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Middle guy is a Bolt Of Change horror. Converted from the new Hobbit Goblin Town Goblins, with added Ghoul/WHFB Goblin heads and arms, and tons of green stuff.
Urbex Session : Horrors Labs (BE) , 11.2012
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Your family contacted our staff and you scheduled to be our newest patient! Welcome to the Hyperion Hills Hospital! (formerly the Hyperion Tavern) We've already confirmed with your family that you qualify for an expense free stay at Hyperion Hills .
Admit yourself to our New Patients Night! Monday October 26th. It's a fun way get oriented to our facilities. It's free to you and your family!!
Here's a run down of the evening!
7pm Proper Tour
Our top staff members will escort
small groups on an orientation
tour of our grounds.
8pm Lovely Films
Gather around everyone,
it's movie time! A little
taste of life as a patient
at Hyperion Hills.
9pm New Friends
The current patients at
Hyperion Hills Hospital
can't wait to meet you!
They put together a little
welcoming show for you
and your family.
Midnight Photo Opps
A little meet and greet
after party! Perfect time to
snap some last photos
of you and your family!
We suggest you arrive around 7:30 to get the full experience of the evening. We'll have plenty of intermissions and candy!
Welcome to your new home!
Sincerely,
All of us on the staff of Hyperion Hills Hospital
and Home for the Criminally Deranged:
Denver Smith
Meghan Parks
Ed Galvez
Jefferey J. Nowicki
Val Myers
A few of our current patients whom you'll see are free to roam around our campus:
Patty Courtland
Sean Hart
Ed Salazar
Erik Tait
Charlie Watkins
Matt Hanley
Emerson Dameron
Finally, a list of current patients you'll see during the Welcome Show:
hosted by: George Earth and Beau Brookes. with JP Houston and Alex on drums!
Mark Wenzel
Marisol Medina
Count Smokula
Matt Blitz
Jim Coughlin
The Walsh Bros
Adam Shenkman
Jason Nash
Scot Nery
DJ Doug Pound
Josh Fadem
Krystal Gibbon
Bonnie Delight
This guy was supposed to be purple but I went a bit mad with the highlights so as luck would have it he is actually the only"pink" horror in the unit of pink horrors.
Hall of Horrors
Sheep's Pass
Joshua Tree National Park
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The Horrors / Heft-Reihe
The Spirit of War
cover: L. B. Cole
Star Publications / USA 1953
Reprint / Comic-Club NK 2010
ex libris MTP
Middle guy is a Bolt Of Change horror. Converted from the new Hobbit Goblin Town Goblins, with added Ghoul/WHFB Goblin heads and arms, and tons of green stuff.
Some shooting to the electoral publicity during the last elections for the municipality in Florence...
Original shot taken with a Minolta Auotpak 500 on Kodak Gold 200 asa expired 126 film cartridge. Some post processing.
From the autumn 2016 trip to Vietnam:
I’ll do my best to avoid channeling my inner Robin Williams here, though I did deplane in Saigon around 7:00 in the morning local time. So, this – and all subsequent sets – will be (almost) devoid of reference to hanging in Danang, a certain less-than-savory woman from the north (though, ironically, Hanoi Hannah just passed away in Saigon last Friday while I was still in the country), or other clichéd references to…Good Morning, Vietnam.
This particular trip (my first to VN) started around midnight Chinese time on 27 September 2016. After a very quick layover in Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia being another country that would be nice to photograph sometime, especially the beaches – I landed in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City early on the 28th. It’s a tossup what they call it, by the way. I’d say the majority still call it by its original name – Saigon – though there are some who call it Ho Chi Minh City. I’ll go with the majority of folks who live there and refer to it as Saigon.
I had two full days there, the 28th and 29th, before flying out on the morning of the 30th. Choosing a random hotel from Lonely Planet (I tend to go budget & find the best available option; usually works out pretty well), I ended up at the Cat Huy Hotel, where I went directly after clearing customs.
This is a hotel in the Pham Ngu Lao area near District 1. It’s down an alley, which was interesting in and of itself. Coming from the airport, the taxi drops you off and send you walking. Each morning (or at least the 3 mornings there), this alley transforms into a very crowded fresh food market, which was outstanding to me. Sadly, though, none of the mornings afforded time to slowly wander and photograph it.
The hotel itself (and its staff) are fantastic. It’s a small hotel with only ten rooms, and the service is top notch. It’s one of the kind of hotels where guests leave books when they finish, so there’s always something interesting to read. One of them (Vietnam: Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton) caught my attention. It’s a non-fiction account of contemporary Vietnam and, while I haven’t started to read it yet, I’m quite interested in it and they let me take it. I hadn’t finished any books so didn’t leave any behind, but was still quite grateful that they let me have it.
In addition to that, they can (and did) help arrange a few tours. These can be anything from day trips to the Mekong Delta – which I would have loved, had we stayed an extra day – to day/night tours in Saigon. (Not to tout this hotel over others; I’m sure almost any, if not every, hotel in cities like these are glad to help arrange such things. I can only say that I was happy here and, if I were to return to Saigon, I’d gladly stay here again.)
The first day I was in Saigon I spent quietly. The only exploration I did was just wandered around the hotel a little, then had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. (Yes, I know this isn’t Vietnamese food, but it’s a bit of a quirky thing; I think I’ve been to 30-40 HRCs around the world now with shot glasses from all but one that I’ve been to.) That being said, lunch was good, as were the six shots I had, fruity though they were.
The HRC is in the heart of downtown near the U.S. Consulate, in addition to being near Notre Dame Cathedral, the Old Post Office, and the Reunification Palace. However, these would all be for the 29th. Today, I was alone, and waiting for my friend Junyu to arrive from Hong Kong, since she missed her morning flight.
The evening was quiet; we just ate around the hotel and arranged tours for the following day. For $11, we had a day tour with Bao and the driver, Mr. Mao. It started around 8:30, I think? I forget, but it was late enough that I was glad to have pho for breakfast.
On a full stomach, we hopped on one of those small vans that can hold about 10 people and started around the city. The first (and most depressing, by far) stop was the War Remnants Museum. This is, in my opinion, a “must see” – especially for folks from the U.S. It’s pretty much a testimonial of the war from the Vietnamese point of view and, at times, is pretty graphic. The pictures simply show the effects of the bombing, in addition to the use of agent orange, etc. Though it’s completely one-sided in its telling, it does have photographs – and many of them – that show the destruction from the war. (I won’t offer my personal thoughts on how accurate the Vietnamese or U.S. version of history is here.)
The next stop after the hour at the museum was one of the obligatory stops that seem to come on these package tours. It was to a coffee shop/store. Free samples of coffee for all (and for those of you who know me, you know how I feel about that) and stories of Vietnamese coffee.
As an aside, I think I saw that Vietnam is now the largest exporter of coffee in the world (not sure if that’s true; it surprised me all the same). They are very, very proud of their coffee and you can’t walk two meters in the country without passing a coffee shop. Their most famous coffee is “weasel coffee.” It’s pretty much the same as Indonesian Kopi Luwak. The beans are digested by animals – weasels in this case, and only then are they most fit for human consumption. So…coffee lovers, enjoy.
After the 15 minute rest stop, we hopped back in the van and went off to Chinatown in Cholon (District 5). If I recall, I think Bao said the Chinese made up about 4% of the population, though accounted for 25% of the economy. (I don’t know if that’s a current figure or a historical one.) At any rate, the first stop was at a temple that I found rather unimpressive. The Thien Hau Pagoda didn’t seem like a pagoda at all. It just felt like a cramped temple in the middle of a neighborhood. I don’t even think I got a single picture here that impressed me too much.
From there, we went to the Binh Tay Market, also in Cholon. This is a wholesale market that supposedly has a central courtyard with gardens. It may have that, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time, and didn’t see anything that mentioned it. The clock tower is nice, but the inside basically feels like a flea market or an oversized garage sale. I enjoyed walking around the exterior of the market much more as this is where the food vendors were. Munching on some cashews, I managed to get quite a few pictures of various vendors selling various food. I enjoyed that quite a bit.
After the 1-1.5 hours total in District 5, we hopped back on the van then followed along the riverside to a restaurant for lunch. We then went across the river to District 2 – currently almost completely undeveloped and on low/swampy land. (For Shanghainese, think Pudong around 1990. District 1, on the other hand, is like Puxi.) Had we stopped, I may have gotten a few interesting panoramas of District 1 from this side of the river and the emergence of District 2. However, we were on our way to the second (and, thankfully, last) obligatory stop…a lacquer production facility. Though the pieces were nice, I bought none, and politely bided my 30 minutes here.
Next up was the Reunification Palace. This is a peculiar place. Originally, it was the site of a palace built for the French leader of Cochinchina (Indochina). It was called Norodom Palace. Norodom, coincidentally, was the ruler of Cambodia. Later, it became the palace/residence for Ngo Dinh Diem, who ruled South Vietnam. He was so unpopular that his own air force bombed the palace hoping to kill him. (He was eventually assassinated by disgruntled South Vietnamese in 1963. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.)
Before he was assassinated, Diem had the palace rebuilt (with underground bunkers). Successive South Vietnamese used it as the main government building, so on the main floor are the cabinet rooms. The upper floors have reception rooms.
This is a building that is stuck in time – in the 1960s – with the interior decorations to match. It’s not the most attractive place, but definitely worth a visit. The Vietnam War ended here (symbolically, anyway) on 30 April 1975 when Viet Cong tanks crashed through the wrought iron gates. The tanks are currently on display to the right of the main lawn.
An hour at the palace – more than enough time to casually look around – and then we were off for a short drive to our last two stops: Notre Dame Cathedral & the Old Post Office, which are right next door to each other. That was the end of the $11 day trip, right around 4:00. (I forgot to mention, the $11 included admission ticket prices.)
The bus dropped us off close enough to the hotel that we had a short walk and roughly an hour to rest before the night tour (which cost $40). The night tour was drinking/eating and well worth it. Two girls on their scooters, Ha & Nga, came to the hotel to pick us up.
First evening stop, a rooftop bar. I forget the name of the bar, but it was downtown in District 1 and up on the 26th or 28th floor. (Saigon doesn’t have too many super skyscrapers like China.) It wasn’t an amazing sunset, but beautiful all the same with random lightning. I tried a number of times to catch lightning in pictures, but had no luck. However, I think the night panoramas turned out fine. Thirty minutes and two Saigon Specials down the hatch and we were back out on the streets.
Ha took me to the intersection of Phan Dinh Pung Street and Le Van Duyet Street. There’s not much memorable about this intersection except for one thing: in 1963, the Buddhist monk Thanh Quang Duc drove here in a blue Austin, got out of his car, then immediately sat in the middle of the intersection in a lotus position and lit himself on fire, killing himself in protest of Ngo Dinh Diem’s persecution of Buddhists. Nga started to explain the story to us, but when I connected the dots about who it was (I never knew his name), I stopped her. You can find the famous picture online of his self-immolation. It’s one of the iconic pictures of the entire decade of the 1960s.
Next up for us was dinner, though I don’t know the name of what we ate. We had a quick “cooking lesson” on how to make rice paper (kind of a pancake, really) that was part of dinner with vegetables. This was in the flower market, a small street where they sell – you guessed it – flowers.
Between dinner and dessert, we stopped for banh mi (or, up north, banh my) which is street food: a small baguette slathered with mayonnaise, a pepper sauce, and vegetables, and meat…or something that resembles meat, a la Spam. Whatever was in it, it was a delicious little sandwich on French bread.
The last place to stop and eat was another little side street for dessert. We had four bowls of…I don’t know what to call it. In common was that they all had crushed ice on top and were in a cream sauce. The differences was in the jelly. One was mango, one was kiwi, one was coffee, and the other was caramel/flan.
On a full stomach, Ha & Nga drove us back to the hotel where we passed out in anticipation of a morning flight to Phu Quoc Island.
As always, thanks for dropping by and viewing these pictures. Please feel free to leave any questions or comments and I’ll answer as I have time.
Burnsville High School Theatre Guild proudly presents 'Little Shop of Horrors' April 16 - 30th. Tickets can be reserved at www.MrazCenterTickets.com.
One of Brad's official duties around the house is TO KILL THESE GOD-AWFUL CENTIPEDES. Of course, as you may recall, Brad is too busy being fed chocolate truffles and champagne in a hot tub somewhere in Denver, leaving his poor wife to freak out alone on the basement stairs when she encounters a bug so big she could probably ride him to work.
I had no choice but to leave him alone. But, really, he was within the terms of our agreement (centipedes can live as long as they remain in the basement; any centipedes found on upper floors are fair game for Brad or the cat).
The Horrors at the Field Day Festival in Victoria Park, London. One of the hot act this year. A band confirming their potential. Full se on live on 35mm
Chelmsford Cathedral, Essex
churchesinessex.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/chelmsford-essex-p...
Chelmsford Cathedral, or more properly St Mary the Virgin, St Peter and St Cedd, was closed for business when I arrived due to the 60th anniversary service to commemorate the Great Flood of 1953 and the presence of Princess Anne so I went for a walk around town to kill time until the service finished.
I don't know Chelmsford well but I have to say that, to me, it made Harlow look like a lovely place to live.
When I finally got into the Cathedral the horrors of without were soon forgotten, overwhelmed by the loveliness of this intimate building (it's smaller than several parish churches I've visited but then until 1914 it was a parish church and quite a large one at that) and it's embracement of modern art - a wonderful mix of old and new makes St Mary rather special.
From: www.chelmsfordwarmemorial.co.uk/WW2/WW2_THOMPSON,__John_O...
John Ockelford Thompson was born in Springfield on 8th October 1872, the only son of the newspaper proprietor Thomas Thompson and Sarah Elizabeth Thompson (nee Ockelford). His father had been born in Rochdale, Lancashire around 1846; his mother in Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1849. The couple had been in Chelmsford since at least 1871, having married in Lincolnshire in 1868. John gained a sister Mary Brierley Thompson, born in 1878.
In 1881 the census recorded John, aged eight, living with his parents, sister and a servant at 7 Chelmer Terrace in Springfield. His father was editor of the Essex County Chronicle.
After an education at King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford from 1883 to 1888 John followed his father's career as a journalist.
The census of 1891 listed 18 year-old John living with his parents and sister at Granville Terrace, Mildmay Road in Chelmsford. He was described as a reporter, his father as a newspaper owner and editor.
In 1895 John married Emma Tanner, ten years his senior, and the couple were to have five sons, all Springfield-born: Cyril James Ockelford Thompson and his twin Reginald John Tanner Thompson (born 28th July 1896, christened at Holy Trinity Church in Springfield on 2nd August 1892), Thomas Cloverley Thompson (born on 25th May 1899 and christened at Holy Trinity Church in Springfield on 25th July 1899), William Brierley Thompson (born on 6th February 1901) and Robert Thompson (born on 19th August 1904).
The 1901 census listed John, aged 28, living with his wife and four sons and two servants at 3 Meadowside in Springfield. He was described as a newspaper proprietor. Following his father’s death in 1908 until his own, John was editor and part proprietor of the Essex Chronicle. In April 1911 the census recorded John, his wife, five sons and two servants at The Eaves in Springfield Road, Springfield.
John's son, Cyril James Ockelford Thompson, died of wounds on Christmas Day 1917, in what is now Israel, while serving as Lieutenant in the 18th Battalion of the London Regiment (London Irish Rifles). He was aged 21.
John's sister died in 1920.
John became one of the most respected men in Essex. He was first elected to Chelmsford Council in November 1907 as one of the members for the new Springfield Ward. In same month he was raised to Alderman and served on the Council for the remainder of his life. In 1911 he organised Chelmsford’s coronation celebrations. In November 1916 he was elected Mayor for the first time. Subsequently he held the office in 1920-21, 1921-22, 1928-29, 1929-30, 1936-37, and 1939-40. On the occasion of his 68th birthday, the week before his death, he had accepted the Council’s invitation to serve again in the forthcoming municipal year (1940-41).
Much of his best work for the Council was as Chairman of the Council’s Education Committee, a position he held from December 1921. He was also Chairman of the Public Health Committee and been a County Councillor for the Chelmsford South Division for six years.
During the First World War he served with the Essex Volunteer Regiment initially as a private and later as an officer. He then went onto special coastal service with the Dorsetshire Regiment. After the war he was largely responsible for Chelmsford’s War Memorial Fund, and during his mayoralty in 1920-21 and 1921-22 he took a great interest in the unemployed, for whom he started and carried on a fund.
He had held numerous other public appointments including; an Essex J.P. since February 1916, Chairman of the Chelmsford Bench of Justices, a Deputy Lieutenant of Essex, Chairman of the Chelmsford Brotherhood, President of the Essex & Suffolk Brotherhood Federation, Chairman of the Chelmsford District War Pensions Committee, Chairman of the Ministry of Labour Employment Committee, a member of the Essex Standing Joint Committee, a member of the Essex Federal Council of the League of Nations Union, Chairman of the Essex Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, a member of the Essex Territorial Army Association, a member of His Majesty’s Prison Board of Visitors, Chairman of the West Essex Building Society, Honorary Secretary to the Essex Association of the Treatment of Consumption, a Commissioner of Income Tax, Chairman of the Chelmsford Mutual Fund Association, and an appointed member Essex Agricultural Wages Committee. He was also a Freemason (Easterford Lodge), and a founder-member of the Old Chelmsfordian Lodge.
During the early months of the Second World Ward John was a prominent figure behind Chelmsford's Flight of Fighters Fund (a fundraising effort to buy Spitfire aircraft) and the local Air Raid Damage Funds Association.
He was entitled to the C.B.E. in 1938 for his valued public services, having been received the O.B.E. for similar services in the First World War.
His recreations, in the little spare time he did have involved the open air and outdoor sports; he was, a past President of the Essex County Cycling & Athletic Association and Chairman of the Chelmsford Cycling Club. He was a life-long cyclist, and rode up to the time of his death a bicycle which he had used on tours through Switzerland and over the Alps. Between the wars he founded the Princes Marie Louise Bowling Club in the grounds of his Brierley Place home. The club was opened by the Princess when she attended and spoke at a rally of the League of Nations Union at Brierley Place. He was also a keen tennis player up until his sixties, a keen gardener and in his younger days had took part in amateur dramatic
John was killed on Sunday 13th October 1940 when Chelmsford suffered its most serious bombing incident of the war to date when a lone Luftwaffe aircraft dropped two bombs over the town. At 7.30 p.m. one of these, a high explosive, scored a direct hit on his home, Brierley Place (number 52), New London Road, the home to the mayor and his family. The bomb is believed to have passed through the building and exploded in its basement, ‘collapsing it like a pack of cards’.
Debris was strewn across New London Road and caused its closure between Queen Street and Southborough Road. The mayor, his family and servants were at home and were thought to have been sheltering in the basement when the bomb struck.
The rescue services were soon at work on the scene and by 10.40 p.m. New London Road had been cleared. However, it was not until 1.01 a.m. that the first casualty figures were received at the Police H.Q. - “Ten people involved (actually nine), two children recovered dead, three householders rescued but one injured, mayor and mayoress still unaccounted for”. The dead children were the Mayor’s grandchildren, 8 year-old Audrey Mary Thompson and her 14 month-old sister Diana Louisa Thompson. Their mother, Muriel who suffered serious injuries, was one of those rescued, along with a nurse and another daughter-in-law of the Mayor. By 5.31 a.m. a further two bodies were recovered, and by 11.50 a.m. another, the fifth fatality, was found. Rescue workers continued their search into Tuesday and in mid afternoon the remains of sixth body, a servant, were found. The four adults killed were subsequently identified as the Mayor, 68 year-old John Ockelford Thompson C.B.E. D.L. J.P., his 78 year-old wife Emma, their 41 year-old son Lt-Col. Thomas Cloverley Thompson and Alice Maud Emery, also 41, who was a servant for the mayor.
The funeral service of John and his family was held at Chelmsford Cathedral on 16th October 1940. Their five coffins were placed in the building overnight prior to the service. Their deaths had come as a great shock to the town and the Cathedral was filled to overflowing for the service which was conducted by the Bishop of Chelmsford and the Provost, the Very Rev. William Morrow. The congregation was swelled by a considerable number dignitaries from all over Essex and beyond. After the service the coffins were driven to the Borough Cemetery for burial, passing the remains of Brierley Place on the way. Large crowds lined the route. John was buried in grave number 6183. His wife, son and grand daughters were buried close by. John is commemorated by the King Edward VI Grammar School's war memorial.
John left an estate valued at £9,993 1s. 7d. to his son Reginald.
Holy Family and St Michael, Kesgrave, Ipswich, Suffolk
A new entry on the Suffolk Churches site.
There are ages of faith which leave their traces in splendour and beauty, as acts of piety and memory. East Anglia is full of silent witnesses to tides which have ebbed and flowed. Receding, they leave us in their wake great works from the passing ages, little Norman churches which seem to speak a language we can no longer understand but which haunts us still, the decorated beauty of the 14th Century at odds with the horrors of its pestilence and loss, the perpendicular triumph of the 15th Century church before its near-destruction in the subsequent Reformation and Commonwealth, the protestant flowering of chapels and meeting houses in almost all rural communities, and most obvious of all for us today the triumphalism of the Victorian revival.
But even as tides recede, piety and memory survive, most often in quiet acts and intimate details. The catholic church of Holy Family and St Michael at Kesgrave is one of their great 20th Century treasure houses.
At the time of the 1851 census of religious worship, Kesgrave was home to just 86 people, 79 of whom attended morning service that day, giving this parish the highest percentage attendance of any in Suffolk. However, they met half a mile up the road at the Anglican parish church of All Saints, and the current site of Holy Family was then far out in the fields. In any case, it is unlikely that any of the non-attenders was a Catholic. Today, Kesgrave is a sprawling eastern suburb of Ipswich, home to about 10,000 people. It extends along the A12 corridor all the way to Martlesham, which in turn will take you pretty much all the way to Woodbridge without seeing much more than a field or two between the houses.
Holy Family was erected in the 1930s, and serves as a chapel of ease within the parish of Ipswich St Mary. However, it is still in private ownership, the responsibility of the Rope family, who, along with the Jolly family into which they married, owned much of the land in Kesgrave that was later built on.
The growth of Kesgrave has been so rapid and so extensive in these last forty years that radical expansions were required at both this church and at All Saints, as well as to the next parish church along in the suburbs at Rushmere St Andrew. All of these projects are interesting, although externally Holy Family is less dramatic than its neighbours. It sits neatly in its trim little churchyard, red-brick and towerless, a harmonious little building if rather a curious shape, of which more in a moment. Beside it, the underpass and roundabout gives it a decidedly urban air. But this is a church of outstanding interest, as we shall see.
It was good to come back to Kesgrave. As a member of St Mary's parish I generally attended mass at the parish's other church, a couple of miles into town, but I had been here a number of times over the years, either to mass or just to wander around and sit for a while. These days, you generally approach the church from around the back, where you'll find a sprawling car park typical of a modern Catholic church. To the west of the church are Lucy House and Philip House, newly built for the work of the Rope family charities. Between the car park and the church there there is a tiny, formal graveyard, with crosses remembering members of the Rope and Jolly families.
Access to the church is usually through a west door these days, but if you are fortunate enough to enter through the original porch on the north side you will have a foretaste of what is to come, for to left and right are stunning jewel-like and detailed windows depicting St Margaret and St Theresa on one side and St Catherine and the Immaculate Conception on the other. Beside them, a plaque reveals that the church was built to the memory of Michael Rope, who was killed in the R101 airship disaster of 1930.
Blue Peter-watching boys like me, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, were enthralled by airships. They were one of those exciting inventions of a not-so-distant past which were, in a real sense, futuristic, a part of the 1930s modernist project that imagined and predicted the way we live now. And they were just so big. But they were doomed, because the hydrogen which gave them their buoyancy was explosive.
As a child, I was fascinated by the R101 airship and its disaster, especially because of that familiar photograph of its wrecked and burnt-out fuselage sprawled in the woods on a northern French hillside. It is still a haunting photograph today. The crash of the R101 put an end to airship development in the UK for more than half a century.
Of course, this is all ancient history now, but in the year 2001 I had the excellent fortune to be shown around Holy Family by Michael Rope's widow, Mrs Lucy Doreen Rope, née Jolly, who was still alive, and then in her nineties. She was responsible for the building of this church as a memorial to her husband. We paused in the porch so that I could admire the windows. "Do you like them?" Mrs Rope asked me. "Of course, my sister-in-law made them."
Her sister-in-law, of course, was Margaret Agnes Rope, who in the first half of the twentieth century was one of the finest of the Arts and Craft Movement stained glass designers. She studied at Birmingham, and then worked at the Glass House in Fulham with her cousin, Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, whose work is also here. But their work can be found in churches and cathedrals all over the world. What Mrs Rope did not tell me, and what I found out later, is that these two windows in the porch were made for her and her husband Michael as a wedding present.
Doreen Jolly and Michael Rope were married in 1929. Within a year, he was dead. Mrs Rope was just 23 years old.
The original church from the 1930s is the part that you step into. You enter to the bizarre sight of a model of the R101 airship suspended from the roof. The nave altar and tabernacle ahead are in the original sanctuary, and you are facing the liturgical east (actually south) of the original building, and what an intimate space this must have been before the church was extended. Red brick outlines the entrance to the sanctuary, and here are the three windows made by Margaret Rope for the original church. The first is the three-light sanctuary window, depicting the Blessed Virgin and child flanked by St Joseph and St Michael. Two doves sit on a nest beneath Mary's feet, while a quizzical sparrow looks on. St Michael has the face of Michael Rope. The inscription beneath reads Pray for Michael Rope who gave up his soul to God in the wreck of His Majesty's Airship R101, Beauvais, October 5th 1930.
Next, a lancet in the right-hand side of the sanctuary contains glass depicting St Dominic, with a dog running beneath his feet and the inscription Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare, ('to praise, to bless, to preach'). The third window is in the west wall of the church (in its day, the right hand side of the nave), depicting St Thomas More and St John Fisher, although at the time the window was made they had not yet been canonised. The inscription beneath records that the window was the gift of a local couple in thankfulness for their conversion to the faith for which the Blessed Martyrs Thomas More and John Fisher gave their lives. A rose bush springs from in front of the martyrs' feet.
By the 1950s, Holy Family was no longer large enough for the community it served, and it was greatly expanded to the east to the designs of the archtect Henry Munro Cautley. Cautley was a bluff Anglican of the old school, the retired former diocesan architect of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, but he would have enjoyed designing a church for such an intimate faith community, and in fact it was his last major project before he died in 1959. The original sanctuary was retained as a blessed sacrament chapel, and the church was turned ninety degrees to face east for the first time. The north and south sides of the new church received three-light Tudor windows in the style most beloved by Cautley, as seen also at his Ipswich County Library in Northgate Street, and the former Fosters (now Lloyds) Bank in central Cambridge.
Although the Rope family had farmed at Blaxhall near Wickham Market for generations, Margaret Rope herself was not from Suffolk at all, and nor was she at first a Catholic. She was born in Shrewsbury in 1882, the daughter of Henry Rope, a surgeon at Shrewsbury Infirmary, and a son of the Blaxhall Rope family. The largest collection of Margaret Rope's glass is in Shrewsbury Cathedral. When Margaret was 17, her father died. The family were received into the Catholic church shortly afterwards. A plaque was placed in the entrance to Shrewsbury Infirmary to remember her father. When the hospital was demolished in the 1990s, the plaque was moved to here, and now sits in the north aisle of the 1950s church. In her early days in London Margaret Rope designed and made the large east window at Blaxhall church as a memorial to her grandparents. It features her younger brother Michael, and is believed to be the only window that she ever signed.
In her early forties, Margaret Rope took holy orders and entered the Carmelite Convent at nearby Woodbridge, but continued to produce her stained glass work until the community moved to Quidenham in Norfolk, when poor health and the distances involved proved insurmountable. She died there in 1953, and so she never saw the expanded church. Her cartoons, the designs for her windows, are placed on the walls around Holy Family. Some are for windows in churches in Scotland and Wales, one for a window in the English College in Rome. Among them are the roundels for within the enclosure of Tyburn Convent in London. "They had to remove the windows there during the War", said Mrs Rope. "Of course, with me, you have to ask which war!"
Turning to the east, we see the new sanctuary with its high altar, completed in 1993 as part of a further reordering and expansion, which gave a large galilee porch, kitchen and toilets to the north side of the church. The window above the new sanctuary has three lights, and the two outer windows were made by Margaret Rope for the chapel of East Bergholt convent to the south of Ipswich. They remember the Vaughan family, into which Margaret Rope's sister had married, and in particular one member, a sister in the convent, to celebrate her 25 year jubilee.
The convent later became Old Hall, a famous commune. They depict the prophet Isaiah and King David.
The central light between them is controversial. Produced in the 1990s and depicting the risen Christ, it really isn't very good, and provides the one jarring note in the church. It is rather unfortunate that it is in such a prominent position. It is not just the quality of the design that is the problem. It lets in too much light in comparison with the two flanking lights. "The glass in my sister-in-law's windows is half an inch thick", Mrs Rope told me. "In the workshop at Fulham they had a man who came in specially to cut it for them". The glass in the modern light is simply too thin.
Despite the 1990s extension, and as so often in modern urban Catholic churches, Holy Family is already not really big enough, although it is hard to see that there could ever be another expansion. We walked along Munro Cautley's south aisle, and at that time the stations of the cross were simple wooden crosses. However, about three months after my conversation with Mrs Rope, the World Trade Centre in New York was attacked and destroyed, and among the three thousand people killed were two local Kesgrave brothers who were commemorated with a new set of stations in cast metal.
Here also is a 1956 memorial window by Margaret Rope's cousin, Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, to Mrs Rope's mother Alice Jolly, depicting the remains of the shrine at Walsingham and the Jolly family at prayer before it. Another MEA Rope window is across the church in the galilee, a Second World War memorial window, originally on the east side of the first church before Cautley's extension. It depicts three of the English Martyrs, Blessed Anne Lynne, Blessed Robert Southwell and Blessed John Robinson, as well as the shipwreck of Blessed John Nutter off of Dunwich, with All Saints church on the cliffs above.
The galilee is designed for families with young children to play a full part in mass, and is separated from the church by a glass screen. At the top of the screen is a small panel by Margaret Rope which is of particular interest because it depicts her and her family participating in the Easter vigil, presumably in Shrewsbury Cathedral. This is hard to photograph because it is on an internal window between two rooms.
A recent addition to the Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope windows here is directly opposite, newly installed on the south side of the nave. It was donated by her great-nephew. It depicts a nativity scene, the Holy Family in the stable at Bethlehem, an angel appearing to shepherds on the snowy hills beyond. It is perhaps her loveliest window in the church.
Finally, back across the church. Here, beside the brass memorial to Margaret Rope, is a window depicting the Blessed Virgin and child, members of the Rope family in the Candlemas procession beneath. The inscription reminds us to pray for the soul of Sister Margaret of the Mother of God, mistress of novices and stained glass artist, Monastery of the Magnificat of the Mother of God, Quidenham, Norfolk, entered Carmel 14th September 1923, died 6th December 1953. Sister Margaret of the Mother of God was, of course, Margaret Rope herself. She was buried in the convent at Quidenham, a Shrewsbury exile at rest in the East Anglian soil of her forebears. The design is hers, and the window was made by her cousin Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope.
Back in 2001, we were talking about the changing Church, and I asked Mrs Rope what she thought about the recently introduced practice of transferring Holy Days on to the nearest Sunday, so that the teaching of them was not lost. Mrs Rope approved, a lady clearly not stuck in the past. She had a passion for ensuring that the Faith could be shared with children. As we have seen, her church is designed so that young families can take a full part in the Mass. But she was sympathetic to the distractions of the modern age. "The world is so exciting for children these days", she said. "I think it must be difficult to bring them up with a sense of the presence of God." She smiled. "Mind you, my son is 70 now! And I do admire young girls today. They have such spirit!"
She left me to potter about in her wonderful treasure house. As I did so, I thought of medieval churches I have visited, which were similarly donated by the Mrs Ropes of their day, perhaps even for husbands who had died young. They not only sought to memorialise their loved ones, but to consecrate a space for prayer, that masses might be said for the souls of the dead. This was the Catholic way, a Christian duty. Before the Reformation, this was true in every parish in England. It remained true here at Kesgrave.
And finally, back outside to the small graveyard. Side by side are two crosses. One remembers Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope, artist, 1891-1988. The other remembers Lucy Doreen Rope, founder of this church, 1907-2003.
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