Out and About

Last week we spent two days travelling around visiting friends and relatives.

We started out in the village of Holmesfield where we had lunch with friends who are also distant cousins of mine. After lunch we all went for a walk around their nearest town of Dronfield. 

I thought what a nice little town it was.  In the centre were lots of interesting and historic buildings.  Above the old forge which is now a shopping complex and cafe.  Below is the parish church.

What we had particularly wanted to see was The Hall Barn as I'd heard quite a bit about it from various sources and it sounded an interesting place to visit.

 

The original framework of the barn dates from 1430.  At this time the manor of Dronfield was leased by Lady Alice Deincourt.   Lady Alice was the daughter of a Neville and a Percy two of the most powerful families in England.  She was a great Aunt to Edward IV and Richard III.  

Experts and researchers think that Lady Alice would have had the hall built for her steward as there is no documentary evidence that she ever visited her lands in Dronfield.  The Hall would have had a dais canopy under which the Lord of the Manor would have sat at high table when entertaining important guests.

The barn formed part of the Hall Farm complex later owned by the Rotherham-Cecil estate and there would have been cottages and workshops in front of it.  The site and barn were later owned by the Jowitt factory which carried out essential work and used the barn for storage.  The site was bought by Sainsbury for a supermarket and in 2004 they donated the barn and its surrounding land to the Peel Centre trust for community use.  The Dronfield Heritage Trust was formed and in 2012 they received a Heritage Lottery Grant of £1.2 million to help with the  renovations and restoration of the Hall Barn.  Downstairs in the extension are rooms for hire and on the ground floor is a cafe and display area.

On the upper floor you can see the early roof beams and there are tables for school activities.  On the wall at the far end of the upper floor is a marvellous quilt.

Called A History of Dronfield in a Quilt it is one of three made by local quilters who used digital archives of the town's history as inspiration.

The one above is the medieval quilt which has been made to look like a stained glass window.  It features all aspect of life in the middle ages including quotes from the Domesday book.  Volunteers are also working on a herb garden and in the grounds are managing trees and creating paths and wildflower areas.  I'd like to go back again in the spring or early summer to see what progress has been made.

After we left Dronfield we popped over to nearby Chesterfield to meet up with my niece and joined with her to visit my sister who is now in a care home in the town. 

We stayed overnight in Chesterfield before moving on to visit more relatives in Mansfield the next day.  Firstly though, after breakfast,  we popped into the Parish Church of St Mary and All Saints which is, of course, known as the Crooked Spire.  I will write a post on this visit later.

Five on Friday

Can you believe that it is Friday again?  Where has that time gone? We've spent it shopping, queueing in the post office, cleaning, visiting friends and relatives and delivering presents to go under trees. We also managed a couple of walks down the towpath of the local Trent and Mersey canal and at Ilam.  I'll maybe write a post about Ilam later but this week's Five on Friday reflects our walk by the canal.

1.  Winter Trees

Dark, sculptural 

and so beautiful at this time of year.

The third one full of pigeons (rock doves rather than wood pigeons)

2.  Geese on and round Westport Lake, lots of geese but this one was my favourite!

3.  Old Man's Beard growing in the hedgerows along the canal towpath 

A few weeks ago we had a crossword clue for 'another name for wild clematis' the answer to which turned out to be Old Man's Beard.  According to references it is also known as Traveller's Joy.  In France it is known as the beggar's or rascal's herb.  There was quite a lot of it growing in the hedges, opposite the Middleport Pottery, which separate the canal from the allotments.  We got chatting to a man walking along there who said that the allotments were on the former site of Port Vale football club before it moved to its present site.

4.   Old Factory Buildings from the canal towpath

Lovely old buildings, icons of the city's industrial past

 5.  Displays in the factory shop

I always love the displays in the shop and seeing what new patterns and designs they have.

Click on the link below to find others joining in with Five on Friday.  Thanks to Amy at Love Made my Home for hosting us.

A 17th Century Farmhouse

In the Smallthorne area of Stoke-on-Trent stands one of the oldest buildings in the city.

 Ford Green Hall is a 17th century timber framed farmhouse which was, when we first came to live in the city, one of the museums belonging to Stoke City Council.

 It is now one of two city Museums that were transferred to charitable organisations and is run by volunteers whilst still working closely with the City Council's  Museum service.

 The farmhouse was built in 1624 for Hugh Ford who was a yeoman dairy farmer of 36 acres of land.  The brick additions were added in the 18th century.  The Ford family lived in the farmhouse for about 200 years.  When they finally left in the 19th century the building went into decline and was made into three and then four cottages.

 At the back of the hall is an award winning herb garden with raised beds full of herbs for different uses within the household. 

Above are herbs for magical and textile uses there are also beds for herbs for medicinal, cosmetic, domestic and culinary activities.

The Green Man was on hand to help organise the festivities.....

(Paul's photo of the Green man)

......shall we go inside?

That's better! It's much warmer in here with candles, and lanterns and open fires.

A choir are singing carols in front of the fireplace in the main hall (I didn't take a photo as children were involved.)

and there is a table laden with festive fayre.

 In the parlour the ladies tell us all about Christmas traditions of the 17th century and other ages too.

 The kitchen too is full of festive food and greenery.

The scent of orange, cinnamon and cloves spreads through the house from the pomander making class upstairs in the parlour chamber.

It's too busy to take a snooze in the hall chamber

So we wander back downstairs to take another look before we leave via the little cafe and shop.....

.....and back out into the cold, December afternoon.

Five on Friday

It's Friday again and I haven't managed a post since last Friday but I did grab my camera when we went on a journey earlier in the week.  Below are five things I spotted whilst out and about.

 

 1.  Beautiful Sunset - photo taken on the way home, early evening just as the light was fading.  Taken through the car window as we were driving along.  The sky was exquisitely beautiful there was no way I could fully capture its beauty. The colours were richer and the light more intense; it changed as we rounded each bend and between each click of the camera. 

2.  Peter Rabbit - straw sculpture of Peter Rabbit at Snugbury's Ice Cream Shop and farm near Nantwich in Cheshire.  There is a layby opposite where you can stop to take a photo.  Peter is 30ft high, his ears are 10ft long and so is his carrot!  Here is a - link  - to find out more about the sculpture.

 3.  Reindeer - at a local garden centre, of course he/she moved just as I had them lined up through the fencing.  Ah well, it has carrots, just like Peter Rabbit above!

 4.  Flowery Car - such a summery looking vehicle to see on a cold December morning.  So pretty though and it matched the door of the house behind it.  Spotted on the main street in Tarporley in Cheshire.

 5.  Snowy Owls - part of the Christmas Displays at a local Garden Centre.

Joining in with Five on Friday organised by Amy at Love Made my Home.  Click on the image below to see others who are taking part this week.

Five on Friday

It's Friday, the first one of December and Five on Friday is back so below are 

five things I've been doing this week.......

1. Eating

Home made butternut squash and carrot soup with homemade bread rolls.  Apple and pear crumble made with windfall apples and conference pears.  White Leicester cheese with homemade apple and prune chutney.  All delicious.

2. Watching

The last episode of The Missing - I've been gripped by it!  Also a new Scandi Noir crime series called Modus. One of my favourite programmes 'Who do you think you are?' is back and there is a new archaeology programme  'Britain at Low Tide' on Channel 4. We also watched an interesting docudrama about the Mayflower Pilgrims with the wonderful actor Roger Rees, whom I remember seeing a few times at the RSC Theatre at Stratford in the 70s and early 80s, as William Bradford. The programme was dedicated to Roger Rees and was filmed just before his death in 2015.

3. Listening

To podcasts of the BBC4 Food Programme, recommended by a friend, as I type this I'm learning about the origins and history of apples and hearing about the Bramley apple from the famous tree in Southwell in Nottinghamshire. 

4. Reading

I've nearly finished reading The House at Bellevue Gardens by Rachel Hore.  At the same time I've been reading Shire a book of quite unusual and disturbing short stories by Ali Smith, loaned by a friend and also dipping into  How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman.

5. Walking

Donning scarves, hats, gloves and boots and walking along by the Caldon Canal and around the lake at Trentham Gardens both on cold but bright mornings when the sun was low in the sky.

Click on the link below to find others who are joining in with Five on Friday 

Painting Memories for Paint Monthly

Childhood Memories

I was thinking the other day about paintings (or rather prints or copies of them) that I remember from my childhood and early years.

One of my earliest memories is of a copy of The Laughing Cavalier by Franz Hals which used to hang over a fireplace in one of the classrooms at the village school I attended.  There were three classrooms in the school.  Baby class was where we had our nature table and did dance and mime from children's radio programmes, there was also a sandpit and Wendy house in this room. Middle class was the largest and was in the main hall of the school, warmed by a huge boiler, it had the alphabet and times tables around the walls under the large windows, the dining tables were in here too and the stage was always fixed at one end of the hall for plays and concerts and also where we learned to play music on tambourines, bells, cymbals and castanets.  The top class was in a room on the back of the school near the kitchens.  This was where we used nib pens and inkwells, learned what we called 'real writing' and studied for the 11 plus.  I was 10 and three quarters when I took the eleven plus, passed and went to Grammar School, I was like a fish out of water there as I was a lot younger than the other pupils, that is another story but my abiding memory is of The Laughing Cavalier looking down on us as we struggled with inky fingers to write in a cursive, joined up writing, whatever the teacher had written on the board.

The original of this painting can be seen in The Wallace Collection

When I was six years old we moved from the large Midlands city of Leicester where I was born, to a small village in North East Derbyshire.  I remember a painting which used to be on the wall at the top of the stairs in our new home.  After my father died my Mum had married again (an old teenage sweetheart) and we moved to his home.   The painting, well copy or print of a painting, was The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais.  Over the years it faded but I remember it always there when I went up to bed on cold winter nights, reluctant to leave the roaring coal fire downstairs, clutching a hot water bottle.  The arm in the painting almost pointing the way to my little bedroom where it took ages to get warm and where sometimes, in the depths of winter,  I woke to frost on the inside of the windows.

The original of this painting can be seen in the Tate Gallery.

  

A few years later my mother wanted new carpet and a new sofa for what we called the front room.  This was a room we rarely used until we put a television in there.  There was a piano in this room and I was sent with my friend Wendy for piano lessons given by a music teacher who lived down in the centre of the village opposite the parish church.  When Mum got her new carpet and sofa the room had been decorated too and she bought a print of a painting she'd always liked for the back wall behind the sofa, it was The Haywain by John Constable.  This was another painting which became so familiar to me.  Many years later I did an 'A' level evening class in Art History at the Art College in the nearby town where I worked.  One of the questions in the exam just happened to be about Constable's paintings of The Haywain and Flatford Mill.

The original of this painting can be seen in the National Gallery


Of course non of the above paintings would be chosen as my favourite paintings but I do have an affection for them as they hold so many memories.   Joining in with Barbara at Coastal Ripples for Paint Monthly