A Saturday Walk

Yesterday we took a local walk through Hem Heath Woods which is looked after by the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. 

Lots of trees have been taken down over the last few months due to Ash die back.

Some parts of the wood were looking quite open and bare especially until the leaves appear on the trees.  There was lots of bird song though.  With the help of Merlin we heard Robins, Nuthatch, Blue tit, Chiffchaff, Song Thrush, Wren and Crow.

We walked as far as the pond where we spotted just one solitary duck before heading back.

There's going to be plenty of Flag Iris later in the year.

The sun was shining but suddenly it disappeared and it became colder, the birds stopped tweeting.  This was about 10.30 am.  Was this change due to the partial eclipse I heard about on the news? 

By the time we reach the end of the wood where the bluebells grow it was sunny again.  There will be lots of bluebells later this year but I hadn't seen any Wood Anemone or Lesser Celandine as we walked.  The Wood Anemones in our garden are flowering at the moment so it is time for them.

It was time for coffee and we'd parked at Wedgwood so we popped into their shopping area for coffee and cake.

We sliced the two pieces of cake in half so we had a piece of each to share.

The flower displays behind the statue of Josiah Wedgwood were pretty.

Lovely colours

and containers.

All for now.  I hope you are all enjoying the weekend.

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.

Two Wartime Tales

 Carrying on from my last post where I promised more information on some of the photos I'd taken.

The sculpture above by Ray Lonsdale is on Scarborough's North Bay.  It's called Freddie Gilroy and the Belsen Stragglers.  It was sited on the North Bay for a four week period but a petition was set up by a local resident, Maureen Robinson, to keep the sculpture in place.  With a short time  to go before the removal of the sculpture she purchased it and gifted it to the town.  It is now cared for by the local council.

Freddie Gilroy (1921-2008) was born in County Durham to a mining family.  He went to work at the local mine but also joined the Territorial Army.  In 1939 at the start of war he was called up to be a gun aimer for the Royal Artillery.  Towards the end of the war he became a Regimental Police Officer.  On the 15th April 1945 he was part of the force sent to Hamburg to liberate Bergen Belsen.  The horrors of what he experienced stayed with him for the rest of his life.  He spent his 24th birthday within the camp and when interviewed by a local newspaper in the 1980s he confessed that he had cried on every birthday since then.

That's Scarborough Castle in the background, shrouded in the morning mist.

In the Canadian Memorial hanger at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington is the Halifax Bomber called Friday 13th.

We watched a small film in the on site cinema about how it came to be named.  Bomber Command 158 Squadron flew Halifax bombers from nearby RAF Lissett each plane having it's own unique call sign.  By 1944 all Halifax Bombers given the F for Freddy designation had been lost so when the new one arrived it was deemed to be unlucky.  On it's first mission in March 1944 bomber LV907 F broke that run of bad luck.  That night 95 aircraft were lost but LV907 returned.  The Canadian crew decided to call it Friday 13th to 'jinx' it even more, they painted many images of bad luck onto the plane and defiantly embraced the F for Freddy superstition.  LV907 Friday 13th went on to return safely from 128 more missions before the end of the war.  This particular Halifax was held in great affection by its crews and of course they all wanted to fly on missions in this aircraft.

Here is a - link - to more about this plane.

Back Home

We've been away for a few days.  We had to go to Paul's uncle's funeral in Scarborough so we decided to turn it into a short break.  We took too many photos, walked lots of steps and saw some wonderful things.  Below are a few images from our four days away.

The Rotunda Museum

Sculpture of Freddie Gilroy by Ray Lonsdale

Bright beach huts on the North Shore 

Seal at the Seal hospital and sanctuary

Whitby Abbey

At the top of the 199 Steps between the town and abbey headland.

By the Swing bridge one of the nine sculptures of local characters by Emma Stothard.

Above and below

Robin Hood's Bay

High tide at Hornsea

The main street in Hornsea 

Halifax bomber Friday 13th in the Canadian Memorial Hangar at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington.

More detail and stories on all the places in later posts.

More on Kedleston

In my last post but one I promised more on our visit to Kedleston during the very sunny week we had earlier this month.

We didn't go into the house this time as we've been in a couple of times before.  We decided to go on one of the estate walks first before lunch and then visit the gardens, bookshop and church.

Lots of sheep baaing in the fields as we walked.  Some were curious, others not.

 

We used Merlin to find out what birds we could hear as we walked along.

Woodpeckers were rat-a-tat tatting almost all the way of the walk.

Kedleston has been owned by the Curzon family since the mid 12th century.  The Mansion was designed by Robert Adam and was commissioned by Nathaniel Curzon in the 18th century c. 1750.  The church is much earlier, probably 13th century and is all that is left of the mediaeval village of Kedleston as it was moved to make way for the building of the Hall.

Inside are many memorials to the Curzon family.  It was difficult to take photos inside as there were a few visitors moving around and also a small group in front of the later tombs.  I was able to take a few photos of the earlier memorials.  the one above from 1456 is of Sir John Curzon and his wife Joan, daughter of Sir John Bagot of Blithfield in Staffordshire.

Both figures have a dog at their feet.

Below, within the chancel, is the memorial to an earlier Sir John Curzon who died in 1406, his wife was Eleanor Twyford.

Apparently he wears  a Lancastrian SS or 'esses' livery collar.  This was an emblem of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

I was trying to work out what animal he had at his feet.

Is it a lion? Or is it a mythical creature? I can find little on google but my book on Derbyshire by Arthur Mee says it is a lion.

Three of the six heraldic shields which decorate the ogee arch above the earlier Sir John's effigy

Two of the stained glass windows which were behind the heraldic shields above.  They both have the inscription Curzon of Kedleston.

Back out in the garden the sun was still shining, but it was time to think about heading for home..

Below is a link to a blog post I wrote in September 2018 about the inside of the Hall.

Post of 2018

All for now.