Wells Heritage Art Trail

We recently popped across to Wells Next The Sea in North Norfolk for a few days to see an art trail organised by the newly redeveloped Wells Heritage Centre.  The pieces were displayed mostly along the quay, in the heritage centre and down at the beach cafe.

Above and below are the panels of a triptych displayed at the Beach Cafe made by Kate Allsop and titled Shoreline Shifts.

I couldn't usefully photograph the whole thing but it can be viewed here.

Also at the Beach Cafe was Harbour Side by Andrew Ruffhead

Pieces of driftwood and a boat's transom are included.  I was really pleased to see this piece as we enjoyed Andrew's work in a holiday let we stayed in at Sheringham earlier in the year.

We had to look a bit harder for our next piece on the art trail as it was out of place due to the bad weather.

Jack was busy keeping us company while we had a cuppa in the Heritage Centre.

Along the East Quay we encountered The Ships by Andrew Schumann.

This is in fact a tall post with two spheres placed one above the other.  We had fun photographing the upside down view through the glass.  Sadly I didn't photograph the interpretive information.

A rather more poignant installation was found at the Harbour Office and was entitled Through These Doors by Robert Smith MBE.

Back on the East Quay we were invited into Gordon Senior's garden to view Marris Otter Barley and Sea Barley.

I hope you can see from the photos that real grain was used to render the barley.   I loved the textures.

I'll continue in a second post for my two favourite installations.

Rosslyn Chapel

Way back when, I promised to write a post about our visit to Rosslyn Chapel (of Knights Templar fame) when we were at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival earlier this year.   Having just seen a post about a friend's visit to said chapel I thought it was about time I kept my promise.  Sadly, my memory hasn't retained all the interesting details we heard and overheard from the guide as we went around but I'll do my best.  You can link to the Rosslyn Chapel website for more information and there's also an App that gives you photographs of the interior, since the public is not supposed to take photographs inside.

 The exterior is almost as ornate as the interior.

 The stained glass was beautiful but I had to content myself with photographs taken from the outside.

 A sneaky glimpse through the door with visitors listening to a talk by one of the guides.

 This is the south aisle (I think).

 There are said to be over 100 Green Man figures inside the chapel.  There are also many carvings of musical instruments.

 This is Woman with Goose.

Carvings inside and out appear to show corn which was not known about when the chapel was built but other opinion is that it is an idealised carving and only coincidentally resembles corn. 

Photographs are actually courtesy of my lovely husband as my camera wasn't up to the job.

One story of the chapel has stayed in my mind and that's the tale of the Sculptor's apprentice who, while his master was away, finished one of the columns in the chapel to a higher standard than his master and without reference to the original design pattern.  When the master returned he was so enraged that he hit the apprentice on the head with a hammer and killed him.  Legend has it that the master's image was carved on a column opposite so that he could forever gaze on his apprentice's work (Wikipedia link here).

Here's the link to Chris Gray's blogpost that spurred me on to finally blog about our visit.

Easton Walled Garden

We've been out to Easton Walled Garden today, a very blustery but mostly sunny day, for a bit of a photographic foray of the late Spring/early summer flowers.

 The terraces below where the house would originally have stood have been planted as wild flower meadows and the wind today made the grasses look like they were windblown water.  The ox-eye daisies were beautiful.

There were lots of allium in various stages of flowering and seed both in the borders and among the wildflowers.

These guys were having a breather from zooming around capturing flies.  (Swallows).  A red kite made several passes over the gardens but I wasn't able to capture him with the camera.

 This intrepid photographer kept getting in my way!

The gardens are about 7 miles or so south of Grantham just off the A1 and they have a great tea room.    Unfortunately they don't take passing trade at the tea room but it's well worth paying the garden entry, you'll find you'll stay longer than you intended.