Country Pubs

It's time that we had another collection of pub signs encountered on my rambles. In 1393, during the reign of King Richard II, pubs were first required to hang a sign outside to make them clearly visible. In those days few people were able to read and using a picture was a practical solution - "I'll meet thee for a tankard of mead at the sign of the Red Bull". 

The Red Lion is one of the most common pub names you'll find; it's a symbol much used in heraldry and may derive in some cases from the arms of John of Gaunt. The particular Red Lion sign seen above is outside a pub which the brewery wanted to close down. The villagers did not agree and overcame many legal problems to make it the first community-owned pub in England.

The Queen's Head in Newton, Cambridgeshire, did close and stood empty for some years before the arrival of the Short family in 1962 - they still run the pub today. It's one of "The Famous Five" pubs which have been included in CAMRA's Good Beer Guide for the whole fifty years of its publication. Inside it's not much changed since I used to make my way there for a pint of Adnams and a game of darts in the early 1970s.

The Plough, Shepreth is another community pub, just down the road from me and a music venue as well as serving meals and good beer. They've also got a cracking good sign in my opinion.

The John Bunyan gets its name from the Puritan preacher who was associated with the ruined cottage which lies just across the road. There are many pubs which have changed their names to reflect local history. It's unlikely that Bunyan ever popped in for a pint - or that the poet Rupert Brooke ever drank in the pub that bears his name - or that the Hermit Of Redcoats ever stopped being a hermit and joined the merry throng in the pub just a short distance from the house where he famously holed up for twenty-five years without washing or venturing outside.

The Woodman is one of many pubs which takes its name from the occupation of its onetime customers. Not that there are that there are many woods around Chapmore End in Hertfordshire. Presumably the woodmen cut them down before retiring for a well earned pint.

I feel I can't leave you without mentioning The Queen's Head Soup of the Day, part of a limited but hearty menu on offer in that famed and quirky establishment:

(from The Queen's Head website)

That should baffle TripAdvisor!

Take care.

Village Identity

Earlier this month I showed you the village of Mistley and one or two of you commented on its superb sign. Many villages have such signs, usually somewhere near the centre of the settlement. It is however quite a new tradition and I remember seeing some of the first examples. Now they are everywhere. Some are carved and painted wood and others are metal silhouettes. Some show similarities that make me think they are the work of the same person, others are so individual that they must be the work of someone in the village.

Did you spot the other side of the Mistley sign? Now I shall have to begin on the next collection!

Take care.

Mill Road Movers And Shakers

The annual winter fair took place in Cambridge's Mill Road at the weekend and I went along as I do most years. All along the length of the road there were food stalls and craft stalls; brass bands, rock bands, folk bands and buskers; morris dancers; guided walks; artists and poets; churches handing out free mince pies; samba bands leading parades; Father Christmas and....well you name it. But how could I photograph it a little differently and capture some of the colour and movement?

The rapid hands of Arco Iris Samba Band

Slow shutter speeds blurring the movement was my tentative answer. As you'll see some worked better than others - and as you won't see many were miserable failures!

The local Fire Brigade were manually pulling one of their fire engines

through the street

The University's Lion Dance Troop

One problem I hadn't anticipated was that, though the performers could be blurred nicely, those watching were static, and this distracted from the action. A lot of tinkering of the computer solved the problem for the shot above.

Cambridge Morris Men

Morris dancers proved unexpectedly tricky to photograph in this way.

The dancers of Ely And Littleport Riot

The colourful dancers above required an enormous amount of work on the computer to give any sort of image: interesting but not what I'd envisaged.

Arco Iris 

The samba band, Arco Iris, gave their usual colourful and extrovert performance which I hope is conveyed by the pictures above and below.

I also got several useable shots of the parade....

I didn't catch who was responsible for the vibrant carnival parade and I can't find any mention of them on the Winter Fair website. You get used to these unexpected happenings on Mill Road!

Colonel Spanky's Love Ensemble

Bands with unlikely names were everywhere - Release The Chimps, The Galapagogos, Jason and the Skagonauts, Shake Your Tailfeather, Ember Rev, Fruity Clave and of course Colonel Spanky, all provided musical entertainment.

I tried to capture the chaos of the crowded streets and just snapped a few slow, blurry shots as I walked along. I rather like the impressionistic feel of this one, with just one face showing clearly through the patterns.

And finally......

These gentlemen are not for blurring!

(For a more literal interpretation of the Winter Fair see my earlier posts here, here and here).

Take care.

"Mr Noah Insists....

….that you step inside the village church and have a look at all the Christmas trees".

I mentioned in the last post that Noah the Donkey was being installed into his small pen just by the church door so that he can welcome visitors to the village Christmas Tree Festival.

Before going inside you need to make a fuss of Noah; it is the only entry charge, Be careful though, he sometimes nibbles hair and coats if he really likes you!

All the Christmas trees are decorated by various companies, organisations, clubs and societies in the village. And our very own handbell ringers will be playing carols (and very good they are too).

"So glad you could come. See you next Christmas!"

Take care. 

Good Golly, It's Molly!

(You will see that some of the dancers depicted in the post have blacked-up faces. This was done historically as a form of disguise so that people would not know who it was begging for money. There was never any real attempt to imitate black people; the ears, neck and hands are never blacked-up. Many modern dance sides are aware of possible misunderstanding and have changed their facial make-up, to bright colours, strange designs or just a few smears to make them look more like Victorian chimney-sweeps. One or two sides are determined to stick to the traditional black faces. 

I hope this explanation will be accepted, but also apologise to anyone who may be upset by the inclusion of these pictures here).

They were at it again at the weekend!

In the city of Ely as the good citizens were going about their shopping, when the boat club were out rowing on the river, while dogs were being walked in the park and tourists posed for photos in front of the cathedral, they gathered in front of the Cutter Inn and began dancing.

A car driver rounded the corner from Victoria Street and was confronted by.....

…..men dressed as women, women dressed as men, people in tweed or technicolour, men carrying brooms, someone pushing a pink plough, grunting and wheezing squeezeboxes, fiendish fiddles and devilish drums, knees lifted high and hands held higher, swinging and stamping and swaying and stepping.

Yes, it's those Molly Dancers again.

This is the traditional dance of the plough men of the Fens and parts of Eastern England. I've photographed it and written about it in various posts and if you want to know something of its history then I wrote about it back in 2014, in this post. But there are also other ways of looking at it.

Everything they are doing - dressing outlandishly, disguising themselves, dancing in the street, playing jaunty tunes and generally making a noise, behaving foolishly, sending up their superiors, drinking beer and having a good time - is guaranteed to annoy those in authority but, and here's the crux of the matter, not actually breaking any laws.

It's a very English form of expression, a gentle but meaningful thumbing of the nose at those in power and all that is staid and conventional. You can trace it from court jesters, mummers plays, through folk tales and songs, music hall and pantomime, the Goons, British pop and psychedelic music of the 1960s, Monty Python, street buskers and steam punks. And you can find elements of most of these incorporated into what passes as Molly dancing today.

Like all traditions Molly is constantly evolving - you need to put in a lot more effort to be outrageous in these permissive times (!) - but there is still respect for the history of the dances, or at least those few that have survived.

The purpose of all this tomfoolery was probably a very necessary safety valve for a discontented populace. And for centuries here in the Fens the poorer classes had much to be discontented about. 

Nowadays our problems are of a different kind, though a homeless man selling The Big Issue magazine reminded us that poverty is still with us.

Take care.

The following dance sides were in attendance: 

Seven Champions

Ouse Washes Molly Dancers

Black Annis
Good Easter Molly Gang
The Norwich Kitwitches
Mepal Molly
Misfit Molly
Oxblood Molly Dancers
Rhubarb Tarts

A Medieval Fair

Beside the busy Newmarket Road leading out of Cambridge, just past the Retail Park, over the railway bridge, near to the scrapyard and Cambridge United's football ground, stands a little Norman chapel. It's known locally as the Leper Chapel and was once part of a leper hospital, which explains why it was built away from the town. I've always wanted to look inside the chapel.

And Saturday provided the perfect opportunity as Cambridge Past Present And Future, who look after the little building, held their celebration of the old Stourbridge Fair.

Important persons from the town and the university were on hand, as they would have been in days of yore, to open the fair and make sure that events proceeded in an orderly manner.

Around the back of the chapel Cambridge Storytellers soon gathered an enthusiastic audience of all ages.

Things got quite dramatic!

After the stories some of us gathered in the chapel for an entertaining talk about the history of the chapel and the fair by Honor Ridout. Amazingly this gathering of traders on a piece of rough ground, over a mile from Cambridge was at one time the largest and most important fair in the country and possibly in Europe.

It was fantastic to sit and hear about the chapel while sitting directly beneath the wonderfully carved Norman arch which has stood for around 900 years.

I may one day write about Stourbridge Fair but those who want to learn about it now could not do better than read "The 800-year-old Story of Stourbidge Fair" by Honor Ridout. Lets go out into the sunshine again to see what medieval revelry is afoot.

A band had assembled by the chapel wall. For those not familiar with the instruments of merrie musicke, that contraption on the left is a hurdy-gurdy. It's played by means of a handle which turns a wheel which makes contact with strings when the keys are depressed - like a sort of mechanical violin. It also has drone strings which make a sustained low note. An interesting sound.

Not only music but dancers too, the Capriol Mediaeval Dancers from Cambridge.

Then the audience were invited to join in for a final Farandole....

A friendly and informative sunny afternoon - and much better than slogging around the retail park.


Take care.