Avebury - Part Three

I discovered that Avebury holds other delights besides the Stone Circle. Above is this lovely Elizabethan manor house which is built on the site of a 12th century Benedictine priory. The family still live in part of it though it has been made over to the dreaded National Trust so some of it is open to the public. I didn't have time to look round as they have timed guided tours and the first available place was at 4.40pm - too late for me with a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead and dinner booked for 7.30pm. I shall go round it on my next visit to Avebury though.


This is the side of the house, there are some nice wooden seats and I sat here in the shade and had a late picnic lunch with not another soul in sight.


After my lunch I had a walk round the gardens which are lovely, I came across this small pet cemetery in a shady corner. The graves were all family pets, both cats and dogs, going back to the 1920s and 30s as well as more recent ones. The inscriptions showed how greatly loved they all were though some of the older stones are barely legible now.


When I walked through into the next section of the garden I met a small friend. It took me ages to get this photo, he was so friendly and liked me stroking and talking to him so every time I tried to back off to take a photo he followed me:)


The garden was laid out in 'rooms' and nearest the back of the house was this wonderful topiary garden. I've never wanted topiary in my own garden but I love looking at it in really old gardens like this one where it looks exactly right.


More topiary - I think this may be a peacock, but then again it may not:)


Just by the entrance gates to the Manor is this pretty stone dovecote, it belonged to the Lord of the Manor and provided him with a source of fresh meat in the winter months.


There were some really pretty cottages in the village, the two furthest away are thatched but I actually prefer the slate roofed ones that have such pretty little gardens in front.


I know that I have some fans of old churches out there so this is for you - St James' Church dates back to Saxon times and there are still visible traces of the original church inside.


This is the Norman doorway with its lovely carved arch


Now I have to say that church architecture is not my strong point! St James' church has a very rare medieval rood loft which survived the Reformation by being covered in plaster and hidden. It was discovered and restored in the 1830s and I think the photograph above is it. For those of you who know as little about rood screens and lofts as I do I've lifted this information straight from Wikipedia:

The rood screen (also choir screen or chancel screen) is a common feature in late medieval church architecture. It is typically an ornate screen, constructed of wood, stone or wrought iron. It divides the chancel ( the area with the main altar in a church) from the nave (the main part of the church for the congregation).

The word rood is derived from the Saxon word rode, meaning "cross". The rood screen is so called because it was surmounted by the Rood itself, a large figure of the crucified Christ, Often, to either side of the Rood, there stood supporting statues of saints, such as St Mary and St John.

Sometimes the Rood stood in a narrow loft (called the "rood loft") set high up, usually level with the springing of the chancel arch. Sometimes the rood loft was substantial enough to be used as a singing gallery; access was via a rood stair.

The carving or construction of the rood screen often includes latticework, which makes it possible to see through the screen partially from the nave into the chancel. The term "chancel" itself derives from the Latin word cancelli meaning "lattice".


The nave is part of the Saxon church dating from around 1000AD and the arch in the wall is one of the original windows.


The font is almost 1000 years old and was originally just a plain stone tub. The carving wasn't added until the early 12th century.

I hope you've enjoyed visiting Avebury with me, next it is on to Sussex and the 16th Century Dairy.

Interlude

Just a very quick post mostly to show off my little grandson. Neil, Cesca and Gabriel stopped by unexpectedly on Sunday afternoon and Granny was wearing her gardening clothes, no make-up and had her hair scraped up in a very untidy ponytail! Gabriel said he didn't mind so we had our photo taken regardless:)


More Gabriel, less Granny!



One of my gorgeous red oriental poppies - all sadly over now, they last such a short time but are so fabulous while they are here.



An aquilegia or columbine which has come from a self sown seedling. The bees have done their work well - it is virtually black. Maybe I have the first ever black columbine and my fortune will be made:):)

Avebury Part Two

It doesn't take long to drive from West Kennet to the village of Avebury. As I approached it I saw, to my horror, signs to the National Trust car park! I hadn't realised that the NT own Avebury as well as Stonehenge. I parked and walked the short distance to the village and, sure enough, the NT have begun their atmosphere removal job on the Circle. At least you can still walk round the circle and touch the stones but it is fenced off into four quarters with little gates to get into the fields. There is a road running through the middle of the Circle and two lanes, one to the left and one to the right of the main road so this naturally divides the Circle into four quarters. The fencing is comparatively recent though, I was talking to a couple who had been to Avebury about 20 years ago and it was all open then. At least it isn't as bad as Stonehenge which is totally fenced off now and can only be seen from the edges. You have probably gathered from a couple of my posts that I am not over fond of the NT even though I'm a member:) I fully support the original aims of the NT to acquire and preserve important historic buildings and areas of great natural beauty, but I'm afraid that I don't care for the way it is run these days. However that is beside the point so on to more interesting things. The photo above is of the Barber's Stone which has a sad story attached to it. The stone circle dates back to around 3000BC when building began, though it's completion took over 500 years to achieve. It stood there until the mid 13th century when the Church took a hand and decided it must be destroyed. Over a period of years the stones were toppled one by one and buried in pits until disaster (or retribution!) struck. While one of the stones was being toppled into the hole that had been dug for it one of the workers
was crushed beneath it as it fell. There was no way of lifting the stone again and it would have been pointless anyway so he remained in the grave he had unwittingly helped to dig for himself. His skeleton was discovered 600 years later when Alexander Keiller was locating and restoring the stones to their original places. The skeleton had with it a pair of scissors, an iron probe and three silver coins indicating that the man had probably been a travelling barber surgeon and since then this particular stone has been known as The Barber's Stone. Oddly enough no more stones were toppled after this........


Alexander Keiller located and re-erected the stones in the 1930s using his personal fortune to fund the project. The concrete markers in the photograph were put in where the original stones couldn't be located. The restoration was never completed due to the advent of WW2 and Keiller's money running out.


This is the Diamond Stone, it is one of the North gateway stones and has remained in its original position for around 4500 years escaping the vandalism of the Church in the 13th century unlike the majority of the other stones. Legend has it that at midnight it crosses the road in search of its missing partner. It is also said to spin through 360 degrees on its axis at the stroke of midnight.


I took this photograph to try and give an idea of the huge ditch that was dug. It is a phenomenal achievement, a mile in circumference and originally 30 feet deep and it was dug using tools made of antlers and bone!! The loosened chalk was put in wicker baskets and used to form the banks. It's been estimated FOUR MILLION cubic feet of chalk was moved using these methods. Then they brought those huge stones to the site and erected them solidly enough to be still standing (given chance!) 4500 years later. I find that just mind blowing - how anyone can consider these people primitive astounds me, they were immensely skilled engineers among other things.


This quarter was closed off for conservation work so I had to teeter along a narrow bank at the side of the road to get the photograph of these two stones which formed the South gateway. The one on the right is known as The Devil's Chair. One side, which I couldn't see or get to, forms a natural seat. Apparently you can summon the Devil by running round the stone 100 times in an anti-clockwise direction!


The Red Lion pub which stands at the crossroads inside the stone circle. It has, I gather, a splendid selection of ghosts!

This is getting rather long so I think there had better be an Avebury - Part 3!

Show and Tell Friday

This is my little Staffordshire cockerel ( Staffordshire as in the pottery not a type of poultry). He dates from around 1900 and I fell in love with him in an antique shop in Bakewell in 1999. He was rather (OK very!) expensive but I've never regretted buying him. The photo has faded his colour, he's a deeper shade of yellow than he appears to be.


He sits on top of the dresser in the dining room just in front of this photograph of L's great-grandmother Eliza Harrison, his colour blends beautifully with the wood frame and sepia photograph. I had to take them down to photograph because of the light.

Daisy Lupin's Poetry Fest

Daisy Lupin has started a new blog for people to post their favourite poems and June is favourites from your childhood. Now, as I've mentioned before, I'm not a great fan of poetry but, when I was a child at primary school, we had to learn poems by heart and recite them in class. One of those was Browning's 'Home Thoughts From Abroad' which I posted in April. Another was one that wouldn't immediately spring to mind as a poem for children but somehow it has stuck in my mind for all these years and I can still recite the first bit of it from memory. I think it's the vision of 'his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold' that caught my imagination, I could see the rich purple cloth and the sun glinting off the armour. Each verse creates an immediate and vivid picture in my mind. I love the rhythmn of it too so here is:


The Destruction of Sennacherib
by Lord Byron



The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.


Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.


For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed on the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!


And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.


And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.


And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!


The description of a battlefield is still relevant today I think.

Avebury - Part One

I set off at 6.20am which wasn't too far off my original aim. The M1 was packed with traffic but happily I only go down as far as Northampton and then I turn off onto the A43 going towards Oxford. From this point life became much pleasanter, it's a good road but with a fairly low volume of traffic and some pleasant scenery. The weather was lovely - hot and sunny, but my car has air conditioning so I stayed nice and cool. By just after 10am I'd reached Newbury and turned onto the A4 which goes through Marlborough and on to Avebury. I arrived in Marlborough just before 11am and to my astonishment was able to choose from several empty parking spaces in the centre of the main road through the town - it's very wide and the left hand traffic goes on one side of a double row of parking spaces and the right hand traffic comes down the other side. It's a really pleasant small town and I'd be happy to see more of it at some stage but, being short of time, I just stopped for coffee and cake at the Polly Tea Rooms then found the Post Office to post a parcel. The tea rooms came straight out of a light novel from the 1930s, full of smartly dressed grey-haired elderly ladies and waitresses in black dresses with white aprons. I half expected to see Miss Marple walk in:)
There is a little website with photos here. The waitresses have red aprons in the photos but I'm sure they were white when I was there.




I set off again and after half an hour or so reached a sign saying 'Silbury Hill' - not that I needed the sign because to my amazement it was right there at the side of the road. No-one knows exactly what it is or why it was built, only that it is entirely man-made and was constructed in prehistoric times (around 2500BC) with picks made of antlers. Considering that it is 130ft high and covers a base area of 5 acres that is quite some feat, it's the largest manmade mound in Europe. There have been several excavations but no-one is any the wiser. The photograph required some careful positioning on my part as they are doing largescale conservation work on the mound and the base is actually surrounded by barriers and huge diggers and dumper trucks etc - not at all romantic looking!


Just across the road from Silbury Hill is the path leading up to West Kennet Long Barrow, a distance of about half a mile I should think. It was a lovely walk through water meadows then up a gentle hill to the barrow. I had it virtually to myself and it was so quiet and peaceful, there were skylarks singing and peewits calling and all kinds of wildflowers to see. Peewit is a country name for a lapwing as that is exactly what its call sounds like - my dad introduced them to me as peewits when I was a very small girl and I was well in my 20s before I discovered that they had a more official name. The photo above is showing the approach to the barrow.


This is an attempt to show the shape of the barrow which gives it the name of long barrow. The entrance faces east and there was a semi-circular forecourt at the front.


It was in use from 3500BC to 2000BC when, for reasons unknown,the chambers were filled with stones and the entrance sealed with the big sarsen stones. When it was opened there were piles of bones all over the place but only one complete skeleton.



This is taken from the entrance looking into the barrow with the main chamber at the end. Only about one sixth of the 340ft of its length has ever been excavated. In spite of its association with bones and bodies and death there is a very tranquil and friendly atmosphere all around the area.


There are several small chambers on each side of the main passage of which this is one.


For this photo I was standing on top of the barrow looking along its length towards the West.


I have simply turned round to face south to take this photo, I thought the view was absolutely beautiful.


This skylark was standing on top of the barrow while I was taking photographs so I thought I'd try out the 18x zoom - gradually I edged nearer and nearer and I couldn't believe how close it finally let me get to it before it finally flew off. It was a privilege to be so close to this bird which sings such a beautiful song as it soars into the sky until it is so high that it is virtually invisible, though never inaudible. There is a wonderful piece of music by a British composer called Vaughan Williams called The Lark Ascending which captures all the beauty of its song and flight. The moments spent so near to it were the crowning pleasure of the time spent in this truly magical place.

I think this is long enough so I will write about Avebury itself in another post. It may be worth clicking on some of the photos to enlarge them especially the views from the barrow.

On The Road Again

Early tomorrow morning (around 6am in theory) I'm off to Sussex to do another course at the Weald and Downland Museum - the 16th Century Dairy this time. The course is on Wednesday but I always go down the previous day and come back the day after the courses because it's a four and a half hour drive - if the Force is with me, which it often isn't! On the way down I
usually try to do a side trip and tomorrow I'm considering the possibility of going to see the stone circle at Avebury. It isn't exactly on the way, I shall have to do a detour of about 25 miles to the west but if I get as far as Newbury in good time I may do it as I've always wanted to see Avebury. The route takes me through Marlborough too and I rather think that might be an attractive town. We shall see, there are alternatives of Jane Austen's house at Chawton or Gilbert White's house at Selborne. The photo at the top is the medieval Bayleaf farmhouse at the Museum.


The dairy at Pendean where the course will be held.


Steve,Hannah and Kaitlyn came to lunch yesterday and this was the best I could manage in the way of a photograph, she is like greased lightning at the moment and is always facing the opposite way to the camera!


Another failed attempt:)

Will be back at the weekend hopefully with some interesting photographs.

A Visit to Hill Top

We have been back from Lancashire for several days but life is very busy at the moment and I haven't had time to read blogs or to write in my own. It looks like staying that way for a while too, summer involves much more coming and going than the stay at home winter months and postings are likely to be sporadic over the next couple of weeks. The photo above is the outside of Beatrix Potter's house Hill Top. It was extraordinarily difficult to get a photograph without people in it as it's very popular with visitors thanks to the film 'Miss Potter'. It is only a small place so visitors are given timed tickets and about a dozen people go in every five minutes. There is no limit on how long you can stay once you are in though so every room is crowded and, to be honest, I didn't particularly enjoy it. The National Trust have a way of de-personalizing places and, even though all the contents belonged to Beatrix Potter and Hill Top is just as she left it when she died, it feels more like a museum than a home. This isn't inevitable when somewhere is open to the public, I've been in places which felt as though someone had just left the room and would be back any minute. Of course in the case of Hill Top it is true that after her marriage Beatrix didn't live here, she did visit it every day and still did her writing here but perhaps that is the explanation of the lack of atmosphere.


This pretty little building is one of the outhouses - the privy I rather think.


The path leading up through the garden to Hill Top,the garden was very pretty and appealed to me very much. There was quite a lot that you couldn't actually get into though, the vegetable garden(below) was only viewable over the gate and the small orchard was also off limits.





Another thing that really irritates me about the National Trust is that they won't allow any photographs to be taken of the interiors of their properties so all I can offer is photographs from a book I have on Beatrix Potter called 'Beatrix Potter At Home in the Lake District' by Susan Denyer. It's a very interesting book with a great many photographs - well worth buying if you are interested in Beatrix Potter. The photo above is of the room you go into as you go through the front door. I know it actually looks very attractive and homely but it has been set up especially for the photo! The only similar thing that I saw was that the fire was lit in the range.



These are the stairs leading to the upper floor, I find this very attractive with the bare polished wood. It's just occurred to me what part of the problem is with NT properties, it's their obsession with light levels which makes everywhere dark and gloomy because there are always blinds shutting out some or all of the light. I know that bright sunlight does fade things and that they need protection but I really do think that the NT go over the top with this.


This is the staircase in an illustration from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, Beatrix used Hill Top and it's furnishings a good deal as a basis for her illustrations.



This is the main bedroom with the bed that Beatrix Potter never slept in! When she was living here before her marriage she did use this bedroom but with a different bed.


This is the room where Beatrix did her writing at the desk in the corner.


The road which runs through the village of Near Sawrey, just a short distance from Hill Top.


This is Castle Cottage which is where Beatrix Potter lived after her marriage to William Heelis. I took the photo from an upstairs window at Hill Top.


The Beatrix Potter Gallery is in this building in Hawkshead which was originally the offices of the country solicitor's practice in which William Heelis was a partner. I enjoyed looking round here, it was quite atmospheric and had a lovely display of some of the original watercolours done for the books. There were a lot from The Tale of Tom Kitten as that particular book is 100 years old this year. There were only 3 or 4 other people there and it had much more of the quiet,peaceful feel that I would guess Hill Top had once upon a time. L and Mr B.Baggins strolled around the village while I was in there. Afterwards we went into a pub called The King's Head for some lunch - outside it had a notice saying 'Dogs Welcome' which is a very nice change from 'No Dogs Allowed'! Mr Baggins made himself at home, stretching full length in front of the fire and wagging his tail furiously as people stepped over him saying things like' what a lovely dog' and 'isn't he well behaved'. Meantime I was thinking things like 'I can't believe he's being this good' while smiling and trying to look modest:):)



Two books that I bought in the Gallery, both full of interesting bits and pieces.


A row of cottages in Hawkshead.


A view across Lake Windermere with the fells in the distance.


Another view of Windermere, both these were taken when we stopped in Ambleside.


There were dozens of swans on the lake and this is one of them. We had a really nice day in the Lake District in spite of a dire weather forecast, it was dry and pleasantly warm all day and only started to rain just as we got back to our house.