St. Mary's Church, Nantwich

In the fall, I was taken to visit the beautiful and ancient market town of Nantwich, not far from here.

Nantwich is one of Cheshire's Roman towns, and was founded as a market centre around the town's original industry, the salt mine.

Wiki:

The origins of the settlement date to Roman times when salt from Nantwich was used by the Roman garrisons at Chester (Deva Victrix) and Stoke-on-Trent as both a preservative and a condiment. Salt has been used in the production of Cheshire cheese and in the tanning industry, both products of the dairy industry based in the Cheshire Plain around the town. Wich and wych are names used to denote brine springs or wells.

We took a stroll around St. Mary's Church, a famous landmark.



The church is almost completely untouched. Unlike most medieval churches in the area that have only bits that are original, St. Mary's has had no significant re-building since it was first put up as, naturally, a Benedictine monastic church, in the 14th century.



a transept chapel



can't remember what you call the little sink with the drain that goes directly into the earth in which one purifies the vessels. But whatever it is called, this one is the original.


I was particularly taken with this stone lady, possibly one of the church's early patronesses.


Very disappointed that this one turned out fuzzy.

A better version comes from the church's website:



Like nearly all the churches in this poor stolen country, it makes me very sad.

Long before the building was called a church there had been a chapel on the site under the control of Acton church. At that distant time there may have been a simple building erected in Anglo-Saxon times before the Norman conquerors arrived.in 1066.

About 1130 Acton church and Nantwich chapel were granted to Combermere Abbey run by a small group of Cistercians from France. For a hundred years monks came from the abbey to officiate in Acton and in Nantwich.

Around 1380 the present building was started. Masons came from Yorkshire and the red sandstone came from the Runcorn area. Money came from the abbey estates; through the religious gilds; and from wealthy people during the Hundred Years Wars in France.

Built in the Decorated style with later additions in the Perpendicular style the church is huge for such a small place as Nantwich was in the 14th century. Little wonder that it has been christened the `cathedral of south Cheshire.`

The oldest parts are the choir, chancel and nave(13th and 14th centuries) and less old, the 14th century transepts.

Features to look for are: the triple-canopied choir stalls; the misericords(carvings on the undersides of the choir seats - often quite amusing); the ribbed vaulted chancel ceiling; the faint remains of inscriptions (the Ten Commandments), high up on the east wall of the nave; and the effigies in the south transept. One is of Sir David Cradoc in alabaster.

After King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s the church changed from being Roman Catholic to Protestant or Church of England.

The Hilariad

Name change.

Obvious reasons.

HJW

Better here than

anywhere else, really.

Took these today, across the road from my cottage.







If the door to Narnia is going to be anywhere, it's going to be in a place where the daffs bloom in January.

More pics to come. Forsythia and more.


And,

new shelves. Uncle Mike made them and put them up today, and just in time; there's a booksale at the Village Institute next weekend.






Believe it or not, this is almost all my books now. But at least it now feels as if I really live here. Not just camping.

Canal Day

Shortly after my arrival here, my uncle and aunt took me on a trip to see the canals and canal boats at the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, and Llangollen, a gorgeous little village in Wales. (Neither of those names are pronounced the way you think. It's Welsh, so don't even try. The fact that Uncle Mike can do it proves its not a genetic Welsh thing, but it takes a lot of practice.) The aqueduct brings the Llangollen Canal over an enormous gorge,



at the bottom of which you can see some of the most charming and lovely Welsh rural scenery anywhere (as long as you're not afraid of heights.)

I'm terribly impressed with grand engineering projects, particularly those completed before the steam age. The canals in England were largely dug by hand by Irish labourers, and formed one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the early industrial revolution. They've been replaced of course, first by rail and now by roads, but consider that before they were built, the only way to ship goods around the country was by horse cart over almost completely unpaved roads. Roads, moreover, that by our standards, were little more than muddy farm tracks.



Thomas Telford is a hero of the industrial age (something as we know, I'm rather ambivalent about) and no matter what we think of the long-term results of the entire movement, there is no doubt that the creation of these canals, canal bridges and aqueducts, was a work of engineering genius unequaled in his time.

The boats are not barges, as is commonly thought. I saw a real barge a few weeks ago and it is enormous. They are too big to get through most of the locks and certainly can't get over most of the bridges. They only take barges on the bigger canals.

These are the more common kind and are called narrow boats, and are now used exclusively as pleasure craft. There is a whole little narrow boat subculture in Britain where people, mostly retired, tool about the countryside from Liverpool to London and as far as Norfolk on the other side.

My uncle has a particular thing about them. Doesn't talk about it much, but misses his boat very much.





Lots of ducks. Canals are really great places to watch waterfowl.


Here reason for the name "narrow" boat becomes clear.





The locks are fascinating. Most of the locks in use today are the same that were built at the time the canals were constructed. As you can see here, they are operated by a hand windlass that all the boaters keep on board.

It can be quite a lot of work to get through a long system of locks.


The lower half of the lock filling.


Just above this spot, there is a very long string of sixteen locks. After you've worked your way down this, which on a busy day can take all day while you wait your turn, you moor the boat next to the pub and have something to eat and a pint before tackling the next set of locks.

This is the Shroppie Fly, a kind of Narrow Boat enthusiasts' hangout.

You use the windlass (which looks like a bent crowbar) to raise and lower road bridges too. When we came to this one, the boaters (probably on a hireboat) had left the bridge up and a car was left sitting there until the next boat came along to take care of it.


Stay tuned for Llangollen.

Nothing to see here; move along.

Well, I'm getting bored with this. L'eg, despite its very appealing acronym is really not necessary any more. I set it up as an adolescent act of rebellion when I was asked to stop blogging at The Devout Life. Since then I'm no longer under that restriction and have resumed full-speed public blogging at the same address as TDL. I don't have a site meter or any way to check blog stats so I don't know if anyone still even comes here.

I had thought I would keep Orwell's Picnic as strictly political and news oriented, but of course, all the grammar, recipes, poetry, jokes and other stuff have crept in there anyway (although nothing yet on the growing threat from our radially symmetrical evolutionary rivals). I do want to keep the strictly personal stuff carefully out of O'sP so I've told one very persistent fan that I will continue putting stuff up here, but this will be mostly for those few personal friends who want to keep up with my private adventures. I'll put up what I think are rather dull pics of family and architecture, canal walks, and various items of local interest. But actual blogging will carry on at

The-Blog-Formerly-Known-As-TDL.

Now the holy bits

Colwich Abbey


The nun's choir and the sanctuary (spot anything missing?). The choir was built originally to be the ball room/banqueting room for the hunting lodge. I took the picture from what was then the minstrels' gallery and is now a place where you can sit and hear and follow the services if you are sick in the infirmary.


The long cloister.


St. Benedict


Among the many treats in the house is the clock room. You go into a bathroom and a little door, about three and half feet high, opens into a little anteroom containing the clockworks. When you are standing over it watching the works, the chime will make you jump out of your skin!



Having a bath in the bathroom right next to the clock is quite an experience. The picture is a bit dark, but if you look closely, you can see the pendulum as it swings.


The Christmas holiday between Christmas day and Epiphany, was described to me as "the silly season" in which the sisters have lots of tea parties and little dos, fancy dress and plays. I was assured over and over that the rest of the year is much more nunny.


from the left, Mother Prioress and Mother Abbess.


The house from the south end of the garden. The mysterious little doors you see in the foreground are the entrance to the "grots" the underground vaults that once were to serve as stables and wine cellars and food storage for the aristocrat who built the big house.


Taking the dog for a walk after Morning Office


the back door.


The grounds with a bit of house

The community was founded in Paris in the 1650's to pray for the conversion of England. The nuns were arrested during the Terror and fled back to England where they pioneered Eucharistic Adoration for this country.


Our Lady of Walsingham still reigns. The shrine to her in the garden had a candle lit all night. This is also the favoured spot in the summer for the sisters to take recreation.


More grounds.


And more grounds.


And more grounds. The view from the community room window.


The community room (which they call the "work room") decked out for a Christmas buffet.


Reverend Mother Abbess Gertrude Baker, saying good bye in the refectory on my last day.At 4'7" and after nearly 60 years of religious life, one of the tiniest and most delightful people I have ever met.

Not a child's Christmas in Wales

but pretty good.

Pics.


Toasting toes at home


Auntie Gill teaching Millie to knit in the pub, Christmas afternoon


The hordes descend. It really was a feast. Turkey, ham, and r. beef, onion sauce, horseradish sauce, wine gravy, sprouts, parsnips, roasties and mash, Christmas pud and bread n. butter pud.


Ben has got into the habit of eating breakfast on Uncle Mike's lap in the mornings before anyone else gets up. Ben eats all the mushrooms and Mike gets to read the paper in relative peace.


Feeling somewhat guilty at having had all three kinds of meat and doubles of B n' B pud. Ready for the Queen's speech and a long snooze.

Away for a bit

Having a holy holiday until Jan 7.


Blessings upon y'all.

HJMW

an interesting new blog

well, new to me.

WitNit.

I like the template especially. (Wish I was hip to html. I really don't like Blogger templates. Never mind.)

I thought his bit on why men don't ask for directions to be fairly good. Straightforward and more or less what I already knew, but good. And I see he also recycles old posts. That makes it OK.

Something I posted a couple of years ago. Thought it time to repost:

*******************

Well, some men ask for directions (not that I've met any).

There is actually a very good and very sophisticated explanation for this fact of male-psyche life.

It's because men are lines and women are circles.

You see, men have a natural orientation to the external, to explore, to pioneer, to manipulate the environment, to play with things, to engage in sports, to talk about politics and football and computers and their entertainment centers and to build complex machines that hurtle other men (and grudgingly women, but only if they don't act girly) into outer space. The line.

Women have a natural orientation to the internal, to nest, to make a home, to talk about their inner feelings, their relationships, what they think about everything, how others perceive them, what people must be thinking. The circle.

Men are comfortable with discovery and problem solving and taking something apart to see how it works and operating complicated remote controls on tons of electronic equipment and not talking about inner things like Why don't you ask for directions. They like the complexity of the external world. They hate the complexity of the internal world. They want the internal world to be simple. Yes, no, right, wrong, let's do this and get on with it.

Women are comfortable with security and knowing that things are in their place and keeping the external world simple, with only a single remote that has one power button, one volume button and one channel changer. They want the external world to be simple. They love the complexity of the inner world. The possible meanings, the subtexts, the implications, the dreams. Men hate that kind of stuff.

So why don't men ask for directions? Cause they like figuring out the external world on their own, they are solving it like a complex time-space problem, thinking about the GPS possibilities and the spatial relations of this street to that highway, and they will only ask directions if they are badgered into it by someone who wants to keep that external world as simple as a remote with three buttons.

Men love having four remotes with 100+ buttons. It's something to figure out and tinker with.

Not that there are many men who could explain it that way... Men are rarely skilled at explaining their own psyches. We hate that kind of stuff...And don't make me say it again!!!

Shooty Thing

I've been noting Kathy's efforts to get a gun license in Canuckistan and every time I go for a walk in the country lately, I hear the sound of shooting.

I really hope someone will give me a gun for Christmas.

A gun and a dog.

More pics and a link later today if poss.

The real joke, of course

is that whenever the BBC is thinking about what CD to put on next and I think London has been nuked, I'm secretly hoping that it is true.

But then I recall that I have nice friends in London and I then secretly hope that they're all taking a holiday in France.

Child of the Cold War, Me.

I laugh because I just realized that every time there is a bit of dead air on BBC Radio 3, the first thought is, "Oh, hey. I wonder if someone has nuked London."

That early childhood training will never never leave you.

BTW: anyone old enough to remember them,

you know those "Emergency Response Test" things they used to have on TV? You know, "This is a test. This is only a test. If there was a real emergency, you would be given instructions..."

Then that long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

then, "This has been a test of the emergency response system..."

you may now return to your regularly scheduled Saturday morning cartoons.

Was I the only one to wonder, "If the emergency came when no one had the TV on, is there some master switch somewhere that would turn them all on so we would know something was happening? How would we know what to do if we didn't happen to have the TV on at the moment the Emergency Response System came on."

It was not until years later that I realized the whole thing was a scam. The "emergency" was nuclear war, and with or without your TV telling you to put a paper bag over your head, there wasn't going to be a lot of point anyway.

I'd be interested to see a study done on people who were raised with the 15 Minute Spectre. You know the one where we were all told that any given 15 minute period could easily be our last. I have often wondered if it resulted in the "slacker" phenomenon where people my age, raised by hippies, simply made no plans for their lives because we all thought there wasn't any point.

I've probably written about this before.

Looking at the pics below,

it occurs to me that the axiom, "Every woman grows up to become her mother" seems to have skipped a generation. I seem to have grown up to become my grandmother.

Cottage Life

My row. I'm the last white door on the extreme right...

...not the really snazzy one across the road...


Inside, almost finished.
Welsh dresser installed, but no pictures hung yet.

view from the sitting room window.

all finished. (Note row of jars of crab apple jam.)

My hidey hole.

Looking up the road towards St. Alban's