It’s become something of a cliché, to describe a place as ‘being frozen in time’, or similar. But in the case of Culross, a small village on the north bank of Firth of Forth in Fife (try saying that after…
Viroconium, Roman City
The small Shropshire village of Wroxeter is the only surviving settlement of what was once the fourth largest Roman city in Britain: Viroconium, or Uriconium, more fully expressed as Viroconium Cornoviorum. The Very Keen Reader will want to know what…
Brough Castle, Cumbria
The bleak ruins of medieval Brough Castle perch on the western edge of Church Brough, a peaceful collection of attractive, solid, old dwellings huddled round a small square with St Michael’s church in the background. The village of Brough is…
Dracula and Whitby
The great tempest broke rapidly and without warning in the darkness. The sea around Whitby convulsed, waves rising in growing fury, over-topping one another, beating white-topped on the sands, rushing up the cliffs and breaking with great spumes over the…
Warkworth
North East England does many things rather well, and one of them is castles. There are dramatic coastal castles, like Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, grand castles like Alnwick, frontier castles, like Norham, and castles you can stay in, like Langley Castle.…
Dunstan in the East
Constantly keep your eyes open when wandering round the old City of London. Behind the steel and glass and beneath your feet are about two thousand years of history. Reminders of the past are everywhere – some obvious, others not;…
Clava Cairns
Less than a mile and a half south-east from the pilgrimage site of Culloden battlefield is a much, much older, and intriguing, reminder of Scotland’s past, Balnuaran of Clava. Balnuaran of Clava is a prehistoric cemetery, 4,000 years old, and…
Kenilworth
Awesome is an over-used word these days, but Kenilworth Castle in its prime must have been exactly that. It still is, in so many ways, its vast red sandstone ruins giving more than a hint of the money that has…
Spring at Nymans
Last Updated on 4th March 2018You don’t need great plants to have an attractive garden. But having lovely views, a romantic ruin and, in the first place, loads of money, helps no end. Fortunately, Nymans has benefited from all three…
The great abbey of Furness
Last Updated on 1st March 2018The 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…
Arbeia upon Tyne
Last Updated on 16th May 2018I’m driving through the terraced urban landscape of South Shields, in search of a Roman fort. It is called Arbeia, a name believed to be a Latinised form of the Aramaic for ‘the place of…
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…