The above is not a comment on Eleanor’s mood, addressed to someone called Hardingstone (which I’m thinking is a good name for a butler); it is a memorial to a dead queen beside a busy road in a suburb of Northampton. And it is part of a very old love story. When you think of […]
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East Midlands
The Devil was a busy little bee in days gone by. Some might say he still is, but in any event he crops up all over the British landscape – including at the Tarr Steps, a famous clapper bridge over the river Barle, Somerset, in the Exmoor National Park. Clapper bridges, river crossings of dry-stone
Lulworth & Durdle sounds like a law firm. Commissioners for oaths; adversarial specialists; rip-off fees; incompetence guaranteed – that sort of thing. I have known at least four firms that should have been called Bungle, Overcharge & Obfuscate. Anyway, close by the Dorset village of West Lulworth on England’s Jurassic south coast is Lulworth Cove.
There’s a ruined castle in the valley bottom, beyond the grand, Victorian, house. A round, machiolated, tower peeks through multi-coloured shrubs and trees. It draws the eye through the garden, overwhelming the desire to linger amongst the flowers. Closer in, down the hill, and the heady scent from rhododendrons and azaleas is almost overpowering. The
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South East
Builders in the past were very selfish people. They put their buildings up without considering for one moment that, one day, their structures might inconveniently stand in the way of a new road, town centre development or shopping centre. Fast forward to an intriguing museum on the South Downs in West Sussex, near the village
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South East
We came upon St Hubert’s, my good friend and I, very late one night and many years’ ago. We were young, and had been indulging that well-known youthful pastime, ‘Visiting Old Places After Dark To See If You Get Scared’. As we walked up the hill through the still Hampshire night toward the church, it
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South East
People are walking their dogs around the ancient walls of Portchester Castle. A cricket match is taking place on the green. Some scruffy kids run up and down the ditch outside, whooping. Anglers drape their lines optimistically into Portsmouth Harbour and gaze at passing ships with the old Royal Navy dockyard beyond. It’s a peaceful
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South East
“ ‘Not here,” said Nancy hurriedly, “I am afraid to speak to you here. Come away – out of the public road – down the steps yonder!’ The steps to which the girl had pointed were those which, on the Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour’s Church, form
Herb Garret sounds like it should be a band leader (perhaps of a similar vintage to the chap pictured below). In fact, the Herb Garret acts as a kind of anteroom to the Old Operating Theatre, perched in the roof of the baroque St Thomas’ church in London’s Southwark. The Operating Theatre is probably the
This is a Victorian operating theatre, where proceedings were watched by an audience of gawping students and operations were conducted without anaesthetic or antiseptic. I mean, you really can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like, can you? The Old Operating Theatre is reputedly Britain’s – some say Europe’s – oldest operating theatre.
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London
Head west out of London Bridge Station. If you’re very careful, you will discover London’s third Anglican cathedral, Southwark; it’s easily missed. Hemmed in between the colourful and vibrant Borough Market and the occasionally vulgar Montagu Close, and often hidden by dark Victorian railway arches over which trains ceaselessly rattle and clunk in and out
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London
Here’s a thing: you’re strolling along by the Thames at Southwark in search of a pint when you suddenly come across some ruins; you look closer and, high up on one its remaining walls, is a beautiful rose window. Most folk pass it by, either because they don’t notice it, or because it’s just another
