Market Harborough, Leicestershire

 

Market Harborough is a town in the south-east corner of Leicestershire, just inside the border with Northamptonshire. It has a population of 23,000.

The town was founded around 1170 as one of the new towns established by King Henry II, and a market has been held here since 1204. A cattle market was held in The Square (which is actually a triangle!) until 1903, when it was moved to Springfield Street.

High Street leads away from The Square, being lined with a number of elegant Georgian houses, most of which have been converted to shops. Two buildings of note in High Street are the Parish Church of St Dionysius and the old Grammar School.

The church, built of ironstone, dates from the 14^th century. The spire, which rises to 161 feet above the ground, is a particularly fine example of a “broach spire”, namely one that has eight triangular faces that rise from a square base atop a tower. The church is also unusual, for a parish church, both for its dedication to St Dionysius and for not having a churchyard.

Market Harborough is close to the Civil War battlefield of Naseby, where, on 14^th June 1645, King Charles I was decisively beaten by the Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell. Charles held a council of war at Market Harborough before the battle, but after his defeat Cromwell occupied the town and announced his victory from the Bell Inn. The church was used to hold 4,500 Royalist prisoners overnight.

The timber-framed Grammar School was built in 1614. It stands on sturdy posts with an open ground floor, which served as a butter market. The school was the gift of Robert Smyth, who was born poor but journeyed to London to seek his fortune and managed so to do. One can still see the Biblical quotations, carved into the arches supporting the upper floor, that Smyth insisted on having made.

The building ceased to be a school in 1892 and it is now used as an exhibition centre.

Other notable buildings in the town include Brooke House, which was built in 1708, and Catherwood House (in The Square) which was built in the Gothic style in 1876 and was lived in at one time by Sir William Bragg (1862-1942) who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915 for his work on X-ray crystallography.

 © John Welford

 

 

Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire

 

Melton Mowbray is a town with a population of around 25,500, lying some 15 miles north-east of Leicester in the County of Leicestershire. It was formerly known as a centre for fox-hunting and also as the home of the Melton Mowbray pork pie, as well as being one of the towns where Stilton cheese is made. Fox-hunting is now banned in the UK, but pork pies and cheese are definitely legal and still very popular products of the area.

It is said that Melton Mowbray is the town that gave rise to the saying “painting the town red”. The story goes that in 1837 the eccentric Marquis of Waterford and his friends rampaged through the streets of the town after a day’s fox-hunting, armed with pots of red paint with which they daubed several of the town’s stone buildings, as well as an unfortunate lock-keeper.

Burton Street leads into the town from the River Eye, which changes its name to the Wreake after leaving the town. On this street may be found the Harboro Hotel, the Georgian front of which has changed little since it was one of the town’s main coaching inns.

Also on Burton Street is Anne of Cleves’ House, which was built in 1384 and given by King Henry VIII to his fourth wife after he divorced her in 1540. However, there is no evidence that she ever lived there.

The Bede Houses, on the opposite side of the street from Anne of Cleves’ House, date from 1640 and were founded by a wealthy townsman who endowed the houses for six elderly men and, in the 18^th century, room was made to accommodate six elderly women as well.

At the top of the street stands the gracious parish church of St Mary. It was built between 1170 and 1532, the oldest part of the church being the lower section of the 100-foot high tower. Inside, the church has a set of pillars and arches down each side of the transepts – a feature it shares with only three other English parish churches – and each transept has a rare brass candelabra dating from 1746. The church has a wealth of stained glass, most of which is Victorian, but some of it dates from the 14^th century.

A previous organist and choirmaster of the church was the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent (1895-1967), who officiated here between 1914 and 1924.

Many people come to Melton Mowbray to sample and buy its famous pork pies, which were first made here in 1831. The pies are handmade according to a particular method for which the town claims the patent - it is illegal to make and sell a Melton Mowbray pork pie other than in Melton Mowbray!

Stilton cheeses also have protected status, as they are not allowed to be made outside the counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, although they take their name from a village in Cambridgeshire! Melton Mowbray is one of the centres for its manufacture.

© John Welford

Places of worship in Norfolk

 

Norfolk is a large county that contains one modestly-sized city (Norwich), a port town (Great Yarmouth), a number of small seaside resorts (e.g. Cromer and Sheringham), a scattering of market towns (e.g. Kings Lynn and East Dereham), and a huge number of small villages that bear witness to the main industry of the county, which is agriculture of the rich soils that cover much of the terrain.

 Virtually every village has a parish church, and, given the nature of Norfolk’s gently undulating topography, it is the churches that one is aware of first on approaching these villages along the miles of roads and lanes that weave through the countryside. Many of these churches are built from local flint and feature a square tower without a spire, although not every church follows this pattern; there is a significant number of churches with round towers, for example.

 Given that many of these churches, both in villages and towns, date from medieval times, and there are hundreds of them to choose from, any selection of places of worship of historical interest is going to be partial, and a short article cannot hope to do justice to the riches on offer. There are, however, two places in Norfolk that could not possibly be left off any list, namely Norwich Cathedral and Walsingham Shrine. There are also two well-preserved monastic sites that should not be missed.

Norwich Cathedral

The see of Norwich was created by the Normans, and much of what you can see of the Cathedral today, particularly at the lower levels, is the original stonework placed here from 1094. However, various disasters in later years, including the 1463 collapse of the original wooden spire into the nave after being struck by lightning, mean that the cathedral has undergone many changes over time, most of which have been to its advantage. The 15^th century rebuilding was on a grand scale, including a magnificent vaulted stone ceiling that features hundreds of carved stone bosses at the junction points of the vault ribs; there are more than 1,000 in total if the vaulted cloisters are included.

The spire was rebuilt in stone in the 1490s on top of the Norman tower, part of which was re-constructed to exactly the same design as the original. At 315 feet in height the spire is the second tallest in England after that of Salisbury Cathedral.

 

Walsingham Shrine

In medieval times there were three main religious sites in England to which pilgrims flocked in their thousands, namely Canterbury, Bury St Edmunds and Little Walsingham. Although the first two were marked by massive cathedrals, the focus of attention at Little Walsingham (a few miles inland from Wells on the north Norfolk coast) was a simple building that had been erected as a supposed replica of Christ’s childhood home at Nazareth.

The original shrine dated from 1061 (shortly before the Norman Conquest) when the lady of the manor had a vision of the Virgin Mary and was inspired to build the “Santa Casa” (“Holy House”). The fame of the shrine grew, and even kings made the pilgrimage to Walsingham, walking the last mile barefoot.

The last king to make the pilgrimage was Henry VIII in 1511, but he included Walsingham on his list of monastic sites to be destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries when he broke with Rome in the 1530s.

The shrine was only restored in the 1930s, after a high-church Anglican priest, Alfred Hope Patten, had organised a pilgrimage in 1922. A new Santa Casa was built to house a statue of the Virgin Mary and this now forms the heart of the Anglican Shrine.

The Roman Catholics also recognise Walsingham as a place of pilgrimage, their shrine being based on the 14^th century Slipper Chapel which also features a statue of Mary that is based on the medieval image of Our Lady of Walsingham.

A number of hostels and other facilities have been built to cater for pilgrims and visitors, although these do not detract from the generally peaceful atmosphere of the place. The gardens around the shrines provide a welcome respite on a fine day.

Large-scale pilgrimages are organised every year, and it has become a regular custom for these to feature visits to both shrines. However, anyone can visit Walsingham on a private basis, even taking advantage of a narrow-gauge steam railway that runs from Wells-next-the Sea (summer months only).

Binham Priory

This is not far from Walsingham, and is an excellent example of a Benedictine priory, especially as part of it is still in use; the nave of the priory church survived the Dissolution as the parish church of the local community, and did not therefore suffer the ruination of the rest of the site. The church, dating from the 13^th century, is highly impressive, but when one imagines what the whole priory would have looked like in its heyday it shows just how rich these institutions were, and why they excited the jealousy of King Henry VIII!

As well as the cathedral-like interior the church has several features of interest for the visitor. The stone font depicts scenes representing the seven sacraments and the wooden carvings on the bench ends and misericords are worth more than a passing glance.

However, it is the overpainted rood screen panels that are of greatest interest for most people, not only for the images that can be seen on them but for the history that they represent. It was common in medieval times for screen panels to be paid for by donors, and for images to painted on the panels as suggested by the donors. At Binham it looks as though sixteen separate images were painted, most of these being of saints. However, at the Reformation, particularly after the accession of Edward VI, such images were regarded as idolatrous and orders were given for them to be whitewashed over. Under Queen Elizabeth I it was common for Biblical texts to be inscribed on the whitewash, as church interiors had become very bland and uninspiring.

At Binham these processes can be traced very clearly because, over the years, the whitewash has started to wear away and a number of the original paintings can be seen, still with the texts written over them. The panels are now preserved under glass.

Castle Acre Priory

Founded in 1090, this large Cluniac priory, not far from Binham and Walsingham, copied its French original in its love of architectural decoration, such as the intersecting round arches to be seen on the west front of the priory church.

The west range at Castle Acre is still virtually complete. The prior’s lodging includes a chamber that was revamped in Tudor times for one of its last inhabitants, including a painted ceiling and two massive oak chests which can still be seen.

Among the buildings in a reasonable state of preservation is a two-storey toilet block with spaces for 24 monks. A herb garden has been created to represent what the monks would have used for medicinal and culinary purposes.

Other religious sites in Norfolk

Another Cluniac foundation, in south-west Norfolk, is Thetford Priory, which is less well preserved than Castle Acre, although the 14^th-century gatehouse is almost complete. Visitors should also see the ruins of the 14^th century Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Thetford, the only surviving example in England of a church of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre. 

St Olave’s Priory, near Great Yarmouth, was a small Augustinian priory. Visitors can see the complete 14^th-century brick-vaulted refectory undercroft.

As mentioned above, Norfolk is full of interesting smaller churches. One that is well worth a visit is at Cley-next-the Sea, although the sea is now some way off. The name is a clue as to why St Margaret’s Church is so big and splendid for such a tiny village; at one time Cley was a major port for exporting wool, and in the 1320s there were extravagant plans for rebuilding the older, more modest church, to accommodate the growing local population. However, the work had not been finished when the Black Death arrived in the 1340s, hence the splendid nave is not matched by the much smaller chancel and squat tower.

Oxborough Church, near Downham Market, is remarkable for the fact that it is a 14th century building that was partially destroyed when the tower collapsed in 1948. A new wall was built to preserve the chancel that now acts as the parish church while the walls of the nave remain roofless.

Another parish church that is much visited is that of All Saints, Burnham Thorpe. This was the village where Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was born in 1758; however, despite the connection there is not much to be seen in the church that has a Nelson connection. There is a Nelson bust and the lectern was made from timbers taken from HMS Victory, which was Nelson’s flagship. These relics, plus a small exhibition devoted to Nelson’s life and times, hardly made the detour to this remote village worth the journey.

© John Welford

St Govan's Chapel, Pembrokeshire, Wales

 

St Govan’s Chapel is a tiny stone building (20 x 12 feet, 6.1 m × 3.7 m) perched in a ravine in the cliffs overlooking the sea at St Govan’s Head, Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is believed to date from the 5^th century.

Nobody is quite sure who St Govan was. Some people believe that he was a disciple of St David, while others that he was a thief who became a convert. There are also theories that he was actually a woman who was the wife of a 5th century chief, and even that he was King Arthur’s knight Sir Gawain who spent the rest of his life as a hermit after Arthur’s death.

There are several legends and strange beliefs associated with the chapel. One of them concerns the stone-cut staircase that leads down to the chapel – this is that the number of steps is different depending on whether you are going up them or down!

Inside the chapel there is a vertical cleft in the rock which, according to legend, first miraculously opened to conceal St Govan from his enemies. The rock closed behind him and did not reopen until the danger had passed. A wish made while standing in the cleft and facing the wall will be granted provided that you do not change your mind before turning round.

Just below the chapel is St Govan’s healing well and the red clay in the cliffs has been credited with the power to heal sore eyes.

Whether or not one believes any of the stories associated with the chapel it is well worth a visit for a view of the dramatic limestone cliffs and the sea crashing against them at their base.

© John Welford

Chiswick House, London

 

Built by 3rd Earl of Burlington in 1725-9, Chiswick House is a magnificent villa modelled on Palladio’s villa rotunda at Vicenza in Italy. It is situated in West London and surrounded by urban areas, but was originally designed as a country villa.

The perfectly formed neo-classical exterior is complemented by spectacular plaster ceilings by William Kent.

The Earl did not actually live in Chiswick House, but in an adjacent Jacobean mansion (demolished in 1758), using the Villa for displaying his works of art and entertaining his friends, who included poets Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, and the composer George Frideric Handel.

The Villa was inherited in 1753 by the fourth Duke of Devonshire and in 1788 the fifth Duke commissioned James Wyatt to add wings to the north and south. These were demolished in 1952.

In 1892 the eighth Duke moved to Chatsworth in Derbyshire and the house became a private mental home.

In 1928 it was bought by Middlesex County Council and is now in the care of English Heritage.

The gardens and grounds, which lead down to the River Thames, were originally adorned with a whole host of follies, statues and other additions. Many of these have disappeared over the years, but what remains include an Ionic temple, a Doric column, statues of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero, two obelisks, a cascade, an avenue of urns and sphinxes, a rustic house, a deer house, a bridge built by James Wyatt in 1788, and a large conservatory attributed to Joseph Paxton.

© John Welford

Herm, Channel Islands

 

Herm is one of the smaller Channel Islands, being just over a mile long from north to south and about half a mile across at its widest point. It lies to the east of Guernsey, from where it can be reached via a 20 minute ferry crossing.

The island has been occupied for at least 5,000 years, as is evidenced by a large number of Neolithic tombs and artefacts such as tools and weapons. It is known that Roman traders visited the island about 2,000 years ago.

During the 6^th century, Herm was a place of meditation for monks from Jersey and Sark, who built a small chapel here. By the 10^th century, Herm was ruled by the Dukes of Normandy and eventually came under the control of the Abbey of Mont St Michel. From 1204 Herm, along with the rest of the Channel Islands, came under the control of the English crown.

In the 19^th century, granite quarries were established on the island and a large community infrastructure was established to support the 400 or so quarrymen and their families. Until the 1880s, Herm granite was very much in demand, and it was exported to England for use in the building of roads and bridges. However, the quarries later fell into disuse.

During World War II, Herm, along with the rest of the Channel Islands, was occupied by German forces. It was liberated in 1945, and from 1949 it was leased to the Wood family, who now manage Herm and seek to preserve the island’s beauty while improving facilities for visitors, of whom thousands visit every year.

Despite its small size, Herm has a variety of natural habitats, including sand dunes, maritime Heath, grassland and woodland, as well as sandy beaches, rock pools and steep granite cliffs.

Herm is very popular with bird lovers. Its resident birds include robins, wrens, blackbirds, thrushes, kestrels and long-eared owls, as well as seabirds. It is also visited by many migrants on their passage from southern Europe and North Africa towards the British Isles in the spring. These include whitethroats, willow warblers and whinchats.

Herm’s many natural habitats support over 450 different plant species. During summer the island is ablaze with bright yellow gorse and clifftop flowers such as sea and red campion, heather and foxglove. The flat northern part of the island is covered in rockrose and many other tiny flowers, while the sand dunes that fringe the shoreline have been planted with marram grass in an attempt to halt erosion.

Herm is traffic-free, apart from a few farm tractors. Walkers can enjoy seeing the island from the tracks that cross the island from north to south and east to west, and the path, about four miles long, that goes round the entire coast.

Visitors can stay at the White House Hotel on the island, or in one of the self-catering cottages and apartments. There is also a campsite.

© John Welford

The Oaks of Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire

 

Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire is considerably smaller than it once was. The National Nature Reserve, which attracts around 350,000 visitors a year, is around 1,000 acres in size, whereas the original Forest occupied much of the county of Nottinghamshire at the time of Domesday Book in 1086.

One feature that makes the Forest particularly attractive is the preponderance of magnificent oak trees, many of which are extremely old. As one walks through the Forest on the well-maintained tracks and paths, it is impossible not to notice a number of carcasses of very old trees that must once have been absolutely massive. There are also many younger oak trees to be seen, at various stages of maturity, as well as other species.

What one can see today is evidence of how the Forest was managed in past centuries. During the heyday of Britain’s colonial expansion, and her dominance of the seas from the time of Queen Elizabeth I onwards, there was a huge demand for large wooden ships, which were built from English oak. Sherwood Forest supplied a considerable amount of timber for this purpose, as did other English woodlands.

Oak trees are naturally long-lived, maturing over hundreds of years. Some may even live for up to 1,000 years. Foresters seeking oak trees to harvest for timber would look for trees that were neither too old nor too young and not misshapen. That means that many trees in a natural woodland such as Sherwood Forest would not be suitable and would therefore be left.

The rejected trees that were too young to harvest in, say, the 18^th century are fully mature today. The older and misshapen trees have since reached the ends of their natural lives and have formed the carcasses that can today be seen dotted around the Forest. It is clear from some of the dead trees, which are twisted into the most extraordinary shapes, that they would never have been suitable for providing timber for Nelson’s Navy.

The gaps left by the harvested oaks have been filled by later growth, not only of oak trees but also other native species such as beech, birch and ash.

 

The Major Oak

One tree that visitors flock to see is a massive oak that could be as old as 1,000 years, although an age of around 800 years is probably more likely. Although it is “major” in the commonly accepted meaning of that word, having a girth of 33 feet (10 metres), that is not why it is so called. It owes that adjective to Major Hayman Rooke, who wrote a description of it in 1790.

The Major Oak (see photo above) is popularly associated with the legend of Robin Hood, who was supposed to have sheltered beneath it, along with his merry men, during their sojourn in the Forest while hiding from the Sheriff of Nottingham during the last years of the 12^th century. The timing would only be correct if the tree is indeed 1,000 years old. If the younger estimates are closer to the mark, the major oak might only have been a sapling, or even an acorn, at the time.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the Major Oak has certainly been revered for a very long time. The tree would almost certainly have collapsed and become yet another forest carcass had the Victorians not propped up its lower branches with the scaffolding poles one can see today.

It has been suggested that the Major Oak is actually three trees growing together. It is not uncommon for oak saplings to fuse together, and that could be one reason why the tree was never felled for timber. It might have been thought that the wood lacked internal strength as a result of its structure.

Whatever the reason for its survival, the Major Oak is definitely worth seeing!

© John Welford

 

Cleopatra's Needle, Victoria Embankment, London

 

Visitors to London, walking along the Victoria Embankment of the River Thames, might be surprised to see a genuine Egyptian obelisk standing about halfway between the Waterloo and Hungerford bridges. It has been there since 1878, although it underwent a lengthy and tortuous journey before it arrived at its current destination.

The Needle is nearly 60 feet high and weighs about 186 tons. It was cut from the quarries of Aswan in Upper Egypt. In about 1475 BC it was transported down the Nile to be erected at Heliopolis and was carved with dedications to various gods and symbols representing Pharaoh Tethmosis III. it was later moved to Alexandria.

The connection with Queen Cleopatra is a tenuous and possibly fictitious one. One tradition supposes that it was carved with Cleopatra’s name as a memorial to the son whom Julius Caesar had by Cleopatra, but there is no real evidence for this.

The obelisk stood at Alexandria for many years until it toppled over into the sand. Later Egyptians had little idea what to do with it until the Turkish viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, presented it to the British in 1819. The question then was how to transport it to London?

It was not until 1877 that Gen Sir James Alexander suggested to John Dixon, an English engineer living in Alexandria, that he might turn his attention to the problem. Helped by an enormous £10,000 contribution by Erasmus Wilson, a surgeon, Dixon built a cylindrical iron pontoon to contain the obelisk which would then be towed all the way to London.

The venture nearly foundered during a gale in the Bay of Biscay, off the French coast, which cost the lives of six seamen. However, the obelisk was able to continue its journey and eventually reached London in January 1878.

The original plan was to erect the obelisk outside the Houses of Parliament, but the site proved to be unstable. It was therefore moved to its present position overlooking the River Thames.

Buried beneath Cleopatra’s Needle is a curious time capsule containing contemporary newspapers, a set of coins, a razor and a box of pins, four Bibles in different languages, a copy of Bradshaw’s railway guide and photographs of 12 of the best-looking Englishwomen of the day!

Visitors might notice a number of indentations on the plinth that supports the Needle. These are the result of bomb damage caused by a Zeppelin raid during World War I.

© John Welford

The three Globe Theatres

There have been three theatres on the south bank of the River Thames in London that have been given the name ‘Globe’, but their histories have been very different, especially when that of Number 3 is set alongside those of Numbers 1 and 2.

The First Globe Theatre

This was built in 1599 by the Burbage brothers. Richard Burbage was a leading actor-manager whose company, known as the Chamberlain’s Men (and they were all men, even those that played the female parts), included a quite useful playwright by the name of William Shakespeare.

Burbage was the first actor to play many of Shakespeare’s greatest roles, including Romeo, Henry V, Othello and Macbeth. It was the stage of the Globe Theatre where these performances took place.

There is some doubt about the exact appearance and dimensions of the original Globe. It is believed to have been 20-sided and shaped like a ring doughnut about 100 feet across, with the centre open to the skies. This was where most of the stage was located as well as standing room for the ‘penny stinkards’. The surrounding structure, in which wealthier patrons had seats in several tiers of boxes, was roofed with thatch, which is why the first Globe had to be succeeded by a second.

It was during a performance of ‘King Henry VIII’ (probably a collaboration between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher) on 29^th June 1613 that a cannon was fired on stage as a special effect but had the unfortunate result of setting fire to the thatch. The theatre, which was built entirely of wood, burnt down to the ground, taking less than an hour to do so.

The Second Globe Theatre

Rebuilding started soon after the site had been cleared and the new Globe opened for business early in 1615, although this time with a tiled roof instead of thatch. William Shakespeare died in 1616, but his plays, and those of other Jacobean and later playwrights, continued to be performed to enthusiastic audiences right through to 1642.

However, the Puritans who ruled the capital in 1642, at the outbreak of the English Civil War, decreed that theatres were dens of vice (they had a point) and must all be destroyed. The site of the Globe was given over to house-building, so it was not possible to rebuild the Globe when theatres were again permitted after the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660.

The Third Globe Theatre

The clock now winds forward 300 years, when the American actor Sam Wanamaker conceived the idea of building a full-scale replica of the Globe as close as possible to the original site.

Sam Wanamaker (born 1919) fell foul of the Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 while he was filming in Great Britain. Having been blacklisted for his previous membership of the American Communist Party, he decided to stay put in Britain which then became his home (and that of his daughter Zoe who was only three years old at the time but would grow up to become a leading actress in her own right).

Wanamaker had long been a lover of all things Shakespearean and, from 1970, it became his obsession to rebuild the Globe. He met considerable opposition at first, and he needed to raise more than 10 million dollars for the project, but building started in 1987 on a site about 200 yards away from that of the first two Globes (which was covered by modern buildings).

Unfortunately, Sam Wanamaker did not live to see his dream become reality. He died in 1993 and the Globe was not finished until 1997. He is commemorated by having the nearby Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (opened in January 2014) named after him. This is another reconstruction, namely of the Elizabethan Blackfriars Theatre.

The new Globe is as faithful to the original as could be managed, given that there are no 16^th/17^th century architect’s plans from which the designers could work. The construction was made from English oak, the seats are simple benches, and there is even a thatched roof – this is the only building in London for which the ban on thatch (imposed after the Great Fire of 1666) has been lifted. However, modern fire retardants have been used to ensure that a repeat of the 1613 disaster is unlikely!

There is little doubt that William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, were Doctor Who able to arrange their presence, would feel at home in the third Globe Theatre, where authentic performances of period plays are given regularly during the summer season.

© John Welford

Some treasures of London's National Gallery

London’s National Gallery, which occupies one side of Trafalgar Square, is one of the world’s greatest collections of Western European paintings, containing around 2,300 exhibits dating from the 13^th to the 19^th centuries. For any art lover visiting London, it is a “must see” destination. Here are brief descriptions of just a few of the many treasures on display.

JanVan Eyck: The Arnolfini Portrait

This was formerly thought to be a marriage portrait of a rich Dutch merchant and his heavily pregnant wife, but that view has now fallen from favour. For one thing, the woman is not pregnant but is holding her dress in the style of the time.

There is a lot of detail in this early 15^th century oil painting (it dates from 1434), in which the artist was experimenting with the medium and demonstrating how it could be used to portray subtle variations of light and shade. In particular there is a mirror in the background in which the artist can be seen, and he signs the painting in a typically witty way in the form of graffiti on the wall that translates as: “Jan Van Eyck was here 1434”.

LeonardoDa Vinci: The Leonardo Cartoon

A cartoon was a full-scale drawing on paper that was intended to be a template for a painting, with the outline being pricked through to create an outline on the panel. However, this cartoon, which dates from about 1500, appears not to have been used for this purpose as it is intact, but also incomplete. The drawing was made using charcoal and chalk and measures 56 inches (141 cm) by 41 inches (105 cm).

The cartoon depicts four characters, namely the Virgin Mary, her mother St Anne, and Jesus and John the Baptist as infants. Mary sits on her mother’s lap, which was a common way of portraying them in medieval art, but still adds an intimate touch to a family group that is both symbolic and naturalistic. There are no halos here, but exquisitely beautiful drawings of real people.

Hans Holbein the Younger: The Ambassadors

Holbein was a German who spent much of his working life as court painter to King Henry VIII. In 1533 he painted this extraordinarily detailed double portrait of Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, who were on a diplomatic mission from France. The painting also includes a large number of objects and details that are full of symbolism, not all of it being sympathetic to the people being painted.

One very good reason for seeing this painting “in situ” is that there is a very strange object painted across the floor in the foreground. By standing at the correct angle to the canvas the visitor can see that this is a skull, painted as a “memento mori” to say that even the rich and powerful must meet their end eventually.

“The Ambassadors” is a very impressive work, being almost square at about 82 inches (208 cm) each way, such that the portraits are virtually lifesize.

JMW Turner: The Fighting Temeraire

The room that houses this painting contains seven Turners, five Constables, four Gainsboroughs, and more. If time is really short, you could spend your whole Gallery visit in this one room and come away having had a cultural overdose!

Turner painted this canvas (which measures 48 inches by 36 inches (122 x 91 cm)) in 1839, having witnessed the towing up-river of one of the ships that helped win the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Against a flat calm sea and glorious sunset, the ghostly white ship is towed by a busy steam tugboat, belching fire and steam into the sky. It is one of the most evocative scenes ever painted, and one that the viewer can never forget.

John Constable: The Hay Wain

This is another painting that is instantly recognisable. The scene is of an idyllic part of England where the River Stour forms the boundary between Suffolk and Essex. A cart stands in the shallow river as the carters pause in their work of bringing in the harvest from the meadows in the distance. To one side stands a cottage that is still there today, some 190 years after Constable painted the scene in 1821.

Despite the immediacy of the scene, Constable worked from sketches to assemble the finished work in his London studio. The canvas measures 73 inches (185 cm) by 51 inches (130 cm).

George Stubbs: Whistlejacket

This enormous painting of a horse always draws the eye. The canvas is massive, measuring 115 inches (292 cm) by 97 inches (246 cm) and shows nothing but a chestnut horse against a plain brown background. Nobody ever painted horses better than Stubbs, and this painting (dating from 1762) is one of his best. Whistlejacket’s eye is turned towards the viewer, and one can tell that this is a horse with attitude!

Stubbs studied the anatomy of the horse in considerable detail, and his paintings reflect this. Indeed, so realistic was this painting that, when it was nearly completed, Whistlejacket (a racehorse owned by the Marquess of Rockingham) caught sight of it and tried to charge at what he thought was a real horse.

Diego Velazquez: The Toilet of Venus

This is also known as “The Rokeby Venus” from the house of its previous owner before the painting was acquired by the Gallery.

Female nudes are very rare in Spanish art of this period (c. 1650) because of the disapproval of the Catholic Church, and this is the only known nude painting by Velazquez. Venus lies on a couch looking at herself in a mirror held by her winged son Cupid. We can therefore see her face in the mirror as well the curves of her body seen from behind. The beauty of the painting lies in the composition and the many variations of skin tone on both Venus and Cupid.

Vincent Van Gogh: Sunflowers

This is another world-famous painting, although it is one of four that Van Gogh painted on this subject in August and September 1888, intended to decorate the room of his friend Paul Gauguin with whom he hoped to start a new partnership. For Van Gogh, the sunflower was a symbol of happiness, as was the colour yellow.

However, the timeless quality of this painting comes from the realization that these sunflowers are past their best. None of the bunch is fresh, and some have lost all their petals to leave just the seedheads behind.  There is, however, beauty in decay and the promise of new life from the seeds that can only ripen after the flowers have died. The message of the painting is therefore equivocal.

The viewer can see how the artist has used thick brushstrokes (impasto) to produce a variety of textures in this painting.

And the rest?

Needless to say, this brief survey barely scratches the surface. One quick visit to the National Gallery cannot be enough and you will want to return as soon as possible. There is no charge for admission (except to special exhibitions) so you can certainly afford to!

© John Welford

British village life in crisis

Many areas of rural Britain are in crisis in the 2020s, with village communities in decay as the demographic balance shifts in the wrong direction. Village schools, shops, pubs and post offices are closing and transport links are being cut.

One of the chief causes of this decline is the fact that young people can no longer afford to live in the countryside and are instead being forced to move away from the villages where their families have lived and worked for generations. Affordable rural housing is in desperately short supply.

One trend in recent years has been for wealthier people in the towns and cities to buy themselves second homes in rural villages which they only visit at weekends and during their annual holidays. This is particularly noticeable in the more attractive parts of Great Britain, such as Cornwall and Devon, where some villages only come alive when the “townies” turn up. At other times a large proportion of the properties are empty.

Another trend is for villages that are within easy reach of towns and cities to become “dormitories”. The owners of the houses leave early in the morning and return in the evening, resulting in crowded country roads at such times and a drastic decline in neighbourliness because far fewer people get to talk to their neighbours or even know who they are.

Under such circumstances it is inevitable that house prices will rise because the people with high salaries who want a second home, or somewhere to sleep at night out of town, are going to be able to afford whatever price the market wants to set for country properties. The losers are the “locals” who simply cannot compete in the housing market.

The problem of income disparity has been getting worse in recent years due to a marked decline in agricultural incomes. In order to keep food prices low, mainly for the benefit of town-dwellers, the big supermarkets have dictated the prices that they are prepared to pay to farmers and have been setting these ever lower. This has been particularly noticeable in the market for liquid milk, where many farmers have been forced to sell their produce at a price that brings them hardly any profit, or even none at all. This means that farmers can employ only the bare minimum number of farm workers and can only pay them low wages.

Another problem, in terms of housing, has been that the number of houses available for rent in rural communities has failed to keep up with demand. Local authorities have become much less involved in the provision of social housing over the years, and housing associations such as Orbit Housing are overstretched when it comes to making up the shortfall. One problem they have is that new housing developments in villages, especially “low end” ones, are unpopular with the owners of larger properties who fear that their investment will be compromised if people with lower incomes than their own become their neighbours.

The net result of these trends is that the average age of rural populations is rising and services are declining. It has been estimated that by 2025 one in every four villagers will be over 65 years old. Without access to either private or public transport they will feel increasingly isolated, especially as their children will have been forced to move away and community facilities such as pubs and libraries will have disappeared.

Even when the second home owners are in their second homes they have little positive effect on rural communities. They are likely to spend more time communing with fellow “incomers” than with the permanent population and will, in all likelihood, have filled their 4x4s with produce bought from the nearest supermarket rather than the local village store.

The rural housing crisis is certainly the most worrying trend to have hit the British countryside in recent years but it is not the only cause for concern.

Climate change is beginning to make its presence felt in various ways that are far from beneficial to British farming. When there are prolonged spells of severe weather at unexpected times the net result is likely to be poor harvests. Arable farmers have had to endure periods of drought that have stunted crops and lowland farmers have suffered from flooding that has made it impossible for land to be ploughed or sown. Upland farmers lost thousands of sheep and other livestock to drifting snow that arrived in March 2013 just as the lambing season should have been in full swing. Future prospects are for more weather events of an extreme kind that are impossible to predict in terms of timing or severity.

Rural communities are not just agricultural. There are many small businesses that are run from rural locations, with many of these also having a connection with tourism because they are making an effort to revive or maintain traditional crafts, be it pottery, cheese making or whatever. Visitors are welcome to see goods being made that they can then buy, and what the visitors pay is a valuable addition to the income of the business.

However, modern businesses, wherever they are, need good broadband connections if they are to succeed against the competition. Unfortunately, the broadband speeds available in many rural areas are pathetic in comparison to what is commonplace in cities. Rural businesses, and people working from home, are thus placed at a serious disadvantage because the broadband suppliers do not anticipate much profit coming from such sources.

A more sensible and integrated approach to the concerns of the countryside is clearly called for. It is important that city-dwellers grow to appreciate that the British countryside is not just somewhere “nice” that exists purely for them to enjoy as and when they feel like it. It is a living entity that must be allowed to thrive if it is to continue being the attraction that they clearly believe it to be. This means that people who live and work in the rural areas must be given every opportunity to do so, which in turn means being able to buy or rent property that is within their price bracket. Also, the institutions that make country life possible and productive must be preserved and encouraged to thrive. Unless these problems are solved, everyone, whether they live in a village, town or city, will ultimately lose out.

© John Welford

Preserving the Flow Country of Northern Scotland

The Flow Country is a vast area of blanket bog in the far north of mainland Scotland. The name, which has only been in common use since the 1980s, comes from the local term for the pattern of bogs and small lochs that stretch for many miles. The Flow Country, which is more than a million acres in size, is believed to be the largest expanse of blanket bog in western Europe.

The Flow Country is important from several perspectives. For one thing, it is an area of wilderness that has been largely undisturbed for more than 7,000 years and is therefore a “living fossil” of the landscape as it was soon after the end of the last ice age. Since then, layers of peat have steadily built up as vegetable material has slowly decomposed in wet, poorly drained conditions, to a depth of up to five metres in places. The peat preserves anything that is covered by it, so a section down through the peat provides a wealth of information about what was growing and living here in past ages.

As it is compressed vegetable matter, the peat acts as a massive carbon “sink” that traps millions of tons of carbon that might otherwise be contributing to climate change.

The Flow Country is particularly valuable for the wildlife that it supports. The boggy ground has a highly specialised flora that includes sundew, bog bean, cotton grass and other plants that depend on this environment. Bird species found here include greenshank, hen harrier, merlin and golden eagle. The value of the area as a wildlife haven is demonstrated by the fact that 50% of the UK’s population of wood sandpipers live in the Flow Country, as well as 37% of the country’s common scoters, 19% of dunlin and 16% of black-throated divers.

However, from an economic point of view, this is 1500 square miles of wasteland. Just about the only land use that is possible is forestry, and that is where the problems started for the Flow Country.

Afforestation began in the 1960s and accelerated during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Land was bought cheaply by forestry companies which took advantage of generous government grants and tax breaks to drain the land and plant vast numbers of non-native pine and spruce trees in dense arrays. Over a five year period more than 60,000 hectares were planted, with devastating consequences for the boglands and their wildlife as massive trenches were dug into the peat to provide drainage and alien forests grew that were almost devoid of other forms of life.

The campaign to save the Flow Country began in 1985 with publicity-arousing events and representations to government that included pleas to reverse previous policies regarding afforestation.

The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) was particularly active in the campaign, pressing for action to be taken under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, which provided for the establishment of protected Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). The first such sites in the Flow Country were announced in 1987, as were protected areas under the European Union’s Birds Directive. Another important move was a new requirement for future forestry proposals to be subject to proper assessment in terms of their environmental impact.

The most important move on the part of the RSPB was the purchase in 1994 of land on the Forsinard estate that had not yet been forested, thus guaranteeing that the bogland would be preserved. The initial purchase was of 7,000 hectares, and this has since been extended to nearly 21,000 hectares. The reserve extends for 26 miles from east to west in the eastern part of the Flow Country.

Work is being done, in co-operation with the Forestry Commission and other agencies, on the removal of existing forests and the damming up of drainage ditches. To date, nearly 2,000 hectares of forest have been cleared and more than 20,000 dams built to raise the water table and restore the bogs.

The hope is that these efforts to reverse the march of afforestation and preserve the remaining blanket bog will lead to the Flow Country being according the status of a World Heritage Site. This would be due recognition of the importance of this area of true wilderness in much of which the hand of man has been absent for thousands of years. With any luck, many future generations of black-throated divers and greenshanks will be able to live at peace in this otherwise inhospitable region.

© John Welford

Rye, East Sussex

Rye is a beautiful old town in East Sussex that was once a premier English port and a haven for smugglers. These days it is hard to believe that this sleepy town could ever have had an important maritime past, given that it is some two miles from the sea, but that is a result of coastal deposition and the silting up of the river that once provided easy access to the English Channel.

In 1377 Rye was such a nuisance to the French that a raiding party landed and burned down most of the town, after which the English government took revenge on its leading citizens – for being faint-hearted in their resistance - and hanged a number of them.

Many of the buildings in Rye date from the Georgian period, and one of these – Lamb House - was lived in by the American novelist Henry James before World War I. It is now owned by the National Trust and is open to view.

Rye’s most characteristic old street is Mermaid Street, the cobbled surface of which rises steeply from the river towards St Mary’s Church. It is lined with a mixture of half-timbered and red-brick buildings, among which is the Mermaid Inn, which was once frequented by members of the villainous Hawkhurst smuggling gang who would sit with loaded pistols on the tables in case of sudden visits by the revenue men.

At another old Rye inn, the Olde Bell, a revolving cupboard provided a quick exit to the street should it be needed.

St Mary’s Church dates from Norman times. The clock was built in the 1560s and features two gilded cherubs that strike the quarters. There are stained-glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones and Christopher Webb.

The marshes below the town are a haven for wildlife.

© John Welford

The Humber Bridge

The Humber Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the Humber Estuary five miles west of the city of Hull in northeast England. When it was opened in 1981 its central span, at 1,410 metres (4,626 feet) was the world's longest, although it has since lost that accolade to ten other bridges, six of them being in China.

The engineers were Freeman, Fox and Partners, and the work took eight years to complete.

The structure contains 470,000 tons of concrete, and the cables that support the roadway consist of 70,700 kms (44,000 miles) of wire, which is enough to go round the world one and a half times.

The towers are 152 metres (533 feet) high and the road deck is 30 metres (100 feet) above the water at high tide.

There is no Humber River as such, because the estuary carries the waters of two major rivers to the sea. These are the Ouse and the Trent, which between them drain nearly 10,000 square miles of Northern England and the East Midlands. The estuary, which is already a mile wide upstream of the Bridge, is more than seven miles across before it reaches the sea more than 20 miles to the east.

The bridge solved a problem that had troubled travelers for hundreds of years. The Romans built a major road north from Lincoln (Ermine Street) which was part of the route from London to York. However, the crossing of the Humber had to be by ferry. There is evidence that rafts were used in prehistoric times.

More recently, a paddle steamer service connected Hull to New Holland, a few miles east of the new bridge.

The only bridging point prior to the opening of the Humber Bridge was at Goole, 29 miles west of Hull. This became a congested “pinch point”, especially when heavy goods vehicles tried to get through the town. Things were eased when the motorway network bypassed Goole, but the Humber Bridge shortened the route between East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and is now heavily used.

© John Welford