Dreaming of Summer

I'm sure I am not alone in feeling that I have had quite enough of this winter now so I decided that I would think of some of the good things that summer will eventually bring. One of the best things about summer is being able to sit outside in the garden on a perfect summer afternoon. I'm afraid I'm not usually so industrious as the young woman in Arthur Claude Strachan's lovely painting, usually I have a book or some stitching to occupy me. I love this picture of the higgledy piggledy cottage with its thatched roof and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers. You can feel the peace of the scene, the fantail doves cooing contentedly as they search for scraps,the warmth of the afternoon sun and the sound of bees buzzing among the flowers.




On summer afternoons I'm often working in my garden rather than sitting in it of course. As Rudyard Kipling so aptly said
'Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade'.




Midsummer brings the old-fashioned roses that I love and fills the garden with their wonderful perfumes. This one is Ferdinand Pichard and my summer dreams include some additions this year, a replacement for Reine des Violettes, which I sadly lost last year, along with Louise Odier and Rosa Mundi.




The fields and hedgerows will hopefully be filled with butterflies and all the myriad other insects that contribute to the beauties of our countryside each in their own way. It may surprise some of you to learn that wasps are among those that contribute. I'm decidedly wary of them having been stung several times with progressively worse reactions each time it happens. Nevertheless they are very useful as they not only pollinate the plants they visit in search of nectar but they also feed their young on many of the insects that we regard as pests. I have to say that another wasp sting isn't actually among my summer dreams though:)




Many creatures are dismissed as 'being no use' when in fact their place in the great web of life is a vital one. I've never forgotten visiting a rehab centre for wild animals at Moholoholo in South Africa and listening to Brian Jones explaining the vital role which that much maligned bird the vulture plays. They are scavengers who dispose quickly of the decaying carcases of wild animals and by doing this prevent the spread of diseases like anthrax and rabies. There are different types of vultures with varying kinds of beaks that do different jobs from tearing open the carcase to picking the bones clean. The less than flattering photo above shows me with a vulture and, believe me, when it lands on your arm looking for its piece of meat you know its there! Clicking will enlarge it so that you can really see the vulture and the huge leather glove I'm wearing. I had to use my left hand to support the other arm so that I could take the weight of the vulture as it landed on me. However I digress, this is not the stuff of pleasant English summer afternoons!




On my doorstep is the Peak District and on lovely summer days I can walk in beautiful places like Edale where the moors are purple with the flowering heather......





.....and it's so hot that dogs need to paddle in moorland streams and quench their thirst with great draughts of cool water and....




.....sheep seek the shade of the drystone walls so typical of this area.





Summer brings weeks spent at our little house on the Lancashire coast where we can wander along the Wyre Estuary watching all the wide variety of birdlife that lives in this special environment of mudflats and saltmarsh. There are specialized wild flowers growing here too - sea asters, sea lavender, glasswort and many others.




An hour's drive and we are in the Lake District with wonderful scenery, delightful villages and interesting places to visit such as Beatrix Potter's old home Hill Top...





...the fantastic topiary gardens of Levens Hall





and lovely old towns like Kirkby Lonsdale which is one of my favourite places, it is full of small,individual and interesting shops and not a chain store in sight. It also has some superb scenery including a view painted by J M W Turner (the artist who painted so many marvellous seascapes including The Fighting Temeraire). It is now known as Ruskin's View as the Victorian art critic John Ruskin called it one of the finest views in England.




This my version and...





...this is the painting by J.M.W.Turner. The river in the picture is the Lune whose name originates in the Celtic word for clear or pure.





Another pleasure of summer is visiting some of the wonderful gardens that we have in this country, the one above is Fanshawgate Hall which is less than a 10 minute drive from where I live. It's privately owned and dates back in parts to the 13th century. The owners, Mr and Mrs Ramsden, open the garden several times each summer and it's well worth seeing.




For me one of the most enjoyable things about summer is that I spend time in Suffolk visiting my younger son and his family which also gives me the chance to explore all the superb medieval churches that Suffolk has in abundance. This one is the church of St Peter and St Paul in Lavenham.





Suffolk is also awash with beautiful villages,ancient black and white timbered houses and chocolate box cottages that are thatched and painted pink or ochre. This is part of the main street in Kersey.





Best of all there is miles and miles of empty space where you can walk for miles without seeing anything other than wild flowers, birds and, if you are lucky, a hare. There's so much to look forward to - and I'll bet you've almost forgotten it's still winter:)

Lost in the Past

January was a month that I spent very happily delving into the past hence the lack of both posts and comments from me. Towards the end of last year I joined the local history group that has recently started up in Totley and it has made me see my local area from a totally different perspective. We live right on the boundary of two parishes but I've always been drawn much more to Dore which is an attractive little village. Local history has always interested me as my version of family history research involves finding out about the places where my ancestors lived as well as lists of names and dates. Dore has an oral history group but there hasn't been a local history group in this area at all until last year. I've always thought of Totley as being rather dreary and boring with no real character to it. I'm now discovering how wrong I was to dismiss it so lightly. All the photographs will enlarge if you click on them.



We are fortunate to have Brian Edwards living in our area, he is a wonderful artist and also a local historian who has been publishing books filled with his drawings and all kinds of interesting information for many years. The Cricket Inn is still there at the end of a country lane, there are horses in the fields next door and a beautiful old farmhouse opposite.



The real catalyst has been the local history class that started in January and every Friday morning I've been turning up to this and getting more and more engrossed. The most recent session was about Census Returns which I've been familiar with for years but only from a family history point of view. I'm now beginning to realise that the information in them can be used in many other ways too. My plan is to print out the whole of the 1891 census for Totley and follow the Census enumerators route pinpointing exactly who lived where. Happily I have also made a new friend who shares my fascination with the subject and who also shares my enjoyment of walking and we are going to do this together once the weather gets better as it will certainly take at least one full day to do it. A picnic lunch has been mentioned :)
I've known P slightly for some time as her dog Bertie is a friend of B Baggins and we met occasionally in the woods or by the river. We were surprised to see each other at the November History Group meeting but that happened to be the night I put forward my idea of researching the names on the War Memorial and asked whether anyone would be interested in helping. P was one of two people who wanted to join me and hey presto! an acquaintance is now becoming a friend. We are attending the classes together and spent a happy evening last week pouring over local maps.



I've been doing a little more work on my soldiers too but there's a lot more to do yet before we can publish anything. It's proving to be very interesting and,in a couple of cases, not as straightforward as you'd think. The photograph above shows an image of the Cambrai Memorial at Louverval where Tom Brown Fisher is commemorated, he's one of those men who, sadly, have no known grave.




The first local history class was about old photographs and these two were among the examples our tutor gave us, the Cross Scythes still looks just the same apart from not having too many horses and carriages standing outside it these days. The other one shows Totley Rise, the cottages were originally built for the navvies working on building Totley Tunnel and the shop at the top began life as the Tally shop, now it's the local newsagents. When I first came to Totley over 30 years ago many of the cottages had been turned into shops including a butcher( in the same place as the one in the photo but minus the pig and cow carcases hanging outside!), a fresh fish shop, greengrocer,a cobblers, a little haberdashery where I bought all my knitting wool, a chemist, post office and several others. Only the greengrocer,cobbler, chemist and post office are left now. Today the greengrocer is the young lad who worked in the shop on Saturday mornings when my children were young, his mum and dad ran the shop in those days. As for the cottages - don't imagine one little family in each, there were twenty to thirty men living in each of these small houses, they worked 24 hours a day in shifts and as one lot got up and went to work the next lot tumbled into the same beds. The state of these places must have been appalling, there were certainly outbreaks of typhoid, diphtheria, smallpox and scarlet fever though these were partly due to the dreadful working conditions in the tunnel as well as the pretty much total lack of hygiene.



These pages are taken from two Trade Directories which are the equivalent of today's Yellow Pages in the UK, I'm sure there are equivalents in other parts of the world too. They are intriguing to dip into and as well as giving details of the trades and occupations in an area they eventually also listed the names and occupations of most of the heads of households in each street. There was also at the beginning of the entry for each town or village a little description of the area, times of the arrival and despatch of the post and when and where you could catch the carrier's cart or the stage coach along with other intriguing little snippets of information. I found it interesting that between 1833 and 1911 Totley changed from being 'a poor village' to being 'pleasantly situated' - which indeed it is. It might be worth trying to find out the reason behind these statements.


This is the 1876 Ordnance Survey map showing the village of Totley as it was then with the main orientation of the village running from north to south. Those roads are still country lanes and the orientation of Totley has changed completely with almost all the houses and shops now on either side of the road running from east to west. This is now a busy road and one of the main routes out of Sheffield into Derbyshire. It was originally opened in the early 1800s as the Greenhill to Baslow Turnpike. It's only in the last couple of years that I've discovered the layout of the original village.
The school to the left of the word 'Totley' is the one my children went to and it is still going strong. The original School built in 1824 still exists as a private house but the current school dates from 1877.



This map is from 1923 and the site of my house lies in the field numbered 702. The line of trees between the fields and the building plots is still there and three of those trees are in my garden. The single tree just above the line is the oak tree that is also still alive and well in my garden. This afternoon it had a greater spotted woodpecker, a treecreeper and two nuthatches running up and down it all at the same time. It shaded my baby daughter one hot summer when she had mumps and I made her a little makeshift bed outdoors, all my babies slept in their prams under it and then when they were older they all climbed in it and finally four years ago one of them got married under it so there is quite a lot of personal local history connected with that little dot on the map.



Family history hasn't been forgotten in all the excitement of local history, now that all the London Parish Registers are coming online on the Ancestry.com site I've been having a lovely time delving further into my husband's family and have added a fair amount of information since Christmas. They lived in the City of London (the Square Mile) for several generations and I plan in the Spring to go and visit and photograph some of the churches where they were hatched, matched and despatched. St Botolph's, Bishopsgate has strong family connections and is an interesting church as well. The poet John Keats was christened there and another ancestor of my husband was christened in the church which Samuel Pepys attended and where he is buried - St
Olav Hart St. I think you'll be reading more about these later this year!

Favourite song MeMe

Bovey Belle from Codlins and Cream has asked me to do a MeMe for my favourite song, there are a lot of candidates really - it depends mostly on what mood I'm in. This one though I've always loved, not the words especially but the sound - that great saxophone and the incredible guitar solo really do things to me and it might not be what most of you are expecting! You'll need to copy and paste the url because I don't know how to link to YouTube. Here it is

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgbGaYTkkPU


Listen and see if that saxophone doesn't send shivers down your spine:)

Fair Maids of February

One month is past, another is begun,
Since merry bells rung out the dying year,
And buds of rarest green began to peer,
As if impatient for a warmer sun;
And though the distant hills are bleak and dun,
The virgin snowdrop like a lambent fire,
Pierces the cold earth with its green-streaked spire
And in dark woods, the wandering little one
May find a primrose.

Hartley Coleridge

I took the photograph of the snow drops in my garden this morning and thought that the words of this poem were perfect for it. One of their country names is 'Fair Maids of February' and they are also known as 'Candlemas Bells'. February 2nd is Imbolc/ Candlemas Day and it marks the halfway point between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The old saying about this day is:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
winter will have another flight,
If on Candlemas day it be shower and rain,
winter is gone and will not come again.

There has been a little sunshine but mostly we have had cloud and rain so it looks as though the worst is behind us:) Certainly the days will begin to get noticeably longer now as the Great Wheel slowly turns and we move towards the Spring.



The last line of the poem made me wonder whether there were any primroses visible and to my surprise a search produced the double white flowers of Primula 'Marie Crousse' in a sheltered corner. Not the lovely wild primroses that Coleridge was speaking of but a cheering sight nevertheless.



Close by I caught sight of the first deep pink flower of this Lenten Rose - Helleborus orientalis. It's time I cut back last year's leaf stems so that the flowers can be seen properly, I wasn't expecting to see flowers this early after such a long,cold snowy period.



I took my little camera with me when B Baggins and I went to the woods this morning, I wondered whether there were any signs of Spring visible yet. You have to look carefully but they are certainly there, these are the male hazel catkins still tightly closed. You can really see why they get the country name of lamb's tails.



A few tiny buds of pussy willow sparkling with raindrops.




These are the tiny new leaves of the wild honeysuckle, the woods are full of it and in the early summer when it flowers the scent is wonderful.




Amazingly the bluebells are already pushing through the brown carpet of dead leaves, the more you look the more you can see. Ecclehall Woods are anciant woodland and in late April/early May the woodland floor is a carpet of blue.




I caught sight of these new leaves of the hart's tongue fern as we crossed the river on our way out of the woods, it isn't the greatest photo but I was peering over the top of a high muddy bank and trying not to fall head first into the river. If it hadn't been so muddy and slippery I could have got nearer and got a better shot but there you go - sometimes you just have to do the best you can!



And lastly, came cold February, sitting
In an old wagon, for he could not ride;
Drawne of two fishes for the season fitting,
Which through the flood before did softly slyde
And swim away: yet had he by his side
His plough and harnesse fit to till the ground,
And tooles to prune the trees, before the pride
Of hasting Prime did make them burgein round:
So past the twelue Months forth, and their dew places found.
from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (1552-1559)

Winters Past

The Frozen Thames by Abraham Hondius

The frozen River Thames painted in 1677 The view is probably from Old Swan Stairs looking east with old London Bridge in the middle distance, and the tower of St Olave's Tooley Street just visible, and Southwark Cathedral on the right. Old London Bridge with its shops and houses and many supporting piers is no longer there, the shops and houses were dismantled around 1760 and the remainder was demolished in the 1830s when it was replaced by the New London Bridge. Even that is no longer there, it was sold to the American Robert P McCullogh in 1967, dismantled and shipped across the Atlantic to be rebuilt in Arizona! The London Bridge in the painting is the one referred to in the old nursery rhyme 'London Bridge is Falling Down'.



The news recently has been full of the usual media hype about coldest winter for 20 years etc etc and most of us have probably seen sufficient snow to last us a while but really what we have seen is nothing compared to winters in the past. We are all familiar with the Christmas card scenes of stage coaches battling through huge snowdrifts. Travelling in one of these coaches in winter must have been appalling, there was no heating unless you were fortunate (and wealthy!) enough to have a footwarmer and for those hardy souls who travelled outside there was no shelter either.



Getting stuck in snowdrifts was a very real possibility in those days when winters were very much colder than they are now. Can you imagine having to get out, probably already half frozen, and stand in the biting cold to lighten the load while the coachman and guards tried vainly to get the coach out of the snowdrifts?



I think we've all probably had a bit of a giggle at old pictures of men and women wearing nightcaps but if you'd been sleeping in the bedroom in the photo you'd have been very glad to wear one yourself. There is no glass in the windows of this well to do yeoman farmer's house, wooden shutters would be put over them and that would be it. The bed curtains were there for a reason not just to look pretty!





From the mid 1300s until well into the 1800s there was a Little Ice Age in Europe and the winters were very severe. On many occasions during this period the River Thames in London froze over completely. In 1536 Henry Vlll travelled by sleigh along the River Thames from Whitehall to Greenwich a distance of about 6 miles. His daughter Queen Elizabeth l skated and practiced archery on the frozen river in 1564 but things really started to get interesting in 1683 when the first Frost Fair was held. The diarist John Evelyn wrote
"Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs too and fro, as in the streets; sleds, sliding with skeetes, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tipling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water"

The stairs referred to are the steps leading down to the river where people boarded the boats which were used in much the same way as taxis are now. The Thames watermen were the London taxi drivers of their day.

Another anonymous eyewitness wrote
"On the 20th of December, 1683, a very violent frost began, which lasted to the 6th of February, in so great extremity, that the pools were frozen 18 inches thick at least, and the Thames was so frozen that a great street from the Temple to Southwark was built with shops, and all manner of things sold. Hackney coaches plied there as in the streets. There were also bull-baiting, and a great many shows and tricks to be seen. This day the frost broke up. In the morning I saw a coach and six horses driven from Whitehall almost to the bridge (London Bridge) yet by three o'clock that day, February the 6th, next to Southwark the ice was gone, so as boats did row to and fro, and the next day all the frost was gone. On Candlemas Day I went to Croydon market, and led my horse over the ice to the Horseferry from Westminster to Lambeth; as I came back I led him from Lambeth upon the middle of the Thames to Whitefriars' stairs, and so led him up by them. And this day an ox was roasted whole, over against Whitehall. King Charles and the Queen ate part of it."
It's worth clicking on the wonderful woodcut to see the detail, all the action is taking place on the frozen river and at the top is London Bridge.



This lovely little mug is a souvenir of the first Frost Fair and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is just two and a half inches high and has engraved on the base 'Bought on ye Thames ice Janu: ye 17 1683/4'
In case you are wondering why it says 1683/4 it is because until the year 1752 the New Year officially began on 25th March although many people considered January 1st the first day of the New Year. Thus between Jan 1st and March 25th the date was always written using both years.



The Frost Fairs continued to be held whenever the Thames froze until the early 19th century. The last one was held in 1814 - an elephant was led across the river to demostrate the safety of the ice! In the mid 1800s the Thames Embankment was built which involved reclaiming the marshes and building out over the foreshore of the river. As a result the Thames became narrower and deeper. Old London Bridge, whose piers had slowed the flow of the river and enabled ice to build up, was demolished and the climate started to become warmer and these three things combined to bring an end to the Frost Fairs.

Apparently there is a plaque under Southwark Bridge with the following inscription

Behold the Liquid Thames frozen o’re,
That lately Ships of mighty Burthen bore
The Watermen for want of Rowing Boats
Make use of Booths to get their Pence & Groats
Here you may see beef roasted on the spit
And for your money you may taste a bit
There you may print your name, tho cannot write
Cause num'd with cold: tis done with great delight
And lay it by that ages yet to come
May see what things upon the ice were done


My son and his family have landed safely in South Africa and will now be enjoying rather different temperatures to those we have here. We mustn't grumble though - things could be a lot worse!!

Now Stir The Fire....

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful ev'ning in.



Oh winter, ruler of th' inverted year,
Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,
Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring'd with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urg'd by storms along its slipp'ry way,




I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold'st the sun
A pris'ner in the yet undawning east,
Short'ning his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west; but kindly still
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse and instructive ease,




And gath'ring, at short notice, in one group
The family dispers'd, and fixing thought,
Not less dispers'd by day-light and its cares.
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted ev'ning, know.

William Cowper 1731-1800

I am a bear of very little brain this morning so I'm cheating a little by posting yet another poem with some paintings as illustrations. Not very inspired I'm afraid but the cold I'm currently dosing with elderberry rob seems to have deprived me of the power of coherent thought! I shall try and produce something better during the coming week. For now it's on with knitting a nice warm jumper for Gabriel I think. Stephen and his family are on their way to Heathrow at the moment - problems with the non arrival of visas meant they didn't travel last week and their flight now leaves on Tuesday evening. They are going down today and staying two nights in a hotel at Heathrow to be sure of actually getting there, having had to rearrange the flights once they don't want to find that the snow prevents them from getting to the airport. We are apparently due for another lot of snow later today up here in what is currently the Frozen North and I suspect that it might be slow going on the M1 and the M25 today as they were forecasting heavy snow for the southern counties last night. Never mind, every day is another day nearer to Spring and scenes like this!

Happy New Year!

Just a very quick post to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. We have had snow again overnight and my garden was looking rather better under its blanket of snow than it does when the snow isn't there! I have a lot of work to do out there once Spring appears. Even now there are tiny signs, in spite of the bitter cold (20F overnight) there are snowdrops and crocus tommasinianus already peeping through. I am feeding the birds even more than I usually do and yesterday, in addition to the regular goldfinches, blackcap, long-tailed tits and other regulars, we had three bullfinches on the feeders - two females and a spectacularly handsome male. I hope they will stay around. As well as seeds, nyger seeds(the reason for all the goldfinches!)and fat blocks I'm also putting out dried fruit, grated cheese and meal worms. Wild creatures suffer badly in these freezing conditions and need all the help we can give them. My reward in the summer is that I have a pretty pest free garden.



When I took Bilbo Baggins out this morning the waning moon was just setting and made a lovely picture through the branches.



This is looking to the west and you will probably need to click on the photo to see the reflection of the rising sun turning the snow covered moors a faint pink.



Another small touch of colour amongst all the black and white, the acid yellow of lichens on this tree.

I'm hoping to be back to posting and commenting more regularly after next weekend, my son and his family leave for South Africa on Wednesday and my younger son and his family will be up here from Friday until Sunday and then life should become a little quieter during the cold winter months.