The first thing that struck me about Furness Abbey was how red it is. The second thing was the girl in the visitor centre and the third was drainage; but we’ll come onto all that later. For the moment, all…
A tour of Stirling Castle
You can see it from miles away. Stirling Castle stands guard from the top of a massive volcanic plug, with steep cliffs on three sides, towering above the ancient crossing over the River Forth and the route armies take between…
The remains of London’s white friars
It beggars modern belief just how much London – well, pretty much everywhere in Europe, I guess – was once dominated by the Church. Did you know there were more than one hundred parish churches within or just outside the…
Secrets of the Middle Temple
Some years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to do some work for the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in London. The days I spent there were almost like being in a time capsule; all around were ghostly…
Thank God for Southwell Minster
There are so many reasons to visit Southwell Minster that it’s a good job someone decided to build it… A few miles north-west of Nottingham, in the English East Midlands, Southwell is neither on a major route to anywhere, nor…
The ghosts of Christ Church Greyfriars
Christ Church Greyfriars is one of those places you stumble across in London without meaning to. That’s exactly what I did a few years ago, drifting in search of somewhere to eat a sandwich after a tedious meeting. Close to…
Is Eilean Donan Castle a fake?
Eilean Donan Castle, ubiquitous star of movies, calendars, biscuit tins and tea-towels, is pretty much a 20th-century creation. Rescued from almost total ruin, it says something for its rebuild, and the success of Scottish tourism, that it is not only…
Who haunts Scarborough Castle?
Scarborough Castle dominates the Victorian Yorkshire seaside resort from a massive precipitous headland bulging up from the North Sea. The fortress has a fascinating three and a half thousand year, often bloody, story to tell, but one of its more…
Don’t underestimate Dornoch Cathedral
Mrs Britain had been banging on about Dornoch Cathedral almost since the time we first met. A relative had been married there and it had made a deep impression on her; you know how young girls can be. Its only…
Wharram Percy DMV
We tend to see modern towns and villages as permanent things. They may change, but it’s hard to imagine the landscape without them and easy to take it for granted that they will last forever. Yet the world is littered…
The church that makes a cockney
Not to be confused with the sound that a cockney makes… There has been a church on the site of St Mary le Bow, on London’s Cheapside, since Saxon times. And this is where Cockneys come from. Or, rather, a…