The complex is a attractive mid-century take on the International Style. Kafkaesque rules keep it characterless.

From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays - a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week. This shot, taken at the back of the studios from Atherton Street, is of the top of the office block and you can just about make out where the big letters proclaiming 'GRANADA TV' would have been. Because they were so high up, I think that getting them off would have been a bit of a mission and not one for those with a fear of heights.

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

This is the true Wythenshawe I know and love, the small green hill and the two iconic tower blocks that were Park Cort (left) and Violet Court (partialy facing this view), and in the background an unidentified Manchester Standard bus (think it's an Olympian) in the good old GM Buses livery.

This shot was taken one Saturday morning in October 1990..........when I was just 11!

This area where this shot was taken is now completly cordoned off, the two flats were abandoned in June 2004 and in early 2007 they were demolished, plans are currently in place to put some characterless retail stores within the next year or so! :(

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

THIS PHOTO IS SHOWN WITH KIND PERMISSION OF STEVE HARVEY

4 or more Class 26s could be had on this move. If the trains to and from the far north were double headed you may even have 6 if you were lucky. The move was.

06.35 Inverness to Wick/Thurso to Dingwall where you could be very quick and get down to the bakery for food supplies. The 06.55 Inverness to The Kyle of lochalsh could then be taken to Achnasheen where in passed the first incoming service from The Kyle. There was never an issue about missing the train as they crossed on the passing loop at Achnasheen station and this always took five minutes or more. Back to Dingwall or The Muir of Ord and returning back into Inverness on the first train in from the far north. My father used to love this move and even went so far as to name his home ''Achnasheen''. In 1986 when the 37s had taken over on this line my father satisfied a bashing ambition of his to stay over at the Achnasheen station hotel. In later years the hotel burnt down and now the line is plastic buses. The mountains and wilderness are still there but the trains are featureless and characterless like most of todays railway.

The photo shows 26024 my highest mileage Class 26 arriving at Achnasheen home signal before being allowed to enter the station and pass 26038 coming in the opposite direction. If there were a top ten favourite bashing moves of all time, this one would make the top five easily.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

New Sheraton Hotel in Srebreno near Mlini ,Croatia - impressive but sterile and characterless .

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

Indian Palms Historical Society

8h ·

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - May 16, 1930

92 years ago today, Indio California became the first city in the Coachella Valley to become incorporated.

On December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor was attacked and in the spring of 1942, downtown Indio, CA was invaded - not by our enemies, but from servicemen at nearby Camp Young.

The U.S. Army established the Desert Training Center (DTC), just 30 miles east of Indio, to prepare soldiers for the harsh desert conditions that they would be facing fighting the German Army in North Africa.

Major General Patton came to Camp Young as the first commanding general of the DTC. Patton, a native of Southern California, knew the area well from his youth and from having participated in army maneuvers in the Mojave Desert in the 1930s.

General Patton, who tried to lessen the impact of his troops’ presence on the city, was active in Indio’s civic affairs during his time at the DTC. On May 25, 1942 Patton gave a Memorial Day address to the citizens of Indio and he also used the Hotel Indio as a frequent meeting place.

When the troop members were on leave from their hot dirty tents at Camp Young, they headed to Indio for the air-conditioned comfort of the Hotel Indio.

The “new and modern” 80-room Hotel Indio was built in the mid-1920’s by the Von der Ahe family, who went on to establish the Von’s grocery store chain.

By 1925, Indio was thriving as the headquarters for the Southern Pacific Railroad and in 1933 the Colorado River Aqueduct project brought workers to Indio’s bars and hotels. The aqueduct project was very good for business at the Hotel Indio.

The Hotel Indio, “An Enchanting Desert Oasis”, which once stood pridefully at the SW corner of Miles Avenue and Smurr Street was destroyed by fire. The inferno took 17 CalFire companies and over 50 firefighters to extinguish the blaze which could be seen throughout the Coachella Valley.

Today this property is a characterless grassy park, with no acknowledgment to its historic past except for the palm trees that once towered majestically in the Hotel Indio’s courtyard entrance.

THE BLAZE

bit.ly/37QLE24

A few memories written by Hotel Indio guests during WWII

1942 July 10

Dear Brother,

This is where I am tonite. Only 26 miles from camp but that’s better than being there. Suppose you are keeping yourself busy these days. Feels pretty good to get away from camp once in a while. Don’t imagine I’ll get away this weekend. Well, take care of yourself, especially them fingers.

— Harold Wilson, Battery B 54F.A., Camp Young, Indio Ca

1943 October 31

Dear Anna,

Arrived California Sat, it took us 2 weeks but it really was beautiful across the country. We will stay in Palm Springs this week just to rest up.

— Best regards, Sadie

1943 November 29

Hi Kid!

This sure is the place for me sunny all day. But this town is much too much for a working girl.

— Love, Mae

#Indio

#CityofIndio

#CoachellaValley

#Patton See less

Comments

Linda Day

Thank you for sharing this ❤️

Reply47m

Carl Schulz

Thank you for this.

Reply8m

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

Founded by Joseph Deakin in 1891, the Echo has only had four editors in its history.

They have long since moved out of this office to a drab characterless modern office on the edge of the town.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loughborough_Echo

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

This is the building that replaces the GDR period Cafe am Zwinger at Postplatz.. Known as the Wilsdruffer Kubus, it is an appalling example of tasteless, characterless architecture. More information in the following link:

www.das-neue-dresden.de/postplatz-wilsdruffer-kubus.html

It needs to be said that the post Wende redevelopment of Wilsdruffer Strasse is a disgrace. Three unusual and interesting buildings (Cafe am Zwinger, Linde Haus and the former Warenhaus Knoop) have been demolished and replaced with the most banal office blocks. These could be knocked down tomorrow without a whisper of protest from anyone. The Warenhaus Knoop has been sacrificed for yet another entry to the voracious Altstadt Gallery in which, architecturally speaking, you could be in any city in the world.

St Nicholas, Dersingham, Norfolk

The first time I went to Dersingham church, they were just locking up for the day. Never mind, I'll come back, I thought. Twelve years passed. Now, I was cycling around the villages to the north and east of the Sandringham estate, mopping up a handful of Norfolk churches that I'd missed when I first cut a swathe through the county. This was one of them.

So at last I stepped into its big interior, and I am afraid I found it a bit characterless. I'm sorry about that. Some big churches have a wow factor, but it just didn't happen to me here. Perhaps I would have preferred a bit of dust, a bit of peeling plaster, I don't know. I thought that St Nicholas is what a church would be like if my mother had been responsible for cleaning it - spotless, and everything lined up. Anyway, I notice that I took nearly 40 photos, so there was obviously plenty to see.

Then I headed out of Dersingham. climbing and climbing, and suddenly left the strange gloom of Kings Lynn, the Wash, the forest and the marsh country behind me, climbing up through narrow lanes through beautiful rolling fields, some being harvested. The sun was shining brightly, and it was with utter joy that I whooped along until descending steeply into Sherborne.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

Rutland Arms, Sheffield. Lovely old pub, now surrounded and slightly overwhelmed by soulless, characterless modern buildings.

St Nicholas, Dersingham, Norfolk

The first time I went to Dersingham church, they were just locking up for the day. Never mind, I'll come back, I thought. Twelve years passed. Now, I was cycling around the villages to the north and east of the Sandringham estate, mopping up a handful of Norfolk churches that I'd missed when I first cut a swathe through the county. This was one of them.

So at last I stepped into its big interior, and I am afraid I found it a bit characterless. I'm sorry about that. Some big churches have a wow factor, but it just didn't happen to me here. Perhaps I would have preferred a bit of dust, a bit of peeling plaster, I don't know. I thought that St Nicholas is what a church would be like if my mother had been responsible for cleaning it - spotless, and everything lined up. Anyway, I notice that I took nearly 40 photos, so there was obviously plenty to see.

Then I headed out of Dersingham. climbing and climbing, and suddenly left the strange gloom of Kings Lynn, the Wash, the forest and the marsh country behind me, climbing up through narrow lanes through beautiful rolling fields, some being harvested. The sun was shining brightly, and it was with utter joy that I whooped along until descending steeply into Sherborne.

This unique courthouse was erected in 1938 with WPA funding. It was really old and musty inside; needless to say I loved it. Unfortunately in 2011, this courthouse was demolished. I'm sure that it will be replaced with a charmless, characterless, modern building.

Pittsboro is a very small community located in the bend of a ridge in the center of Calhoun County.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

St Mary, Hadleigh, Suffolk

Hadleigh is a pleasant, self-important little town. It is one of those places remote enough to be a microcosm of bigger towns - the factories, shops and housing estates all to scale. Its centrality in this part of Suffolk gave it the headquarters of Babergh District Council in 1974, despite the fact that the greater part of the population of the district lives in the Sudbury conurbation and the southern suburbs of Ipswich. Having said that, Hadleigh has expanded greatly in recent years, with characterless new estates now lining the bypass, and in any case Babergh District Council has since merged with Mid-Suffolk District Council and the councillors have all toddled off to Stowmarket. But the heart of the town is still probably the loveliest of any in East Anglia.

If Hadleigh is small, however, St Mary is not. This is one of the grand Suffolk churches, the only big one with a medieval spire which is also the only proper wood and lead spire in the county. There are echoes of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, only without the twist. It was built in the 14th century, and the exterior bell, a 1280 clock bell doubling as a sanctus bell, is Suffolk's oldest. The aisles, clerestory and chancel head eastwards of it, equalling Lavenham in their sense of the substantial. It is one of the longest churches in Suffolk.

To the south west of the church stands the famous Hadleigh Deanery, more properly the gorgeous red brick Tudor gateway to the now demolished medieval Deanery. It was at this Deanery gateway in July 1833 that the meeting was held which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, and went on to change the face of Anglican churches forever. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern Church of England was born in this building. The Rector here, in one of those anachronisms so beloved of the CofE, is styled 'Dean of Bocking'. Bocking is a village in Essex, and the living is in the gift of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so Hadleigh Rectors are installed in Canterbury Cathedral.

The south side of the graveyard is taken up by the former guild hall, and on the fourth side there is a scattering of excellent 18th and 19th century municipal and commercial buildings. With the possible exception of the Bury churches, it is the best setting of any urban church in Suffolk. Hadleigh was one of the great cloth towns, a centre for merchants rather than factories (most of the work was farmed out to self-employed weavers in nearby villages, quite literally a cottage industry). The wealth of those days rebuilt the church, particularly the fine 15th century clerestory and aisles.This is a big church, since it needed to contain the chantry altars of at least five medieval guilds. And it has always been an urban church, as you can tell from the way buildings on the north side cut into it. The east window was clearly always intended to be seen up the gap to the busy High Street.

The magnificent south doorway retains its original 15th century doors. It is interesting to compare it with Cotton, barely 50 years older, but from a quite different generation of architecture. Gone are the delicate fleurons, the articulate details that speak of an internal sense of mystery. Here, we enter the realms of self-confident rationalism for the first time. You step into a space that is light and airy, so vast that at once it swallows sound, a feeling accentuated by the sheer width of the chancel arch. Trees close by on the north side gently wave shadows into the nave. It feels that the church is organically part of the town and has been so down the long centuries, although perhaps it is hard at first to see this building as anything other than the rather polite CofE parish church it has become.

If you'd been here some ten years or so ago, you might have though that this was a very strange church, for there was the surreal sight of a snooker table and a pool table in the north aisle. They were part of what was called the Hadleigh Porch Project, an attempt to provide something to do for teenagers in the town who had been causing a nuisance in the churchyard and porch. The parish galvanised itself and attracted funding, and the building became used by young people for secular activities, one idea being that the sense of ownership conveyed would give them a sense of responsibility. Coming here in Lent of 2013, I was struck by the Stations of the Cross lining the arcades, each created by a local youth group or organisation. They were radically different from anything I'd seen before, and I'm sure that Maggi Hambling's Christ, looking on from the north aisle, would have approved.

Coming back in 2019, the snooker and pool tables have now gone, and so have the run of the mill Victorian benches that filled the nave. Regular users of this site will know that I am an enthusiast of replacing 19th Century pews with modern chairs in medieval churches, but here you can't help feeling that it hasn't really been done very well. The chairs themselves are not the problem so much as the floor, which has been left with expanses of floor boards between the lines of poor encaustic tiles. Perhaps there are plans to replace all of this with a polished wood and pamment floor (Oundle in Northamptonshire is a good example on a similar scale). I hope so.

The sheer size of the nave and its aisles stops the stained glass overwhelming it, which is a relief because there is a lot of it and it is by no means all good. To start with the best, there is a 1988 window by John O'Connor for Chapel Studios beside Maggi Hambling's painting, a memorial to John Belton, a former rector. But the glass in the south aisle is mostly by Ward & Hughes, and some of it very poor indeed, from the height of that period when Thomas Curtis was trashing the brand.

Of course, there is much here that is older and more traditional. In the south chancel chapel is what has become known as the St Edmund bench end, attached to a modern bench. It appears to shows a wolf, with the Saint's head in its jaws. But a closer look shows that the beast has cloven hooves, and what are either wings and a collar or possibly eucharistic vestments. It is more likely related to those bench ends more common in east Norfolk depicting a mythical beast holding the head of St John the Baptist. There are squints through to the high altar from this chapel, so this was probably the site of a guild altar.

There are recent memories of the High Church past of St Mary. In the high sanctuary are not one but two plaques to former Dean Hugh Rose, one commemorating his conference that led to the Oxford Movement, and the other the centenary of that movement, laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1935. One of the plaques quotes Pusey's eulogy to Rose, that when hearts were failing, he bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true mother. Another religious figure associated with Hadleigh is the puritan preacher Rowland Taylor, who was burned at the stake on nearby Aldham Common in the brief but unhappy reign of Mary I. One of the Ward & Hughes windows in the south aisle remembers him.

Up in the chancel, grinning figures peer down from the roof, and in the east window of the north chancel aisle is a small collection of old glass, including heraldic shields, a Tudor royal arms and haunting fragments of 15th Century English glass, all that survives of what must once have been one of the largest expanses in England, a sobering thought.

From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays - a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week. This rather long shot is of the main entrance on Great John Street but there is a more close-up view and, if you click on 'All Sizes' on that you can just about make out where the letters 'GRANADA TELEVISION' would have been on the canopy.

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

Close up of the chimney of the Royal Liverpool Hospital. Opened in 1978 to replace the Royal Infirmary in nearby Pembroke Place (which closed prior to Christmas that year) work began on this is 1966 and in 1970, the 33-year-old Majestic on the corner of Daulby Street and Prescot Street got pulled down to make way for this cathedral of medicine.

At the time, the foreman of the demolition contractors joked that it would have been easier to pull down Fort Knox, such was the sturdy construction of the cinema.

My grandad's been in here and so has my mum when some dozy twat of a learner driver smacked into her on the corner of Orphan Street and Neville Street in Toxteth. She was only a new driver herself and this happened. I remember it well as if it was yesterday, I was in the back of the ambulance with her crying my eyes out - I know this because my childminder was very dismissive, saying I was 'screaming like a jackass'.

Well, I was eight at the time so it's only to be expected. What ELSE did she expect me to do? Take it like a fucking adult? If my mum was involved in a smash-up again, I'd be the fucking same and I'd probably wish the offending driver dead!

But I digress, a lot of water has passed under the bridge and this hospital has been deemed unfit for purpose (a bit like Copperas Hill Sorting Office by those ivory-towered twats high up in the Royal Mail).

Anyway, before this building gets reduced to a pile of rubble to make way for its characterless and unprepossessing replacement, I'm recording this for posterity and I think that Aler Hey's next on my list.

From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays - a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week. This shot is of the main entrance on Great John Street and, if you click on 'All Sizes' you can just about make out where the letters 'GRANADA TELEVISION' would have been on the canopy.

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

Unlike so many town and city centres, the centre of Lichfield is still as it should be with hundreds of years of natural development instead of the characterless facades found in so many places

Those signs are disappearing from the roads and sadly being replaced with dull green characterless ones. Photo by Jonmikel

I was fortunate enough to take a relative to Peterborough Station recently, and was rewarded with seeing a whole raft of locos we don’t generally find down on the Berks and Hants in old Wiltshire!!! Peterborough Station is a different animal to the station that witnessed an endless procession of A1’s, A2’s/3’s and A4’s in the years up to the end of Steam. Revamped to suit the needs of modern traffic and traveller, it’s a boring featureless and characterless place that saw Driver Duddington bring Mallard into the station after its record breaking run down Stoke Bank in July 1938. The ECML still supports high speed travel, and here we see two 5 Car Hitachi ‘Azuma’ units (801 105 & 107) joined together to make up the 1A33 13.45 service from Leeds to Kings Cross.

Mansell St, Aldgate, Tower Hamlets. 1980

24l-14: building, door, pillar

I think I walked down Mansell St on my way from Spitalfields, perhaps to London Bridge, and this was one of six pictures I made of details of this closed café serving halal meals and snacks. It had obviously been built as something rather grander.

Most of the buildings on both streets have now been demolished and replaced by larger and rather depressingly characterless modern blocks but I this still stands, though with a rather different look, at No. 57. The building from around 1720 was Grade II listed in 1971 and has gone considerably upmarket since my photograph and is now the offices of Seascope Insurance Services.

St Martin, Overstrand, Norfolk

Like several churches in this part of the world, St Martin was in a very bad state by the 19th century, with only part of its nave still in use for worship, and the decision was made to rebuild it. It seems to have been a north Norfolk fashion to rebuild on a new site, and so when Christ Church was erected in the churchyard beside St Martin in 1867, St Martin was left as a picturesque ruin. However, in 1883, Clement Scott eulogised this area in an article written for the Daily Telegraph, and the legend of Poppyland, a dreamlike English idyll, was born.

The north Norfolk coast became a popular holiday destination, thanks to Scott's writing and the opening up of the area by the railways. Perhaps a characterless Victorian church did not fit in with Scott's vision of what Poppyland was, and what people might find there. The medieval parish church at neighbouring Sidestrand had been rebuilt on a new site in an entirely medieval round-towered style, and so it was that Christ Church was demolished, and the ruin of St Martin restored to something approaching its former glory. The architects were Cecil Upcher and AJ Lacey, and the church was opened on the eve of the First World War.

The reconstruction coincided with the pre-War triumphalism of the Church of England, which was at that time at its highest point in the national consciousness, but the project demanded a rigorously vernacular style, and so too many excesses were avoided. The guardian angel in his niche on the south side is not a taste of things to come, because you step into a relatively plain and simple interior which is full of light from the clear glass windows. The only colour comes from a vibrant east window depicting Christ in Majesty with St Cuthbert and St Martin accompanied by otters, dogs and ducks above scenes of Durham and Tours cathedrals. The aisle and chancel are by Upcher & Lacey, the north doorway surviving to create an unusual opening between aisle and nave. Mortlock says the current south porch was originally on the north side. Arthur Mee says that the old font was found in a garden.

Although Overstrand is in many ways still a remote backwater, the memorials and headstones here record links to some of the 19th century's most significant philanthropic families, including members of the Buxton and Gurney families as well as Lady Battersea, who was one of the Rothschilds.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was the millionaire owner of Truman's brewery. He married Elizabeth Fry's sister, and as MP for Weymouth and the Isle of Portland he spoke strongly in parliament for the abolition of all slavery, even after the ending of the slave trade. It is said that his advocacy of the extension of liberty in Africa through the influence of legitimate trade under the protection of Christianity inspired the Scottish doctor, David Livingstone, to go to Africa as a missionary.

Tragedy haunted Buxton and his wife Hannah: four of their children died during an outbreak of whooping cough in the early spring of 1820. Buxton himself never came to terms with his failure to eradicate slavery from Africa; he died in 1845, and was buried here. His memorial is inside the church, but he was also to be found on a recent British five pound note, where he was the spectacled figure standing to the left of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Fry.

Final resting place of fiberglass statues of Yogi, Cindy, Boo Boo, and the Ranger from the Yogi Bear Honey Fried Chicken chain. In 2002, there were plans to renovate the 1960s era truck stop and possibly include some of the statues. That never happened, and the Lakewood Travel Plaza has since been razed and replaced with the Oasis at Lakewood Landing, a characterless mix of gas, convenience store, and fast food.

The pleasing view from the spring of 1970 shows an ex Middlebrough Corporation, Guy motorbus heading out of town on the ‘M’ service for Lodore Grove at Acklam. The bus wears the turquoise livery of Teesside Municipal Transport (TMT). The County Borough had amalgamated the operations of Middlesbrough Corporation. Stockton Corporation and the Teesside Railless Traction Board as the newly created Teesside Municipal Transport Board from the 1st April 1968.

The 1956 built Northern Counties (low-bridge) bodied Guy Arab IV was nearing the end of its life when this picture was taken. It was officially withdrawn from service on New Years day 1972, and sold to scrap dealer David Rollinson of Barnsley for breaking on 28th March 1972.

A wonderful variety of period townscape architecture is seen amongst the parade of shops that faced the town hall opposite, the town hall being out of view to the right of picture. Along the length of the street, independent businesses offering goods and services from many trades would have been a delight to peruse. Nearest, two building society branches are conveniently situated next to the Tees-side Estate Agent’s, or was it the other way around?

The large redbrick building with the soot-stained stone façade; marked by the red ‘United’ Bristol Lodekka bus was the Corporation Hotel. This was a popular public house in the town centre that during the war years had been run by the parent’s of actress to be, Wendy Richards. I understand that the Corporation Hotel closed around 1970, but I stand to be corrected.

How sad that this wonderfully nostalgic view has been lost to another characterless modern redevelopment. Today, the Lego-style Holiday Inn Express hotel with retail units below occupies much of the land seen in the 1970 view.

Middlesbrough has lost many historic buildings over the decades, but the demolition of the 1868 built Royal Exchange in 1985 was probably the town's greatest loss, sacrificed by Cleveland County Council for the brutalist A66 concrete flyover that runs close the heart of the town.

Images: 27th May 1970 / July 2018.

Scanned from the original 35mm slide taken by the late Mr R Copson and now held in my archive.

St Martin, Overstrand, Norfolk

Like several churches in this part of the world, St Martin was in a very bad state by the 19th century, with only part of its nave still in use for worship, and the decision was made to rebuild it. It seems to have been a north Norfolk fashion to rebuild on a new site, and so when Christ Church was erected in the churchyard beside St Martin in 1867, St Martin was left as a picturesque ruin. However, in 1883, Clement Scott eulogised this area in an article written for the Daily Telegraph, and the legend of Poppyland, a dreamlike English idyll, was born.

The north Norfolk coast became a popular holiday destination, thanks to Scott's writing and the opening up of the area by the railways. Perhaps a characterless Victorian church did not fit in with Scott's vision of what Poppyland was, and what people might find there. The medieval parish church at neighbouring Sidestrand had been rebuilt on a new site in an entirely medieval round-towered style, and so it was that Christ Church was demolished, and the ruin of St Martin restored to something approaching its former glory. The architects were Cecil Upcher and AJ Lacey, and the church was opened on the eve of the First World War.

The reconstruction coincided with the pre-War triumphalism of the Church of England, which was at that time at its highest point in the national consciousness, but the project demanded a rigorously vernacular style, and so too many excesses were avoided. The guardian angel in his niche on the south side is not a taste of things to come, because you step into a relatively plain and simple interior which is full of light from the clear glass windows. The only colour comes from a vibrant east window depicting Christ in Majesty with St Cuthbert and St Martin accompanied by otters, dogs and ducks above scenes of Durham and Tours cathedrals. The aisle and chancel are by Upcher & Lacey, the north doorway surviving to create an unusual opening between aisle and nave. Mortlock says the current south porch was originally on the north side. Arthur Mee says that the old font was found in a garden.

Although Overstrand is in many ways still a remote backwater, the memorials and headstones here record links to some of the 19th century's most significant philanthropic families, including members of the Buxton and Gurney families as well as Lady Battersea, who was one of the Rothschilds.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was the millionaire owner of Truman's brewery. He married Elizabeth Fry's sister, and as MP for Weymouth and the Isle of Portland he spoke strongly in parliament for the abolition of all slavery, even after the ending of the slave trade. It is said that his advocacy of the extension of liberty in Africa through the influence of legitimate trade under the protection of Christianity inspired the Scottish doctor, David Livingstone, to go to Africa as a missionary.

Tragedy haunted Buxton and his wife Hannah: four of their children died during an outbreak of whooping cough in the early spring of 1820. Buxton himself never came to terms with his failure to eradicate slavery from Africa; he died in 1845, and was buried here. His memorial is inside the church, but he was also to be found on a recent British five pound note, where he was the spectacled figure standing to the left of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Fry.

The Town Where I Work Is A Cliché For Boring and Average

The writers of the television sitcom 'The Office' were going to set it in Milton Keynes but thought it too much of an obvious cliché so changed it to Slough.

I remember when MIlton Keynes was being built and there were ads (commercials) on TV trying to entice people to move there. I was a small child at the time so didn't pay a lot of attention to them. I mainly remember green spaces and someone one a bicycle (possibly cycling by a lake). Although there are bike lanes (red routes) these do not always go where you need them to, don't always follow the roads (so if you don't know the way to where you are going you will get lost) and are poorly lit. I certainly wouldn't use them in the dark.

Milton Keynes is a town (it's not a city, despite what it tries to tell us) for car drivers. The public transport system is abysmal (see some of my earlier 365/366's for the misery of waiting for the bus), the trains can be good to London but to get anywhere else - further north, for instance - you have to go south to London and come back up. For the first two years we lived here there was engineering work on the line (yep, for two years) and the trains were replaced by buses. During this time my journey home travelling by train (to Bletchley, just south of Milton Keynes) from the Old Vic Theatre at Waterloo one evening took the same length of time as travelling by train from Waterloo to Brussels in Belgium.

All the 'communities' or 'neighbourhoods' (housing estates by another name) look like legoland. All the main roads look the same as each other - soulless, characterless and blank. It is supposed to be designed on a grid system with horizontal roads numbers H# and verticals V#. However, there is a junction where two H roads meet (or is it two V roads?). They can't even get that right.

Under the H & V roads are grafitti covered underpasses. This is one of them.

St Martin, Overstrand, Norfolk

Like several churches in this part of the world, St Martin was in a very bad state by the 19th century, with only part of its nave still in use for worship, and the decision was made to rebuild it. It seems to have been a north Norfolk fashion to rebuild on a new site, and so when Christ Church was erected in the churchyard beside St Martin in 1867, St Martin was left as a picturesque ruin. However, in 1883, Clement Scott eulogised this area in an article written for the Daily Telegraph, and the legend of Poppyland, a dreamlike English idyll, was born.

The north Norfolk coast became a popular holiday destination, thanks to Scott's writing and the opening up of the area by the railways. Perhaps a characterless Victorian church did not fit in with Scott's vision of what Poppyland was, and what people might find there. The medieval parish church at neighbouring Sidestrand had been rebuilt on a new site in an entirely medieval round-towered style, and so it was that Christ Church was demolished, and the ruin of St Martin restored to something approaching its former glory. The architects were Cecil Upcher and AJ Lacey, and the church was opened on the eve of the First World War.

The reconstruction coincided with the pre-War triumphalism of the Church of England, which was at that time at its highest point in the national consciousness, but the project demanded a rigorously vernacular style, and so too many excesses were avoided. The guardian angel in his niche on the south side is not a taste of things to come, because you step into a relatively plain and simple interior which is full of light from the clear glass windows. The only colour comes from a vibrant east window depicting Christ in Majesty with St Cuthbert and St Martin accompanied by otters, dogs and ducks above scenes of Durham and Tours cathedrals. The aisle and chancel are by Upcher & Lacey, the north doorway surviving to create an unusual opening between aisle and nave. Mortlock says the current south porch was originally on the north side. Arthur Mee says that the old font was found in a garden.

Although Overstrand is in many ways still a remote backwater, the memorials and headstones here record links to some of the 19th century's most significant philanthropic families, including members of the Buxton and Gurney families as well as Lady Battersea, who was one of the Rothschilds.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was the millionaire owner of Truman's brewery. He married Elizabeth Fry's sister, and as MP for Weymouth and the Isle of Portland he spoke strongly in parliament for the abolition of all slavery, even after the ending of the slave trade. It is said that his advocacy of the extension of liberty in Africa through the influence of legitimate trade under the protection of Christianity inspired the Scottish doctor, David Livingstone, to go to Africa as a missionary.

Tragedy haunted Buxton and his wife Hannah: four of their children died during an outbreak of whooping cough in the early spring of 1820. Buxton himself never came to terms with his failure to eradicate slavery from Africa; he died in 1845, and was buried here. His memorial is inside the church, but he was also to be found on a recent British five pound note, where he was the spectacled figure standing to the left of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Fry.

St Martin, Overstrand, Norfolk

Like several churches in this part of the world, St Martin was in a very bad state by the 19th century, with only part of its nave still in use for worship, and the decision was made to rebuild it. It seems to have been a north Norfolk fashion to rebuild on a new site, and so when Christ Church was erected in the churchyard beside St Martin in 1867, St Martin was left as a picturesque ruin. However, in 1883, Clement Scott eulogised this area in an article written for the Daily Telegraph, and the legend of Poppyland, a dreamlike English idyll, was born.

The north Norfolk coast became a popular holiday destination, thanks to Scott's writing and the opening up of the area by the railways. Perhaps a characterless Victorian church did not fit in with Scott's vision of what Poppyland was, and what people might find there. The medieval parish church at neighbouring Sidestrand had been rebuilt on a new site in an entirely medieval round-towered style, and so it was that Christ Church was demolished, and the ruin of St Martin restored to something approaching its former glory. The architects were Cecil Upcher and AJ Lacey, and the church was opened on the eve of the First World War.

The reconstruction coincided with the pre-War triumphalism of the Church of England, which was at that time at its highest point in the national consciousness, but the project demanded a rigorously vernacular style, and so too many excesses were avoided. The guardian angel in his niche on the south side is not a taste of things to come, because you step into a relatively plain and simple interior which is full of light from the clear glass windows. The only colour comes from a vibrant east window depicting Christ in Majesty with St Cuthbert and St Martin accompanied by otters, dogs and ducks above scenes of Durham and Tours cathedrals. The aisle and chancel are by Upcher & Lacey, the north doorway surviving to create an unusual opening between aisle and nave. Mortlock says the current south porch was originally on the north side. Arthur Mee says that the old font was found in a garden.

Although Overstrand is in many ways still a remote backwater, the memorials and headstones here record links to some of the 19th century's most significant philanthropic families, including members of the Buxton and Gurney families as well as Lady Battersea, who was one of the Rothschilds.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was the millionaire owner of Truman's brewery. He married Elizabeth Fry's sister, and as MP for Weymouth and the Isle of Portland he spoke strongly in parliament for the abolition of all slavery, even after the ending of the slave trade. It is said that his advocacy of the extension of liberty in Africa through the influence of legitimate trade under the protection of Christianity inspired the Scottish doctor, David Livingstone, to go to Africa as a missionary.

Tragedy haunted Buxton and his wife Hannah: four of their children died during an outbreak of whooping cough in the early spring of 1820. Buxton himself never came to terms with his failure to eradicate slavery from Africa; he died in 1845, and was buried here. His memorial is inside the church, but he was also to be found on a recent British five pound note, where he was the spectacled figure standing to the left of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Fry.

Video Production | Motion Graphics | TV Commercials

Early for a meeting and there was an old delapidated coffee shop begging to be explored just outside Seletar camp. What it lacked in variety, it more than made up for in character. So many of these old places are being redeveloped into characterless stores, that it was such a treat to find something old and dirty for a change. Anyone else know of other such gems around?

From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week.

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays - a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week. From May 1956 until recently, this was the beating heart of regional telly in this part of the North West on the ITV network, but now all that has been transferred to the characterless and frankly unprepossessing Media City on the other side of the Irwell in Salford Quays - a venue shared by the BBC, who also broadcast from the iconic (and should never have been closed) Television Centre. Anyway. this was Quay Street Studios, home to a television station named by founder Leonard Bernstein after his favourite place - the Sierra Granada mountain range in the Andalusia region (pronounced 'Andaloothia') of Spain.

"What Manchester sees today London will see tomorrow" was his proud boast in the year when Britain and France invaded Suez, only for America to tell them to get out of there. Because it wasn't a war they started, they had to get jealous but I digress.

This was also where Richard Madeley (big, BIG fan of Tesco!) met Judy Finnegan who cheerfully told him on his first day at the station back in 1982 that she 'was his mummy' and, let's face it, the years haven't exactly been kind to her!

Of course, I should really have taken a few photos of this in the past when it was an active TV studios but what spurred me into action was Peter Kay's tribute to the station Goodbye Granadaland and that was a week before I took these shots. Why a week you may ask? Well, because I forgot to charge my camera battery the night before I first went (June 16), I had to make do with the camera on an old mobile phone. I only took a few photos with that because I was used to MY camera. Anyway, long story short, as soon as I got home that day, I put the battery on charge and it was ready the following week. This rather long shot, taken at the back of the studios from Atherton Street, is of the top of the office block and you can just about make out where the big letters proclaiming 'GRANADA TV' would have been. Because they were so high up, I think that getting them off would have been a bit of a mission and not one for those with a fear of heights.

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

Oh yeah, you may be wondering how the title came about. Well, years ago when the telly started at half nine in the am, they were the words you would have heard uttered in the dulcet tones of Graham James or whoever was announcer that day.

Showing my age, aren't I? But hey, I don't give a fuck!

Among the kitten-torturing teachers and sexually-deviant sixth formers, some more innocent rumours circulated the dinner halls of schools in the Seventies. As we tossed flicks and considered the merits of Anne French cleansing milk and cherry cola flavoured lip gloss, our gaze would alight oh the pallid cubes of matter in the plates in front. What exactly was it?

Fruit cocktail, promised the dinner ladies. Chopped parsnip and carrot in heavy syrup, whispered the agents provocateurs of the third year. The sugar-saturated matter slopping in the bottom of the bowl could just as easily have been a root vegetable as a tropical fruit The cherry was distinguishable by its colour and rarity, but the other little lumps were as characterless as Tory backbenchers.

Maybe, in another life, they were apricots, peaches, pears, pineapples and other luscious health-giving fruits. After dicing, sweetening and incarceration in a giant can, they were indistinguishable from turnips. We left most of it anyway. Who wants swede in turnip when you’ve got cherry cola lip gloss?

Anna Burnside