Seven Random Facts

African Sunrise - White River, Mpumalanga


This is just a fill in post while I wait for inspiration to strike. Patty from Morning Ramble tagged me ages ago to post seven random facts about myself so here they are. Incidentally White River is where my son and daughter-in-law lived for 3 years. The photo is there simply because I love it, it's about the best I've ever taken.



1. I've visited Dracula's castle in Transylvania. It's called Bran Castle and it's a lovely place perched on top of a hill just like a castle in a fairytale. In spite of its reputation it has no unpleasant atmosphere at all - quite the reverse in fact.




2. I love Reeses chocolate peanut butter cups and saltwater taffy.




3. My favourite wild animal is the wolf. In spite of all the bad press they undeservedly get I have always felt a strong attraction to them. I sponsor one called Madadh at a sanctuary in Herefordshire, I've visited her and her companions and been up close to them.They aren't tame but one or two of them are sufficiently socialized with humans to be strokable. It was a wonderful experience to do that. I've also been wolf watching in Romania though we got much closer to bears than wolves there.



4. I can't stand salad cream or mayonnaise so this is an image of saltwater taffy instead:)




5. I'm really scared of lightning, I came close to being struck a few years ago and have never quite got over it. Thunder doesn't bother me at all though. The image is not mine - I wish it was.




6. I am a really bad sailor! Lord Nelson of the Battle of Trafalgar fame was too, so at least I'm in good company.




7. I was in Kruger National Park when a really large herd of elephants with lots of babies crossed right in front of our car. I raised my lovely new digital camera to take photographs and got the message 'Battery Empty' - and I didn't know enough then to carry spares! So those pictures are all in my mind but not anywhere else unfortunately. The buffalo is pretty good though isn't he?

I've been having problems with my computer this week, it keeps having periods of erasing everything I write so if there are no posts or I'm not commenting or answering e-mails that will be the reason why.

The Tudor Stillroom

There are quite a number of words in the English language that I find very evocative, two of them are Tudor and stillroom - put them together and I am transported to another world filled with the scents of roses, herbs and spices, where gentlewomen and their maids used skills and recipes learned over centuries and passed on from one generation to the next. I think that monasteries were the first places to have herb gardens where they grew herbs which were used to prepare medicines for treating the sick and they had dispensaries and stillrooms. Readers of Ellis Peters' Cadfael novels will be familiar with this. With the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1546 this free medical service disappeared and the Lady of the Manor began to take on the task of preparing medicines for her household. The stillroom would already have been in use for distilling aromatic waters, preserving, making cosmetics (some of which were pretty lethal!), drying herbs for winter use and for strewing herbs which were used for pest control. To this was now added the preparation of ointments, cough linctus, rubbing oils for rheumatic joints and so on.
The photo at the top is of Tina, our tutor, gathering herbs in the garden at Bayleaf Tudor farmstead.


The results of her labours - by no means all herbs would be grown in the garden of course, many would be gathered from the lanes around the village - elder, hawthorn, cleavers, nettles, cowslips among them. Gathering herbs is such a pleasurable occupation, so many of them have wonderfuls scents, roses, various mints, lemon balm, rosemary, southernwood(opinions differ here, I love southernwood but not everyone does, it has a slightly musky edge to the lemon scent). Then there are the beautiful colours of the roses, pot marigolds, hyssop, borage and many others.



The contents of the basket were added to the herbs that Tina had gathered and brought from her own garden. One thing I've realised is that a simple jug filled with a mixture of herbs is a very attractive sight, perfect for a kitchen windowsill or anywhere else for that matter.



The start of a healing ointment - extra virgin olive oil with a selection of herbs including ribwort plantain, pot marigold petals, thyme, marshmallow, scarlet pimpernel and fumitory. This is put to heat gently for 3 or 4 hours then strained and melted beeswax added. At this point speed is required to pour it into small dark glass jars as it starts to set incredibly quickly.



If you don't have any muslin to strain it through no problem - you go out and gather a large bunch of cleavers, make two circles put one on top of the other lying in opposite directions and hey presto! or abracadabra or whatever you wish to say:) It works extremely well too.



Not everything that is made in the stillroom is purely for usefulness, some are decorative such as the various flower sugars. This is one of the ladies taking a turn at pounding marigold petals into sugar - quantities are simple,one cup of petals to one cup of sugar. I have to say that one or two members of the class, including this lady had obviously not used a mortar and pestle before. It requires a rather more robust action than this I'm afraid :)


We also used rose petals and this is the rose sugar spread out on greaseproof paper to dry. When it's dry you store it in an airtight glass jar and use it to decorate cakes - and very pretty too. The sugar retains the scent of the roses so has a wonderful flavour as well as a pretty colour.


These are the flowers of rosa gallica officinalis otherwise known as the Apothecary's Rose. The scent is divine and the uses are surprisingly varied - rose petal jelly, the rose sugar, candied rose petals, rosewater, rose honey and, of course, pot pourri.



Before using the petals they need to have the white heel at the base cut off and then to be washed and dried. Here they are spread out on muslin to dry.


This is another use for the rose and marigold sugars - people in Tudor times loved sweet things and the shape was made using the sugars mixed with rosewater and gum tragican. The rose and marigold are done individually, rolled into thin sausage shapes and then plaited together. After this they are sliced into rounds and left to dry out and the finished product looks very pretty.

Finally I have to bring to your attention Peppermint Liqueur. I can only say that if you have never tasted this you haven't lived!! It is so simple to make and the result is out of this world but unfortunately you have to wait two years for it to mature properly:( This is Tina Stapeley's recipe from her lovely book Herbcraft Naturally. You need 1 bottle of brandy, a cup of roughly chopped or torn peppermint leaves, a cup of roughly chopped or torn lemon balm leaves, 1/2 tspn of dill seeds and 1/2 tspn of cinnamon. Use only perfect undamaged leaves, wash and dry them and add them to the brandy. The leaves don't need to be chopped that small, you are simply trying to release the flavour. Pound the dill seeds in a mortar, grind enough of a cinnamon stick to produce 1/2 tspn of powder and add them to the brandy and herbs. Screw on the top of the bottle or jar tightly, give a good shake then store it in a warm,dark place for 6 weeks, give it a gentle shake each day. After 6 weeks filter it through a paper coffee filter into a clean bottle or jar and add about a cup of sugar. The exact amount varies according to personal taste. Now comes the hard bit - put it away in a cupboard and forget about it for at least 18 months, preferably 2 years. The wait will be worth it. It's medicinal too as it's a good remedy for indigestion! Only a liqueur glassful at a time please:)

Well Dressing

This week is the annual Well Dressing in my village, it is one of many that will take place over the summer months from May to around the end of August. It is an ancient custom that is restricted almost entirely to villages in the county of Derbyshire, though there is one place in Staffordshire and one on Gloucestershire also I believe. I would imagine that in the mists of history the dressing of springs and wells was probably much more widespread though. Our village dresses two wells, above is the main one. Many of the present day Dressings are modern revivals but there are a few villages, including Tissington, that have an unbroken tradition going back for centuries.


This is the spring below the picture. The dressing of wells and springs has pagan origins of course, as a thanksgiving to the various water spirits and goddesses for the gift of water and in the hope of continued supplies. As with so many other things it has become Christianized - I often wonder how many people actually realise that they are taking part in a pagan ceremony when the wells are blessed by the local vicar :) You can see the coins which have been thrown into the stone basin 'for luck'.


This is the whole picture, the spring is on the edge of the village green. The pictures are made in a wooden frame which is filled with clay between 1/2" and 1" thick. Salt is added to the clay to keep it moist and prevent it cracking when it is exposed to the elements. Each village chooses a different theme each year and the design is drawn on paper which is laid over the clay and the design is pricked through with an awl or other sharp tool. The paper is then removed and the outline of the design is defined by using alder cones or holly or rowan berries. Then the picture is filled in using only natural materials - mosses, lichens, bark, leaves and flower petals. They take several days to complete and are the combined effort of many people. The results sometimes are absolutely stunning.


This is the spring which is dressed each year by the local guides - as in scouts and guides not taking you on a tour guides :) I think they've done a great job. I'll try and get to some of the other local villages and take photographs during the summer. The one that is usually best has already gone by unfortunately, Ashford-in-the -Water dresses 5 wells and they are always really beautiful.
Clicking on the photos will hopefully enlarge them so that you can see more detail.

The Best Laid Plans

There was going to be a proper post today. After spending the morning doing domestic goddess stuff, packing, then reading and commenting on other blogs I planned to do a post this afternoon. Then guess who turned up?:) And looking at that photo perhaps I should add that the dark patches are shadow in the pile of the carpet, not dirt!! Really they are:)



Miss Kaitlyn started walking last week and came to demonstrate her new skills to granny and grandad (who appeared singularly unimpressed!) and when Miss Kaitlyn went home granny no longer had any energy left for blogging having had more exercise this afternoon than all the rest of the week put together:) Had to laugh at her as her trousers spent more time round her ankles than her waist which hindered things a bit:) Since I am off to Sussex again early tomorrow a proper post will have to wait until I come back. It's still pitching down with rain so I'm not sure whether I shall be driving or sailing back home to Sheffield at the weekend:) Steve and Hannah are close to the flooded areas and were on an island for a while with Catcliffe at one side and the River Rother on the other. Their house was OK but three days without power put paid to the contents of the freezer. Could have been much worse but fortunately they live at the top of a hill. I feel so sorry for all those people who have been flooded though. There isn't much sign of those lazy, hazy days of summer in the UK at the moment I'm afraid.

Selborne and Gilbert White

Gilbert White was born in Selborne, a small Hampshire village, in 1720 and he lived there for the whole of his life. He was a country curate and also a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His claim to fame though is as the first real naturalist and his book The Illustrated Natural History of Selborne was originally published in 1789. It has never been out of print since and after the Bible, Shakespeare and Pilgrim's Progress it is the fourth most published work in the English language. This was my second visit to Selborne and on neither occasion have I had time to explore the village and the surrounding countryside properly but at some stage I want to do that. I found an interesting booklet with not only information about Gilbert White and his house but also the history of the rest of the village with a map! As I hope to spend some time looking round and taking photographs at some future date I have just included a few bits and pieces in this post.



This is a page from my copy of the book with a couple of the wonderful illustrations.They aren't the original ones but are hand coloured engravings by artists working at the same period of time. It is mostly a book about his observations of the birds,plants and animals that he saw but it also has bits and pieces about the local people and area and the weather - always a subject of interest to British people:)


This is the back of The Wakes, the house where he lived. It is so much altered and enlarged from when he knew it though that I haven't included any interiors from the guide book. As a building I find it very attractive - full of nooks and crannies, it would be an intriguing house to explore and I feel there would be every chance of the discovery of secret passages and hidden treasure:)


Not only was Gilbert White a naturalist but he was also a very keen gardener and the gardens are now more or less as he had them when he was alive and the plants grown are the ones he would have known. Close to the house are six large beds filled with old roses and both perennial and annual plants.


Happily there is also a 'plant sales' area so I didn't come away empty-handed!


There was a pretty little enclosed herb garden to one side, I would have liked to linger longer here but as I hadn't arrived until 3.30pm and it closed at 5pm I had to go at a fairly brisk pace in order to see both house and garden.


I don't know whether any of you have heard of a haha and wondered what it was - if so all will now be revealed. From the house side the wall is invisible and the fortunate owner has a clear view out over his parkland and/or the surrounding countryside. The wall however prevents any grazing animals - cattle, deer, sheep or whatever - from invading and ruining the garden. The lawn with the sundial is the bottom end of the one that can be seen in the photograph of the house above.



I took this simply because I thought that this small corner with the door made a really beautiful picture. The remaining photos below are of cottages around the village that appealed to me, there is no particular story attached to any of them.








I think the Tudor Stillroom will have to be delayed as we are going over to our seaside home for the week in the morning and there is no computer there. If the weather co-operates there will hopefully be another visit to the Lake District and a visit to the cottage where William Wordsworth lived. If not there will be lots of pictures of a wet,windswept seashore:)

Lark Rise to Candleford

Every time I drive to or from Sussex I pass a sign that says 'Juniper Hill Single Track Road'. I've always known that Juniper Hill was the real name of the hamlet of Lark Rise in Flora Thompson's trilogy 'Lark Rise', 'Candleford Green' and 'Over to Candleford. These tell the story of her rural childhood in Oxfordshire in the 1870's and 80's. For anyone interested in family history who discovers a long line of 'ag labs' among their ancestry, this will give a true picture of the hard lives that they lived. Hard does not necessarily translate as miserable or unhappy though, their pleasures were simple and few by our standards today but in many ways they were happier and more contented I think.
I had it in mind that I might turn off and have a quick look at Juniper Hill this time but it wasn't a definite plan - nevertheless when I saw the sign I found myself indicating and turning left into the narrow lane. I expected a longish drive but it was only a few hundred yards up the lane that I saw the sign telling me that I had arrived in Juniper Hill. Almost as soon as I passed it, the road widened slightly so I parked the car there. Almost immediately I was walking past the sign at the other end of the hamlet, it's a tiny place still and I would think that Flora Thompson would still find it relatively unchanged. It was like walking through a door in time into a different world, quiet and peaceful - incredible to think that not far away heavy traffic was still thundering along the A43.


This is the view that stretched before me, I stood in the middle of the road taking photographs and gazing about, the absence of cars was wonderful. I was surrounded by wheat fields scattered with bright red poppies and the reason that Flora called it Lark Rise soon became obvious - there were larks everywhere, soaring up into the clear blue sky.


Very pretty to look at but not really a sight to gladden the farmer's eye!


The roadside verges were filled with wild flowers, among them were these pretty little pink convolvulus. I walked up the lane for half a mile or so then turned back having come to the conclusion that there wasn't much else to see, no real indication of where Flora might have lived although I'd passed various small houses and cottages. I was about to get in the car and carry on my way when I spotted a little notice at the end of the tiny lane on the other side of the road saying Garden - Nursery. I decided to have a quick look and see whether there was anything worth buying. Reader, I never got there! I'd just set off down the lane when a lady appeared from round the bend. 'Are you looking for Lark Rise?' she asked me. 'Oh, yes' I replied, 'does it still exist?' I was invited to go back with her to the end of the lane while she put a notice in the village notice board after which she would show me where Flora had lived.


The lane leading down to Lark Rise cottage........


.....and here it is - it turned out, of course, that my new friend actually lived here:) She and her husband were expecting the arrival of a lady fom the BBC to do an interview and take some shots of the cottage for the local news programme, South Today. I was invited to look at an exhibition of photographs that was in the little garden house and then look round the garden while they were busy. The exhibition was really interesting - old photographs of Juniper Hill accompanied by quotes from the book and then a modern photograph showing how the places look today. It would make a very good little booklet for people to buy and hopefully might appear as such one day. The garden was lovely, a real cottage garden with fruit trees and bushes, a wildflower area and cottage-y borders.


This is the plaque on the front wall of the house.



This is the back of the cottage showing the original part, the garden in Flora's time ended just about where the line of shrubs begin, the rest of the current garden formed allotments. As I wandered back up the garden I was waved over to where the BBC lady was and asked if I'd mind being interviewed! I was fixed up with my little microphone and then I did my bit - unfortunately I have no idea whether it eventually was broadcast or not as I was back home by Friday evening when it was supposed to go out. So I may or may not be a star of stage,screen and radio by now:):) I shall be signing autographs later:):):)
After this bit of excitement Mrs Harvey asked if I'd like to go inside and see the original two rooms and was kind enough to say that I could take photographs.


This is the downstairs room. The fireplace isn't original of course but that is where the fire would have been and the cooking would probably have been done in an iron pot hanging from a hook.


The stairs leading up to


the bedroom. From what I've read elsewhere, ( A Country Calendar edited by Margaret Lane), I gather that there were once two other rooms, one up and one down, even then this would have been a tiny space for a family with five children to live in. I'd like to thank Mr and Mrs Harvey for making my visit to Juniper Hill so enjoyable and interesting - they were charming people who went out of their way to make me welcome.


As I was leaving Mrs Harvey showed me the path through the fields leading to the mother village of Cottisford ( Fordlow in the books) which is where Flora went to school and to church. I walked there and back - a distance of about 3 miles all told. The view is taken looking back towards Juniper Hill. I didn't see a soul the whole way, it was alive with birds, butterflies and wildflowers including the lovely...


...scarlet pimpernel.


The 13th century church at Cottisford. There are no aisles, just the central nave and chancel. It's a tiny church with the lovely old box pews that have disappeared from so many churches now. Flora's parents and grandparents are all buried here.





Sitting in Flora's grandfather's pew where she and her brother always sat, on summer days they could see this view through the open door to help them through the endless sermons of those times.

What was originally intended to be a 15-20 minute visit lasted about three and a half hours in the end - serendipity played a huge part in a wonderful morning. On I went to Sussex and by 3.30pm I was in the little village of Selborne home of Gilbert White. But that is for next time.