Keys To The Countryside

The season for summer walks is drawing to a close. Soon walking will require a jacket and maybe my waterproof boots, I may carry a flask instead of my water bottle and I'll spend a little more time studying the weather forecasts before I set out. The last time I was in Arkesden in north-west Essex it was that time of year; I trudged through muddy fields and ended up sheltering from a sudden downpour in the village church. I said I'd come back in summer and this week was possibly my last chance in 2018 to do so.

I'll have some photos of quaint thatched cottages to show you in future posts but for now lets gently climb the footpath, which doubles as a farm track, away from the village and out into the fields.

Harvest is over in these parts and the fields are being ploughed and harrowed ready for next year. In places that included ploughing up the footpath as I found to my cost later in the day. You're still within your rights to proceed along the line of the path but the going underfoot is less than perfect and you're always a little uncertain that you're on the correct bearing.  

The church at Wicken Bonhunt is in a delightful setting, especially in the morning sunshine. I almost wish that I hadn't tried to find out more. You see, the church here once had a round tower which, had it survived, would have been very unusual as far west as this. However in the nineteenth century the vicar decided to more or less destroy the old church and rebuild it according to his own design. To make matters worse the tower he built became unsafe and had to be replaced.

The small village did not detain me over long and the path led across the fields towards the much bigger village of Clavering.

We'll have a look inside the church another day. It's a large church for this area and sits in a very large churchyard which stands next to a grassy mound and a deep moat (dry today) which is all that remains of the castle which once stood here. It may be the site of Robert Fitz Wymarc's castle which was mentioned in 1052.

The residents of the village were friendly, though rather bothered by a large number of flies!

The heart of this now large village still has many picturesque corners.

This was the site of a ford and the adjacent cottage is known as the Ford Keeper's Cottage. It's reputed to be the smallest house in Essex.

We took our leave of Clavering by an old sunken road which led us up into the fields once again. Here I indulged in two of the unique pleasures of a late summer walk - eating wild blackberries and stretching out on a stubble field and gazing up into the overhanging branches - before continuing the walk.

Eventually the church at Arkesden appeared above the thatched roofs of the cottages.

Take care.

Cars In Church

I'm not really a "car person" but I do like to see old cars from time to time. I like the design of some of them. Others have interesting histories. Sometimes there are models that I remember from my youth which bring back memories. And the skill and dedication of the people who restore these machines is a source of wonder.

One of the exhibits on display in the village churchyard on Sunday was this Bristol 401. The Bristol company started off building trams but grew through building planes in each world war. After WWI they started making cars to occupy their workforce and they adopted the same plan after the Second World War. The cars were very much based on pre-war BMW designs, but modified by using the wind-tunnel technology used for their planes. It's streamlined shape made it a very efficient and speedy machine.

Sometime around 1960 one of my uncles rolled up alongside our back gate in a strange little car, the first Mini I'd ever seen. The car went on to become one of the symbols of "swingin' London" of the 60s. Sir Alec Issigonis must surely be the only car designer to have become a household name. Interestingly the Austin version of the car, which was known as the Austin 7, was written AUSTIN SE7EN in early publicity, so dodgy typography is not an invention of the hip-hop generation.

Pride of place must go to this mighty Rolls Royce Phantom which was made for the Maharana of Udaipur in 1927.

It's appropriately adorned with a pith helmet and big game rifles.

This is a Greeves motorbike from 1965. The firm were famous in the early 1960s for their moto-cross bikes. Moto-cross, racing motorbikes over a rough and often muddy circuit, was a very popular sport around here in those days and was shown on TV. For a few years every young boy furiously pedalling his stripped down bicycle over rough ground thought he was the unbeatable Dave Bickers on his Greeves. 

Inside the church there were model railway set-ups and, just as importantly cups of tea and coffee cake.

Back outside again to admire the "cockpit view" from this 1932 Lagonda which competed in the 1933 Monte Carlo Rally, coming in 33rd, but winning its class.

A Daimler sports car from 1960.

To quote directly from the programme:

Our car is a Pembleton Brooklands, home build, finished in 2014. Has a Pembleton chassis, Citroen 2cv running gear, Vauxhall Astra steering column and is powered by an 800cc O.H.V. BMW motorcycle flat twin engine. The body we made ourselves from sheet alloy. Instruments are from the donor motorcycle. Copper cowl made from a hot water tank. The project took approximately 6 years due to my husband being registered blind with only 15 percent vision.

This 1928 Chevrolet has quite a story too, the chassis and engine having been manufactured in America, exported to Australia where the bodywork was completed by Holden, and now, 90 years later, sitting in a sunny churchyard in England.

This Wolseley was first purchased for £236 in Reading on 2nd of September 1936. This is therefore its 82nd birthday portrait.

I think most, if not all, of these were various models of MG. 

And then it was time to wander home. I'm sure there'll be another show next year.


Take care.

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.

Excuses To Visit The Chequers

The village of Eriswell would be a nice quiet, out-of-the-way place if it were not being sandwiched between RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath air bases and having a busy road running through it! But alongside that road stands a quaint little pub, The Chequers, which does very tasty food as my brother and I discovered a few months ago. Now what reason can we find to drive over there again....?

Well, we could go for a walk at the RSPB bird reserve at Lakenheath. It's probably the worst time of year for looking for birds - young all raised, birds hiding away while moulting, not many migrants passing through just yet - but there's plenty of walking to be done on this extensive reserve and it's a fine sunny morning.

We started off walking alongside the River Little Ouse with its wide floodplains. A sign told us there was a bull grazing here, but as he had numerous 'wives' accompanying him he clearly had no energy to waste on us. He lifted his enormous head and watched us pass by.

This large site used to be owned by Bryant & May who used it to grow poplar trees which they planned to make into matches back in the days before cheap disposable cigarette lighters. There are still big plantations of the trees here and once-upon-a-time-a-long-time-ago the rare Golden Oriole used to nest here and I actually managed to spot one once. For a bird which is bright yellow they are infuriatingly difficult to spot.

Joist Fen has been turned into a huge reedbed which now hosts a different star species as Cranes now nest here, part of the very small number of these birds that have taken up residence in East Anglia. Bitterns nest here too and a few months ago we visited and had seven sightings of these elusive birds.

We also stopped off for a while at the Mere Hide where last time we'd seen Bearded Tits in flight and Hobbies catching dragonflies. Today though there wasn't a bird in sight here though we did see a Kingfisher not too far away.

The skies however were putting on quite a show as the clouds slowly built up during the morning.

Then it was time to withdraw to The Chequers for our lunch - tasty as ever.

Before returning home we wandered down to the village to see the church. Unfortunately the building was locked but we found something interesting in the churchyard. (Or rather my brother spotted it after I'd walked past it twice without noticing it!)

IN MEMORY OF

JAMES PAUL

A NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN

HE WAS BROUGHT TO GREAT BRITAIN

AND EDUCATED AT THE EXPENSE

OF THE NEW ENGLAND COMPANY

AND APPRENTICED TO

THOS. HOUGHTON

CARPENTER AND BUILDER

HE DIED NOV. 15. 1820

AGED 16 YEARS

THIS IS A REPLACEMENT HEADSTONE 1988

The New England Company was a charity set up by Oliver Cromwell's government to spread "the Gospel of Christ unto and amongst the heathen natives in or near New England and parts adjacent in America" and is in existence to this day. In 1649 it purchased the Manor of Eriswell and used the profits from the rents to pay for its missionary work. Many of the cottages in the village still bear the initials NEC.

Later the estate was bought for the Maharajah Duleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Sikh empire. He came to Britain at the age of ten and was raised as an English country gentleman. He soon acquired the neighbouring Elveden estate too and at one time everyone in Eriswell, apart from the vicar and the publican, worked for the Maharajah.

Take care.

More Time In Hertford

According to the clock it's still not even mid day so there's time to explore a little more of the town of Hertford which we began in the previous post.

Looking down Fore Street with the eighteenth century Salisbury Arms Hotel on the right.

Opposite The Salisbury Arms, which has fine decorative plaster-work itself, stands this even more elaborately ornamented building. They call this kind of decoration "pargetting" and you see lots of it in East Anglia, though mostly on smaller buildings than this.

Splendid carved stone on the bank set off by a colourful floral display.

More flowers outside some half-timbered and jettied shop-fronts.

This handsome fellow is Samuel Stone, a Puritan preacher, who, along with his friend Thomas Hooker, founded Hartford, Connecticutt. Stone was born in Hertford, England, in 1602. 

He's not the only famous person to have connections with the town: the naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who arrived at the same conclusions as Charles Darwin at much the same time, lived here, as did Capt W E Johns, who wrote the Biggles stories. The radical politician John Wilkes came from Hertford. The band Deep Purple were formed in Hertford in 1968. And Rupert Grint of "Harry Potter" fame went to school here.

Barges and houseboats line the River Lea, very close to the town centre despite its very rural appearance.

This is Yeomanry House, reckoned by many to be the finest house in the town. It used to be known as Wisteria House, but that name was understandably thought unsuitable when it was taken over by the army in 1910. The Hertfordshire Yeomanry were mobilised here before leaving for Gallipoli. It is still used by the Army Reserve today.

More fine buildings nearer the centre of town. I think that's the Post Office.

Elsewhere in town there are rather more mundane facilities for posting your letters.

This is the grand entrance to the former Christ's Hospital School. The school was founded as long ago as 1552 and the word "hospital" in this case just meant a boarding school, though one for fatherless children or those from poor families. This site was purchased in 1682 after many of the children had been billeted in the area since the original school was damaged in the Great Fire of London. It served as a girls' school till 1985. It was familiarly known as the Bluecoat School from the uniform they wore.

Look hard enough and you can usually turn up some kind of mad architectural ideas in most English towns and Hertford is no exception. The colourful building above is an example of the Egyptian architectural style which briefly flourished in England in the early nineteenth century.

But is there any architecture as sublime as leafy trees overarching a quiet stream?

Take care.