King's Lynn

 If there's a town that I am unfamiliar with that promises 'a strange walk' then I'm in. By my standards [which to be frank are probably weirder than most people's] it wasn't that strange, but I did rather fall in love with King's Lynn.

In earlier times the town was situated on the coast and was a trading post in the medieval trade alliance,  the Hanseatic League, which was formed to protect the interests of Northern Europe and the Baltic States. From a position of great dominance the league gradually fractured or lost ground to its rivals and by the mid 17th century it had ceased to be the great powerhouse it had once been. KL is the only town over here that still has an original Hanseatic warehouse. With the ever shifting Eastern coastline KL now finds itself inland, but interestingly it joined the modern equivalent of the Hanseatic league in 2005.

So what does one find as one wanders around the town aside from its strong trading and maritime history? Many beautiful buildings in a myriad of architectural styles for starters.

As for the strange you've got this rather marvellous moon dial upon which the dragon hand points at the moon phases and the tides. It dates from 1683.

If you want to see it for yourself it's on the southwest tower of the Minster church. You don't have to ask whether I took my chances and shot inside for a look whilst we were there. I have to say that my little heart sank as I progressed up towards to the high altar and there was the handiwork of the Victorian improvements stretching out before me. That usually spells the kiss of death for a weirdling like me, but there was a lightness of step as I began to realise that some of the old wooden carvings had survived towards the back. I've just highlighted my favourite greenman misericord and a couple of these tiny 2" carvings that were at head height on one of the screen. I have no answers for what they are supposed to be conveying!

Sadly I didn't get to meet the loony dog.....

This little heart set within a diamond is to be found above the upper set of windows on one of the properties in the Tuesday Market Place. Supposedly this where the heart of a burnt witch burst out and hit the wall. Never let the fact that we didn't burn witches, but hung them in England get in the way of a good story

Below is the so called 'Exorcist's House' which sits in the grounds of St Nicholas' chapel [currently closed] and was built in 1635. Nobody know why it's been given this name save it's built on the site of an earlier property where the clergy lived. Somehow it managed to look slightly menacing even against a bright blue sky.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day of wandering around. There's a wide range of things to enjoy here and we ran out of time to visit the museums. Sometimes it's the unplanned elements which are the best. For a treat we decided to buy ourselves lunch at Spoons and as we walked past I noticed the Guild Hall which has been featured on a couple of documentaries and is currently undergoing a major refurbishment. At one point in time it was a priory, a button factory, a French school and it is still used as a theatre today. Indeed the earliest record of a play was the nativity in January 1445 When they went down through the layers the archaelogists found the original early 15th century oak plank floors still in situ and there's a team still there excavating and trying to bring this fascinating building's story into the light. I know that many places lay spurious claims to Shakespeare, but recent research has backed this place's claim to fame up. It seems likely that The Bard was here in 1592/3 when the London theatres were closed due to the plague. I had kind of assumed that there would be no access for the public as it's a current dig site, but quite the opposite is true and people are welcome to join a free volunteer led guided tour. It was fascinating and I truly welomed having the opportunity to chat to the team about their latest findings. As you might imagine the story changes day by day.

 That I think will do for Norfolk tales. Time to move on to what I've been getting up to since I got back.

Arilx

Angelic

I thought that you might like to see something a little different today It is unusual to see well preserved  medieval paintings on church screens. Most were destroyed after the Reformation, but against the odds this set survived in Wiggenhall, Norfolk. The church is in the care of the CCT and has unfortunately closed today for maintenance work, so we were lucky to get in there just in time. 

Arilx

Big Jobbie

When I waltzed down into my garden at 6am to inspect the contents of my weekly trap I could see that there was a very big jobbie sat on the top having a mighty doze.

I had no idea what it was, but as it wasn't showing any signs of going anywhere I left it until last to deal with. After a gentle tickle with a small paintbrush to wake it up enough so that I could safely release it into a nearby bush it opened its wings, but still didn't shift. Only then could I see that it was even more beautiful than with its wings closed.

This is the UK's largest moth and is a male [it has 6 pink bands on its body] Privet Hawk moth. We have no privet in our tiny garden so I feel blessed to have seen one. They are common apparently. It amazes me that something of this size is hurtling around and most of us are blissfully unaware. With seeing so many new species this year I am hoping that our efforts of the past couple of years to rewild our garden and put in lots of good pollinator plants is beginning to pay off.

Back to Norfolk musings next time.

Arilx

Meet the Ancestors

Whilst away I literally went up, I went down, but not across in my never ending quest to explore the sites left behind by our ancestors over a thousand plus years ago.

I heaved my body up all those steps to the top of the highest burial mound in England. It's 13m high and was originally one of seven, although only three are visible these days. You might imagine that the manmade Bartlow Hills are Bronze Age or at a stretch Saxon, but you might be surprised to find that they are actually Roman. They were a funereal fashion for the great and good of the day back in the late 1st and early second centuries here in East Anglia and over in Belgium.

Another day I went down a ladder instead to find myself several metres down an ancient mine shaft. This pock marked surface is what remains of the many hand dug pits our Neolithic ancestors created in the search for flint. Although there would have been a lot of the stuff lying around on the surface it lacked the quality of the stuff that was much deeper in the earth and formed the crux upon which they based their society. It was not only used for weapons, but trading and pieces from this particular place, Grimes Graves, have turned up huge distances away.

With no written records our interpretation of this period has to be based upon the physical traces they left behind. Somehow that bridge between me and all those generations stretching back disappeared in the blink of an eye as soon as I got down there. I could see the pick axe marks left on the wall and the antler picks they left in situ.

When you step back from it and remember that these were the tools they were working with it's extraordinary how they managed to extract the material. It must have been so dangerous and there is a school of thought that some of the mining activity may have been viewed as some sort of rite of passage backed up by the evidence of feasting and ritual deposits [including a stone phallus and chalk goddess figures although whether the latter are genuine or not is up for debate]. The information above ground greatly added to my understanding, but this motley collection of stones laying quietly to the side of the visitor centre really drew me to them. Both are polissoirs or so called polishing stones. There is a famous one in Wiltshire on Fyfield Down and they are rare. This is where the flint tools were sharpened or smoothed. So many pairs of hands must have worked on these and I count myself lucky to have unexpectedly seen some examples.

My final encounter with our ancient ancestors took me over to Flag Fen. I have wanted to go here for so many years ever since I first found out about it on Time Team back in 2000. It's not possible to cross it because it's being kept under water to preserve the timbers which date back three thousand years. Whilst it might not look much now, it blew me away to be able to see a wooden trackway that people were using to cross the fens all that time ago and which has only survived because of a particular combination of environments. You can even see the different stages of its construction as they modified the build. Below is a mock-up of what it might have looked like back in the day. 

As with Grime's Graves there's a wealth of information to absorb and exhibits to study. Many items were recovered from the water in and around the trackway. The question of the purpose of such depositions must always remain unanswered, but the sheer volume of finds make their accidental loss unlikely. Votive offerings or appeasement to their Gods must surely be up there as the most likely explanation given that metal would have had value even in the form of broken weapons because it could be melted down and repurposed. There were many things on display, but I thought that the shears and case were a much less common thing to see from this time and that dog skull was pinioned in place by a piece of wood on top of it and then the stake driven in on top.

All these experiences really left their mark upon me. Perhaps we'll take a jolly over to a very well known Norfolk town which was once on the coast and a major player in the Hanseatic League next time. Have a good weekend folks.

Arilx

The elephant trap

Look who came to visit me today...not of one these 🐘, but one of these....

A most stunning Elephant Hawk Moth. That colour combination of hot pink and sharp lime seems far too bright for these UK shores, but it is a native and fairly common. Apparently it is so called because its caterpillar looks like an elephant's trunk. It's one of the moths that I've spent my life looking at other people's pictures of, but never expected to find one in my tiny town garden. Delighted to be proved wrong....indeed I was so delighted that I got David out of bed to come and see it. I hasten to add that he didn't mind as it's such a stunner. It was delivered to a place of safety where it could snooze out of harm's way until it resumes its nocturnal adventures tonight. Absolutely cock-a-hoop about this one. 

Arilx

If only walls could talk.

 It turns out that East Anglia has some cracking medieval wall art and two of our finds were happy unplanned discoveries. I like to have some idea of what's in an area before I visit and a rough idea of opening hours etc. However, there's only usually a couple of things I really want to do and the rest is a wish list which leaves us a bit of wriggle room. Longthorpe Tower was a place I'd read about ages ago, but I had no idea where it was. When it cropped up again recently it rang a vague bell. Imagine my delight when I found it was not that far from where we were staying and very close to my number one destination. 

As I was to find out and despite appearances, strictly speaking this isn't a tower, but a solar and there is still part of the original house to which it belonged out the back [privately owned]. It was built for Robert Thorpe c1290-1300 and his story is one of real rags to riches. A mere sixty years before his family had been peasants, but over the course of two generations they had clawed their way up the social ladder and Robert [d1354] was a lawyer and an official of Peterborough Cathedral. This room was one designed to impress and impress it still does as every surface is painted. There's still a substantial amount remaining which makes it the most important collection within a non religious setting in Northern Europe [says she repeating the tour guide verbatim!] 

Below we have the wheel of the five senses. Each animal represents one of the five - spider [touch], boar [hearing], monkey [taste], vulture[smell] and cockerel [sight]. If you look at the close up of the cockerel you can see where the first draft didn't make the cut as it wouldn't have lined up properly. The chap at the centre is the man of reason and he's stopping the wheel with his hands so that the emotions can't free wheel out of control.

Each wall has something different to offer from the labours of months, to familiar religious scenes and even a fine young fellow with his pet hound wearing the fashions of  the 1320s. I wonder if the visitors were a trifle taken aback to to turn around and be faced with this rather large mythical beast then. Although only the rump now remains in all its glory it would have looked like a bull with some equine features and horns. Let's not forget the bonnacon's party piece...it would see off its enemies by spraying them with with flaming dung. Actually I might not be very happy if someone had just shot an arrow up my jacksy either😀

The ladies who gave us the tour we're lovely and very informative. As fellow fans of such things inevitably we started comparing about such things and what's in our local areas. I love these sort of conversations because you always end up learning something new. Two churches were mentioned with one in particular being recommended and that's how we ended up at St Pega's in Peakirk later on.....

At this point I definitely had no plans of searching out any more, but purely by accident on our homeward bound pitstop I decided to stick my nose round the corner of a church we were walking past just on the off chance. I give you St Mary's in Bartlow Hills. A wonderfully bonkers dragon and a doom screen with a splendiferous devil. Glad I took the chance.

Quite a good clutch I feel seeing as they're all at least 700 years old. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Arilx

 

Inside the cabinet.

Within Holy Trinity church in Stow Bardolph is the Hare Chapel and within that is this rather unassuming mahogany cabinet.

It's what lies within that makes it interesting. Open the door and you'll find yourself face to face with this life sized wax effigy of a woman. Even though I knew it was there it's one thing seeing photos of it and quite another seeing it for real.

This is Sarah Hare who was born in the village in 1689. She was part of the rich family who owned the manor and she stayed put in the family house her entire life. Besides from having no money worries she never married and very little is recorded about her life. However fame has followed her posthumously. She died on 9th April 1744 from blood poisoning after she pricked her finger with a sewing needle and this was how she set out in her will that she wanted to be remembered. I have no idea whether this was a common funereal practice at the time, but this is only surviving waxen effigy outside of Westminster Abbey. She's wearing her own dress and one of her own wigs made from human hair. It's not a flattering piece, but it's supposed to be a good resemblance. I rather like this slightly frumpy and middle-aged woman with her facial moles.

This is the first of my Norfolk holiday posts.

Arilx

The field.

We are still away. Stopped to photograph this yesterday after we spotted it from the car.  Hope everyone has a good weekend. 

Arilx 

 

Wren

 Before the midden hit the windmill you might vaguely recall that we had offered to make a folkart style wren mask for one of the Mythago stories. Apparently nobody has ever been daft enough to attempt such a thing as the search engine doesn't show any hits. After a lot of head scratching it's done...David's made it bar a bit of sewing and I've sourced the materials. Hope you all have a great weekend. We are travelling out of area......

Arilx

The Devil and St Dunstan

 As a county Sussex has many folkloric tales of the devil and his antics to share. He always seemed to by trying to flood the South Downs or move the churches around. However the South Saxon folk from these parts were far sassier than Old Scratch and time after time he was outwitted. I've shared some of these stories in earlier posts, but this time we're heading over to the village of Mayfield in East Sussex.

Places like Glastonbury claim that St Dunstan worked there as a smith, but we all know that the truth is  he really was in Mayfield [whilst curiously also being able to be the Archbishop of Canterbury simultaneously]. One day, as he was hammering away in his forge, a young lady that he didn't recognise entered the premises. His suspicions were immediately raised and then verified by the glimpse he got of a pair of unsightly cloven hooves beneath her skirt. In the ensuing tussle the Saint grabbed the devil by the nose with his red hot tongs. Although the horned one made good his escape with much shrieking it's said that he flew over to Tunbridge Wells where he quenched his painful snout in the waters of the now famous Chalybeate Spring and that is why to this very day it retains its mild ferrous taste. As you can see the episode is well documented around the village.

This was my first visit to Mayfield and it's a gorgeous place full of architectural delights and independent shops. We were here celebrating a family birthday, but were able to enjoy a quick dash round beforehand. I strongly suspect that its charm will attract many during peak holiday times so perhaps its best enjoyed during the quieter part of the year.

Arilx