Monday -

Warrior's Dyke, the stones are the foundation of hut settlements

Nostalgia on a miserable day!!

The wind has started up,  grey and wet, Autumn is making her presence felt, someone on TMA has been to an area I know well, St.Davids and it brings back memories of wandering with Moss in the Welsh landscape......

Sat on the floor in front of my books, can I throw any away, no is the answer, they are the ones that accompanied me on my divorce, these must stay even the archaeological ones.  I pick up the old exercise books I have recorded in so many years ago, they are commonplace books, written so neatly in that  slanting writing I learnt in the drawing office of my almost first job. Old poems, sayings current at the time, Ruskin is there talking about the Pre-raphaelites, Dosteyevsky's chapter on The Grand Inquisitor, Goldsmith's poem of course and there is Thomas Hardy poem's with his bleak lamenting at the grave side for his former wife, the poems the children wrote when young. So what would I choose, well maybe words from the Iliad, there is a phase in this quote that often drifts through my mind 'soft as the fleeces of descending snow'.

But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound,
his modest eyes he fixed upon the ground,
As one unskilled or dumb he seems to stand,
Nor raised his head, nor stretch'd his sceptred hand;
But, when he speaks, what elocution flows.
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows,
The copious accents fall, with easy art
Melting they fall, and sink into the heart
Wondering we hear, and fix'd in deep surprise,
Our ears refute the censure of our eyes.

These words come from four eighteenth century books, written in that funny print of the time. John Ruskin next, I got rid of some of his books, but kept several, such a prolific, one might also say boring writer!

The largest soul of any country is altogether its own.  Not the citizens of the world, but of his own city - nay for the best man, you may say, of his own village. Patriot always, provincial always, of his own crag or field always.  A Liddesdale man, or a Tynedale;

Angelico from the Rock of Fesole, or Virgil from the Mantuan Marsh.  You dream of National Unity! - you might as well strive to melt the stars down into a nugget and stamp them small into coin with one Caesar's face.     Ruskin - Art of England.

I wonder how he would have viewed the world today, though the truth of the matter is that we haven't really changed.........

Fungi

Even the recently coppiced chestnuts are producing crops

I have been in love with this many branched family of the woodland floor for years, so excitement creeps into my soul in Autumn.  The fungi family are nearer to animals on the evolutionary tree of life than plants, one can hardly say a near relative but one who took a different branch line.  What is it about them, they have soft colours, not always necessarily so, Schroomworks blog from America came in  this morning rejoicing about their appearance, a great cluster whose local name is 'strawberries and cream' were pictured.  She dyes with mushrooms creating soft shades of pink, blues and greens, though what colour she gets from these monsters, I am not sure.

Hydnellum peckii  rather grotesque; Wiki entry

Yesterday we set off for Blakes Wood to find sweet chestnuts, and there is a great collection of them, this year's bounty in wild fruits and nuts has been spectacular.  LS spent more time picking them than me, stamping on the prickly outer covers to get to the nuts snuggled so neatly inside but my nose was to the ground looking for mushrooms. 

There is a mathematical perfection about the gills, and as I don't pick, my only way of getting underneath the cap is to lay the camera on the ground.  Puffballs galore, the slightly brown capped ones, we have never picked them I fancy the larger whiter one, which I think grows out in the open. According to the book, you have to be careful of not confusing puffballs with earthballs.  Well I can identify the stinkhorn (hopefully), and we found two small blue ameythst deceivers, very pretty, and a rose coloured  russula .  No fly agaric where it normally grows.

Down the lane and into the woods

Little assemblies of mushrooms just like a settlement 

Old lichened wood

puffball

russula

tiny cap emerging

ameythst deceiver

Alfred's cakes?, this particular fungus likes a different tree.

Emerging Stinkhorn

And just to finish off Beatrix Potter wrote a book on mycology, illustrated with her drawings, of which you can find many on the web......

Flotsam

Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,

This morning I am confined to the computer, as the agent is coming to photograph the house, and everything must remain tidy... My mind is bubbling over with thoughts, LS often asks 'what are you thinking,'  too much is my answer.

Yesterday's post about the Banksy drawing  at Clacton, slowly slides off the page, news revealed yesterday that Clacton needs a new MP, defection of conservative to UKIP and all that, but it seems that only two miles down the road from Clacton, there is a small town called Jaywick 'The poorest town in the UK'.  Clacton is but 50 miles from London, so what has happened.  Well the answer soon becomes clearer, it is the retired and old that have moved to this town by the seaside, and Jaywick also by the sea has a history of its land being sold off into plots in the 1950s. This produced a rash of cheap wooden holiday homes for Londoners, unfortunately there was no ancillary services put in by the council for such things as electricity, roads etc.  Plotlands as they are called, are similar to the dachas of Russia, originally temporary not permanent homes.

Towns falling into decay, are only to be expected through the centuries, deserted medieval villages come to mind,  the people wiped out by the recurrent 'black plague'. The book I am reading at the moment (Britain After Rome - Robin Fleming) also explores the period of the so called 'Dark Ages' when the Roman way of life ceased to exist after the withdrawal of the troops in 410, and there was no form of overall government.  Villas, government offices and the baths fell into ruins, as presumably anarchy must have prevailed for a period of time.  Some of the Iron Age forts were again inhabited, as small local Romano-British leaders took control.  There was colonisation by the Angles and Saxons, arriving in small groups they settled down into the countryside seeming to shy away from the towns.  There is an 8th century  Old English poem, said to be written about the City of Bath which captures the mood so evocatively.......

The city buildings fell apart, the works
Of giants crumble. Tumbled are the towers
Ruined the roofs, and broken the barred gate,
Frost in the plaster, all the ceilings gape,
Torn and collapsed and eaten up by age.
And grit holds in its grip, the hard embrace
Of earth, the dead-departed master-builders,
Until a hundred generations now
Of people have passed by. Often this wall
Stained red and grey with lichen has stood by
Surviving storms while kingdoms rose and fell.
And now the high curved wall itself has fallen.    

What fascinated me on reading the book, was the 'ancestor' jewellery, and Roman bits and bobs that were found in the Saxon graves of the women, like my magpie acquisitiveness with words so these women would have searched among the old Romano-British homes, rescuing pieces of pottery and broken glass.

The next thing to grab my attention was Digging Deeper rather striking use of Bonham images to underline the problem of how antiquities are getting sold.  Sometimes one feels that this is rather like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, such things have been sold since time immemorial, but the Sekhemka saga still rumbles on, and there is a questioning in the air!

Notes to myself... Iron Age Roman helmet reused for cremation burial

Bad Pigeons

 Meaning of Irony; Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension. Wiki entry

So Banksy has won the game yet again, his irony fails too pierce the ignorance of the council members, who finding 'racial' offence at the above photo scrubbed it off the wall not knowing it was a Banksy thereby depriving Clacton of a 'masterpiece' worth several hundred thousand pounds, or maybe they  just did not have a sense of humour.  Double meanings are part of our collected language inheritance, we delight in them, they are clever little parodies which tells us a truth which makes us examine our own thinking.

Anyway, it is a delight to see birds brought into the argument, as I watched 'our' birds feed this morning, the dozen or so sparrows that come to the bird table for seed, the small dopey one who sits inside for a long time watching the world go by. Then there are the doves, whose nest building abilities leave a lot to be desired.  A quick shake of a few twigs laid haphazardly on a branch or two and the job is done.  Of course it falls down in a matter of days, they even built a nest on the bird table, only an expert could recognise it as a nest, but quickly done and quickly forgotten about. I am always alerted to the fact that there is no seed on the table by one dove's squawk as he flies down.  The blackbirds are the next on the scene, a young male is trying to bath in a little plastic saucer, and looking ridiculous, whilst the  old  male blackbird tries to shoo him off.  Age is fast creeping up on this bird, he started the spring with such fierceness, fighting off all intruders, but now has patches of white all over his feathers, too much white bread (but not from this house).

LS has been in touch with 'Billy Broadband' in Newton-on-Rawcliffe, worrying about internet reception in the village.  Well as our 'maybe' house is opposite the village hall we should 'bounce' off whatever contraption is needed to get reception, such things are beyond my scope, but it is a delight to know that such people as Billy, who was a radio ham at one time, exist. He also gave the latest village gossip, the pub is up for sale, now LS is worrying whether there will be a pub in the village after all....

Patchworks

Each month I treat myself to something, it could be a book, some spinning wool, or patchwork, this month it has been patchwork material.  The scheme in mind is for Lillie, aged 8 so some funny materials are dictated.  There is a surge of excitement on opening parcels, my choices are not always what I want them to be in the cold light of day, but this time pastel shades fit the bill.  I can see I have gone for bird/flower motifs so this almost dictates larger panels to show the patterns against the background colour of pale blue.  A lot of deliberation will go into arrangement before the materials hit the cutting board, and to be honest I quite like the 'old-fashioned' way of just using materials that come to hand, but we will see.

Jewel colours

Just as a note, and what is inspirational as far as material/prints are concerned, Angie Lewin

Tidying up

Life is busy at the moment, the 'gang master' LS has to find my duties for the day!.. Lester has come and gone and painted brown wooden windowsills with white paint - yikes, and a removal man is coming this afternoon to quantify what is to be removed, though we have not as yet put the house on the market.  So be it, so in that short time between now and coffee, I go through old blogs and start to assemble them in some sort of order..... Basically an Essex order, though Deorham of course is in Wiltshire.

Battles come to mind Deorham in Wiltshire, and Bryhtnoth in Maldon, but I realise I want to bring together the Essex churches as well.  So the medieval Mundon Church, and then there is  the Saxon church of Greenstead not forgetting Great Canfield Church with its Norse influence.

Greensted Church

Great Canfield Church

The Battle of Maldon

The Battle of  Deorham

Mundon Church

Prittlewell Burial/Greensted

St.Botulph's Church - puddingstone

Broomfield Saxon burial at the church as well, here I have collected a lot of notes but not the picture of the 'pyramidal stud' mentioned as being housed at the British Museum,  if I had the time I would see patterns emerging from these rich burials.  Prittlewell Saxon Burial comes to mind, as does the Street House, Loftus, North Yorks as well.

Broomfield Saxon Burial

There is of course the reuse of Roman tile to be seen in so many Essex churches, the use of the black puddingstone, is that a prehistoric trait? and of course talking about prehistory what of the Alphamstone church stones buried in the fabric of the wall and scattered around the graveyard, are there similar patterns to be found at the Alton Prior church in Wiltshire?


The Arts of Early England 1915

Why did the Anglo Saxon not become more British?

Fairy tales

“The industrial landscape of the Black Country was on Tolkien's horizon growing up – like a demon, encroaching on the green idyll he lived in,”

There is a new exhibition on the scene about Tolkien and the Midlands which some would say inspired Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings, the inspiration lying in the Satanic mills of the North, the heavily industrialised conglomerate towns of the Midlands, all filled him with such hate that in his imagination Mordor was a representation of the Black Country.

Well I lived my first 15 years on this earth in the Black Country, and can understand my need to escape such a place but was it that bad?  First of all I tried to remember the fiery furnaces but none came to mind, only the blacksmith's fire at the dairy where he shod the great cob horses that pulled the milk floats, and I would ride my pony into Wolverhampton to have her shod.  Then there was the vast empty spaces of the factory that my grandpa managed.  The oily black surface of the walls and floors, driving down lanes to different work shops, for the factories in those days were vast.  The great car factories of Coventry come to mind, all now gone, and Villiers which made motorbike engines, where my grandfather worked has disappeared from view. When the hundreds of factory workers came out through the gate, walking or riding bikes it was as if a Lowry painting had come to life.

What is true is that all the towns were joined by long ribbons of housing estates, Bilston, Darlaston, Wednesbury, Walsall, Wolverhampton and of course Birmingham, there was no where to rest the eyes on a green field, now I expect it is different, a tidying up must have occurred. 

I have loved the stories of Tolkien, the great tree ents, the hobbits, and the trolls and when I had read the three books in the 1960s, the films I later watched translated them into a more accurate form.  What I would say is, that imagination can run rife, but Tolkien built his stories up over a period of time and I am not sure that the Black Country was the template for Mordor.

When I thought about the stories, I could not remember a 'wicked stepmother/queen', in Lord of the Rings and it set me thinking.  C.S. Lewis had the terrible Ice Queen in the Land of Narnia,  Hans Christian Andersen had the bad Snow Queen, a story that I had loved as a child but Tolkien kept his main female characters good and life affirming.

The Snow Queen with Kai

This thread of thought, and I did not sleep well last night, bought to mind my three stepmothers, and the middle one who was so remote that I can hardly remember her at all. In my child's mind, she seemed to have stayed upstairs in her bedroom.  Barbara was a classic beauty, copper-red hair, green eyes an alabaster skin sprinkled with freckles, she was not cruel just not there and rather cold. She was the mother of my half brother Peter, and the upset between my grandfather and my father.  I came across a photo of her on the web a few months ago, she had become a councillor in Wolverhampton, though old in the photo she still had traces of her old self.  In the photo below this must have been the time Peter came into my life, and in my imagination he was Kai of Andersen's Snow Queen and I was his  friend called Gerda who had to protect him.  I suspect I thought Barbara was the Snow Queen, of course she wasn't, just an ordinary girl in a situation that was difficult, her parent's home granted me at the time a safe and secure place to visit and I would go cycling round the park behind their home all on my own on a tricycle which seems ridiculous now.

To return to Tolkien... the Guardian covers the subject more thoroughly, and like me has its doubts as to the Black Country being the inspiration for Mordor, as Stuart Jeffries  so rightly says the Midlands was the power house of England, people were proud of their work, it may have been dirty but it was bustling with energy and life.

Writing this shows that sometimes we wind our lives round stories and fairy tales, they may never reach the conclusive happy ending of these tales but our lives fall into  patterns we can understand.......

Taking the Plunge

Well as I haven't written for a few days, my fingers itch, but my heart is still beating at a faster rate than it should. So, we have decided to go for the farmhouse in Newton-on-Rawcliffe, estate agents are doing their business, the 'stuff' in the studio has been put on line for the various bodies interested in Japanese conservation tools and people are already getting in touch.  Scary, scary is my reaction, when this house is sold, the move will be fairly easy, as all the furniture can be moved instantly into the farmhouse, and we can live in the cottage whilst work is done.

Why are we moving to Yorkshire instead of Cornwall.  I think the answer is that we are used to the countryside there and are at home, Cornwall is still a bit strange.  I for one would answer rabbit pie at the Blacksmith's Arm in Lastingham, or maybe Rosedale Abbey, it is the peaceful nature of the villages contrasted against the rugged moors and the black grouse that pop their heads up over the heather as we drive past that spring to mind.  

Perhaps also it is the fly agaric mushrooms that greeted us last time in all their flamboyant colour, fairy toadstools waiting for who knows what down at the beck, a place that has always greeted us with such warmth and that hidden genii loci which we call spirit of place or to quote Alexander Pope when designing a garden.....

Consult the genius of the place in all;

That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;

Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,

Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;

Calls in the country, catches opening glades,

Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,

So fingers crossed for the next few weeks, it may be will happen or not.

Newton-on-Rawcliffe

Yorkshire is a joyous place to discover and though I have not written about the cottage at the above village, LS is still interested.  He has entered into correspondence with Truda and her partner who own the house.  LS is very, very careful, he must know every detail, so to date it has been about the old chimney in the kitchen, which has no kitchen furniture in it by the way but looks like two rooms made into one, with a pantry and another Victoria extension which I suppose you could call an utility room.  To return to the chimney which is reputed to be 300 years old but is behind a wall it has had a double skinned liner inserted for a boiler or wood burning stove, LS wants to open the chimney fireplace but I'm not sure that this is a good idea better to have the stove free standing. 

So yesterday he was worrying about isolation out in the country, what if the car does not work, is there a bus?  Taxi said I, but Truda mentioned that we could walk down the valley track (three miles) to the North York Moors Railway  line at Levisham, don't think there is even a road to it.  Lots of 'well I'm not carrying the shopping back up that hill', had me giggling.  But on further research would you believe it apparently Levisham Station has an artist in residence, who paints down in this rather beautiful valley.  The train runs from Whitby to Pickering and is rather expensive, I have only been on it once with the children but it a beautiful scenic ride.  There is another method of transport in the summer as well which is the moor bus for walkers which you can catch as it goes through the village.

@ Creative Commons - Levisham Station

Miscellany

Well the excitement is over, Scotland still stays within the union, but somehow I think the real adventure would have been an independent Scotland but it is not to be.  I'm all for devolution and that is all I will say on the subject, because I got myself into trouble yesterday over Cornwall.

We had a terrible storms last night down here in the South, lightening lit up the window, thunder roared overhead, I am not sure what it presaged but it was in the South not the North! So I turn to William Morris for reflection, 'The Dream of John Ball', Morris is an exhausting writer, he fills the pages of his books with dreams of a better, medieval way of life, a romantic socialist coupled with a creative hand so I pick the first verses of The March of the Workers to quote which seems so apt......

What is this, the sound and rumour? What is this that all men hear,

Like the wind in hollow valleys when the storm is drawing near,

Like the rolling on of ocean in the eventide of fear?

                           Tis the people marching on.

Whither go they, and whence come they? What are these of whom ye tell?

In what country are they dwelling 'twixt the gates of heaven and hell?

Are they mine or thine for money? Will they serve a master well?

Still the rumour's marching on.

Hark the rolling of the thunder!

Lo the sun! and lo thereunder

Riseth wrath, and hope, and wonder,

And the host comes marching on.

There is change in the air not just for Scotland but for England as well, and a partial reform of our antiquated Houses of Parliament and forms of government is long overdue.  But to return to Morris and his trip to Iceland when he bought back a little Icelandic pony for his children.I see a favourite poem amongst his writings, just love its bleakness, so the first verse, as the robin sings so sweetly outside and I must go and make coffee for LS who is messing around with the new front door installed yesterday by Lester who played Radio 1 continuously all day yesterday!......

Iceland First Seen

Lo from our loitering ship 

a new land at last to be seen; 

Toothed rocks down the side of the firth 

on the east guard a weary wide lea, 

And black slope the hill-sides above, 

striped adown with their desolate green: 

And a peak rises up on the west 

from the meeting of cloud and of sea, 

Foursquare from base unto point 

like the building of Gods that have been, 

The last of that waste of the mountains 

all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and grey, 

And bright with the dawn that began 

just now at the ending of day. 

Mices - Robert (Mouseman) Thompson

On the chair arm you will note a little mouse, now this is the trademark of a woodworking company in Kilburn, North Yorkshire founded by Robert Thompson (1856 to 1955), and in the 1930s was asked by a vicar to carve the cornice of a screen in the church, which he did, but when it came to payment the vicar said that the church was  poor as church mice.  So henceforth Thompson always carved a little mouse on his furniture and so his company grew.  Also it will be noted that he never carved the front legs of the mice because they were likely to be knocked off.  

He worked in beautiful seasoned English oak, and his work is very collectible, softly lustred and golden, but having said that it is also very expensive.

We saw the bench on the photo at the top of this view, 5 minutes from the cottage we looked at and the view it looked at over was the valley and of course the moors...

A collection  of his saleable work 

Bits and pieces

Unpacking; Clothes are so easy, it is the seed pods, that are deep in my jean pocket that need digging out, the memory of that walk following the mushrooms along the beck still lingers. LS picked up fir cones as well, to go back into the bowls of dried flowers I keep.  Then there is the bag of heather, purple flowered that I cut from  the moor, now residing in the fireplace.

Also there is my handbag, large and with plenty of pockets, in here resides the 'important things', such as cheque book (will we ever see the back of them) never go out into the wilds of this country without a cheque book, you will suddenly find that the hotel or inn you are staying in, only takes cheques. There are still seeds in my bag as well, perennial sweet pea pods which I gathered from a pub garden.  Then you will always find something to nibble, a packaged biscuit maybe, LS was so pleased to find a packet of peanuts the other day.  This need for food at regular intervals has been with me throughout life, like my son I carry glucose sweets but do not have diabetes as he does. 

The first time this ability to faint happened if I wasn't fed every so often manifested itself at the convent I was boarded at, early morning chapel was a killer, and I got special dispensation to have a couple of biscuits and a cup of tea before attending the service.

Then there are the  half a dozen archaeological books/pamphlets that the 'book' man at the charity shops my daughter works, or even runs, has set aside for me so I am duty bound to buy them, I buy three little painted parrot coasters as well.  Darron my son-in-law is back home, feeling better but sounded a bit husky on the phone, the hospital cannot find the clot but think there is something according to all his tests and so his illness goes on.  The prodigal grandson, Tom, has at last phoned Todmorden, someone stole his phone is his story, my daughter sounded sceptical about this.  He has been working in London all through the university holidays, so seemingly has fled the nest for the time being.

There is one more thing I would like to record, and that is a potter who was exhibiting at the Museum,  John Egerton works in Sandsend and makes the most beautifully decorated pots in smudgy greens and blues, unfortunately the price ranges around £300, so slightly out of my reach!

John Egerton

Pirates in Whitby

It was Pirate's Day in Whitby, so rather unexpected when we emerged from the wholefood shop to see these two women with their swashbuckling escorts in front strolling down the alleyway,

What the pirate was doing with the typewriter heaven knows.

Newton-on-Rawcliffe's ducks

George Weatherill - Turner of the North

George Weatherill's Whitby and above Whitby Abbey

On Saturday we went to Pannett Gallery/museum to look at the two galleries which are free.  George Weatherill is called the 'Turner of the North' and you can see why, he at one time worked or was taught by Turner and you can see it in his misty watercolours of Whitby.  The busyness of the town is caught in the above painting, beautiful sailing ships moored by the bustling quayside and the Abbey above and it is little changed today.  His children painted as well, a streak of genius that must have run in the family, Mary Weatherill, his daughter went on to fame as well.

It is said of George, that he only painted within 20 miles of Whitby and wandering round the gallery you can see his love of the sea.

Mary Weatherill travelled more widely than her father but there is still that unmistakable air of Turner about her works as in this painting of The Grand Canal, Venice

The Grand Canal, Venice - Mary Weatherill

 

The Wreck - Mary Weatherill

Whitby

Penultimate day; we wandered round Whitby yesterday along with a lot of other people, and their dogs of course, Whitby is renowned for its dogs, (hear my son-in-law comments on the state of the place!) it truly gets packed, this is the Southend of the North, LS's parents used to come years ago on the coach and stay at the large Royal Hotel on the West Cliff.  Whitby has given itself to tourism like a good time prostitute, not quite what I meant to say but its garishness is a tonic for the soul.  Fish and chip eating people everywhere, goth shops, beautiful jet jewellry, fortune reading and perhaps LS's favourite haunt the fish shops, where you can buy three oysters at a pound each.  

The young gulls are fully fledged now and wander in their rather lovely grey plumage on the quay with that rather vacant blue-eyed look of the bird. 

Below is the rather ramshackle 'Bobbins' shop, which as you can see was once an old chapel the shop sells rather expensive crafted wools and hand knitted jumpers, especially the fisherman one. Here amongst the cheap goods are old wooden bobbins and toys.

Car parking is terrible, we pay £4.50 a day in the little car park in Silver Street, we went and saw Tom at the Reading Room Gallery and had a long chat about the family, he made us a fair offer on a space in his little underground car park for four months but we did not take it up.

     

House hunting

Newton-on-Rawcliffe; Another pretty quiet village, this time a 17th century long house, which you can see in the photo.  Slightly ramshackle inside, needs work, but plenty of space, small sun trapped garden at the back.  There is a negative/positive side to this house, the present owners are converting a large barn behind into a house, very friendly we spent almost two hours with them and learnt everything about the village, and then surveyed their acres, can always negotiate land if we want for grazing but the fox eats all the hens round here...

We walked up the village, 3 minutes probably onto a track way that goes over the moors, the North Yorkshire Railway runs below in the valley, and over the hill is the Hole of Horcum; the views are spectacular but then this is my favourite road over the moors from the Wheeldale Beck Roman Road, enough said.

View to the moors

the little brown beck

 heather still flowering;

plenty of wool colours there

Very large fly agaric, and unbitten.

these fly agarics were coming up everywhere on the edge of the larch wood

The dark miserable larch woods

Village duck pond