earlier church. The Benedictine Winchcombe Abbey once stood close to the east end. The Abbey was founded in 798AD and was demolished in 1539 - Henry VIII at work again with his Dissolution of the Monasteries!<br />
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St Peter's has forty wonderful grotesques- I loved this one:) Grotesques are just carved figures, it's the gargoyles that were originally water spouts. Apparently this one was the inspiration for the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I wish we'd had time to look for all of them.<br />
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The base and shaft of the font date from 1654 and the lovely painted font cover is mid 18th century. The bowl is a replacement for the one that was destroyed during the Civil War but there is a discreet silence about whether the Royalists or the Roundheads were responsible - I know which I'd bet on:) Behind the font is one of two Saxon stone coffins, one is thought to be that of King Kenulf and the other of his son St Kenelm both of whom were buried in the nearby Abbey church. Kenulf or Coenwulf was King of Mercia from 796AD until his death in 821AD.<br />
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This 14th century altar cloth is made from pieces of vestments and it's thought that it was stitched together and the border embroidered by <a href="http://tudorhistory.org/aragon/">Catherine of Aragon</a> the first wife of Henry VIII during a stay at nearby <a href="http://tudorhistory.org/places/sudeley/">Sudeley Castle</a>. Sudeley is another place on my list of places to go on my next visit to the Cotswolds. The curtains are kept closed to protect the fragile fabrics from the light, a guardian opens them when someone wants to look at the altar cloth. <br />
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Here we have a statue which represents King Kenulf who founded the Benedictine Abbey that once stood nearby. The statue isn't very old - 1872 to be exact. It was given to St Peter's by Mrs Emily Dent who paid for the restoration of the church in the 1870s.</div>
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A beautiful medieval carved oak screen which once separated the nave and the chancel but has now been moved to the west end of the church. Can you see the imp?<br />
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Here he is:) Look at the third panel from the left in the previous photo.<br />
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The church is full of wonderful old things - this is the medieval Alms Box. It had three locks and one key was kept by the vicar and the other two by the churchwardens. The box could only be opened when all three were present. The church and the town both deserved more time than we were able to give them and I would definitely like to go back - maybe next year.<br />
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Belas Knapp is quite close to Winchcombe but spotting the narrow lane where the path up Cleve Hill begins is not easy if you don't know what you're looking for. Fortunately a local lady gave us precise instructions before we left Winchcombe. It's quite a long steep climb up to Belas Knapp but there are some wonderful views on the way up.<br />
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Belas Knapp is an early neolithic long barrow and was constructed about 3600/3700BC . It's about 50 metres ( 164 feet) long and 4 metres (13 feet) high. I've borrowed an aerial photograph from <a href="http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belas-knap-long-barrow/">English Heritage</a> to give you a proper idea of what it looks like.</div>
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The skeletons of five children and a young man were found behind the stones of this portal setting with its projecting horns which formed a forecourt for ceremonial use presumably when burials were taking place. It was also possibly used at certain times of the year for ceremonies connected with the ancestors who were very important to neolithic people. My theory not an official one!</div>
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The barrow has four burial chambers and the remains of at least 38 people were found during various excavations. Fourteen skeletons were in this chamber which is on the north eastern side of the mound.
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One of the two chambers set into the north western side, the fourth is on the narrow south east side but there is very little to see of that one. <br />
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Belas Knapp is in a wonderful position with lovely views in every direction. The barrow itself is covered in wildflowers including lots of wild thyme, yarrow and scabious. This lovely butterfly is, I think, a Marbled White. We were lucky to have Belas Knapp entirely to ourselves so we were able to absorb the tranquil atmosphere undisturbed. We met one couple coming down as we climbed up to it and as we were going down two more people were on their way up but that was it. <br />
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Eventually we made our way slowly back down Cleve Hill and set off towards Painswick. But that is for next time.Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-47977972335081354902015-08-26T17:06:00.001+01:002015-08-28T07:24:29.072+01:00Two Cotswold Villages<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Many people who visit the Cotswolds head for the well known places such as Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water and Broadway - all very nice in their way but much too crowded for us. Though I have to say that Broadway has the most wonderful delicatessen - we bought various delicious things there and had them as a picnic lunch later on:) However we soon moved on to the delightful villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter. Above is the 12th century church of St Peter in Upper Slaughter. It's a pity that the day was rather cloudy so the photo is rather dreary looking especially with the two yew trees at the front of the church. This is an entirely false impression as the church and the village are both very attractive. There are an awful lot of people buried in that churchyard, apparently it stands six feet higher than the church itself! <br />
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This is the lovely 14th century font made even nicer by the flower arrangement standing on the font cover.
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The font stands below the Norman archway at the western end of the church which forms the entrance to the church tower.<br />
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A walk down the lane that runs by the side of the church brings you to the pretty little ford crossing the River Eye. This joins with another small river further down and eventually runs into the River Windrush at Bourton-on-the-Water. There is a small stone footbridge over the river as well. One thing you won't find in Upper Slaughter is a war memorial. It is one of only fourteen villages in England and Wales where every one of the soldiers who went to fight in the two World Wars returned safely, 25 in WW1 and 36 in WW2. <br />
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On the way to Lower Slaughter we passed this beautiful Elizabethan manor house - Upper Slaughter Manor..<br />
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The River Eye runs through Lower Slaughter as well and there are several of these stone slab bridges crossing it. It's a lovely village and although there were a few more visitors here than in Upper Slaughter it was still quiet and peaceful. The name Slaughter actually has nothing to do with killing anything - it derives from the Old English word 'sloughtre' which means a muddy place. The level of the river is so near the level of the road in both villages that I can well believe that it in past centuries it was very muddy indeed in winter. And probably in spring and autumn too!<br />
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I loved this tiny front garden, it makes the most of every bit of space and everything blends beautifully.
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This 19th century mill with its restored water wheel was still working until 1958. The mill house now houses a tea room, small museum and gift shop. It took us about 30 seconds to decide it wasn't our kind of place:) The words 'tourist trap' spring to mind! We, of course, are not tourists but travellers:)Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-54459080531885529982015-08-19T11:42:00.000+01:002015-08-19T11:42:54.594+01:00Ancestral Trail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been tracing my family history for many years and have known for a long time that my great grandmother was born in Evesham Workhouse in 1851 and that her mother's family lived in Aldington which is a hamlet a couple of miles from Evesham. Since we were visiting the Cotswolds I wanted to visit the places that Amelia and her mother and grandparents would have been familiar with. Amelia was born in the Workhouse as her mother was unmarried and this is where single women often went to have their babies at this period in time. Amelia's mother was Robina Pugh who was born in 1828, she was baptized in Badsey Church which is in the photo above. Aldington was too small to have a church of its own so the people who lived there walked to Badsey, which was only a mile away, to be hatched, matched and despatched. Both Badsey and Aldington were poor rural communities until the late 19th century when market gardening brought prosperity to the area - too late for my ancestors who had all left by 1871.
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The church was built in 1120 with additions in 1325 and 1450 and it then seems to have suffered 400 years of neglect until major restoration took place in 1885.This is the outside of the north wall with its blocked up Norman doorway which is the only remaining part of the original Norman church<br />
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The churchyard seems to have suffered a similar fate, oddly until 1866 the churchyard belonged to the Lord of the Manor who obviously took very little interest in it. The Rev.Thomas Hunt, who was vicar from 1852 - 1887, wrote<br />
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'Nettles are growing up everywhere. The sheep turned in and left all night plough up the turf from the newly made graves'.<br />
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This doesn't conjure up a particularly attractive vision of the place where Robina's 23 year old brother was buried in 1863! Things improved once the church bought the churchyard in 1866 however and it's now well kept. I don't know how old the yew tree is but I would guess that it might go back to medieval times. It's certainly on the list of ancient and veteran yew trees.<br />
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The 16th century Badsey Manor House. Originally there was a house for the ill and infirm monks of Evesham Abbey on this site but after the dissolution of the monasteries it was acquired by Sir Philip Hoby. In 1587 Richard Hoby rebuilt it in the Elizabethan style and it's thought that he incorporated some of the walls of the former sick house into the new manor house.<br />
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From Badsey we went on to Aldington. I have no way of knowing which of the cottages my 3xgt-grandparents lived in of course but it's very likely that it was one of these. There were only 19 houses in Aldington in 1841 and since the Manor House, the Mill, 2 farms and a house occupied by a solicitor are out of the equation it doesn't leave many to choose from. <br />
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The final place on the family history hunt was the little village of Childswickham now in Worcestershire but formerly in Gloucestershire. This was the birthplace of my 3xgt-grandmother Sarah. I can't give her a surname because I now need to visit Worcester Record Office to search the parish registers for her marriage to John Pugh and for various baptisms and burials. Neither John nor Sarah were buried in Badsey and my guess is that both ended up in the Workhouse and are buried somewhere in Evesham. They weren't married in Badsey either so Childswickham is a good bet there or failing that Evesham. St Mary's is another old church with Norman origins that had to be pretty much rebuilt in the 1870s. The list of vicars goes back to 1283 though.</div>
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Sarah was born around 1797 well before the church was restored but this is the 17th century font where she would have been baptized. <br />
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Sarah would have known the 15th century village cross which stands at the old village centre 300 yards from the church.It has its original medieval base but the cross was destroyed by the Puritans (they have a lot to answer for!)and was replaced in the 18th century by a classical urn.
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As with many workhouses the one at Evesham eventually became the local hospital but the buildings that existed in 1851 are now demolished and lie under the car park. Robina and her father John, who was also born in Evesham,would have known this lovely old 14th century building though. It is the Almonry which once housed the Almoner of the Benedictine Abbey which was founded in the 8th century. The Almoner was responsible for distributing alms to the poor.</div>
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The stocks were originally in the town hall jailhouse but were moved here in the 1920s. The stocks were a form of punishment involving public humiliation, they would be used to punish people who were drunk or tradesmen who had tried to cheat customers and other minor offences. The criminal had to sit on a low bench with their feet locked between the two wooden boards for several hours and sometimes longer. People passing by would jeer at them and often throw rotten fruit or eggs at them. In severe weather the exposure sometimes resulted in death even though this wasn't intended.
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<span style="text-align: start;">This ruined archway once led to the cloisters of Evesham Abbey. Although it was demolished when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries there is still quite a lot of stone work visible on the ground this is the only remaining section of walling though. It's possible that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Godiva">Lady Godiva</a> was buried here in the Church of the Blessed Trinity which is no longer there having presumably been demolished along with the rest of the Abbey. This church was founded by Lady Godiva and her husband Earl Leofric.</span></div>
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Closer inspection of the archway revealed these weatherworn carved stone figures. They must have been rather splendid in their heyday.<br />
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I would really like to visit Evesham again and spend more time there,it's a very historic place and has a lot to see including this wonderful 15th century timber framed house which is now the local Nat West Bank. Originally it was a Tudor merchant's house.<br />
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All the Evesham photos were taken on the first evening as we had a quick look round on our way to dinner at the Royal Oak. The frontage is a modern sham but the building itself is 16th century and so is genuinely old and is Grade 2 listed. Apparently it's haunted too! The key thing though is that the food is really excellent, we only intended to eat there on the first night but we enjoyed it so much that we returned on the other two nights as well. Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-72737632035401293622015-08-14T16:28:00.001+01:002015-08-14T16:28:57.306+01:00Shakespeare and Stratford - Act Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We had much better weather for our second visit to Stratford and arrived early which gave me chance to take a photograph of the house on Henley Street where William Shakespeare was born without hordes of tourists in front of it. Shakespeare lived here with his parents until he married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18 and the couple then spent the first five years of their married life here.<br />
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Taking photographs was really difficult as the house was absolutely packed so there was neither time nor space especially as the rooms were quite small to begin with. There didn't seem to be any individual guide books to the houses only one book which covered them all so I don't really know what this room is but I'm assuming it was the kitchen. <br />
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William's father, John Shakespeare, was a glover by trade and the house was also his workplace. I found this display of the glovers tools and the various styles of gloves really interesting. Notice the rabbit fur which was used to line gloves for cold winter weather.<br />
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I'm afraid that we didn't stay very long in Shakespeare's Birthplace, it was so crowded that there wasn't a great deal of pleasure in it. Instead we decided to walk along the River Avon to Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare was baptized, married and buried. The day was pleasant and warm and once we got about 200 yards along the riverbank there were very few people which is amazing since the part near the town centre was packed.<br />
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Holy Trinity is a very ancient church, there was a wooden Saxon church on this site as early as the 8th century. The Normans rebuilt the Saxon church in stone but the core of the present building dates back to 1210 when the Norman church was rebuilt. Holy Trinity has other interesting features apart from Shakespeare's grave. The photo above is of the Clopton Chapel which is the finest Renaissance tomb in England, here lie Sir George Carew and his wife Joyce Clopton. Sir George was Master in Ordnance to King James I hence the canon on the lower part of the monument The Chapel is actually named after Sir Hugh Clopton a native of Stratford who became Lord Mayor of London in 1491/92. He wanted to be buried in what was then the Lady Chapel where he had built an ornate tomb for himself. Unfortunately he was in London when he died so was buried there and it is later members of the family who are buried in Holy Trinity. As with several of these photos you will see more detail if you click on them and enlarge them.<br />
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The church has a wonderful set of twenty eight 15th century <a href="http://www.stratford-upon-avon.org/misericords">misericords</a>. They show a variety of real and mythical animals and scenes from daily life which, judging from some of the carvings, must have been decidedly interesting!<br />
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Shakespeare died on St George's Day - April 23rd - 1616. This funerary monument was erected on the north wall of the chancel within a few years of his death and is said to be a good likeness.</div>
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The graves of Shakespeare and his wife Anne lie side by side in the chancel of Holy Trinity. Following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII the tithe income privileges of the church were sold off. The duty of employing a priest and looking after the chancel went with the privileges. In 1605 Shakespeare purchased a share in these privileges for £440 . It was this, and not his ability as a poet and playwright, which gave him the right of burial in the chancel. The curse which is inscribed on the grave was to dissuade anyone from digging up his bones and putting them in the charnel house - a frequent occurence in earlier times although I'd be surprised if the bones of those buried in the chancel of the church itself would be disturbed.<br />
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Very close to Holy Trinity stands Hall's Croft which was definitely our favourite of the houses we visited. It belonged to Dr John Hall who married Shakespeare's daughter Susanna in 1607. It's a really lovely house. Dr John Hall was a physician and was skilled in the use of herbs<br />
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This was my favourite room in the house - the parlour. Notice the beautiful carved Elizabethan child's high chair on the right.
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There's an interesting exhibition of the equipment used by an Elizabethan apothecary - the jars would have held various liquid preparations, dry ingredients, pills and lozenges and so on. Some of them are really attractive.<br />
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There's a lovely garden at the back of Hall's Croft which I suspect would once have been where Dr Hall grew the medicinal herbs for his practice. We were lucky in having the garden virtually to ourselves although several people came out just as we were leaving. There were surprisingly few people in both the house and garden especially compared with the crowds in the Birthplace on Henley St.
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We passed these wonderful old almshouses on our way back to the town centre, The plaque in the photo below gives their history.<br />
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A quick visit to Marks and Spencer's provided us with a picnic lunch which we ate sitting in the sunshine by the river before setting off on the journey home.Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-54492888143374556352015-08-10T20:02:00.001+01:002015-08-10T20:02:08.736+01:00Shakespeare and Stratford - Act One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My daughter and I recently spent a few days in the Cotswolds and this has enabled me to fulfil a long held ambition to visit Anne Hathaway's Cottage and some of the other places associated with William Shakespeare. On the way down we went to Anne Hathaway's Cottage and Mary Ardern's Farm and on the way back we stopped in Stratford itself and visited the Shakespeare Birthplace, Hall's Croft and Holy Trinity Church. <br />
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Anne Hathaway was the daughter of Richard Hathaway a well to do yeoman farmer who lived in the village of Shottery just outside Stratford.The right hand part is the original farmhouse built around 1460. In the early 17th century Anne's brother Bartholomew Hathaway added the taller lefthand section. The Hathaways were close friends of the Shakespeare family which included their son William. In August 1582 there was a particularly good harvest and it would seem that 26 year old Anne and 18 year old William joined in the harvest celebrations a little too enthusiastically. On November 27th 1582 there was a rather hurried wedding at Holy Trinity Church closely followed by the baptism of their daughter Susanna on May 26th 1583! <br />
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I love the beautiful stone flagged floor and the drop leaf table in this photo. The vast hearth includes a bread oven with a wooden peel for getting the loaves into and out of the oven.</div>
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Shakespeare's Courting Chair is traditionally thought to have belonged to William Shakespeare and is said to have been given to the Hathaway family by his granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Barnard. It's an early 16th century chair so is certainly of the correct period but there does seem to be a degree of doubt about whether it really belonged to Shakespeare. <br />
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My favourite rooms in old houses are almost always the kitchens and pantries. I would give a good deal to own those wonderful pancheons and the lovely wooden butter churn.
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Our next stop was Mary Arden's farm at Wilmcote, the home of William Shakespeare's mother. Wilmcote is the area traditionally known as the Forest of Arden famous as the setting for the play 'As You Like It' although even in Shakespeare's time the forest was long gone. Here we have the shepherd on the right and the falconer on the left passing the time of day. Both were charming and interesting to talk to, the sheep is a Cotswold which an old breed of sheep that would have been farmed in this area in Shakespeare's time. <br />
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My daughter isn't a fan of looking round historic houses but she does like animals so was much more enthusiastic about Mary Arden's farm. Here we have an English Longhorn and her calf.<br />
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My daughter's new friend:) He's a Mangalitsa, a rare breed long haired pig originally from Austria/Hungary and similar to the wild boar that would have been around in the Tudor era.<br />
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As we walked back towards the farmhouse we saw the falconer at work so we stopped to watch. He's flying a beautiful Lanner falcon. In Tudor times falconry was a very popular sport with both royalty and the aristocracy.<br />
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Having flown in a very spectacular manner and having - eventually! - returned the falcon has gained his reward and is guarding it with wings spread. I love this photograph. Later we discovered that the falconer also had ferrets and we were allowed to hold them. They are incredibly wriggly and you need to keep a firm grip on them without hurting them or they'd be gone. I've always liked ferrets.<br />
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This is the farmhouse which was Mary Arden's childhood home although this has only been discovered fairly recently. Previously the house now known as Palmer's Farm was thought to be Mary Arden's house. Fortunately the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust owned both properties and this farmhouse is now used more as a museum. There's a lovely garden outside filled with borage, St John's wort, lemon balm and other herbs and cottage garden flowers which Shakespeare would have known well. He mentions flowers often in his plays -<br />
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"Here's flowers for you;<br />
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram."<br />
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from The Winter's Tale. Not that I'm an expert on Shakespeare's plays ! I have a lovely and very useful book called Shakespeare's Flowers which is full of quotes.<br />
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Palmer's Farm is very close to the Arden's farm and belonged to Adam Palmer who was a close friend of William's parents and grandparents. This house is furnished and is used as a living history setting. It's a wonderful building with walls that bend and bow out but in spite of this it has stood here since the 16th century.<br />
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This is the best room in the house which was not only a place to eat and relax but was also the master bedroom - much warmer down here where there would be a fire to warm the room.<br />
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Rather less luxurious upstairs where the children slept!<br />
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The small dairy - cheese was being made here and the smell was really strong.<br />
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As with many very old houses there is a passage that runs right through from front to back. The kitchens etc are to the left and the family's living quarters are to the right. I suspect that originally the arrangement would have been animals living on the left and people on the right! This was usually the case with medieval longhouses but I don't know whether Palmer's Farm really did start out this way.<br />
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This is the back of Palmer's Farm showing the woodstack and the farmyard. I should finish here really but I can't resist adding.....<br />
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the Tamworth pigs.....<br />
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the goats - there were three of them but this one was definitely in charge!.....
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and last but not least Ellie the horse:)Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32992882.post-67169613776637972272015-07-10T11:52:00.004+01:002015-07-10T11:52:50.453+01:00Well Dressing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week is our village Well Dressing and above is the well dressed by the local Guides. They chose to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's book 'Alice in Wonderland'. The characters are based on the original illustrations by John Tenniel.
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The main well dressing commemorates the granting of Magna Carta at Runnymede on June 15th 1215 where it was sealed - not signed - by King John and witnessed by twenty five barons. Magna Carta or The Great Charter was drawn up after a rebellion by the barons because the king had demanded heavy taxes to finance his unsuccesful wars in France. It enshrined the rights, privileges and liberties of the nobles and clergy and limited the power of the Crown.</div>
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Magna Carta was written in medieval Latin on parchment made from dried sheepskin and the words were often abbreviated to save space on the parchment. Many copies were made and sent out to bishops and sheriffs all over England. Only four of these copies survive, two in the British Library, one in Lincoln and one in Salisbury. I've seen the one in Salisbury Cathedral and it's much smaller than I'd imagined. It's an iconic document and inspired the American Declaration of Independence of 1775 and the 1948 UN Charter for Human Rights.
Only three of the original clauses in Magna Carta are still law. One defends the freedom and rights of the English church, another confirms the liberties and customs of London and other towns, and the third paved the way for trial by jury by stating that no man could be arrested, imprisoned or have their possessions taken away except by “the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”
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This is the seal of King John who was the younger brother of Richard the Lionheart. John succeeded to the throne of England after Richard's death in 1199. John is also of course the villain, along with the Sheriff of Nottingham, in all the stories of Robin Hood. So there we are - that's the end of today's history lesson:)
Rowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13679130612798888266noreply@blogger.com7