Gruyere and marmalade - Sinnington Church

Yesterday was my birthday, and LS likes to have what he calls a 'memory' of the day to remember.  So how did it go, well firstly Jo and David came for a coffee and chatted for a couple of hours and introduced us to the 'gossip' of the village, which is of no importance though a wind turbine, fallen tree on a neighbour's roof did figure largely, breaking the village into two factions;)

My plan had been to have a fondue for our meal, but Pickering did not yield any gruyere cheese, though I found emmenthal.  So after lunch  we went to Helmsley to Hunter's delicatessen shop, and luckily they had some.  We had also decided to have a walk somewhere, so as we had been talking about Sinnington we decided to go there with Lucy, and found what I would call the memory of the day. a church at the top of a hill, my love of churches runs deep!

The river Seven (our river) runs through the village, and it was high and fast, all the rivers that have broken their banks are very dangerous and it is a wonder that hardly anyone has been drowned. but the Seven has some kind of flood defence somewhere apparently.  It is a pretty village grouped round a green.

The Church;  We walked up the hill to the church with a couple out walking, and they explained the history of the old manor that once stood up on the hill next to the church.  All that is left is a 'great hall' on the outside is a 'leprosy' squint window, I think at one time in the 12th century this hall was a convent for a group of nuns from Yedingham.

What makes the church so interesting is the Anglo-Saxon pieces of stone that are built into the fabric of the church, also parts of a Viking hog backed tomb.  Sinnington is not far from Lastingham and many of the churches round here still have evidence of the earlier Saxon churches. The following is taken from British History online, which gives the details to the ownership of the manors.

" Preserved in the church or built into the fabric are numerous fragments of pre-Conquest sculpture. Over the porch is a stone carved with a man riding a beast, possibly part of a Norman tympanum, and in the south wall are two cross-heads, one with knotwork and the other with a roughly carved figure of the Crucified and a serpent. Near by is a portion of a shaft with two standing figures. In the west wall inside is the base of a shaft bearing a bound serpent and two other fragments bearing knotwork. Inside the north window is another base of a cross shaft. There are numerous other fragments in various parts of the building, including a hog-back built into the north wall and the base of a shaft on the north side of the quire."

And so to the photos; did I miss the hog back on the North wall I wonder ?

The leprosy window

The Great Hall surrounded by farm buildings.

All Saints church

Solitary aconite pushing up through the pebbles of the path

http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol3.php?pageNum_urls=130&totalRows_urls=288

An entwined dragon ? - http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/corpus_images_vol3.php?set=653

Man riding a beast, over the porch

Cross-head - http://www.ascorpus.ac.uk/catvol3.php?pageNum_urls=135&totalRows_urls=288

"The modern timber bellcote at the west end is surmounted by a spirelet and contains three bells, the first being mediaeval and inscribed 'Sancte Petre ora pro nobis,' the second is recast and the third is modern. The church fittings include a communion table with turned legs of circa 1660 and some good Jacobean pewing in the nave. The bench ends have small carved panels in the upper part and on a window-sill is a piece of oak inscribed, 'harken unto the lord's word and let it dwell in your harts.' Preserved in the church or built into the fabric are numerous fragments of pre-Conquest sculpture. Over the porch is a stone carved with a man riding a beast, possibly part of a Norman tympanum, and in the south wall are two cross-heads, one with knotwork and the other with a roughly carved figure of the Crucified and a serpent. Near by is a portion of a shaft with two standing figures. In the west wall inside is the base of a shaft bearing a bound serpent and two other fragments bearing knotwork. Inside the north window is another base of a cross shaft. There are numerous other fragments in various parts of the building, including a hog-back built into the north wall and the base of a shaft on the north side of the quire"  Taken from British Online

And the fondue was delicious, though it did make Lucy sick..... The marmalade was brought from the church sold in aid of a charity in Africa, and still to be opened.

Source of the River Seven high up on the moors outside Rosedale. near Fat Betty!

Creative commons; Colin Grice/Geograph.

Edit; much better photos by Smell of Water

Floods

Keeping in touch with the River Seven at the back, Environment Agency chart shows we had a high of over three metres yesterday.  The road flooded once again from the backup valve that resides in the drain outside our house, and cars swished through.  The pub's doors was sandbagged as their car park flooded. And now today the rains still beat down, over the road Nigel's small flocks of hens are being kept in, also his goats, as their little paddock turns to a duck pond.

Reading through the news this morning, and I find the much heralded Pickering flood defence scheme is taken to task by Jeremy Biggs in the Guardian, he reckons that the town did not flood because their was not much rain over the Christmas period on the moors, believe what you may but at least the Pickering flood defences 'seemed' to have worked, with obstructions and the holding pond.

Flood defence at Newtondale

Enough of water, a new book.... slightly esoteric, bought because Landscapism blog recommended it. Beautifully wrapped in tissue paper, with a pretty card accompanying it, it was a pleasure to open the parcel.  It is writing, fiction, non fiction and poetry.  The first poem was 'The Combe by Edward Thomas, Jennie will recognise it! And also there was Thomas's Lob poem, one of my favourites you can find it here on my other blog, long again as poems go, slightly nonsensical but very evocative of the villages of Wiltshire.....

If they had reaped their dandelions and sold

Them fairly, they could have afforded gold.

Soon we will be going in Pickering for a coffee with a historian, we had been planning to meet since we arrived here,  Hopefully it won't have flooded...



  The Calder Vale 'Our Little Valley', following link, which does not work copy and then put in your own top line...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jV7Pbo4gz0

Picking up a book

The book in question is Madeleine Bunting's The Plot, a description of an acre of land her father bought, and to which they all as children went.  Not quite narrowed it into the landscape but Sutton Bank was not far away. She writes so well, about the history of this part of Yorkshire, that my mind is turned to the Victorian 'barrow bashers' of their time

Today, once more it is raining, shall we go back to the time when the Vale of Pickering was a lake, Star Carr is not too far away it should be noted, and then there is the fascinating river Derwent which runs 'backwards', probably due to a geological fault, but if you are fanciful it could have been  that which gave this small vale a 'ritual significance' in prehistoric times.  So much to discover, the Howardian Hills, and the Tabular Hills. 

“The whole drainage of the country south of the Esk, except a strip a mile or two broad north of Scarborough, enter the Vale of Pickering, and instead of taking the simple and direct course to the sea at Filey, is all diverted, against the slope of the rocks and the grain of the country, and passes out into the Vale of York by the gorge at Kirkham Abbey.” (Kendall, 1902, p. 499)

“When I went to school I learned that the Vale in which we lived had once been a lake, but long ago the sea had eaten through the hills in the east and so released the fresh waters, leaving a fertile plain. But such an idea would have seemed strange to my innocent mind… I seemed to live, therefore, in a basin wide and shallow like the milkpans in the dairy; but the even bed of it was checkered with pastures and cornfields, and the rims were the soft blues and purples of the moorlands” (Read, 1933, The Innocent Eye)

Taken from Vale of Pickering - Statement of Significance

Grave Robbers; Thomas Kendall of Pickering was one in the 19th century, he gathered the biggest collection of prehistoric remains ever made in North Yorkshire. "He assembled 135 pottery vessels, 27 urns, 26 axe hammers and at least 26 stone and flint axes from mounds in the county".

There are of course no provenance notes to go with this collection and this caused some concern, and eventually there was a backlash against these souvenir hunters; diggers were accused of  "desecrating these time hallowed monuments for no better purpose than the indulgence of a craving acquisitiveness and the adornment of glass cases with ill-understood relics to be paraded for the empty admiration of those who may descend to flatter the equally vain and ignorant collector"

Mmm, that takes some thinking about but true, just don't expect me to stand up for these Victorian gentleman from the past.  There were two other rascals as well,  Canon William Greenwell (again scanty notes of provenance,).  Then there was Canon Atkinson, who boasted of excavating four barrows a day, and was responsible for 'excavating' - I use the term lightly - because both these men excavated from the top of the burial down, and were very careless in either tidying up after themselves, which got the landowners mad, or excavation techniques.

to be continued....

Melodramatic madams and watery worlds

Sainsbury's car park.  The store is up on a hill, but the main roads into Whitby are all flooded one way or the other.

Lucy was ill yesterday, I think from eating fish pie which had some chopped onion in.  She made a terrible fuss, turning round and round, trying to get into corners, whining.  Had she eaten something poisonous we did not know, so took her to the vet and she had a couple of injections to calm her and pain relief.  This morning it looks like she is on the mend, toyed with her biscuits and has been drinking.  What a kerfuffle!  And expense!

And watery worlds, well it is, news that Whitby was cut off by flash floods, and was only approachable from Ruswarp by four wheeled drive, something I read this morning.  It reminded me of a radio play I had listened to long ago about the rising waters around a small farm, lapping ever nearer to the farmhouse, till the day arrived when they had to take off on a raft they had constructed and leave the farm and its animals to their fate.

That everyone is sick of continual rain is in no doubt, we jump on those few days when the sun comes out with blessed relief.  The weather is so warm as well, one day of frost does not a winter make. 

Our road has been 'up' almost continuously, the mains pipe must have burst from one of the farms, and even now there is a lorry with a crane across the road inspecting, presumably some water works gone astray.

Whitby Cut off by unprecedented flash floods

Sunday

Siri;  Siri is an automated voice on your mobile phone, both my young granddaughters demonstrated this function over the weekend.  Ask a question and it comes back with a whole host of information. It is unnerving to watch them talking to this virtual creature but this is the way the world is going. Less contact with physical realities more contact with virtual 'intelligences'. slightly scary, LS asked the question 'what is the sound of one hand clapping' Siri answered 'silence' got that one right then!

One day we will all have a little bug inside our heads, we will not even have to hold our phones or tablets.  Tablets have already ousted the computers in my daughter's family, being 'wired' up to an outside influence is a tad scary.....  I note that I can talk to Google on my computer asking questions but have never got that far, I would rather internalise my thoughts and just type a question.

It was great to see my eldest grandson, three years away at university has not changed him, he is doing an internship (paid) in PR in a big company, having decided that working for the police was not for him, you have to do five years as a policeman before you can diversify into another job.

Everyone settled down to their sleeping places, just read about a 'cheap' option for spare beds, sew four pillowcases together, then fill with pillows.  Three of them slept on the sofa and armchairs which all flip out, Teddy the dog had his basket, and Lucy slept up in my workroom on the chair and was quiet all night!

Enjoy life while you can James Lovelock.....


The Pickering flood scheme which worked..

New Year

Happy New Year everyone.  Whatever the future holds in store, may it at least bring flowers in their right season.  Wild and bright in the fields, cultivated in the garden with taming grace, may the year in it's Turning bring beauty and peace of mind.

and a poem from my other blog;

Gary Snyder;  Raven's Beak River At the End, in this poem he captures for a moment the old celtic enmeshing of nature, animals and the cosmic reality we sometimes forget.  For the owl I heard this morning, gently calling as he went about his world.

Raven-sitting high spot

eyes on the snowpeaks,
nose of morning
raindrops in the sunshine

Skin of sunlight

skin of chilly gravel

Mind in the mountain, mind of tumbling water,

mind running rivers

Mind of sifting

flowers in the gravels

At the end of the ice age

we are the bears, we are the ravens,

We are the salmon

in the gravel

At the end of the ice age.

Local rivers

This is my walk along the river, monitoring, for me anyway, the river's progress. from the chart below there is a large spike and then the river returns to normal, though of course you can see the sides of the banks have been scarred by mud.

Starting from the bridge

This is the bank to protect the fields from flooding

saturation point, many field going towards Salton are small lakes.

You can see where the river has risen to almost flooding levels, the flow gauge counter to be found here recorded on the 26th December over 3 metres of water, chart taken from the Environmental Agency.  Old Malton was flooded by the River Derwent;

River Seven flow gauge at Normanby

Rivers; Derwent at Malton;
             Seven at Normanby
             Dove at Kirkbymoorside
             Rye at Salton
             Riccal at Nunnington
             Pickering Beck at Pickering

Interesting observations by Monbiot on Yorkshire Grouse Moors and their role in the floods

artists.....

There is a new exhibition of Gertrude Hermes 1901 to 1983 work at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, mostly sculpture it looks like, but on checking her work, the drawings of Stonehenge are masterly, rather than beautiful, and perhaps reflect her need to carve.

I had seen her Stonehenge drawings years ago, so finding them on the web was an opportunity to highlight them, also her plant drawing are rather beautiful and precise.

Spanish iris

Keeping abreast of things

Meals to feed 200 people, this is what the above family did, driving from Bradford to Todmorden. Single acts of kindness.  LS said put that on your blog, and what you see is just probably the tip of how volunteers are helping.  Cameron is to visit the 'Northern towns' today, the people are organising themselves better though.  Do we really need government, when local people pull together so efficiently. The latest from Todmorden Town Hall is a need for cleaning materials, disinfectants etc.  The floods have not been so bad in Todmorden,  Hebden Bridge seems to have fared worse. 

I must admit though many criticise Facebook but when action is needed it is the place to go, roads that are flooded are posted, help centres spring up.
I could fill the page with Monbiot's articles, who blames many farming practices but I will not, after all this is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.  Government legislation of course does not help, as of course 'conveniently' forgetting climate change.  But I predict one thing the people in this country do a lot better than a government's rhetoric of 'how they will help'