Cool Stuff

A collection of photos salvaged while in the process of clearing out a lot of unwanted pictures from my hard drive.

I've got a bike

You can ride it if you like

It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things to make it look good

I'd give it to you if I could

But I borrowed it

....so sang the late Mr Syd Barrett, of the Pink Floyd popular music ensemble, and at one time if you saw a hand-painted bike like this on the streets of Cambridge it might well have belonged to the man himself, as he lived out most of his life in troubled obscurity in his home city. This one though was spotted in the cycle racks of Peterhouse when I was supposed to be photographing the buildings and gardens.

This is the elegant, sun-lit conservatory of Abbot's Hall, which is part of the Museum of East Anglian Life at Stowmarket. Somehow it didn't fit in when I was showing you the old barns and rusty tractors.

And speaking of "rusty"......a very unusual but rather appealing pub sign spotted while out on a walk in Hertfordshire.

And this is for no other reason than that I've always wanted one. Not just a squeezebox but a Dino Baffetti one. They're not actually "top of the range" and they don't do anything that I can't do on my trusty old melodeon, which is why I can't justify owning one. But there's something about the black and red, and that white diamond on the bellows, that's pretty cool. "Well cool" as the modern idiom would have it.

And pictures with a-frame-within-the-frame are also rather stylish to my eye. This one was spotted on a wet autumn day last year. A few weeks time and we'll be back to that season once more.

As near to US design as British cars ever got, the Humber Super Snipe, if I'm not mistaken. A cool car in its day.

As for me I'm still caring for my mother and she's doing OK.

Take care.

Certain Signs

Perhaps we should start with this sign....

....believe it or not you could once get milk from Bulls, from Bulls Dairies in Cambridge's Hills Road anyway. I used to see this sign as I made my unhurried way to school, though I think the dairy itself had already disappeared even back then. I'm told that at one time cows used to be walked from Coe Fen, where they grazed, through the residential streets and up to the dairy for milking. When the dairy ceased trading the building was still owned by the Bull family, who were rightly proud of their history, and continued to look after their enchanting sign and have it regularly repainted.

I can remember this old sign being repainted too. I'm not sure when that was, but it certainly wasn't 24th March 1857!

Recently this fine old signage has been given a lick of paint before it faded into oblivion. And a good deal of fuss it caused too. You see, the restorer took the opportunity to slightly re-size the sign to allow for building alterations which had partly obscured it. And that has opened a huge debate about whether it's right and proper to spruce up our heritage and even improve upon it. The city council have plans to restore many of the painted wall signs and have published a feasibility study and costings. 

They even have plans to re-instate signs like the one above - not just the Ernest A. Guest bit but also the large area of wall above it which allegedly once bore an advertisement. Apparently it's on some old photographs so it should be possible to reconstruct it. 

If these signs are not saved now they'll surely soon disappear. I went out with my camera to capture some "old friends", signs which I was sure were still clear to see, only to find that they've already been painted over.

I was glad however to see the charmingly-worded Kingston Arms sign is still there, though I don't know how old it actually is. Thomas Kingston, from whom both the pub and the street take their name, was known as Miser Kingston and died in 1902 at the age of 96. He had a long grey beard, dressed shabbily and usually wore slippers rather than shoes. Occasionally he was seen in boots, but never two of the same pair! He made his money from clever investments and land deals, and despite his nickname he bequeathed huge sums to the church.

I rather hope that someone will see fit to include some of the old wall-painted street signs, like these on opposite sides of Lensfield Road, in the restoration project.

I wonder if the old "Hot Numbers" record store sign will survive. The name certainly has, for there's a coffee bar called "Hot Numbers" in the old Dales Brewery building in Gwydir Street, which itself has a very fine sign in the form of an old and rather ornate clock.

And now it's time to "sign off"...


Take care.

Welcome To Crane-bridge!

Just in case anyone reading this blog thinks that Cambridge is all cobbled alleys; or that the University consists entirely of grand stone buildings; or that everyone studies Latin, Greek or ancient history; or indeed that it always rains in England, then they should study the picture above. 

It shows the guided busway and pedestrian/cycle path leading towards Addenbrooke's Hospital on the outskirts of Cambridge. As well as being Cambridge University's teaching hospital it's also the site of the Rosie Maternity Hospital and innumerable laboratories and research facilities. The cranes in the top picture are engaged in building AstraZeneca's new UK headquarters and the new Papworth Heart Hospital is also under construction nearby. Below are the new labs of the Medical Research Council.

Unfortunately I was not visiting merely to admire the architecture or sheer scale of the place but to visit my mother in Bed 3, Bay C, Ward C4. The good news is that she's now home again but still needing a lot of help and care, so posts on this blog might not be so full or frequent for a while.

Take care.

Four Delights

sipping from a purple glass

tulips aflame

the dance of summer rains

sparkles

Take care.

On The Prowl In Wolferton

We recently had a look at Dersingham Bog Nature Reserve and popped in to the Royal Railway Station at Wolferton, which is just next door to the Bog. The next post was going to be Wolferton itself but somehow I digressed to other things and the photos of the village remained unpublished.

  

I didn't take that many pictures, because Wolferton is not a very big place. The first house you see as you enter the village is of rather spooky Gothic design and the sign depicts someone being attacked by a wolf which is the size of an average horse! I expect there's a local legend explaining how the place got its name, but probably the story post-dates the actual name by several centuries.

The houses are all very neat, tidy and well-maintained, for this is an estate village, serving the royal estate at Sandringham. It has a social club but no pub, shop or school. It does however have a horse-racing stud farm and that rarest of all survivals - a working telephone kiosk! And one with planters for flowers too.

We are situated on the outcrop of that distinctive rock known as carrstone, a type of iron-rich sandstone with all the appearance of gingerbread. It's not great as a building stone but it's nevertheless much-used wherever it occurs, in a belt running southwards fro Hunstanton cliffs; local builders everywhere used whatever materials were close to hand.

In order to make decent corners red brick was often utilised; the "almost-but-not-quite-matching" tones of the two building materials causing outrage to the aesthetic sensibilities of some folks, including the landscape writer Jacquetta Hawkes. Personally I wouldn't have found anything jarring in the juxta-position if I hadn't had it pointed out to me.

The Prince Of Wales's feathers are featured on the wall of this house, so presumably he had it built for his estate workers. The AEA stands for Albert Edward (he became King Edward VII on the death of his mother, Queen Victoria) and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark.

The road to Wolferton leads nowhere else, it just loops around and comes back on itself. At the furthest extremity of the loop are views out towards The Wash which would excite any members of the Flat Earth Society!

Looping around past hedgerows thick with roses...

....we come to the old level-crossing house where the Kings Lynn to Hunstanton branch line crossed the road just prior to arriving at the Royal Station.

Tucked away down this corner of the village is the parish church which, though by no means huge, is bigger than might be expected in what is no more than a straggle of houses on a road to nowhere.

A man was tending the graveyard when I arrived and I sat on a wall watching incredulously as he managed to balance all his tools, including a power strimmer, on his bicycle before pedalling off down the lane.

Inside, the church seems to have been little influenced by the royal connection, but harks back to an earlier time, before Queen Victoria purchased Sandringham for her dashing son. Though perhaps this Germanic-looking light-fitting in the porch has a whiff of the Saxe Coburgs about it.

It's a nice enough church inside and there's what looks at first glance to be a medieval "doom" painting on the chancel arch. It may well once have been, but it rather looks as though some well-meaning soul has had a go at re-painting it, not done a very good job, and walked off without finishing it.

We always like a touch of the ghoulish and here are displayed some Early English stone coffins, perhaps from the 12th or 13th century.

Out once more into the sunshine and flowers: life continuing in this isolated corner of Norfolk.

Take care.

On The Bottle?

It's Sunday, so lets visit a church. In this case St Botolph's Church in Cambridge. Saint who? St Botolph - though if you talk to some Cambridge folk you might hear St Bottle's. And the little lane next to it is sometimes called Bottle Lane, rather than Botolph Lane.

And in that little lane stand some interesting old buildings, including No 12, which in the nineteenth century was The Bell, a pub run by Mr Samuel Bowtell in the 1830s, a well-known cricketer in the town.

I can't help wondering if Mr Bowtell's unusual surname is derived from ancestors who lived by St Botolph's. Even if not, then Mr Bottle would be an excellent name for a pub landlord!

But never mind old Samuel, who was St Botolph? 

Botwulf, Botulph, Botulf or Botolph of Thorney was an English abbot and saint who lived sometime around the year 600 AD - and not much more is known about him! He was the patron saint of travellers. 

London had four churches dedicated to St Botolph, standing at Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate and Billingsgate, the last of these burned down during the Great Fire and was never rebuilt but the others survive. You'll notice that all four places contain the element "gate" indicating the old gates of the city. They were churches for travellers to give thanks for a safe arrival or to pray for a safe journey on leaving the city. Cambridge's St Botoph's also stood at the town's edge, on the road to London.

Stepping inside nowadays one might feel moved to give thanks from being safely delivered from the teeming throng of tourists on the Cambridge streets and into the cool, quiet interior of the church. There is some wonderful Victorian church restoration here by the ever-industrious George Bodley, whose work turns up in lots of Cambridge churches and colleges. I can remember a time when all Victorian work was despised by the self-elected guardians of good taste, nowadays its back in fashion once more.

This rather fine font cover is usually described as Laudian, after the troublesome seventeenth century Archbishop William Laud. Laud was nominally a Protestant but favoured elaborate decoration and ceremony which some thought was dangerously close to Catholic ideas. He was autocratic, pompous and outspoken - an explosive mix to have in seventeenth century England. At the height of his success he became Archbishop of Canterbury, but inevitably, perhaps, it ended with him being beheaded on Tower Hill in 1645.

Something more functional and workaday is the old parish chest where important records and papers were kept. The two locks are an insurance against documents getting lost; two keyholders would have to be present to remove or deposit items.

Our ancestors didn't muck about when it came to death. None of your "passed from this life", "went to sleep" or "resting in peace" for them. "Here Lyeth the Body of JOHN BREWER who died on the 21st of November 1706..." and to make things perfectly clear there's a skull an cross-bones as well.

"Nigh to this place (in hopes of a joyfull Resurrection) lyeth ye body of Hannah ye wife of Robt Roberts by whom she had three children, Robert, Ann, and Hannah, and was a Loving wife & an indulgent Mother she departed this life ye 17th day of August in ye year of our Lord 1711"

A little more sentimental with weeping cherubs but still plenty of skulls around.

This seems to be an elaborate arrangement to allow one person to ring the four church bells. The only such set up I've ever seen. Apparently it's called an Ellercombe chiming apparatus and you can see it in operation here. (Amazing what you can find on YouTube if you take the time to look).

Take care.

Scenes From A Summer Saunter

I was planning on going a little further afield, but it was a lovely morning and the temptation to "get out there and get going" was too great to resist. So I opened the back gate and just started walking....

.....past the roses in a cottage garden....past the village primary school standing so quietly and emptily through the summer holidays....past a hopeful "missing cat" notice (do lost cats ever read these things and return home?)

....alongside the little River Mel, sliding along under the green trees....Ducks, Blackbirds and a busy litle Grey Wagtail....

....over a meadow of grazing cattle, staring dully out from their beefy heads full of beefy brains....

now here's a curious thing: a field of wheat, but not like the wheat we grew when I was working on a farm. I remember reading somewhere that the earliest forms of wheat had this "bearded" sort of look. I think the proper name for these bristles is awns, though we always called the ones which grew on barley barley ails.

....beside a hedgerow thick with the beautiful berries of the Guelder Rose....we used to call these "cranberries", though they're not.....

....an overgrown footpath.....yes, it goes straight through there! Luckily there were no nettles and very few brambles....

Harvest Skies - wispy cirrus clouds that would have old Bert confidently predicting "Rain on the way", especially towards the end of harvest when we all wanted an evening off work....

....a patch of cranesbill, backlit by the blazing sunshine.....

....another unfamiliar crop to me. How things move on in the seemingly unchanging English countryside! I think this may be grown for birdseed and might be called "canary grass", though I've never seen a field of it before.....

......beside the River Shep, another of the tiny chalk streams which thread their way through our local patch.....

.....possibly the best sight in farming - a cleared field at harvest time.....

....not everyone was out for a walk; this fine old vintage car passed me in the village of Foxton.

Walker's Log:
    Start: My back door, Meldreth 06.50
    End: Foxton 11.25
    Distance walked:  10.5 miles (17 Km)
    Notable birds: Grey Wagtail, Yellowhammmer, Swallow, House Martin, Swift, Buzzard, Kestrel, Green Woodpecker 
    Mammals: Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits
    Wild flowers: lots of common ones, nothing unusual  
    Churches: Meldreth, Shepreth, Fowlmere, Foxton
    People with dogs: 1
    People enjoying a walk: 2 adults, 2 children
    Cyclists: 2, both under ten years of age.
    Horse riders: 0