A Day Away

 Last week we travelled over to Leicester to spend the day with my cousin and her husband.  We were both born in the city, her family stayed there.  We moved away when I was six years old.

After a lovely meal at the Badger's Sett in Cropston we walked at nearby Bradgate Park.

There were so many deer there both Red deer and Fallow deer.  I managed a few snaps of them but it began to rain so they are not the best.  

The ruins of the former residence of the Grey family and the home of the tragic Lady Jane Grey - queen for just nine days - was surrounded in scaffolding and is being refurbished.

We decided to stay overnight at Ashby de la Zouche where we met this little fellow before we moved on to visit Calke Abbey.

It seemed quite a while since we had visited Calke.  I looked back and it was 2016.  I wanted to see the Auricula Theatre full of pumpkins and squashes.

It looked amazing

We didn't go in the house this time but wandered in the gardens and up to the church.

There were more deer to see.  The stags were bellowing, you could hear them across the park.

All for now.

Ragged Victorians

 Today the Ragged Victorians were in town so we walked down the hill to find them. 

 They were at the Gladstone Pottery Museum where a Victorian Day was being held.

We could hear the music from the barrel organ as we entered the museum.  

The Ragged Victorians are a living history group re-enacting the lower classes of England in 1851 and very good they are too.  So many different characters.  The sober shepherd, the rat catcher, the fish wife, the policeman, the wounded soldier and many more.

I took loads of photos so I'll share a few now and perhaps do something later with more of them.  I might try to sepia tone some of them or perhaps monochrome.

The Fisherman's wife making nets.

Lavender seller

The Rat Catcher

In the Doctor's waiting room

A friendly hug

The sober shepherd seeking work

Policeman.  

The costumes were wonderful, suitably grubby and well worn, roughly mended shoes clattered on the cobbles.

All for now.

Whitby Abbey - Early History

 The Abbey ruin we see now is not the first religious building on this site.  In the 7th and 8th centuries the headland it stands on was known as Streaneshalch and was the site of  an Anglian settlement and Minster church established  in the 5th and 6th centuries by the peoples who had settled on this side of Britain - the Angli or Anglians.

The Minster was founded some time after the battle of Winwaed in 655 when the forces of Oswiu of Northumberland beat the pagan forces of Penda of Mercia. Oswiu married King Edwin's daughter Eanflaed.  Oswiu gave his infant daughter Aelfflaed into the care of Hild the Abbess of Hartlepool.   In 657 Hild founded a new Minster for both men and women at Whitby.  It is assumed that the first settlement and minster was destroyed sometime in the 10th century by Viking raiders who burned and sacked many of the Christian establishments along the North East coast.  The name of Streaneshalch all but disappeared from the records and the Danish name of Whitby appeared.

The foundation of the second monastery at Whitby came in the aftermath of the Norman invasion of 1066.  A second Romanesque church was built in the early 12th century and this in turn was replaced by the Gothic buildings, the remains of which we see today.

Although the weather looks sunny and calm it really wasn't.

The wind up on the headland was so strong and was buffeting us about, it must have been quite bleak living up in the settlement in those early days.  Through the arch you can see St Mary's church.  I'll write about this in a later post.

The building below was the home of the Cholmley family who leased the site of the abbey after the suppression or dissolution of Whitby Abbey in 1539.  At this time Henry Davell was the last abbot of the abbey and at the time it was handed over to King Henry VIII's commissioners there were twenty two members of the community and the estates were worth £437 2s 9d.  Whitby was one of the poorest Benedictine Monasteries in England.

It now houses the museum, gift shop and cafe.

All for now, more to come over the next week or two.

The Longest Yarn

The Longest Yarn - A Thread through History - is a travelling exhibition which depicts, in 80 panels, the lead up to the D Day landings of 6th June 1944, the Longest Day.  It was completed in time for this year's 80th anniversary.

Above Stoke Minster. The iron railings guard the resting place of potter Josiah Wedgwood.

The Longest Yarn is on display at Stoke Minster until 5th December and on Friday morning we went along to see it.

The inspiration for the 3D project came about as an idea from a lady called Tansy Foster who initially wanted to create a topper for her garden wall but the idea grew.  The 80 panels, each a metre long, represent the 80 years since the events and the 80 days of The Battle of Normandy.

Each panel depicts events happening across Britain and France on that one day and has been constructed by volunteer knitters from across Europe, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Photographs from the time inspired the creators of the panels.  Above President Eisenhower makes the final decision to go.

The detail in each display is amazing.

Parachutes landing and getting caught on buildings and trees.

Above the bombing of Carentan station.

After a while it became impossible to take photos as the Minster became quite crowded but the whole exhibition is quite spectacular and very detailed.

This morning when we passed by the Minster on our way to walk at Westport Lake there were queues waiting to get inside.  I'm so glad we visited yesterday.

There is so much more to see than the items I have photographed, apologies for the fuzziness of some of them. 

Above Stoke Minster in sunshine as we left the exhibition.

The exhibition is moving on to Tewkesbury Abbey from here, then to Enniskillen, Norwich and Peterborough before it leaves these shores to travel to Cape May, New Jersey in the USA in April next year.

A smaller exhibition of Britain at War is being made at the moment comprising of just 6 panels ready to go on tour next September.