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