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Created for storming beaches under enemy fire. These are released onto the ocean floor from submarines, and then walk up continental shelf to the beach and to the surface.
Created to be a posterboy for the Bionicle WW III contest I'm running over here: www.flickr.com/groups/1412762@N23/discuss
Created for 36th MMM Challenge
D'après un tutorial de: psd.fanextra.com/tutorials/photo-effects/halloween-puppet/
created with prompts using recraftai
inspired by childhood dream of a spooky barn boatride featuring animatronic and costumed characters loosely themed on 70s vintage fast food motifs.
I should mention that this was not a nightmare, but a thoroughly fun child's dream where we were riding through a spooky barn on boats and being served hamburgers, fries, shakes and other common fast food items.
One of the earliest dreams I can recall.
I know it's hardly original but I had to get a shot of this place as it really is one of the wonders in Britain, if not the world.
Copyright © John G. Lidstone, all rights reserved.
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Situated outside the Broken Hill Council Chambers are sculptures created by Broken Hill artist Geoff De Main, commemorating the Syndicate of Seven; the name given to the original members of the Broken Hill Mining Company who pegged mining leases Block 10 to 16 along the Line of Lode in September 1883.
These leases covered the exposed orebody and the whole of the easily worked ore, which would become known as the richest deposit of silver, lead, and zinc in the world.
The members, who were all workmates at the Mount Gipps Station, were:
George McCulloch (station manager)
Charles Rasp (boundary rider)
Philip Charley (station hand)
George Urquhart (sheep overseer)
George Lind (bookkeeper)
David James (dam sinking contractor)
James Poole (employed by David James)
All agreed to contribute £70 each towards the venture.
In 1884, the syndicate agreed to divide their shareholding and eventually there were fourteen equal partners but only Rasp, McCulloch, Charley, James and Poole retained and original shareholding. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited was formed in 1885 and the chimney of BHP's first works office survives near the old slag heap.
The BHP Mine's richest ore was exhausted by 1908 and the company began to look eslwhere for profit. The wealth won at Broken Hill by BHP established Australia's iron and steel industry. BHP ceased operations in Broken Hill in 1939. In 2001, the company became a part of BHP Billiton, the world's largest resource company.
Charles Rasp:
Charles Rasp (1846 - 1907), prospector, was born on the 7th of October 1846 at Stuttgart, Duchy of Württemberg, where he was educated. A clerk in a chemical firm, he later trained as an edible-oil technologist with a large chemical manufacturing company in Hamburg, where he worked in the export department as he was fluent in English and French. Rasp was delicate and the bitter winter of 1868 brought on a serious lung weakness, so he decided to leave Germany for a warmer climate.
Rasp arrived in Melbourne in 1869 and found work pruning vines. After two years on agricultural properties he tried the Victorian goldfields but the days of the big strikes were over and the slushy diggings gave him a hacking cough. On advice from friends he moved to New South Wales. He worked on Walwa station, then wandered from place to place until engaged as a boundary rider on Mount Gipps station in the Barrier Ranges in the far west. After discoveries of silver at Silverton and Day Dream every station-hand in the area searched for indications of the metal.
When his duties led him to the 'hill', Rasp often examined the outcrop. No geologist, he was observant and on the 5th of September 1883 pegged the first block on the 'Broken Hill', which he thought was a mountain of tin. On advice of the Mount Gipps manager, George McCulloch, a 'syndicate of seven' was formed and seven blocks pegged to include the whole ridge. Each member subscribed £70 to the unregistered 'Broken Hill Mining Co.' and paid £1 a week towards working the claim.
The syndicate had little success for some months and the Adelaide analysts' reports were disappointing as they only tested for tin. The discovery of rich silver ore in 1885 led to the formation of the Broken Hill Proprietary Co., with a capital of 16,000 £20 shares, 14,000 of which went to the syndicate, and to a rapid growth of the mining industry at Broken Hill. Within five years Rasp had made a fortune.
He was prominently connected with Broken Hill for some years. With a large number of shares in the company, he moved to Adelaide when dividends were declared; he married Agnes Maria Louise Klevesahl there on the 22nd of July 1886. They bought a house, Willyama, where his wife entertained in the grand manner. Rasp preferred his library of French and German books. For some years he had mining interests in Western Australia.
Leaving an estate of £48,000, Rasp died suddenly from a heart attack at his residence on the 22nd of May 1907 and was buried in North Road cemetery, Adelaide. He was childless. In 1914 his widow married Count von Zedtwitz and died in Adelaide in 1936. Oil paintings of Rasp and his wife are in the Charles Rasp Memorial Library, Broken Hill.
Source: City Of Broken Hill & Australian Dictionary Of Biography.
Some more photos I took for the 3rd annual "Where bloggers create" blog party.
blooged about here: www.carolsgarden.blogspot.com
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
1. rose, 2. ready, 3. softly, 4. tulip-baby, 5. colorful, 6. red red red, 7. lily, 8. daisy, 9. cyclamen 2 B, 10. cotton candy, 11. purple, 12. purple flower, 13. cyclamen, 14. purple cascade, 15. purple flower, 16. daisy, 17. rose, 18. amaryllis, 19. the glow from within, 20. lily
created bu fernando giglado
from a 40cm square of fur paper mc with white unryu from origami shop.
the paper is a little hard to work by i like the result with the fur style
Created for Kreative People August www.flickr.com/groups/1752359@N21/discuss/72157721919065848/
and Down Under Challenge September
www.flickr.com/groups/14835537@N22/discuss/72157721919205...
With thanks to Renee for the source image on the right ...
www.flickr.com/photos/14678598@N07/2912543164/
plus my photos
www.flickr.com/photos/gilleverett/52970497591/
www.flickr.com/photos/gilleverett/52741195736/
Editors: IrfanView, Picasa
Here is a tutorial that I created in Adobe Illustrator. In the tutorial we use some Illustrator basics, as well as some warping and other effects to create this retro looking badge/banner logo design
If you would like to learn how to make this retro badge you can head over to my blog: Create a clean retro badge in Adobe Illustrator
Created for Marcus Ranum Challenge #17
Model with thanks to Marcus Ranum
With thanks to…
Background ~ I Love Butter
Textures ~ Skeletal Mess & Eddi
I feel this could have many stories behind it......that is my sister at the window
Creating memories on a Southern California beach at the end of May. Photographers enjoying capturing perhaps the child's first visit to the beach. This is a random family I watched as I sat relaxing observing my surroundings.
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
1. Red crystal heart for Valentine, 2. Crystal flower, 3. Crystal 2,
4. Green paper and brown crystal, 5. Shadow of Crystal, 6. Crystal,
7. Wine glass, 8. Brown crystal, 9. Available light
Jak szaleć to szaleć ahahah z Nulą i AnnMarii zapodałyśmy kolejnego lifta. Tym razem ja rzuciłam na tapetę boską pracę Mony! ♥
21x21cm
Inspired by this layout madeMona ♥
... one must sometimes destroy.
A section of exterior wall at the MainPlace mall in Santa Ana, CA, stripped down for renovation.
It looks as though MainPlace used to be a part of the Westfield portfolio, like many of the destination malls in my home town of San Diego still are, but has since been sold to another manager. Echoes of Westfield still remain, however, such as the branding on some of the food court tables.
MainPlace is an older mall in a modest area of Orange County; it has neither the high-end glamour of South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa nor the outdoor panache of Irvine's Spectrum Center. But for a middle-class 80s kid like me it has an intense nostalgia that can't be beat. I hope it continues its comeback.
My friend let me take some portraits of him for photography class. This is my favorite one of them. Enjoy!
Creatable World: Customizable Fashion Doll - Starter Pack & Rainy Day Style Pack (Mattel)
*The wigs are horrible...they sit on the head like a BIG, hairy hat! lol
a still shot from a video project i shot earlier this year
Một công ty của Campuchia vừa đưa ra thị trường loại xe ô tô Angkor EV 2013 chạy bằng điện với giá 5.000 USD làm nhiều người “sốc”. Trước đó, Ấn Độ còn đưa ra một loại xe còn “khủng” hơn với giá chỉ có 2.000 USD.
VN mình có thể làm được cái xe rẻ như vậy không? Tất nhiên là làm được. Người VN mình vẫn ngầm thỏa thuận với nhau rằng chúng ta thông minh nhất thế giới còn gì.
Vậy tại sao không có xe hơi siêu rẻ made in Vietnam nhỉ?
Vì mọi chuyện nó như thế này:
Một bác tên Nguyễn Văn Kinh ở TP. HCM đam mê cơ khí, công nghệ, bia, thịt chó và nhiều thứ khác bỗng một ngày đặt ra một câu hỏi rất hâm triết: “Tại sao chỉ có những người nhiều tiền mới được đi xe hơi?” và một câu hỏi còn hâm hơn nữa: “Có thể làm ra một chiếc xe hơi rẻ tiền đến cả một người nghèo cũng mua được hay không?”
Với tính chiến đấu rất cao, bác ấy lập một kế hoạch hoành tráng, thuê 5 kỹ sư mới ra trường của đại học bách khoa tạo nên cái xe 2.000 USD với đa số là linh kiện Tàu. Xe làm ra chạy ngon lành cành đào.
Vấn đề bắt đầu xuất hiện.
Một nhà báo nghe tin bác Nguyễn Văn Kinh làm ra chiếc xe siêu rẻ liền làm 4 kỳ liên tục về “Doanh nhân Kinh làm xe siêu rẻ”. Khổ nỗi loạt bài này rất ít nhắc đến các từ như “đam mê”, “liều lĩnh”, “dũng cảm”, “sáng tạo”,… mà lại có rất nhiều chi tiết như “ai cũng bảo bác ấy hâm”, “bạn bè bảo bác ấy dở hơi”, “Vợ bác ấy nói bác yêu xe hơn yêu vợ”,…
Sau đó là hàng trăm tờ báo khác lao vào xâu xé, khai thác bác Nguyễn Văn Kinh với các đề tài tương tự, có điều là với cường độ hâm hơn nhiều. Nhiều nhà báo còn khai thác đời tư của bác ấy một cách không cần thiết ví dụ như phát hiện ra bác ấy là “người dân tộc nhưng rất kinh”.
Vì bác ấy HÂM nên bác ấy vẫn đem xe ra đường thử nghiệm. Nhưng đúng ngày đó thì đùng một cái, cảnh sát giao thông tuyên bố: “Thằng cha Nguyễn Văn Kinh đó chạy thử trong sân nhà hắn thì được chứ mang xe ra đường mà chạy là chúng tôi bắt”.
Báo chí lại sôi sục ầm ầm: sao bắt, luật có cấm đâu, hâm à, dở hơi à, điên à? Cảnh sát GT trả lời: “Cái gì ra đường có nguy cơ gây nguy hiểm cho người dân là chúng tôi bắt”.
Nghe có lý không và có quen không? Nó cũng giống như giải thích của mấy bác quân đội khi cấm ông Hải ở Tây Ninh thử nghiệm máy bay trực thăng tự chế. Hay gần đây nhất là công an Thái Bình không cho ông Hòa thử nghiệm tàu ngầm vậy. Lý do rất nhân đạo, nhân văn và nhân dân: “Cái gì đưa xuống nước có thể nguy hiểm cho ngư dân là chúng tôi bắt”.
Ơ, hay nhỉ. Cái tàu ngầm này mà đưa ra biển nó cũng chỉ ra xa được 100m, lặn sâu 5-10m là cùng, chắc chẳng chết ai. Còn ngoài biển có những thứ nó ngang nhiên cắt cáp của tàu lớn, đâm vỡ tàu nhỏ, ăn cướp hải sản, bắt bớ đánh đập ngư dân sao các bác không bắt hết hốt hết đi?
Thôi quay trở về với cái xe siêu rẻ. Nó không được đưa ra thử nghiệm để sản xuất hàng loạt, tất nhiên rồi. Vì người ta luôn quan niệm làm ra cái xe hơi, cái máy bay, cái tàu ngầm phải là công việc của các bác giáo sư có mấy chục cái bằng hay của một cơ quan bí mật đó của nhà nước cơ, người dân sao làm nổi.
Thế là cấm! Đấy, thay vì dùng “sự phá hủy sáng tạo” của ông Schumpeter thì VN mình lại sáng tạo thành “phá hủy sự sáng tạo”.
Khi được hỏi có nghiên cứu thị trường trước khi sản xuất xe 4 bánh chạy bằng động cơ hay không thì Henry Ford nói rằng: “Nếu hỏi người tiêu dùng muốn gì họ sẽ nói muốn một con ngựa chạy nhanh hơn”. May mà khi ông Ford đem xe ra chạy thử, chẳng có ai cấm. Nếu nước Mỹ cũng có tư tưởng cấm đoán này thì hẳn rằng đến năm Ngọ này họ vẫn còn cưỡi ngựa.
Và sau này khi IBM thử nghiệm bộ xi xử lý, Microsoft bán hệ điều hành, Google đưa công cụ tìm kiếm mọi thứ mà người ta cố giấu hay Facebook cho người ta cơ hội thể hiện cảm xúc cá nhân cũng chẳng ai cấm cả.
Thay vì thịt con gà ngay khi mới lớn, người ta nuôi dưỡng, khuyến khích con gà đẻ trứng vàng. Còn ở VN thì đến con chim nó mới đập cánh vài cái đã bị bóp chết bởi những dọa nạt bản quyền với truy thu thuế.
Ở đâu mà người ta để cho sự sáng tạo được tự do, ở đó sẽ có những phát minh thay đổi thế giới.
Thôi thì “hãy cứ khát khao, hãy cứ dại khờ”
I think in Simon's list of 50 best Suffolk churches, Woolpit comes in at number 31. It is now that I remember that I cannot remember why I should go to Woolpit on what would be the last of the EA church visits this year, as Mum was home and in the care of the district nurse, and there was nothing else we could do, not in actions, money or time given. She really has to stand on her own two feet now.
Anyway; Woolpit.
I decided to go, and after looking on the map I saw that with some create route planning, I could go down the 143, then double back and join the A14 eastwards before turning south down our old friend, the A12.
On the way I did also visit Stowlangtoft, which was a wonderful church, a church filled with wonderful things that seemed to hang together as a whole. Woolpit would have to be something special to trup St George.
And it nearly did. Nearly. Woolpit is a picture perfect village, all timber framed buildings, narrow lanes and impossible to park in. I drove through it finding a kind of space just past the church. I could see from the tower and building it was a church on which the Victorians had been very busy.
Most glorious is Mary's roof; double hammerbeam adorned with 208 angels one of the wardens told me. It had been counted several times during a dull sermon. Or two.
The wardens were building the crib for Christmas, so were using a pallet as a base, or something like that. I didn't see it finished, but Ken Bruce was booming out from a radio, preaching the Gospel According to Popmaster to all who would listen.
The angels in the roof and on the walls of the church are indeed impressive, as is the rood screen, but not sure if they are original. There are carved pew ends aplenty, but to my eye, not as well carved or as old as at Stowlangtoft. I could be wrong. But I snap a few anyway.
But I received a warm welcome here, and it is a fantastic church for me.
-----------------------------------------
2008: Woolpit is a village which I often visit, and it is always a pleasure to go into the church. But the entry for St Mary was one of the last on the original Suffolk Churches site, making its appearance in late 2001. In fact, I think it was the last of the old-style entries. I was getting a bit wordy by then.
Woolpit was one of the longest entries, and this wasn't just because there is so much to see. I went off at a great tangent about the meaning of medieval iconography, and how it survived the Reformation. It certainly got some thoughts clear in my own head, even if it confused other people. I actually wrote the entry in the back of an old exercise book sitting outside a café on the Cote d'Azur in southern France. Reading that back, it seems a little pretentious, but I really was there. Here in Ipswich on a frosty February evening, I can't help remembering the heat as I scrawled in the pad.
I've left the original entry almost entirely as it was, apart from the removal of one absolute howler, which I won't mention. I am not sure if Woolpit still has a Sunday market, and I am sure that someone will tell me if it has not. Paul Hocking is no longer Rector of Woolpit, but to my eyes the church continues to go from strength to strength, feeling at once busy and at the heart of its community, the still centre of a busy village. I like it very much.
2001: The clear blue waters of the Mediterranean swirl around my legs, then past me, buffeting the rocks along the silver beach. Millions of tiny flecks of mica swarm through the current, washed out of the hills of Southern Provence. They shine for a fraction of a second with all the light the high summer sun can give, a universe caught in a moment; then turn, disappearing, making of the water a shimmering skein, an ancient memory.
The sea is at the start of all European civilisation. Here, history wells about me. I think of Europe, and the fragmentation of nations. I think of the Balkans, and the Reformation, and the same water surrounding, tending, isolating. I think of time passing.
A week before, I'd been standing in the cool nave of the church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, Woolpit - or at least, that is what it probably was once, back then. Today, it is dedicated simply as 'St Mary', in common with the majority of Suffolk's medieval churches, among which it is one of the finest, some say. This is mostly by virtue of its beautiful porch, and extraordinary angel roof.
But is that true? For there are those who love this church that, perhaps, never look up at the porch or roof. Is it the plethora of 15th century bench ends that captures the imagination? Or could it be Richard Phipson's outrageous 1850s tower and lacy spire, straight out of the Nene Valley, its evangelistic slogans around the side in a Victorian equivalent of Piccadilly Circus neon? It ought not to work, and yet it does. Or is it that supremely articulate view to the east, perfect of proportion despite the stripping away of its medieval liturgical apparatus? Above all else, and above most others, this is a church with presence.
It was the bench ends that I was thinking of as I immersed myself out of the intensity of the Provencal sun. A number of questions occured to me, as they have done on other occasions, in other churches. Who made them? What did they mean by them? And how did they survive the iconoclasms of the Protestant Reformation? Here in Southern Europe, I thought I might have found some answers.
Woolpit, then. It is perhaps the most perfect of all Suffolk villages. Not sleepy, and chocolate boxy, but to actually live in. Its shops and pubs are arranged around the pleasant village square, and Phipson's crazy spire towers above them. Woolpit still has its school, and you wouldn't need to get in the car every time you needed a loaf of bread, as you'd have to do in some of Suffolk's more famously picturesque villages, like Kersey and Tuddenham. And Woolpit has its Sunday market, beloved of hundreds of non-sabbatarian junk-hunters each week.
Further, Woolpit has its mythology; the two green children, who climbed out of the ground, speaking a strange language and afraid of the sunlight. The boy died soon after, but the girl grew up and married; she learned to speak English, and told of St Martin's Land, from where she and her brother had emerged. There are holes in the ground around Woolpit, quarries where bricks were made in the 19th century. But perhaps there was once something much older, for every Suffolk schoolchild knows that the name 'Woolpit' is nothing to do with wool, but with the wolves that once lived in the pits here...
So, it is a well-known village. It is because of this as much as anything about St Mary itself that makes this church so well-known to people who haven't heard of the even more interesting and beautiful church of St Ethelbert, Hessett, barely three miles away.
Your first sight of St Mary will be Phipson's crazy spire, visible from miles away, and quite unlike anything else in East Anglia. Suffolk is a county where spires are rare enough, anyway. From the far side of the Gipping valley you can see this one and two others, piercing the soft harvest mist in autumn. They are Phipson's equally absurd Great Finborough, and the 1990s blade of St Peter and St Mary, Stowmarket. There are only about a dozen more in the whole of the county. The excuse for this one was that the tower was struck by lightning in 1852, bringing down the previous lead and timber affair (presumably like the one at Hadleigh). The font is contemporary with the tower, suggesting that the old one was destroyed by the fall.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the artist John Piper produced a series of screen prints of aspects of Suffolk churches; for most, he used the fine perpendicular tower, ramifying it in bold Festival of Britain primary colours. But for Woolpit, he chose the porch, because it is Suffolk's finest. Cautley thought it the best in all England. It is two-storey, 15th century, contemporary with the nave. Mortlock tells us that they were both built by wealthy Bury Abbey, who owned the living here. As at Beccles, it rises way above the south aisle, tower-like in itself.
A rood group of niches surmounts the shields of East Anglia above the door. More flank them. Mortlock says that the work began in the early 1430s, and the niches were filled by a bequest of 1473, suggesting that the porch was forty years in the making. The south aisle and chancel are slightly earlier, the north aisle slightly later, so it is the nave that promises us great things, and doesn't disappoint.
You step into cool darkness, and look up. It is breathtaking. This is Suffolk's most perfectly restored angel hammerbeam roof. It may not have the drama of Mildenhall, the exquisiteness of Blythburgh, the sheer mathematics of Needham Market, but it shows us in detail more than any other what the medieval imagination was aiming at. From the still, small silence of the church floor below, you look up into a great shout of praise. Here are hundreds of figures, both angelic and human. The profusion is ordered, as if some mighty hymn were in progress.
Paul Hocking thinks that it is a representation of the Te Deum Laudamus: We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord... To thee all Angels cry aloud, the Heavens, and all the Powers therein. To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabaoth... The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee, the noble army of Martyrs praise thee...
I know this, because he told me so. I was busy photographing bench ends when this very enthusiastic American bounced in with another visitor, and gave him a whistlestop tour of the church, describing the details with great knowledge and understanding. Solicitously, he talked to me afterwards about what I was doing, and asked me if I'd met the Rector of Woolpit yet. I said that I went out of my way to avoid Rectors wherever possible. He laughed, and replied that, on this occasion, I'd failed, because he was, in fact, the Rector.
After I'd coughed miserably, and he'd laughed again, we had a long chat, uncovering a few mutual aquaintances. He described the roof, which he has obviously spent a lot of time exploring. He pointed out the way the wall posts contained Saints, some with apostolic symbols, some with books, and some with martyr's palms. There are angels on the hammerbeams above, and bearing symbols below. John Blatchly counted 128 angels alone. Some of the shields have letters on them. Are they an acrostic, as on the east chancel wall at Blythburgh? Do they indicate individual Saints? The great Henry Ringham completely restored this roof in 1862, but Mortlock thinks that one of the angels is not his, and I agree - you'll find it in the south west corner. Paul Hocking argues that the restoration was nowhere near as complete as has been made out, and that many features are original.
Henry Ringham also restored the range of bench ends, by duplicating some of the medieval ones, as he did at Great Bealings and Tuddenham St Martin. All are rendered with his customary skill. If Ringham did restore this roof, then the imagery must have been destroyed at some point. One instinctively thinks of William Dowsing, the Puritan inspector of the churches of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, who progressed across the counties during the course of 1644. His delight in the destruction of angel roofs was matched only by that at the destruction of stained glass.
And Dowsing did visit this church. He arrived here in the afternoon of February 29th 1644. It was a Thursday, and he had come here across country from Helmingham, where he had found much to do. He also planned to visit Beyton that day, but in the end stayed overnight at the Bull hotel, and inspected All Saints there in the morning. He then rested for the weekend - the following week, he had a busy tour of southern Cambridgeshire ahead of him.
Dowsing records in great detail what he found to do at each church. In the case of Woolpit, the angel roof is the Dog That Didn't Bark: My Deputy. 80 superstitious pictures; some he brake down, and the rest he gave order to take down; and three crosses to be taken down in 20 days. 8s 6d. There are only two possible reasons why Dowsing doesn't mention the roof. Either he didn't notice it (extremely unlikely) or it had already been destroyed. This second option seems certain; mid-Suffolk was a strongly protestant area, and nearby Rougham, which clearly had a similar roof, was not visited by Dowsing, but was vandalised even more comprehensively than Woolpit. Most likely, the destruction at both churches dated from a hundred years earlier, although it is possible that the Rougham and Woolpit congregations had been puritan enough in the 1630s to do it to their own churches themselves.
Beneath the roof, the church is broad, its two aisles giving room for the panoply of medieval liturgical processions. At the east end of the south aisle was once the shrine of Our Lady of Woolpit, a site of medieval pilgrimage in connection with a nearby holy well. Apart from the front rows, many of the benches appear to be in their original positions. Some of the bench ends are 15th century, others are Ringham's 19th century copies. I wandered around the medieval bench ends, running my hands over them, crouching down and engaging them, face to face. For anyone educated in a Marxist or Weberian historical tradition, as most of my generation were, interpreting the less-obviously liturgical or theological features of a medieval church is fraught with difficulties. One possibility is to do a Cautley, and try not to interpret them at all. But it is more fun to try to do so, don't you think?
The bench ends of Woolpit are remarkable for their abundance. They are not representations of sacraments, virtues and vices as at Tannington and elsewhere, or Saints as at Ufford and Athelington. They are almost all non-allegorical animals, although not the art objects we find at Stowlangtoft, or the mysterious beasts of Lakenheath. Perhaps a good comparison is the similar body of work at nearby Combs. Indeed, although they do not appear to be from the same workshop, it is likely that their creators knew of each others' work. There are dogs, with geese hanging from their mouths, and another which may be a cat with a rat or lizard. There are lions and bears, and a chained monkey, and birds in profusion. So who did them, and why are they here?
There is one school of thought that says that they are simply there to beautify the church, and that they were made by local craftsmen doing what they were best at. If they could do lions, they did lions. If they could render a decent rabbit, then that is what they did. And so on.
But I think that there is rather more to it than that. On my journey down through France, I had spent an afternoon in one of my favourite towns, Autun, in Burgundy. One of the reasons I like Autun is its 11th century Cathedral of St-Lazaire; this is Lazurus, raised by Christ from the dead, and until the 18th century his relics were venerated at a shrine here. St-Lazaire is most famous for its great tympanum above the west door, generally recognised as one of the greatest Romanesque art treasures in the world, and with International Heritage status. It was created during the middle years of the 12th century, and shows the Last Judgement. To emphasise Christ's majesty over all the world, it features all manner of beasts, domestic, wild and mythical.
Throughout the Cathedral, animals infest the famous capitals, which tell the Gospel story. Abbe Denis Grivot, in his Un Bestiaire de la Cathedrale D'Autun (Lyon, 1973) argues that the 12th century creators of all this filled it with animals to echo the final verse of the 150th Psalm, the crowning point of that great sequence of hymns of praise: Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!
Standing in the nave at Autun, I instantly recalled Paul Hocking's words about the roof at Woolpit, when he said he thought it was a representation of the Te Deum Laudamus. The Te Deum is one of the canticles; another is the Benedicite, traditionally sung through Lent: Oh all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever... O ye whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord... O all ye Fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord... O all ye beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!
Could it be that the bench ends at Woolpit, and elsewhere in Suffolk, were intended to reflect and represent the praise defined in the canticles and psalms? Both would have been central to the liturgy of the medieval Catholic church. Perhaps the bench ends of Woolpit are liturgical and theological after all.
How would a carpenter, or group of carpenters, go about creating a set of benches like the ones at Woolpit? Who were they? Almost certainly, they were locals. They might have been itinerant jobbing carpenters, but I don't think so. The bench ends at adjacent Tostock are clearly by the same hand. But those at nearby Stowlangtoft and Norton are not, and a third hand seems to be responsible for those at Combs, as I previously mentioned. I do not think that the mutilated ones at Rougham and Elmswell are either; they were probably from the same workshop as each other.
So, we have a conscious attempt by skilled members of a community to create a hymn of praise in carved oak, by representing as many beasts as they felt capable of making. Where did they get their ideas from? They would have had no problems with oxen, cocks, conies - these were all around them, in their daily lives. The person who carved the hunting dog here was very familiar with it. Perhaps it was his own. What about monkeys and lions? These are more problematic. In medieval bestiaries, exotic creatures had fabulous legends attached to them, which gave them a theological symbolism.
But this symbolism doesn't usually seem intended when we see them on bench ends. Sometimes they are rendered accurately, but more often wild animals are fairly imaginary; I think particularly of Barningham's camel, and Hadleigh's wolf. It isn't enough to say that the carvers could have seen pictures of exotic beasts. This is fairly unlikely. Probably, the ordinary people of Woolpit never saw a book other than the missals, lectionaries and hagiographies used in church.
They might have seen pictures of lions and monkeys in wall paintings, either in other churches or here at Woolpit. They might have seen them carved in bench ends, for the same reason. In fact, the representation of wild animals varies so much as to suggest that this is not the case - compare, for example, the lions of Combs with those of Stowlangtoft. Probably, they were created in the imagination from descriptions and attributes in stories. But I think that there is a strong possibility that the woodcarvers of Woolpit did see lions and monkeys in real life.
Here in Catholic Southern Europe, there are many remote small towns which, by virtue of being so very far from each other, take on a rich and complex life of their own. Even small villages have their shops, their craftsmen, their tradespeople; they replicate a situation that existed in Suffolk until well into the 19th century, and in some cases beyond, before the great industrialisation and easy transport swept it away. Further, there are traditions here still that we have lost. Whenever I come here, I am fascinated by the itinerant entertainers, who move from village to village, giving a single performance befre moving on. This must also once have been true of England. The thing that fascinates me most is the multitude of small family circuses.
Many of them seem to be of Italian or Romany origin; all family members have multiple roles, from the oldest grandparent to the youngest child, selling tickets, doing acrobatics, being the straight men to the clown (who is typically Grandpa). They all put up the tent before the performance, and take it down afterwards. They move on, through the remote hills of Provence and the Languedoc, performing on village greens, wastegrounds, the corners of fields, even traffic islands.
As I say, I am fascinated, and can rarely resist them, even though I am shocked, even appalled, by the easy cruelty to animals. Performing animals are still often chosen for their curiosity value, if you can call running around in a circle to the crack of a whip 'performing', poor things.
The choices are strange indeed; camels and zebras often feature; I have seen an old bear on a chain, and at one circus in remote Languedoc a hippopotamus of all things - it caught bread thrown by the crowd. There was no safety fence between the seats and the ring, no Health and Safety Executive to penetrate these lost valleys. I do not know if such circuses existed in medieval Suffolk. But I think that they probably did. Suffolk is a maritime county, and exotic animals were widely known and exhibited in medieval Europe. Before the Protestant Reformation cut us of from the mainland, clerics and merchants thought of themselves as European, and travelled widely - English sovereignty was a hazy concept at best, and 'Britishness' was still centuries away from being formulated as an idea. People owed allegiance to their village, their parish, and their lord, not to the Crown and Parliament in London.
Were the woodcarvers of Woolpit and Tostock remembering this? A circus visit, perhaps back in their childhood? Exotic animals rendered inaccurately, to be sure, but with an enthusiastic nostalgia for that exciting moment in their lives? Was there a lion? A monkey, or a bear? How much more powerful if they also knew the fabulous legends about the beasts - and had seen them in real life!
Some of the carvings at Woolpit are allegorical. One shows a monkey dressed in monk's robes. This, I think, is a joke at the expense of the itinerant friars who went from parish to parish, preaching repentance in the streets. They were sanctioned by the Pope, but were beyond the jurisdiction of the local Bishop. They didn't always go down well with the local Priest and congregation, who considered the Friars nosey and hypocritical. A monkey is often a symbol of foolish vanity - hence, a Friar thinking he was better than anyone else. What better way to make the point than to slip him in as one of the creatures praising the Lord?
How did they survive? But why should they have been destroyed? We make the mistake of thinking of the Puritans as vandals. But the more you read about William Dowsing, the more he emerges as being a principled, conservative kind of chap, despite his clearly flawed and fundamentalist theological opinions. He had no reason to destroy animal bench ends. They weren't superstitious - even Dowsing didn't think Catholics worshipped animals. If he didn't think they were meant to represent the canticles, he wouldn't even have considered them religious. Amen to that.
So much for the 17th century. What about the 19th? St Mary is one of the most enthusiastically restored of Suffolk's churches, despite its survivng medieval detail. But it was done well. Mortlock thought that the 19th century pulpit was the work of Ringham - but the brass lectern is pre-Reformation, a fine example. The rood screen dado panels have sentimental 19th century Saints on them, that may or may not duplicate what was there before. They are actually very good, particularly the gorgeous Mary of Magdala. They have their names painted on the cross beams for the less hagiologically articulate Victorians - from left to right across the aisle they are Saints Barbara, Felix, Mary of Magdala, Peter, Paul, Mary, Edmund and Etheldreda. It is unlikely that Saint Felix would have been on a medieval roodscreen, and Mary almost certainly wasn't - it would have relegated her to a position of no more importance than the others. If it reflects anything of what was there before, it was probably St Anne with the infant Virgin.
The top part of the screen was renewed in 1750, and dated so. The gates are probably a Laudian imposition of 120 years earlier, as at Kedington. This may suggest that, by the time of Dowsing's visit, the chancel was being used for some other practical purpose. Above, high above, set in the east nave wall over the chancel arch, is one of the wierdest objects I've seen in a medieval church. It was installed in the 1870s, and is clearly meant to echo the coving of a rood loft. Goodness knows what it actually is, but it is painted in garish colours, and inscribed with texts. In one of those moments where Cautley and credibility part company, he describes anyone who doesn't think it is a genuine medieval canopy of honour as 'stupid'. I suppose that it has a certain curiosity value.
The three-light window above it would have given light to the rood. The east window contains one of Suffolk's best modern Madonna and child images which was made by the artist Ian Keen for the King workshop in the early 1960s. Ian Keen was also responsible for the beautiful St Margaret in St Margaret's church in Norwich, and for the memorable window of St Francis with a labrador at Somerleyton near Lowestoft.
I turned back westwards, past a superb medieval bench end of the three Marys. This is a delight, and you'd travel to London to see it if it was in the V&A. Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the mother of James and Mary of Magdala huddle together, perhaps on the morning of the Resurrection. One of them has a lily of the Annunciation. One head is destroyed - but was it vandalised? Or is it the result of carelessness, the wear and tear of the centuries? Would 17th century puritans have destroyed it if they'd seen it?
Dowsing rarely mentions bench ends, so perhaps few were left by then anyway. So how could it possibly have survived the violent zeal of the 16th century Protestants, battering the Church of England into existence with their axes, pikes and bonfires? How, even after the 1540 edict of Edward VI which ordered the destruction of all statues and images of Saints, especially those of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is it still there at all?
Still more questions than answers, I suppose. I dived beneath the water, and there was beneath me a restless current, shifting and reshifting the silver sand into unique patterns, the work of millennia, still changing, never the same.
- le Rayol Canadel, Cote d'Azur, August 2001.