A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Where the water whispers mid the shadowy rowan - trees
I have heard the Hidden People like the hum of swarming bees:
And when the moon has risen and the brown burn glisters grey
I have seen the Green Host marching in laughing disarray”

Fiona MacLeod


Tonight is Midsummer Eve when the veil between the worlds is thin, it is one of the few times of the year when it is possible to see the faery people as they hold their Midsummer Revels especially if you sit under an elder or hawthorn tree at midnight.
Tomorrow will be the longest day of the year, for a few days the sun rises and sets in the same place before the wheel of the year begins to turn again and the days begin to shorten once more. The Crown of the Year passes from the Oak King to the Holly King as we begin the journey to the fullness of the harvest and the long cold days of the winter.


Come faeries, take me out of this dull world,
for I would ride with you upon the wind
and dance upon the mountains like a flame

W.B.Yeats

For now, though, the sun is at the height of its strength and it is time to celebrate and enjoy all that summer has to offer - the scent of the wild honeysuckle drifting on the air, the brilliant blaze of red where the poppies grow in profusion and all the new young lives that are in every tree and field and woodland glade at this time of the year.





"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight"

Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream

A very Happy Summer Solstice to all.

The paintings are
1.The Riders of the Sidhe by a 19th century Scottish painter called John Duncan.
2.Midsummer Eve by Edward Robert Hughes a Pre Raphaelite artist
3.Titania Sleeps by Frank Cadogan Cowper

Another Left Turn

While I was in Dorset I stayed in a village called Iwerne Minster (pronounced yewurn) chosen because it is fairly central to the area I wanted to see. I had a wander round on the evening I arrived and found this wonderful old cottage right on the edge of the churchyard which looked as though it was in a time warp.



There were several lovely old houses including this one standing on a quiet lane.The weather was still grey and very windy on Monday morning and I decided to head for Wimborne Minster where there is a museum as well as the Minster and having indoor options seemed like a good idea. However as I drove along the B3082 I saw a brown sign (brown signs in UK are used to indicate places of interest) - it pointed to the left and it said 'Badbury Rings'. The indicator went on and once again I made a sharp left turn off my planned route.



Badbury Rings is an Iron Age hillfort surrounded by three large banks and ditches and the area that was the actual area of occupation is now covered with trees. This is approaching the entrance on the western side of the rings. As I was walking up here I met a woman on her way out and she said she had walked the circumference of the hillfort on top of the ramparts and that it was worth doing for the views. She had walked both the third and second but had decided against doing the inner ring because it was already occupied! I decided that, in spite of a really strong wind, I'd walk round the second ring. My new friend had said that the wind was exhilarating and she'd felt almost as though she could fly! Hmmmm, I think I've mentioned before that the wind and I are not on especially good terms so the plan was to see what it was like on the top and turn back if it got too bad.



This gives a better idea of what Badbury Rings looks like than I can manage with photographs. Clicking on the photograph will enable you to read what it says and to see the drawing more clearly.


It's hard to give a real idea of the height of the ramparts which would have been about forty feet high with the wooden palisades that would have been on top, even now they are still substantial. As I walked along it was rather thrilling to think that I may well have been treading in the footsteps of King Arthur - Badbury Rings is thought to be a possible site of the Battle of Badon Hill where King Arthur finally defeated the Saxon invaders and brought a prolonged period of peace to Britain.



I discovered that my friend was quite right - it was exhilarating up there in the wind and the views were certainly worth seeing. They would have been even better on a clear day but there was heavy cloud and the rain was never far away.



Here we have the reason for avoiding the area which would have been occupied during the Iron Age! It was occupied currently by a herd of beautiful Devon Reds, they had calves with them and gave the impression that they wouldn't take kindly to closer inspection. I'm not at all afraid of cows but I have a healthy respect for them when they have young at foot. Discretion is definitely the better part of valour at times like this. It took me about an hour and a half to complete the circuit, it was a fair distance and I kept stopping to look at the views and the wild flowers. It was time well spent though and I was glad I'd followed the little brown sign.



Practically the first thing I came to when I started off to explore Wimborne Minster was the Priests House Museum which was on my list of things to see. It's an interesting little museum set in a 16th century town house, there are period room settings and a great many exhibits telling of life in East Dorset from prehistoric times to the present. At the back of the museum is this lovely walled garden which also has a little tea room.



There has been a church on the site of Wimborne Minster since 705AD when an Abbey was founded by Saint Cuthberga, sister of the king of the West Saxons. The nunnery was destroyed by the Danes in 1013 but the Abbey church survived and was remodelled and rebuilt by the Normans between 1120 and 1180. The outside of the Minster isn't especially thrilling but it does have, high up on one of its two towers, this Quarter Jack which dates from 1612. Originally he was a monk but during the Napoleonic Wars he became a Grenadier - and very smart he is too. He strikes the two bells every quarter of an hour.



The nave with its Norman arches with the typical chevron decoration. Above the arches are small round headed windows which formed the clerestory of the original Norman church before the roof was raised probably in the mid 1400s. The two arches in the centre are the oldest part of the building dating to 1120 and they support the central tower of the Minster.





Each of the Norman arches is decorated with a corbel figure or animal, I was particularly taken with the second of these two which I think looks like friendly little monkey though I don't expect that it really is.



This wooden chest survives from the original Saxon nunnery which makes it over a thousand years old! It is carved from the trunk of an oak tree and was used to hold religious relics.



My favourite thing in the Minster - this is a monument to Sir Edward Uvedale who died in 1606. It's about the most laid back looking monumental figure I've ever seen I think. It's worth clicking and enlarging as it really is beautiful.



The mid 15th century tomb of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and his wife Margaret, they were the grandparents of Henry Tudor who we met in a previous post when he fought and defeated Richard lll at the Battle of Bosworth and became King Henry Vll of England.


The thing about Wimborne Minster that I found most interesting is that King Ethelred, the elder brother of Alfred the Great, was buried here in 871AD following his death in battle against Danish invaders. Alfred succeeded him as king. The exact location of Ethelred's tomb is unknown but is thought to be in the wall close to the high altar. This memorial brass was engraved about 1440 and is the only memorial brass effigy of an English king. Incidentally this is not the the same Ethelred as Ethelred the Unready who was a great grandson of King Alfred.


The sundial has a date of 1676 on it and has three faces which is very unusual. I would have liked to see the Minster's Chained Library but it was closed the day I was there probably because they were preparing the church for a funeral service. Wimborne is a pleasant enough town but it is, I regret to say, rather a dull place in spite of having a very long history. I did walk round the town clutching a little town guide but didn't find anything either especially interesting or especially beautiful and so,as it was by now mid afternoon, I decided that it was time to move on.



'I'll go back via the scenic route' I thought, 'and see whether I can find Knowlton Circles'. Well, it certainly was the scenic route, I got to know Wimborne St Giles quite well as I drove through it at least three times trying to find the lane to Knowlton! I could find any number of signs pointing in various directions but they all ended up in Wimborne St Giles. Eventually I came across a young couple and they were able to tell me the way, it was no wonder I'd missed the turn as it was up a very narrow lane with no sign at all and I drove on into what appeared to be a totally deserted landscape. The road climbed higher and higher and got narrower and narrower but eventually I spotted the silhouette of a church on the skyline and soon I was getting out of the car to explore. The ruined church is Norman and, as is the case with a great many Christian churches, it was built on an ancient pagan site.


Here you can see the bank and ditch of the henge which the church stands on, Knowlton has three henges in a row and the church is on the middle one with a fourth one known as 'Old Churchyard' to one side. In the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age it was apparently one of the most important ceremonial sites in Wessex, the equal of Stonehenge. Knowlton was once a thriving village and the capital of a Saxon hundred. It was devastated by the Black Death around 1485 and gradually people moved away and the church fell into disrepair in the 17th century. Knowlton 'village' now consists of one farm!


Knowlton was a centre for the building of Bronze Age round barrows, the one above is just to the east of the central henge and is the largest round barrow in Dorset and there are many others close by. By this time thoughts of dinner were beginning to enter my mind so I headed back to Iwerne Minster at the end of an enjoyable day. As so often happens though it was the unplanned parts that were the best.

The 18th Photo!

Derrick from Melrose Musings has tagged me to go to the 18th photo of the 18th folder in my files and tell the story behind it - apparently the meme started off as the 6th photo of the 6th file but it seems that there is a degree of superstition attached to the number 6 which I must investigate later. My husband spent a lot of the winter of 2007 scanning all our family photos, from the late 1800s up until the advent of my digital camera, into my computer and these are all in folder number 18. The photo is a family group taken in our garden in 1988 and left to right are my husband, my Uncle Vic, Aunty May, elder son Stephen aged 15 with daughter Juliette aged 8 in front of him, me and my younger son Neil aged 13.
My Uncle Vic was a Norfolk man and early in WW2 he was stationed in my home town of Macclesfield, Cheshire with the RAMC. There he met May, one of my dad's younger sisters and they fell in love. Soon he was shipped out to the Far East and after the fall of Singapore in February 1942 he became a Japanese prisoner of war. He managed to survive these dreadful years with the help of a small leather wallet containing a photograph of the girl he'd left behind which he managed to keep hidden from the Japanese guards. He was finally repatriated back to the UK in late 1945 weighing just 6 stones (84 pounds). He came straight to Macclesfield to the girl who had been his reason to struggle on and survive and in April 1946 he married her and took her back to live in his home county of Norfolk. They celebrated their Diamond Wedding in 2006 and in August 2007 Uncle Vic died at the age of 87. Aunty May is still going strong and will be 89 in August.
So really this is a cheat as the photograph wasn't taken by me at all but by my Uncle David, it brought back some happy memories though even if it wasn't quite according to specifications. I'm not passing this on to 6 other people but please feel free to do this meme if you want to, you may well find that it brings back some good memories for you too.

The Shepherd's Calendar - June

Here is an excerpt from the June poem in John Clare's 'Shepherd's Calendar'. Remember that you have to put in your own punctuation as you read:) The lovely painting above is by Helen Allingham.

Some ancient customs mixd wi harmless fun
Crowns the swains merry toils - the timid maid
Pleasd to be praised and yet of praise affraid
Seeks her best flowers not those of woods and fields
But such as every farmer's garden yields





Fine cabbage roses painted like her face
And shining pansies trimd in golden lace
And tall tuft larkheels feathered thick wi flowers
And woodbines climbing oer the doors in bowers





And London tufts of many a mottled hue
And pale pink pea and monkshood darkly blue
And white and purple jiliflowers that stay
Lingering in blossom summer half away
And single blood walls of a luscious smell





Old fashioned flowers which hus wives love so well
And columbines stone blue or deep night brown
Their honey-comb-like blossoms hanging down
Each cottage gardens fond adopted child




Just to help you out with the flower names
larks heels are larkspur
London tufts are London Pride
jiliflower could be either pinks/carnations or wallflowers
bloods are also wallflowers, the lovely deep red ones

June is sheep shearing time and the girl is collecting flowers for her 'clipping posies' which were little nosegays presented to the sheep shearers - I believe they were often sprinkled with pepper or snuff which was the cause of much hilarity when the unsuspecting recipient put the sweet-smelling flowers to his nose. Sheep shearing was hard, hot work but not entirely without its pleasures. The farmer would usually supply copious amounts of home brewed cider or ale to help things along. In fact here are another few lines -

The large stone pitcher in its homely trim
And clouded pint horn wi its copper rim
Oer which rude healths was drank in spirits high
From the best broach the cellar would supply
While sung the ancient swains in homly rhymes
Songs that were pictures of the good old times
When leathern bottles held the beer nut brown
That wakd the sun wi songs and sung him down

Life was hard but it had it's lighter side as well.

On To Dorset via Salisbury

It was early on a grey,cool morning as I left Sussex and headed towards Dorset,my early start was to give me as much time as possible in Salisbury.The first thing that took my attention as I walked from the car park was the medieval Poultry Cross where once upon a time country people would sell their eggs and poultry, it is the only survivor of the four market crosses that once stood in Salisbury's market place. In the background are some half-timbered buildings one of which is...



.... The Haunch of Venison which was built originally to house the craftsmen working on the cathedral spire, it has been there since at least 1320 and is Salisbury's oldest inn.



Relations between the citizens of Salisbury and the clergy of the cathedral were not always entirely harmonious and there was constant trouble to the point that in 1327 Edward lll granted a licence for the building 'an embattled wall of stone' around the cathedral and Close. The photo shows High St Gate, one of four gates which were, and still are, locked at night. This gate had a portcullis which could be dropped across the entrance when the citizens got too out of hand!





The West Front of the cathedral with its life size statues of saints. Salisbury is unique in that it was built to a single plan in a remarkably short space of time, the foundation stone was laid in 1220 and the cathedral was complete by 1266. The chapter house and cloisters were added by 1280. It didn't have a spire to begin with, this was added around 1335 and at 404 ft is the highest in England. Clicking on the photos will bring up more detail.



The interior of the cathedral looking towards the east window.

The rather splendid tomb of sir Richard Mompesson and his wife Katherine who owned Mompesson House, one of the houses in the Cathedral Close and now owned by the National Trust.



This is the oldest working clock in the world, it was made about 1386 and only strikes the hours. It doesn't have a face as it was originally in a bell tower and only heard not seen.



The cloisters and behind them the octagonal building is the Chapter House. The Chapter House is the only part of the cathedral where photography isn't allowed so naturally it is also far and away the most attractive and interesting part! It has a wonderful vaulted ceiling and a superb medieval carved stone freize depicting scenes from the books of Genesis and Exodus, including Adam and Eve, the building of the Ark, and Abel's murder at the hands of Cain. It is fascinating to walk round with the information card explaining which each one represents. The jewel in the crown though is one of only four of the original forty or so copies of Magna Carta still in existence.


I couldn't resist looking for an online image of the freeze and this is the only one I could find - Noah's Ark with Noah and the returning dove. Isn't it wonderful?



Walking through the close I saw this lovely sundial on the wall of Malmesbury House.



This is another of the gates of the city - St Ann's Gate this time and the rain was beginning to fall quite heavily again when I took this photo, hence the rather grey and depressing look to it. The great composer Handel was a friend of the owner of Malmesbury House and in 1739 he is said to have given his first concert in England in the room with the arched window above the gate. In the house that you can just see on the left of the gate lived Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones. He liked to have a good time and was apparently giving one of his frequent noisy parties as Handel performed next door!



I love the beautiful statue on the portico of The White Hart which is an 18th century building - again you need to click on the photo to see it properly. It was one of Salisbury's grander coaching inns and must once have been the scene of a good deal of noise and activity as the stage coaches clattered down the street and turned into the inn yard.



The House of John a'Porte who was a wealthy wool merchant and six times mayor of Salisbury. The house was built in 1425.



The church of St Thomas Becket was originally built around 1220 as a place of worship for the craftsmen working on the building of the cathedral but the present building dates from around 1450. Over the chancel arch is the largest 'Doom' painting in England dating from around 1475, the offering of a grateful pilgrim safely returned from his journey. It was whitewashed over at the Reformation and rediscovered in the 19th century.



It isn't everyone who carves their own memorial! Humphrey Beckham was Chamberlain of the Joiners Guild in 1621 and Warden in 1635 and obviously intended to be remembered.



In the Lady Chapel of St Thomas' there are more medieval wall paintings, this one is The Annunciation....



.....and this is The Visitation. Paintings of The Visitation are quite rare in English churches partly because the churchmen considered it an 'indelicate' subject!



Eventually the rain stopped and I decided to walk through Harnham Water Meadows to see the view of the cathedral which John Constable painted though in 1831 the Meadows seem to have been rather more watery than they are now, though judging by the rainbow in his painting it was raining while he was in Salisbury too!


It was really nice to get out of the busy city streets and walk through this lovely rural scene.



This lovely old building dates back in parts to the 12th century, in 1550 it was rebuilt and the course of the River Nadder was diverted to flow under it and it then became Harnham Water Mill, Wiltshire's first paper mill. It's my favourite of all the buildings that I saw in Salisbury.



This is a detail from the walls which I found both fascinating and beautiful. I think this is the original 12th century part



I crossed the 15th century Crane Bridge over the River Avon as I walked back into the city to retrieve my car and continue the journey to Dorset. I think there is still a good deal of interest for me to see in Salisbury and I'd like to go back there - preferably on a nice,dry day next time!