It’s always tempting when the seed catalogues drop through the letter box on the darkest of winters days, to get a bit carried away by the promise of summer, and spend a lot of money. (Sarah Raven’s catalogue is particularly seductive)
It’s even harder this year with the memory of New Zealand’s summer flowers still fresh and fragrant in my mind.
However, no mater how much restraint I show, yellow and orange geums will be on the list These beauties were in Christchurch Botanic Gardens. Which felt very familiar, very British (only sunnier) similar to Buxton’s Pavillion Gardens, in Derbyshire.
The gardens are home to The Peacock Fountain which was made at Coalbrookedale Foundry in Shropshire, England; this blog has explored the Coalbrookedale Museum of Iron in a previous post, and its easy to see this fountains linage.
Built in 1911it’s not always been universally popular, its quite ornate…
Erected by the Christchurch Beautifying Association from funds bequeathed by the late Hon. J. T. Peacock
I’ve enjoyed making some of my Christmas cards from stack of vintage postcards I found in a second hand book shop inKeswick, they are reproductions of stamps issued by the post office in the 1970s and 80s. Some had a Christmas theme, like the one above, published in 1981 I wonder what Samantha Brown is up to now, I hope she is still having as much fun with paint as she did back in 1981?
There were some very pretty ones.
This was a favourite
Some were not seasonal at all. I just chose them because they had a link to interests and hobbies of the intended recipient.
We’ve a friend. MR, who is a postal historian, I was delighted to find a postcard for him that celebrated postal history. Spot on, couldn’t be better.
Every year we always await eagerly the arrival of MR’s Christmas card to us, as we are curios to see what combination of stamps he has used, they are never recent issues, and often include 1/2p denominations, I guess they must raise an eyebrow or too in the sorting office, they make us smile, we try to reciprocate, I’ve even added a Greenshield stamps to his card before now, along with the correct postage, of course.
One card I was delighted to find was of an old English Sheepdog, it was the perfect one for a friend who is mourning the loss of his own dog of the same breed.
Meanwhile our card from MR landed on the door mat, bearing the very same postage stamp as the postcard I’d just written and was about send.
Shall we calculate the odds on that happening? Or shall we stick to stamp collecting?
It’s a church in need of a little TLC, but then most are, but it had a smell, a little more on the side of decay than just old and dusty. There were several things to intrigue the curious ( with a fair wind, I can probably spin it out to three blog posts).
Now what are these, hung in the arch?
It was tricky to get a good look, and we could see no information (even when we had found the light switch, which we were invited to use so long as we turned them off when we left). Clusters of paper flowers and a glove? I’ve never seen anything like them before in a church.
Later I turned to the Internet for answers. I discovered they are maidens’ garlands or crantses, they were made for the funerals of young women,
‘The gloves suspended by the garland’s side,
White as snowy flowers with ribbon tied,
Dear village! long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of the early dead.’
And now I find Anna Seward was involved with the Lunar Society and that her friend was married to Richard Edgeworth. It was a small world then?
You have to wonder how on earth any Crantese have survived, now I’m off on the history of paper making in the UK, would they be paper or vellum? I might be gone for hours, I love how blogging does that.
There were two major developments at about the middle of the eighteenth century in the paper industry in the UK. The first was the introduction of the rag-engine or hollander, invented in Holland sometime before 1670, which replaced the stamping mills which had previously been used for the disintegration of the rags and beating of the pulp. The second was in the design and construction of the mould used for forming the sheet. Early moulds had straight wires sewn down on to the wooden foundation, this produced an irregular surface showing the characteristic laid marks, and, when printed on, the ink did not give clear, sharp lines. Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, wanted a smoother paper. James Whatman the Elder developed a woven wire fabric, thus leading to his production of the first wove paper in 1757.
Mr Uphilldowndale observed that the untimely death of two maidens, didn’t seem very many, considering how short life expectancy was back then! (Maybe he’d been looking at the Mills and Boon books at the back of the church.)
If you garden you soon come to realise that you are trying to keep control of a force far greater than you, or any number of gardeners, turn your back on your plot and it will revert to a path of its own. Nature will reclaim.
In the benign climate of Cornwall the gardens of Heligan, went there own way, like so many gardens of the ‘big house’ after WWI, when the carnage of war wiped out a generation of men, who worked the pleasure grounds and productive gardens. Heligan house was sold, but the land was not. This has resulted in a time capsule.
Hop on over to the website for the story of how this magical place was rediscovered, or better still read Tim Smit’s book, I really enjoyed it, Smit, Rob Poole and John Nelson’s drive and determination to restore the gardens was both epic and obsessive! You can only start to imagine how overgrown it must have been.
We were there before the crowds, Spud the dog was welcome on a lead, we headed down into the jungle. Full of tree ferns, palms and tropical plants, gathered with such vigour by the Victorian plant hunters; we swung by the Burmese rope bridge. Spud wasn’t allowed on here ( and we know just how much a dogs leg can cost to repair). Spud had to sit on the bank and admire his masters aura, from afar.
Cornwall’s gardens are famed for their camellia and azalea.
As well as the time capsule of the old, their was the new, with sculpture and art, you can’t keep a good plant down.
My favourite part was the productive gardens, there you can really get a feel for the people who worked here. I just love the anemones in this image, got to be one of my favourite flowers.
But it wasn’t just fruit veg and flowers, these are bee boles
I had plant pot envy.
The head gardeners bothy
The curved shadow are from the distinctively shaped panes of glass
The magnificent pineapple frames, heated by horse muck.
Rare, exotic and hard to grow, Pineapples were a symbol of great status and wealth in Victorian times. A pineapple on your dining table meant you were a person of discernment, style and affluence.
I loved this green house, its light, warmth and scent, and because it reminded me of the painting by Eric Ravilious
The poignancy of the effects of WWI on the Heligan gardens if perhaps best capture, by the Thunderbox room (the toilet) written on its white washed walls ‘Do not come here to sleep or slumber’ and a list of signatures and a date 1914.
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing features 12 drawings at each venue, all selected to reflect the full range of Leonardo’s interests – painting, sculpture, architecture, music, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany.
I was surprised we were allowed to take photographs, but we were, so long as there was no flash used. Fumbling around with my phone to take a snap or two to upload to social media, I had a bit of a moment where I realised the phone was about to flash! I quickly bundled into the folds of my fleece, for fear of a 500 year old de Vinci disappearing like invisible ink, in front of my eyes! (The Banksy incident was running through my mind).
Was there anything he couldn’t draw or imagine?
Great feats of engineering and soft romantic portraits
The anatomical drawings are incredible.
Not only in terms of the observation,
but he clearly had a rich understanding of how the body works, which seems a head of its time, as the information screen explained.
And now I’m seeing the teacher responsible for insisting on me writing in pen and ink in this drawing, you get the picture?
Afterwards we found our way to the coffee shop, to reflect that we had just been transported, from Tim Peake’s space travel, to five hundred years ago, when the polymath that was Leonardo da Vinci was sketching something remarkably like a helicopter all under one roof. Amazing.
We meandered our way through Shropshire, and the South Wales coalfields, to reach Cardiff, our boy Joe has been working in Cardiff on his industry placement year, what a cracking time he’s been having (he’s studying civil engineering at Swansea University). There is a very handy campsite, near the city centre, (book it is you can it is fully booked more often than not) this allowed us to catch up (and feed, what student doesn’t want mum and dad to turn up and take them out for dinner?) with Joe in the evenings and we got to have a good mooch around the city, with Spud the dog, close at hand.
We were on the doorstop of The Museum of Wales, at opening time, along with a large number of school parties, but we were swift of foot, and savvy to getting ahead of school parties, before teacher could raise their clipboard, we were off and in, to see astronaut Tim Peake’s *landing capsule, which has been touring the UK, it’s got a bit of a Sutton Hoo look about it, in the background, the parachute with which it drifted down to earth or came down with a bump, depending whose story you believe.
It was very well lit, so you could see inside, not much room to swing a cat…
it looks kind of basic doesn’t it, compared to the smart phone or tablet you might be reading this blog on?
We were comforted to see, that if all else fails, there is a ring bider or two you can refer to for instructions what to do next.
Not sure how you recharge it though.
It looks like it took a bit of a knock, I’m sure a bit of body filler or gaffer tape would sort it though, no harm done.
*Tim Peak is a bit of a hero in our books, not only for what he did in space, but with what he continues to do educating and encouraging young people into studying STEM sciences and with his involvement of The Scout Association
I want to go to Big Pit, said Mr Uphilldowndale, after we’d been wallowing in the history of the industrial revolution in Ironbridge. ‘That sounds interesting’ I said, ‘but I’m not going down it.’ For decades Mr Uphilldowndale has been regaling me with his description of what it was like, back in the very early 1980’s, when he went down to the 48 inch thick coal face of Emley Moor colliery and there was no way I was going to be wriggling around 300 feet underground. Far to claustrophobic for my liking.
So we headed south into Wales and rolled up at Big Pitt,
Mr UHDD went to check the lie of the land and came back to tell me that I wouldn’t have to crawl around I could stand up throughout our tour, that admission was free (I had been feeding the dogs) and that we were going down the pit now, as they were expecting 70 school children to arrive in twenty minutes time. So cajoled by added headroom and propelled by the thought of not wanting to be caught up amongst 70 children in a confined space we were on our way down Big Pit.
The mine is covered by HM Inspectorate of Mines regulations, because it is still classed as a working pit.[4] Visitors wear a plastic hard hat, safety lamp, and a battery on a waist belt which weighs 5 kilograms (11 lb). Visitors must also carry on their belt a rebreather, which in case of emergency will filter foul air for approximately one hour, giving a chance for survival and escape.[40]
The tour guides are men who used to work at the coal face, or either Big Pit or another colliery, so you got a real flavour of what it was like ‘in their day’ and plenty of history too. Who can start to imagine what it was like for children, working underground. There was enough to see and hear about keep my attention from wandering to the fact, I was in a coal mine, most of the time. I was surprised about the amount of woodworm in the pit props and timbers though! They can’t treat the timber with chemicals, they just have to keep on replacing it.
They had some beautiful shiny miners lamps, I’ve one at home, it looks a little neglected to compared to Big Pit’s lamps. No canaries down the mine but they did have some in the lamp room (I hadn’t been reunited with my camera at this point!)
Plenty to see around the mine
Many of the original buildings are accessible, from the explosives store,
to the medical room,
And displays of equipment and ephemera.
The locker room, what a lot of lockers! I’d never thought about the fact a miner would have two lockers, one for his coal soiled clothes and one for his clean clothes.
I can imagine both would have been popular.
The arrival of ‘pit head baths’ must have transformed the daily routine, for the miners and the women at home… I love these towels, their style is on the edge of my childhood memory.
Much Wenlock is an ancient market town, it was sleepy when we hit the streets early next day, it has many beautiful old buildings,
I was caught by a wave of childhood nostalgia, by a RSPCA collection box, a little bell rang when I put Mr Uphilldowndale’s money in it, lovely, look how loved those noses are!
Can graves look cosy? Maybe its just the symmetry.
There was an antique shop, that was very well stocked…
Certainly not somewhere that has not had a Marie Kondo makeover!
Another little flash of nostalgia, my grandmother had a little table just like this, I’m sure she brought back from one of her early early ‘package deal’ holidays, of which she was an early adopter… I must post about that.
You can’t leave canals out of the history of the Ironbridge Gorge, for transporting all those delicate and valuable china goods, to hauling the coal to fire the kilns, it was by far the best option, the only other way was pack horses on unmade roads.
The canal at Coalport was frozen over in part, on the day we visited, the ducks waddled along as best they could, occasionally falling through the ice, or swimming along in the style of an ice breaker
Now I may be the ‘creative’ of the household, but I know cracking engineering solution when I see it. This is the Hay inclined plane, we have few of those nearer to home, but none as impressive as this, ours were used for hauling trucks full of limestone or coal to or from the canals, here they simply moved the whole boat.
The Hay Inclined Plane is a canal inclined plane with a height of 207 feet that is located on a short stretch of the Shropshire Canal that linked the industrial area of Blists Hill with the River Severn. The inclined plane was in operation from 1792 to 1894 and can be visited as part of the Blists Hill Victorian Town and is also a waypoint on the South Telford Heritage Trail. In operation box-shaped tub boats 20 feet long were taken up and down the plane on twin railway tracks, an empty boat would be loaded into the river at the bottom and a full boat would be loaded into the canal at the top, a rope would connect the two so that gravity would drop the loaded boat down to the river counterbalanced by an empty boat being raised to the canal. At the bottom of the incline the rails went underwater allowing the boats to float free.
I have a little china cup, once upon a time it lived in the glass fronted cabinet in the ‘front room’ of my great, great aunt’s house, one of those late Victorian rooms of heavy furniture and creaking floor boards, the lids of the china teapots in the cabinet rattled as you walked across the room. Here she is seated, centre, I don’t remember her a being very jolly, but I do remember, in the 1970’s her then white hair, had a nicotine stained quiff of yellow,
Time passes and the little cup then moved on to my mum’s dresser, and now it lives in my cabinet of curiosities. It’s marked Coalport China
It seems Coalport sold undecorated china, and it was often decorated by other companies to their specification. I prefer my little white cup, just the way it is, I like its simplicity.
I can’t think that this little print came from the dour great Aunts house, it seems far to whimsical for her taste, but who knows.
Australian Traveller that loves to "Roam" our globe, creator of ENDLESSROAMING.COM sharing the experience through word and photography. Currently residing in my home of Newtown Sydney
Uphilldowndale 