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I think this little ghoul loves to trick 'r treat.
She is for Erica Fustero, we are swapping face ups :)
My house's second bedroom, now with 50% more color!
You may not be able to see it in this picture, but this room is really extremely small, and also houses a full-size futon, a 25" TV and stand, and my craft table (also, my husband's closet). Space is very tight in here, so my workspace had to be compact, yet I also needed easy access to my files and cables. As a result, I went up the wall.
Een paar weken geleden waren we hier ook, toen met een giga-advertentie voor een Netflix serie.
Deze week deed men aan zelfpromotie: de teksten werden gesponsord door het Museumkwartier.
Wie het zelf nog wil gaan zien heeft pech: e.e.a. is al weer vervangen door een reclame voor een Zweeds automerk.
v.Baerlestraat/Willemsparkweg
My friend, Aidan, described Westminster Abbey as English history written in stone, which as good as a description as I could think of. And English, as the Kings and Queens of that country, later of Great Britain are buried here.
Anyway, I had a fabulous time at the Abbey, and already planning a return for the details I missed.
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Of all the churches and cathedrals in London, the one I wanted to visit and photograph was Westminster Abbey. But, the Abbey didn't allow photography didn't go. And then a few weeks back, my friend, Aidan, started to post shots from inside, and as it turns out, photography, in most areas of the Abbey, is now allowed. So it was a case of when we would visit, not "if", and once we had a free weekend, I began to plan and book.
£25 to go in, each. £10 each for the new museum. And £15 each for a hidden highlights tour. It wasn't cheap, but then if you're going to do it, do it well!
All chores were done Friday, including shopping, so we were free to catch the quarter to eight train from Dover. On the way we called into the garage to pick up some stuff to eat on the train, so we were set.
Saturday was also the last day of British Summer Time (BST), as the clocks would go back early on Sunday morning, then five long winter months would begin.
So, better make most of the daylight.
We were early for the train, so we ate breakfast on the platform, then once the train pulled in, I picked my favourite seats and we settled down for the hour run into London. THe one thing I hadn't planned well was the weather, and some rain was expected during the morning.
The train wasn't busy, and most people wore masks, though enough didn't to make one wonder if the message about COVID really hadn't got through. But then with Johnson as PM, we shouldn't be surprised.
We get off at Statford, and the rain was falling heavily even before we left the Essex marshes behind and entered the long tunnel. But at Stratford, day had become night and the rain fell in what is called stair-rods. I hoped that if we walked slowly through the shopping centre it might have eased by the time we needed to cross over the bridge to the regional station, but the rain was falling just as hard.
And there was no way to avoid it, so we just pulled our collars up and walked as quickly as possible.
Which is why, by the time we arrived at the other side, we were wet little hobbitses.
A quick walk to the Jubilee Line platforms, catching the next train out, we took seats and sat there, gently steaming.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived in Westminster, no dryer, really, taking the four flights of escalators to the surface, where outside it had, atleast, stopped raining for now.
Demonstrations are now outlawed in Parliament Square, so it was quiet, once you got to the other side of the road, its a five minute walk past the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament), and round to the entrance of the Abbey.
Amazingly, there was no queue, and once inside the doorway I show my e tickets, they were scanned and we were allowed in. There was a one way system round the Abbey, so I began the first circuit with the 50mm lens, thinking I would go round again with the wide angle, and a third time with the big lens to snap detail.
That was the plan.
Westminster Abbey is where the Kings and Queens of England and Britain have been crowned. Also, where until Henry V11 thought otherwise, they were buried too, so the chancel is jammed with tombs of many famous and infamous figures from history, from Edward the Confessor to William and Mary, most tombs are grand, some less so. As well as Kings and Queens, minor royals and members of the nobility also were either buried here, or had monument erected. As have military figures, and famousnames from the arts.
It really is quite remarkable.
That and the Abbey itself, in parts dating from just before the Norman COnquest, to a rebuilding just after to the 13th Century when Henry III pulled the old Abbey down and started to rebuild it, until he ran out of money.
But it was completed, and since then had filled up with monuments, so many, I lost count and gave up trying to record them all. Instead, marvelling at their range and beauty.
I walked down the nave, through the arch into the Quire, and it was as breathtaking as expected, then round the Chancel looking and photographing the tombs of the Kings and Queens, round Henry VII's chapel.
And then repeating it with the wide angle lens, taking shots of the various chapels and tombs, all the while keeping an eye on the time as we were to go to visit the new gallery musuem at 11, and then a guided tour of some normally off limit places at half past.
Neither of these allowed photography, which is a great shame as the views from the gallery were stunning down the length of the Nave and then the ancinent chain library and the sanctuary of Henry VII's chapel where we could reach out and touch the shrine of St Edward the Confessor.
The museum had dozens of funeral effigies of the Kings and Queens, some made I'm sure to look better than they did in real life, but others had a degree of realism about them. The one of Queen Mary seemed pregnant, while the one for Queen Elizabeth Ist had a tight corset, so she would have appeared in death as she had as a young woman.
There were carvings, ceremonial cloaks, replicas of the Crown Jewels, and so much more, but we had run out of time, as we had to get to the other side of the church for the hidden secrets tour.
Us and three other couples joined our guide as he showed us the latest escavations revealing the area where monks used to prepare for services. This is hidden behind screens now, and will soon become the site of a new visitor's centre. The trenches were filled with uncvered skeletons and bones, all human of course, and these will all either be rebuuried here or some other Christian place.
Next we went to the Dean's quarters where we saw where he prepared for services, and were allowed into, but not allowed to photograph the Jerico Room, before being allowed outside for a while, then walking around the cloisters, back into the chancel and into Henry's chapel to see the tombs and shrine. Envious looks rained down on us as we climbed the wooden steps into the usually closed area, and then only the people in the gallery above could see us.
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Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is a large, mainly Gothic abbey church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United Kingdom's most notable religious buildings and the traditional place of coronation and a burial site for English and, later, British monarchs.
The building itself was originally a Catholic Benedictine monastic church until the monastery was dissolved in 1539. Between 1540 and 1556, the abbey had the status of a cathedral and seat of the catholic bishop. After 1560 the building was no longer an abbey or a cathedral, after the Catholics had been driven out by King Henry VIII, having instead was granted the status of a Church of England "Royal Peculiar"—a church responsible directly to the sovereign—by Queen Elizabeth I.
According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, a church was founded at the site (then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island)) in the seventh century at the time of Mellitus, a Bishop of London. Construction of the present church began in 1245 on the orders of King Henry III.[4]
Since the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066, all coronations of English and British monarchs have occurred in Westminster Abbey.[4][5] Sixteen royal weddings have occurred at the Abbey since 1100.[6]
The Abbey is the burial site of more than 3300 persons, usually of prominence in British history: at least 16 monarchs, 8 Prime Ministers, poets laureate, actors, scientists, military leaders, and the Unknown Warrior. As such, Westminster Abbey is sometimes described as "Britain's Valhalla", after the iconic hall of the chosen heroes in Norse mythology.
Between 1042 and 1052, King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey to provide himself with a royal burial church. It was the first church in England built in the Romanesque style. The building was completed around 1060 and was consecrated on 28 December 1065, only a week before Edward's death on 5 January 1066.[9] A week later, he was buried in the church; and, nine years later, his wife Edith was buried alongside him.[10] His successor, Harold II, was probably crowned in the abbey, although the first documented coronation is that of William the Conqueror later the same year.[11]
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacent Palace of Westminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry. Some of the lower parts of the monastic dormitory, an extension of the South Transept, survive in the Norman Undercroft of the Great School, including a door said to come from the previous Saxon abbey. Increased endowments supported a community that increased from a dozen monks in Dunstan's original foundation, up to a maximum of about eighty monks.
The abbot and monks, in proximity to the royal Palace of Westminster, the seat of government from the later 13th century, became a powerful force in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. The Abbot of Westminster often was employed on royal service and in due course took his place in the House of Lords as of right. Released from the burdens of spiritual leadership, which passed to the reformed Cluniac movement after the mid-10th century, and occupied with the administration of great landed properties, some of which lay far from Westminster, "the Benedictines achieved a remarkable degree of identification with the secular life of their times, and particularly with upper-class life", Barbara Harvey concludes, to the extent that her depiction of daily life provides a wider view of the concerns of the English gentry in the High and Late Middle Ages.[13]
The proximity of the Palace of Westminster did not extend to providing monks or abbots with high royal connections; in social origin the Benedictines of Westminster were as modest as most of the order. The abbot remained Lord of the Manor of Westminster as a town of two to three thousand persons grew around it: as a consumer and employer on a grand scale the monastery helped fuel the town economy, and relations with the town remained unusually cordial, but no enfranchising charter was issued during the Middle Ages.[14]
The abbey became the coronation site of Norman kings. None were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult of the Confessor, rebuilt the abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England. The Confessor's shrine subsequently played a great part in his canonization.
The following English, Scottish and British monarchs and their consorts are buried in the Abbey:
Sæberht of Essex (d. c. 616) [possibly]
Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) and Edith of Wessex (d. 1075)
Henry III of England (d. 1272) [his wife, Eleanor of Provence, is buried at Amesbury Priory]
Edward I of England (d. 1307) and Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290)
Edward III of England (d. 1377) and Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369)
Richard II of England (d. 1400) and Anne of Bohemia (d. 1394)
Henry V of England (d. 1422) and Catherine of Valois (d. 1437)
Edward V of England (d. c. 1483) and his brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York (d. c. 1483) [possibly]
Also known as the Princes in the Tower. In 1674, the remains of two boys were exhumed from the Tower of London and at the orders of Charles II, they were interred in the wall of the Henry VII Lady Chapel.
Anne Neville (d. 1485), wife of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales [m. 1470–71; buried at Tewkesbury Abbey] and of Richard III [m. 1472–85; buried at Leicester Cathedral]
Henry VII of England (d. 1509) and Elizabeth of York (d. 1503)
Edward VI of England (d. 1553)
Anne of Cleves (d. 1557), former wife of Henry VIII [buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle]
Mary I of England (d. 1558)
Elizabeth I of England as shown on her tomb
Mary, Queen of Scots (d. 1542), mother of James VI & I of England and Scotland [brought from Peterborough Cathedral in 1612]
Elizabeth I of England (d. 1603)
In the 19th century, researchers looking for the tomb of James I partially opened the underground vault containing the remains of Elizabeth I and Mary I of England. The lead coffins were stacked, with Elizabeth's resting on top of her half-sister's.[9]
James VI & I of England and Scotland (d. 1625) and Anne of Denmark (d. 1619)
The position of the tomb of King James was lost for two and a half centuries. In the 19th century, following an excavation of many of the vaults beneath the floor, the lead coffin was found in the Henry VII vault.[9]
Charles II of England and Scotland (d. 1685)
Mary II of England and Scotland (d. 1694) and William III of England and II of Scotland (d. 1702)
Anne, Queen of Great Britain (d. 1714) and Prince George of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland (d. 1708)
George II of Great Britain (d. 1760) and Caroline of Ansbach (d. 1737)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burials_and_memorials_in_Westminste...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Abbey
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Built by the royal masons in 1250, the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey was originally used in the 13th century by Benedictine monks for their daily meetings. It later became a meeting place of the King's Great Council and the Commons, predecessors of today's Parliament.
A beautiful octagonal building with a vaulted ceiling and delicate central column, it offers rarely seen examples of medieval sculpture, an original floor of glazed tiles and spectacular wall paintings.
The 11th century Pyx Chamber also has a medieval tiled floor, and was used as a monastic and royal treasury. It contains a 13th century stone altar which survived the Reformation.
www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/chapter-house-an...
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.
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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.
X-Pro of an Fuji Superia 200 (Expired 2006)
Crossentwicklung eines Fuji Superia 200 (MhD 2006)
Camera: Black Slim Devil (22mm)
Film: Fuji Superia 200 @ E6
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I don't know this girl. I think she might be a second-grade kid,
but she was the best of the jumpers out there on Wednesday.
I volunteered for yard duty at recess, which means I stand
still for an hour and pray nothing goes wrong. Every twenty
minutes, I or someone else rings the bell, and a new shift of
kids comes out.
My other job is to enforce the rules of four square. You can't
believe how the older kids play. They actually hold the ball
before they pass it. That's right; they catch it. They let it bounce
several times in their spaces, and they have do-overs all the
time. It is really just a chance for this one girl clique to hog
the ball and not let anyone else play.
So I yell things like, "You're out!" "Hey, you! It bounced twice.
OUT." Etc.
this chick has pashed naruto like 10000000000 timez....hehhehe...its become a routine for naruto ><"..."ohhhh baby that kiss was a lil cold but those lips were nice and soft"...heheh
Going by the curious name of Platycerium superbum, commonly known as the Stag Horn Fern, native to Australia.
The fern is native to north-east New South Wales (north of Nabiac) and Queensland. It can also be found in parts of Malaysia. In propagated form, the plant is grown successfully as far south as Victoria.
During the 1990s, the fern was also discovered on the Hawaiian Islands where they are now considered a "problem species".
Tewantin, Queensland.
HDR effect.
27/31 Dark Green, 365 Days in Colour.
MDPD2014 27/365
114 pictures in 2014/16 Think Green
On this day the sky was actually as white (or may be even silver) as seen on the photo. It was a little bit misty and also hot with a high humidity.
On a day when we're in the "bleak midwinter" mindset, a stroll in and around the park reveals all those brave blossoms that refuse to hide until spring is official!
Think this was around 2002...
if you didn't know already I am taking it back, back into time, I've recently dipped into the archives & unearthed thousands of old photo's so the next few uploads are gonna be about History...
I painted Big Frank at the Brickhouse he was about 10ft tall.
The Brick House was an old deralict brickworks factory. It lasted for 2 years until some kid fell off the roof, so they knocked the place down. Once again the moral of the story is..."Always
keep your halls of a fame a secret."
In honor of Marchikoma I decided to put together a little bot inspired by the Logicoma in Arise, knowing full well it doesn't qualify for the challenge. I just really like the new design without the abdomen pod.
First proper picture of her and she's been with me over 2 years now! @.@
--
Evangeline is a SOOM MD Amber
Face-up by Adamantine
Photography © Primadonna dolls
Rodin's "The Thinker" (Le Penseur) in front of Glyptoteket in Copenhagen. This is one of several "originals", bought in the artist's lifetime.
Camera: Mamiya C330 Professional
Lens: Mamiya-Sekor 65mm F3.5 (Seiko shutter)
Exposure: 1/250 @ F/5.6
Film: Rollei RPX 100 dev. in xtol 1+3
If you think this is the countryside of Tuscany, France, think again. These are farmlands on the hills of Central Cebu.
Cebu, Philippines
so i think i've finally figured out why i am repeatedly and sometimes constantly nauseated and lethargic... i was off work all last week feeling terrible, worse than ever before and i decided to research my symptoms online.
i found all sorts of scary's - bowel cancer etc. but after i was done freaking myself out (i hate the internet it does nothing for paranoia) i stumbled across coeliac disease - an intollerance to gluten. the descriptions of people in forums who had been diagnosed with this disease sounded just like me.. everything they described i've been living with.
i decided to cut out gluten from my diet and guess what? i'm only on my fourth day without gluten but i'm already feeling rediculously better. i haven't felt this good in years.
there's only one stupid problem. my doctor has agreed on my symptoms and suggested i take a blood test to prove it - only i have to be eating gluten for the test to come out correct. i don't want to eat it - it'll make me feel crappy again and i can't take anymore time off work. all the forums say that you need to be eating as much as you can stomach to get a positive result on the test but i really don't think i can bare it.
do i need to be registered medically as coeliac?
or can i just self diagnose and know that it makes me sick.
i'm done feeling horrible!
My exciting new thriller 'Honey Hangover' has just been republished by Eeyore Books and this is the cover pic. Pooh Bear had a raucous night on the tiles with his bestest mates Christopher Robin and Piglet. He got pretty wasted on eleventeen pints of honey. He managed to stumble back to his flat but couldn't find his door key, so he climbed into the bin to throw up and then had nice a little nap. The next morning he awoke with a very sore head. Silly bear!