Heritage Crafts

I have always been interested in the old traditional country crafts and am so pleased that there is finally an organization to try and prevent these old skills dying out. It supports the more industrial skills as well including those involved in the steel making and cutlery industries of Sheffield. Could I direct you to a very eloquent post by Leanne at Somerset Seasons, Dorset Days which expresses my feelings about the old crafts but better than I can manage. Here is the Heritage Crafts Association site if you would like to learn more about them. It is so important that we don't lose the knowledge that these craftsmen and women possess or it is gone forever. They are still trying to work out how the people who built Stonehenge moved the blue stones from the Preseli Hills in Wales and the huge sarsen stones from the Marlborough Downs to Wiltshire! It may not have been a making baskets or weaving kind of skill but nevertheless a skill of some kind was involved and it has been lost as have many others.

A Suffolk Summer Part One

I mentioned in a recent post a book I have called Suffolk Summer by John Appleby, he was a member of the USAAF who was stationed at Lavenham in Suffolk and then Thorpe Abbots in Norfolk during WW2. He acquired a bicycle and spent his leaves and days off exploring Suffolk. Quite early on he discovered the art of brass rubbing and from then on he visited as many churches as he could that had brasses worth seeing. Like John Appleby I spend as much time as I can exploring the villages and countryside when I go to Suffolk and since the life and history of the people largely centred around the church I tend to visit a lot of them.


The church in the photograph at the top is St Lawrence, Little Waldingfield which was built in the 14th century. John Appleby came here to do rubbings of the brasses - this one is John Wyncoll, a clothier who died in 1544.


The South Porch with its sundial - it looks very mellow and peaceful in the sunlight.


The Charity Boards on a wall inside the church. Wealthy people often left charitable bequests to assist the poor of their parish, many are still being distributed today. Whether this is the case with the 'Ten Loads of Wood' I don't know, a load of wood would have been very welcome to a poor family in a bitter winter but these days it may have been somehow converted to a cash payment.



This venerable old parish chest is over 700 years old, it dates from about 1300 and would have held the church valuables. There were three locks with each key held by a different person so that there was no danger of anyone making off with the contents.



This is the 14th century church of St Peter, Monks Eleigh, another church built with the wealth that came from wool and the manufacture of cloth. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you will see the bell which chimes the hours set in a cage on top of the tower.



You never know quite what you are going to come across in old churches, this is the parish bier made by the local carpenter in the late 1500s and used to carry coffins to and from the church. At each end there are two folding handles for the pall bearers to use.


Another unusual item in this church is the alms box fixed to a pillar and dated 1636 - three keyholes again you'll notice. They didn't seem to trust their vicars all that much in those days!


The beautiful stone font dates from the 13th century - I wonder how many babies have been baptized there in the last 800 years? Even in a small village like Monks Eleigh it must number several thousand.



As I walked down the road from the church I saw this charming scene which must be what most people visualize when they think of an English country cottage.



Chelsworth is one of the places that John Appleby mentions in his book, he calls it 'the loveliest village in Suffolk' and I'm inclined to agree with him. All Saints church is 13th century.


This medieval wall-painting of The Last Judgement was discovered in 1849 when the church was being re-decorated. During the Reformation all the brightly painted walls in churches were plastered or painted over and many were destroyed completely. Clicking on the photo will make it possible to see it more clearly.



I had a friendly little companion while looking round Chelsworth church.



One of the lovely cottages in the village, I love all the odd angles of the walls. The jetty ( where the top storey overhangs the lower one) is a sure sign of a medieval building.



Another of Chelsworth's attractive cottages, in June each year the village has a 'Gardens Open' to raise money for the upkeep of the church. There are around 20 gardens to visit and it's well worth going if you are in the area on Sunday June 28th. There's a plant stall and a cake stall, two of the gardens do teas, there are flowers in the church and best of all a chance to get a closer look at all these fabulous old places including the local manor house. I'm rather hoping to go myself this year - depends on my husband's cricket fixtures though!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Following a recent post by The Weaver of Grass I acquired a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam earlier this week and on Tuesday I sat out in the sunshine to read it.It was translated from the original Persian in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald and became a great favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites without whose interest and support it would probably have sunk without trace. These illustrations from The Rubaiyat are by a wonderful French illustrator called Edmund Dulac who was working in the early to mid 20th century and was greatly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones.



Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet,philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who lived between 1048 and 1151. This portrait is in his mausoleum at Nishapur, the town where he was born and lived for most of his life.


I suspect that a great many people know parts of the Rubaiyat without being aware of it. For instance:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

" The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: " are also well-known lines from The Rubaiyat. They provided Agatha Christie with the title for one of her Miss Marple stories.



I have always thought that the Rubaiyat was a poem of love and romance - actually it's a bit of a drunken rambling written as Omar Khayyam spends the day in an inn getting progressively more intoxicated and morose as the day goes on! Dulac did a series of beautiful illustrations for the book, however I am not matching them to the lines he wrote them for but to the ones that appeal to me:) My favourite lines are the opening quatrain which The Weaver also quoted:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.





Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly - and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.




The title of this illustration from the Rubaiyat series is The Sleeve of Night - less colourful but with a tranquil, dreaming quality that I love.



Edmund Dulac illustrated many other fairytales and books including The Arabian Nights and Shakespeare's play The Tempest from which comes this lovely drawing of the sprite Ariel. What I would love now is to discover where there are examples of his original artwork that I could go and see.

April

April's Charms

When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;





When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long --
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;





When I can hear the woodland brook, that could
Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood;
Upon these banks the violets make their home,
And let a few small strawberry blossoms come:





When I go forth on such a pleasant day,
One breath outdoors takes all my cares away;
It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold
Of wood that's green and fill a grate with gold.

William Henry Davies

A Miscellany

A little bit of catching up here as I never did the Sunday bit of last weekend - we went to the Museum of East Anglian Life which could easily have the word 'rural' in its title as that is what East Anglia basically still is. There have always been a lot of Romani travellers in Suffolk and the museum has a small exhibit about them including some fascinating recordings by an old Romani lady telling about their way of life including some interesting bits about the herbal remedies that they made and used. Above is a traditional bender tent which is what the gypsy people lived in until the mid-19th century when the traditional vardo (caravan) started to be used. The benders were made from a framework of saplings tied at the top and covered in canvas which was held down by stones.



The interior of a vardo showing how highly decorated they were - this one could use a little bit of restoration! They look small but the gypsy people lived an outdoor life so needed only a place to sleep.


I find the Romani people very interesting, they carry a huge fund of knowledge of the natural world and especially the uses of herbs. My interest is increased by a family legend that my grandmother had some gypsy blood. I have no idea whether there is any truth in this but I can certainly see why people would think it was so. My dad also had her jet black hair,high cheekbones and swarthy skin. I got the high cheekbones and fairly dark skin but not,unfortunately,the black hair.


However, back to the Museum, this is one of the room settings, a lovely cottage kitchen. Though not so lovely if you actually had to use it. My gran (the one in the photo above) had something similar but smaller with a cold water tap, a shallow stone sink and a big mangle in it. She did have a gas stove though the old range still provided the heat in the little living room. This is getting bad, I keep wandering off the subject!



This fabulous old machine is a chaff cutter which would have been powered by a steam engine. It cuts straw chaff, hay and oats into very small pieces, it is then mixed with chopped mangolds, swedes, sugar beet pulp and is given to the cattle and horses. The straw is much easier for them to digest when it is cut small so they gain more nourishment from it. This information all came from the man who owned and was restoring it. Cesca and I were standing by it making all kinds of unlikely guesses as to what it was for and I don't think we'd have come up with the right answer if we'd stood there for the rest of the day.



Gabriel and his other granny standing by one of the steam rollers - Gabriel looking rather doubtful about the whole thing:) I remember quite clearly when these were a common sight wherever the roadmenders were at work. I used to love the smell of the tarmac - still do but usually they only patch the roads up these days instead of replacing whole sections so there isn't much tarmac to smell.



George looking highly unimpressed by his brother's driving skills!



On Tuesday Steve, Hannah, Kaitlyn and Lucy came over for the afternoon and we went to Padley Gorge for a walk. The wind was bitter on the road above but once we dropped down into the trees it was fine. This is the Burbage Brook which runs through the gorge, once forming part of the boundary between Yorkshire and Derbyshire.



Hannah, Kaitlyn and Lucy ( yes, she is in there!) striding out along the rocky path through the woodland which is mainly oak and birch with alder along the river.



It was difficult to take a photo that gave any real impression of the steep sides of Padley Gorge. Some parts of the path are very steep indeed especially if you aren't quite three yet. Kaitlyn walked the whole way holding my hand on the very steep parts while Steve helped Hannah who had Lucy strapped to her in a Hugabub. There were one or two very muddy patches which I carried her over but that was because she only had ordinary shoes on rather than wellingtons. No whingeing either - a real little trooper. We pretended we were intrepid explorers :)



My evenings have been spent finishing this blanket for Lucy. Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while may have a sense of deja-vu and you'd be right, you have seen it before. This is the fourth time I've done this pattern, one for each grandchild but a different colour for each. To be honest this has taken ages, I feel as though I've been knitting it for years! There are 48 small squares in it as well as the border so the sewing took nearly as long as the knitting. I'm going to make something really, really small next - I have in mind a dishcloth. Watch this space!


And finally, I was researching on Google for a detour I have in mind as I go down to Sussex later this year. I can't remember how long it took me last time to get from Avebury to Winchester so was trying to get some clues and came across this little gem which made me laugh:

Arthur Tour to mysterious southwest England
Meeting time 12.00 noon. He will take you to Winchester in his tour bus. ... probably built around 3000 BC)


Now that's a trip I'd like to take - King Arthur as guide and a 5000 year old tour bus :)

A Fun Weekend - Saturday

I spent Mother's Day weekend in Suffolk with Neil, Francesca, Gabriel and George. On Saturday afternoon Neil and I took Gabriel into Bury St Edmunds so that Cesca could have a rare opportunity to relax. We went into the Abbey gardens and played football.




Then we walked by the river - Bury has two rivers both with delightful names, this one is the River Lark and on the outskirts of the town it has a tributary called the River Linnet.They must be among the prettiest river names in England. This is the Abbot's Bridge which dates back to the 12th century.







We went in the play area and rode on a sealion....










.... and had lots of fun on the swing.





We tried to make friends with some ducks but they were rather reluctant!





The American airman who donated the rose garden wrote a book called Suffolk Summer about his explorations of Suffolk when he was stationed at Lavenham and then Bury St Edmonds. I bought a copy on my first visit to Bury many years ago so I'm very familiar with the name on the plaque.



Gabriel and Alfie Bear sitting on a memorial bench donated by the USAAF and made from the wing of a B17 Flying Fortress bomber.




St James church which is now the cathedral of Bury St Edmunds but it was originally the parish church for the ordinary people of the town thus leaving the now ruined Abbey church exclusively for the monks. Bury St Edmunds Abbey was once a great Benedictine monastery, one of the richest in England.




We went inside and found that the Suffolk Sinfonia were rehearsing for a concert to be held on Saturday evening, we sat and listened and we all, including Gabriel,really enjoyed it. We went right up to the orchestra and Gabriel was fascinated by all the musical instruments especially the big drums and the double basses.





Finally we had to walk down the side of the Norman Tower built between 1120 and 1148 and one of the two great gateways into the Abbey. It was time to leave the gardens to go and buy a very special card for a very special mummy.

Bee! I'm expecting you!

A close encounter with a beautiful big bumble bee earlier this week suddenly made it feel as though early summer isn't all that far away after all. One of my summer pleasures is to sit in the garden and listen to the busy hum of the bees as they work at collecting nectar from my flowers. I find it a relaxing tranquil sound even though it indicates great industry on their part. I like bees, they are friendly comfortable creatures and only sting as a last resort unlike wasps. If a bee stings it dies so it isn't an option that they take unless they feel very threatened. There are two little pieces connected with bees that I really like, this poem....

Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due --

The Frogs got Home last Week --
Are settled, and at work --
Birds, mostly back --
The Clover warm and thick --

You'll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me --
Yours, Fly.

by Emily Dickinson

....and the song sung by Ariel in Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'


Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

-- William Shakespeare