That was the week that was.

 Despite making a few tentative plans to head out beyond the town last weekend I found that actually I fancied sticking around and being a home bird for once. During the previous week I have snapped a few things which I've enjoyed which make for a domestically local sort of post for a change. Here goes....

This little patch of loveliness is growing at the side of the path on a scrubby verge. It's so pretty. I have no clue as to what the purple flower is in our garden save that it's a wild one, but the bees love it and I love our salmon coloured berries. Many of the berries have now turned red and they will be black soon.

Don't say that you haven't been warned that this particular household has hounds. I was quite relieved to see that they have actually got perspex in that triangular cut out!

Hilariously someone with a sense of humour set up a spoof art-trail round the town centre a few weeks back. They'd chosen redundant or tatty bits of street furniture and then "improved" them with an attached notice giving details of their ahem artistic merit. Supposedly the work of the "Horsham Objects of Modern Art" no one's owned up to it. Helpful little fingers [or humourless individuals] have already removed most of them, but I did find these two. The old shoes now green with age and moss must have been hanging from the top of the first lamppost for at least 15 years!

Despite the odd lamppost which probably should be retired from service we do have some rather attractive ones too like the example below. Many have got hanging baskets suspended from them which makes for a very pretty Carfax along with these pretty arrangements around the newly spruced up bandstand.

Somewhere amongst that group of people is my Mum who was singing madrigals to entertain the shoppers on Saturday morning. People were happy to sit and listen to the music, but this little fellow has to win the prize as their smallest fan. A few minutes later he climbed up the bandstand steps and sat down to hear them better!

This sign just made me smile. The other side reads "Anchor Hotel", but the Ho Ho seemed to be in keeping with the cheeky message below enticing you in.

The museum is looking rather splendid, but I actually wanted to see if they had a particular bicycle as part of their display....

As luck would have it they did. Below is a pentacycle which was patented by a local architect, Edward Burstow in 1881. At the time the Post Office was looking for a new design for a carrier bike which could carry greater loads and Burstow submitted his plans. However, it was rejected because it was thought to that there was a high chance of the riders getting injured because it wasn't very sturdy. Locally it's called the Hen and Chickens because of the four extra wheels. There's a pub in a nearby village which shares its name and occasionally I wondered why the hen was riding a bike. Now it's all crystal clear!

Finally I rounded off the weekend with some baking. It was my first attempt at lemon and white chocolate cookies using this recipe https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/lemon-and-white-chocolate-cookies.html Pretty scrummy but it makes at least 30. They seem to be evaporating rather fast here at GBT. How does that happen eh😁

Arilx

The Tide Mills Village

 By the mid 18th century the course of the River Ouse in East Sussex had changed direction and was meeting the sea at Bishopstone. Henry Pelham [the Duke of Newcastle] could see the financial potential in using the power of the water flow in this creek on his land to drive mills and in 1761 he leased it to three millers for that purpose. Three brick tidal mills were built to grind corn and at their peak they were producing 3500lb a week which was being transported by boat to Lewes or up to London.

By 1808 the site was in the sole ownership of the one miller William Catt who ran it very successfully until his death in 1853. Catt was a hard task master, but a fair man who made sure that his employees who had moved into the nearby and recently built flint cottages were treated well. He had a school put in along with a granary, office, blacksmith, carpenter and stores and both the business and the village flourished under his leadership. At its peak there were 70 living in the Tide Mills village. His success made him a wealthy man. Sadly the arrival of the railway at nearby Seaford in 1864 sounded the death knell for the mills as it was far cheaper for the locals to send their grain off by train to be milled elsewhere. Slowly the milling foundered and the machinery was sold off in 1883. The mill buildings continued as warehouses until 1901 when they were taken down.

The village itself continued to be lived in for several years after with the residents working on the nearby farms. By 1920 Dr David Dale, a former jockey and by then a racehorse doctor, had moved into one of the cottages and set up his own stables. He'd often take the injured horses down to the beach and into the seawater to aid their lameness. The horse bath is still evident.

With war looming.  people were served with notices of eviction and the last one left in 1939. The area was used for training troops and many of the houses were damaged by damaged by the bullets of their military practice. What was left was demolished after the end of WWII bar the few walls which remain still standing on the site. 

Nowadays it's a nature reserve leading down on to the beach. There is no charge either to visit or park.

If you haven't already guessed this was where I saw the flint cobbles last week. It was Mr GBT's delayed birthday outing [we had to cancel originally because Humphrey was really poorly]...he loves to be near the water. As we were already down on the coast we made a day of it and went elsewhere in the afternoon which I'll cover separately. It was an interesting day spent in a part of Sussex I really am not familiar with.

Arilx

From the car window.

 I noticed all three of these from the car window when I've been driving home this month so had to stop and take a quick snap. Now the children are on school hols and the library's Summer Reading Challenge is in full swing perhaps some of them will enjoy these well known books. I can remember reading them to my son...from memory he rather liked 'The Gruffalo' and it's only appeared in the last couple of days.

Enjoy your weekend. No idea what we're up to as dancing has been cancelled due to an error made by the event's organiser. I am sure I will come up with something!

Arilx

Sussex Diamonds

 In my part of Sussex we're on heavy Wealden clay with woods around us and this is reflected in the brick and timber buildings you see. However, as you travel further into the South Downs there is a noticeable change in building style with many flint covered buildings appearing. Since Neolithic times people have mined the hills for the flint nodules. Cissbury Hill Fort has many scars of the workings which can still be seen as depressions in the surface. It seems a little puzzling that they went to such trouble to retrieve the flint when the surrounding area is littered with flint nodules, but the good quality ones which would withstand being made into tools were at the greater depth and getting them may well have been seen as a rite of passage for the transition from boys into men.

Up until very recently I had never given much thought to how the material is used and the different styles. This is a rather pleasing decorative chequerboard effect on the front of the Marlipins museum in Shoreham.

There are also different terms for the pieces of flint are treated. Sometimes they are square knapped which is the most labour intensive and others are only roughly knapped. You have walls which have them in straight lines sometimes combined with bricks to add contrast whilst some aim for uniformly shaped stones and others use random sizes. The one below is where flint chips are inserted into the mortar and is called galleting [or garreting] yet others know them as witches' eyes.

These ones are just known as cobbles for obvious reasons [I'll write a post about where we saw them last weekend in a separate post], but my favourite and very Sussex expression is 'snail-creep work' for those buildings where the walls have the shiny knapped flint all facing outwards. I am guessing it gets its name from the shiny trail snails leave behind them.

Down-land flint has been regarded as a precious commodity for many thousands of years and hence its other name of "Sussex Diamonds". I, for one, didn't know that there was quite so many interesting snippets to know about what I formerly thought to be rather a dry topic!

Arilx

Seeing things

I have a rather fanciful imagination at times, but even I couldn't quite believe that I had really seen what my brain was telling me on the road sign as I drove home from work on Friday. I parked up and went back for a second look....

For once it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me....somebody's been busy😹

Arilx

Holiday Treat

 When I looked back over a few previous blog posts about our holidays I noticed that there seemed to be a theme running through them...often we come back with a locally made picture or an object which we can hang up on our wall [last year it was a ceramic greenman]. Every time I see them it brings back happy memories of our travels and experiences. This year we have repeated the pattern and it's a piece made by Rustic Revolution. Aside from it being beautiful [we both fell in love with it and thankfully it was within our budget] it ticks all the boxes for me as it's made from locally sourced organic wool and is mounted on a vintage wool blanket. We've just got to decide where to put it now!

Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend.

Arilx

Exploring in a new way

I went back for a second look at this bench in Malvern because I was curious about the rather large plaque on it. It informed me that CS Lewis had gone to Malvern College. Quite Interesting I thought and walked on by....

 

It really was quite a surprise when I got to the far end of it and saw this on one end of it! Malvern has many of its old gas lamps still remaining and there's a school of thought that Lewis might have been inspired by them when he wrote about the first meeting between Lucy and Mr Tumnus beneath the lamppost in "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe."

I stumbled across this one shortly afterwards which is marking the establishment of the Morris company. H F S Morgan set up his first garage in Worcester Road in 1905 and by 1910 he had gone into production of the three wheeled 'runabout'. They are still making cars to this day....1300 handbuilt classic motors per year with a waiting list to fulfill.

This one shows the shield and axe of the legendary British King Caractactus who was supposedly defeated at British Camp and taken to Rome as a prisoner. His impassioned speech is said to have impressed Emperor Claudius to such an extent that he granted him his freedom. Local boy Edward Elgar wrote his Caractacus Cantana in celebration of the story and it was premiered in 1897.

One thing I did find out about Malvern is that you have to be reasonably fit as there are a lot of steep slopes to walk up round the town. In the 19th century the donkey women saw a chance to turn the inability or reluctance of some visitors to undertake the more challenging conditions into a money making venture. Small boys walked a team of donkeys up and down the hills up to ten times a day carrying passengers on their backs. There's a reason why donkeys are known as beasts of burden. 

The benches were installed in 2017 as an innovative way to introduce people to aspects of Malvern's heritage. They are very visually appealing. There are five in total and I only missed seeing the one with Florence Nightingale and her pet cat. However, it was fortuitous to have come across the others during our amblings as we hadn't set out to look for them. Keep your eyes peeled if you do ever go that way!

Arilx