Five on Friday

Joining in this week with  Amy and Five on Friday.  Click on the link at the bottom of this post to find others who are joining in too.

On the edge of the lovely, historic little town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire stand the beautiful ruins of Wenlock Priory. 

Founded by the Normans as a priory of Cluniac Monks 

The Priory stands on the site of an earlier Anglo Saxon monastery founded in 680 by King Merewalh of Mercia whose abbess daughter Milburge was hailed as a saint, her relics were found here in 1101 and the priory became a place of pilgrimage.

I could describe to you the beauty and tranquillity of the grounds as we wandered amongst the ruins in the bright warm early afternoon sunshine. 

I could tell you of the banks of primroses around the ruins and the delicate spring flowers growing on the soft grey stone

  but for my Five on Friday I want to show you something else that can be found here,  come with me........

for in the cloisters near the monks' refectory and lavatorium or bath house are some very well known and admired topiary animals and birds

some of the figures were hard to identify but I think I've found five that I can possibly put a name to, so,  what do you think?

Bear? It looks like a cuddly teddy bear.

Definitely a Squirrel

Mouse or Hedgehog?

Duck?

got to be a Cat

I have one more to show you......

When I first saw this one I thought it was a baby bird but now I'm thinking it's a mole with its big snout and huge paws?  Am I right?

More Five on Friday posts here -

Thoughts on Thursday

Just  a few, simple things that have made me smile this week

  A surprise visitor to the garden

 Monsieur Reynard or Mr Fox visited our garden this week, not unusual in one sense as we know that foxes visit the garden - they leave behind the evidence- but we rarely see them.  This one visited around lunch time in the bright light (well grey, drizzly light) of the day.  He sat for ages on the grass behind the greenhouse and I was able to rush upstairs (well rush as much as I can nowadays with my knees) and grab my camera and photograph him from the landing window.  He sat for ages scratching, and then began  stretching his legs. front then back,  before he wandered off to the top of the garden where there is a way in and out through a small gap in the holly hedge behind the shed.

 A Rainy Walk at Ilam
On Wednesday morning we set out to walk at Ilam it was quite rainy when we arrived and we sat in the car in the car park for a while before we decided to risk a walk.  I'm so glad we did as the rain stopped shortly after we set off and only started again as we neared the end of the walk.  We had the place almost to ourselves just a couple of school parties who were way ahead of us and a few people staying at the Youth Hostel who stopped to chat on their way along the riverside.

We went inside the church too.  I know I've taken you here in several posts and told the tale of St Bertram whose tomb is in the chapel built especially to house it.  The font is Saxon as is the cross, one of two to be found in the churchyard.  The pictures around the walls of the nave depict the history of the village of Ilam through the centuries.

Back in the Garden
Things are livening up a bit, the winds and rain over the last few days have flooded the area around the pond again, but around the garden and in the raised beds the signs of spring are there.  The little tete a tete are raising their heads and the muscari and puschkinia are in flower.  The rosemary has little blue flowers and the rhubarb and wild garlic are looking lush and green.

  Easter Decorations 

Just a few bits and pieces out for Easter.  I've yet to find a suitable twig for hanging decorated eggs on. It has also been very hard this year to find any chocolate eggs without palm oil but the ones in the bowl from MandS seem to be free of it.   I don't know about the cute chocolate bunny, it was given me by my neighbours for looking after their cat for a couple of days whilst they opened up their caravan in Wales for the season.  We are making our own hot cross buns, in fact they are being made as I type by the bread maker of the house and the smell of mixed spice is wafting in my direction.  I will make some Easter buns or fairy cakes on Saturday. 

Hope you all have a lovely, peaceful Easter weekend.

Photo Scavenger Hunt - March

It's the end of March already and so I'm joining in again with the Photo Scavenger Hunt kindly organised by greenthumb at Made with Love  just click on the link for other participants.

Circle

A mill stone at Rowsley Mill near Bakewell, Derbyshire.

Card

I was delving into my postcard album to chose a card.  I have lots I've collected over the years from places we've visited.  I finally chose the one of The Pilgrim Rabbit carved about 1325 for St Mary's Church, Beverley in Yorkshire.  It is thought to be the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and as on 1st March we always say 'White Rabbits' I thought I'd include it.

Window

A window in a building in Bakewell in Derbyshire

Art

One of the upstairs art galleries in the Harley Gallery near Worksop in Nottinghamshire

Skyline

A skyline across the rooftops taken at Castleton in Derbyshire

A favourite word

I've been fascinated over the last week by the partial eclipse and by events in Leicester and the re internment of King Richard III.  I was particularly moved by the reading of Dame Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Richard' but also the sermon given by the Bishop of Leicester and one phrase stood out for me when he spoke about how the events over the last few years of finding, identifying and re interring the remains of the last Plantagenet king had joined us all together into a 'we' society rather than a 'me' society. I rather liked that.

Movement

A skateboarding dinosaur!  Well, it was on wheels and was being moved into place for a new 'Dinogolf'' crazy golf course at Bridgemere Garden World.

Bathroom

The queue for the 'bathroom' at the top of our garden

Car

A rather long car or stretch limo parked in Hanley market place.

Plate

A plate used for reminiscence quotations in the bottle oven room at the Middleport Factory, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent.  There were lots of plates with people's memories written on them.

Something you made

Homemade lunch - carrot and parsnip soup and a roll

Whatever you want

A few months ago I was contacted by e-mail by a lady who had seen my genealogy pages on-line and had a photo dated 1906 that she wanted help in identifying.  I tried to help as much as I could but we were rather confused by the family connections- her family member was the bride.  She thought that my granny should be on this photo but I couldn't recognise her as I only knew her in her late 70s/early 80s and she died when I was 12 years old.  This last weekend I've had more information about the photo from the lady who had found someone not only descended from the little boy bottom right of the photo but could remember my granny and my father.  Not only is granny on the photo but some of her brothers and sisters and my great grandmother as well.  Granny is at the back with a black hat and a black ribbon at her neck, next to the man in the suit who may be my grandfather. Great grandmother is at the front dressed in black.  I've also now been contacted by the lady who has identified the people in the photo for us and a meeting is in the offing as she doesn't live that far away.  What an incredible week it has been.

Scenes from a short walk

On Monday morning we walked around the lake at Trentham.  It was quite early and very quiet and peaceful.

The little robin posed for ages so we could take his photo

Further round the lake the male Mandarin duck was showing off in the water

whilst his lady friend stayed on the jetty, quite unimpressed by his cavorting.

It was so  still with just sprinkling of damp in the air - it was too light to label as rain more like spits and spots.

There were many swans on the lake and also quite a few on the lakeside fluffing up their feathers and performing their early morning ablutions.

The light over the lake was stunning and the water was still

Members of the U3A were out in their rowing boat gliding silently up and down the lake.

There were loads of little birds in the trees, we saw tree creepers, nuthatches and long tailed tits all too quick and agile to photograph easily

Up above we could hear the woodpeckers tapping and calling to each other and we saw two pairs of them flying joyfully over the tree tops and swooping back down to the echo of more loud tapping.  Again they were too quick to spot easily let alone photograph.

In the gardens the signs of spring were appearing with swathes of daffodils across the grassy areas

and more formally each pot along the terrace was planted with their bright flowers

Such a cheering sight

Five on Friday

Joining in this week with  Amy and Five on Friday.  Click on the link at the bottom of this post to find others who are joining in too.

The village of Creswell and also Creswell Crags are in North East Derbyshire and not very far from the village I grew up in.  Two other nearby attractions close to the village we lived in were Bolsover Castle and Hardwick Hall, and only a little further away was Clumber Park.  Hard to think that all these were on my doorstep for the twenty five or so years that I lived in that part of the country.

Access to the Crags has changed so much in recent years.  When I was a child we used to drive quite close to the caves as the road went through there - it has all been bypassed now and there are many more walks in the area.  Creswell Crags is a Limestone Gorge honeycombed with caves and fissures where evidence of life in the last Ice Age, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, has been discovered and is interpreted in the Visitor Centre and Museum.  There are about eight caves in all along the gorge some more accesible than others.  As this post is for Five on Friday I'm going to introduce you to five of them.

1.  Robin Hood Cave -  this is the largest cave at Creswell  Crags and there are four main chambers linked together by short passages.  There have been many excavations in this cave in both the 19th and 20th centuries and many tools left there by Neanderthal people from between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago including flint scrapers and hand axes.

2.  The Arch -  Three caves in all make up the Arch or Lion's Mouth and many different animal bones have been found here including a  reindeer bone with cut marks over 42,000 years old suggesting that Neanderthals were using the caves to butcher the animals they had captured.

3. Pin Hole - Neanderthals were the first people to use this cave as a shelter whilst hunting reindeer in the area.  During the first excavation here the teeth of a young woolly mammoth were found.

4. Dog Hole -  was first excavated by Robert Laing, a Newcastle doctor before 1889.  None of the finds from this excavation have ever come to light but in the 1980s in spoil pits outside the cave many items were found.  These included animal bones dating from the last ice age including hyenas, woolly rhinoceros, horse and reindeer.  They also found a few flint tools.  Finds from the nearby Dog Hole fissure caused by a landslide in 1978 have included bones from other animals like lynx, beaver and wild pig.

5.  Mother Grundy's Parlour - has undergone many excavations over the years.  One of the first people to dig in the cave was a local Creswell man whose wife dreamt that there was buried treasure in the cave.  A hippopotamus tooth was found and offered for sale which prompted an excavation in 1878 by the Reverend Magens Mello and Professor W Boyd Dawkins.

Here is a - link - to the Creswell Crags website where you can find out more about each cave, the excavations that have taken place and see some of the artefacts found there.