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The weekend.
After a one day working week.
Though with the travel and late nights, it seemed to be a lot longer.
We didn't need to go to Tesco first thing, I did that on Thursday, so we could lay in until we woke up.
Amazingly, it was pretty much full light by ten past seven, though cloudy with the threat of rain showers.
We were going to go back to Dover Castle, but the steep slopes and steps might not have been the best idea, but I had a back up plan that involved churches.
Smarden is a stunningly pretty village, mostly timber framed medieval houses of clapboard cottages, and two fine caching inns, and a grand church too.
And it had been a decade since we last visited, so we could combine that with two nearby ones as well.
So, after second coffee and breakfast, I grabbed my cameras and we drove to the A2, down Jubilee Way to get to Ashford before turning off onto the A20 to Lenham, then to Pluckley.
There was a sold queue of trucks from Dover all the way to the Roundhill Tunnels, all trying to get off this Brexit Plague island, and cars and coaches trying to get past them to get to the port.
Up the motorway to the second Ashford junction, then down the A20, which was quiet, then into the Kentish countryside, down through Pluckley, past the Black Horse and into Smarden, finding a place to park outside the Flying Horse.
Best entry to the the church and churchyard is through a courtyard and under a clapboard house, passing over mossy flagstones leading to the porch.
The main road passes by the pub and courtyard by two 90 degree bends, flanked with yet more clapboard houses and another pub. Villages like these were not designed for the 21st century and motor cars.
We reached the churchyard safe and sound, walked to the porch and found it unlocked, so went in.
Not much glass here, though there was a fine double window made up of medieval glass fragments, giving a hint of what was there, including a St Michael and a green dragon's head.
What I missed last time was a mythical beast stone carving, high on the south wall, and near to it an odd couple of short carved pillars. Otherwise a church that may have had a light touch in Victorian times for restoration, if at all.
I have always found St Michael open.
A short drave away, along lanes lines with ditches full to overflowing from recent rains, is Bethesden.
All roads seem to lead there, although there was no village sign to tell you when you'd arrived. But the tower of St Margaret could be seen to the left, so we turned up the hill and found a place to park opposite.
The guy clipping his hedge was talking to his teenage daughter, but as we couldn't see either, it seemed he was speaking to us. But not unhappy about parking outside his house, apparently.
Jools could hear music and talking from inside the church, so wouldn't go in. I could see through the glass panels at the top of the inner door, so could see a group of people watching a film on a screen.
I went in and gestured if it was OK for me to take shots.
It was, but this explains why there is no shots from the west of looking in that direction.
The film was paused, and then they got into a theological discussion, I tried to make as little noise as possible. But every scrape and knock was amplified in the inner space of the church.
I took shots of the windows, and a couple more of interesting carvings, then took my leave.
A four mile drive away, down yet more narrow and partially flooded lanes is High Halden. In fact the village is on the main road, the old Hig Road from Ashford to Tenterden,
St Mary is situated on Church Hill, of course, just off the main road, and set back so that you can't see it until you have nearly reached the church.
When I did my top 50 Kent churches, I forgot St Mary. And would have included it for the most memorable entrance and porch under the wester tower, all made of wood and looking every bit the 700 year old it is.
Lighting inside the porch is great, and I looked forward to seeing inside again, but upon entering, there was a family collecting items from the food bank. Not wanting to embarrass them, we walked straight into the Nave leaving them to sort what they needed.
The Nave and Chancel are small, and parts date back to the 12th century, though the original date of its founding is lost.
The porch is separated from the Nave by a glass screen, set with diamond panes, and s effective and most attractive. High on the Chancel arch, are four small windows, an unusual feature. I have seen them with a single light, but not four.
I record details of the window, but there's not much I have to snap that's new. And with a steady rain falling outside, we turn from home happy that all three churches were unlocked, and welcoming, and one in use this grey winter's day.
We drove back through the hellhole that is Ashford. Ashford is fine, but it's roads are just dreadful, so always a relief to get back onto the motorway and be heading home.
Couldn't work out why the port was so busy, then I realised that its half term, so people getting away from this winter grey.
We cut through the Alkham Valley to miss the worst of the port traffic, and along the bottom of the valey, the Drellingore had died up to just be a few muddy pools now.
But we did get back for half twelve, meaning time for the football, and a chance to keep an eye on Ipswich who were playing WBA at home. Ended 2-2, but Town played well and are a well coached team.
Then came the main bock of games, with Norwich away at QPR, which also ended 2-2, though Rangers are not the team that WBA, and so that is 17 points City have dropped from a winning position.
Sigh.
And for the evening, I watched the Bayer v Bayern derby, which was very good indeed, and also because Bayer won easily, 3-0. Hard luck, Harry.
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THE PARISH of Halden is situated very obscurely, in as unpleasant a part as any within this county; it is about three miles long and two broad, and has about one hundred houses in it. It is so little frequented as hardly to be known beyond its own neighbourhood. The village is nearly in the centre of the parish, with the church and parsonage close to it on the east side. The soil is a deep stiff clay. The turnpike road from Tenterden to Bethersden and Ashford, leads through it, which, as well as the rest of the roads throughout it, are hardly passable after any rain, being so miry, that the traveller's horse frequently plunges through them up to the girths of the saddle; and the waggons sinking so deep in the ruts, as to slide along on the nave of the wheels and axle of them. The roads are all of great breadth, from fifty to sixty feet and more, with a breadth of green swerd on each side; the hedges being filled with oak trees, whose branches hang over to a considerable extent, and render the surface near them damp, and the prospect always gloomy. In some few of the principal roads, as from Tenterden hither, there is a stone causeway about three feet wide, for the accommodation of horse and foot passengers; but there is none further on till near Betheriden, to the great distress of travellers. When these roads become tolerably dry in summer, they are ploughed up and laid in a half circle to dry, the only amendment they ever have. In extreme dry weather in summer, they become exceedingly hard, and by traffic so smooth as to seem glazed, like a potter's vessel, though a single hour's rain renders them so slippery, as to be very dangerous to travellers. The country here is low, flat and dreary, and very wet and miry, as is this whole hundred and the country northward of it, as far as the quarry hills; the farm-houses and cottages are thinly scattered about, and meanly built of timber and plaister. There is a great deal of oak coppice wood interspersed throughout the parish, having many fine large trees of the same kind in them.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, consists of two isles and three chancels. The steeple is at the west end, the bottom of which is in form, five parts of an octagon, which part of it is built of upright timber planks, set close to each other; the upper part is shingled, with a pointed top, it was built in king Henry the VIth.'s reign. There are five bells in it.
www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol7/pp220-226
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This Grade 1 listed church was built before 1286, but this is the first date we have for a recorded name of a priest who was Richard de Halyngleghe.
Although the church has been extended over the years, its most remarkable feature is the timbered tower which was probably constructed in the late 13th Century. It consists of an octagonal ground floor and a square upper story above which rises an 80 foot octagonal shingle-clad spire. The whole structure is braced and strengthened by a system of massive oak pillars, beams and trusses, giving a truly impressive demonstration of the skills of medival craftsmen. The beautiful 14th Century South porch has an entrance which is a natural arch made of two halves of a colossal oak trunk and inside the church there is a lovely 13th Century font.
Also included in the features which have created a building of great beauty, are windows dating back to the 13th Century, which bear ancient heraldic quartering. The Lady chapel features a stained glass window designed by the famous 20th Century silversmith Omar Ramsden.
www.thefriendsofstmarys.org/the-church/
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HIGH HALDEN
1.
5272
Parish Church of St Mary
TQ 9037 17/169 16.8.62.
I
2.
Chancel, south chapel, north transept, nave with south aisle, wooden south
porch unusual belfry tower at the west end of timbered construction with scissor
trusses shingled outside with shingled spire above and on each side of it
on the ground floor casing in the form of a wooden room (the north one now
the vestry) so that the shape of the ground floor as a whole is an octagon.
The nave is Norman, the chancel C14, the tower circa 1300, the south porch
C14, the south chapel the north transept and the south aisle C15. C14 crown
post roof to nave and aisles. Church restored by Street 1868. C13 font.
The churchyard contains a tomb chest and some C18 headstones with cherub
or hourglass motifs, one with serpent, book, heavenly crown and hourglass
motif, an early C19 headstone with cast iron cherubs and some oval bodystones.
Listing NGR: TQ9016137236
www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-180230-parish-church-...
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This link as as much information that you'll ever need on the church
www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/Vol.026%...
St Mary, Shotesham St Mary, Norfolk
I spent a pleasant day in the company of my friend Peter Stephens exploring the churches between Norwich and Loddon. Apart from a couple to the south of the Beccles road they were all open, and it was a pleasure to explore a succession of small, unassuming but welcoming churches. I last visited them about ten years ago, and although not much has changed it was pleasing to see that a couple of them were in safer hands than had seemed on my previous visit.
I came back through Norwich and caught the train back to Ipswich with dozens of disconsolate Norwich City fans who had just seen their team lose at home to West Bromwich Albion, leaving them perilously close to the drop. On the way back on the train I took part in a three-way conversation with my son in Amsterdam and my daughter in Madrid. Ten years ago, when they were little and I first explored these churches, I don't think I would have thought such a thing likely, or even possible.
The following day, Norwich City sacked their manager Chris Hughton.
Pierre de Wissant is a figure from Rodin's Monument to the Burghers of Calais, commissioned by the city of Calais in 1885. It commemorated the heroism of six men during the Hundred Years' War between France and England. In 1347 the six prominent citizens offered to sacrifice their lives if King Edward III would end the year-long siege of the city. Like a Renaissance master, Rodin first worked on a nake figure to understand its form before adding clothing.
[British Museum]
Part of Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (April to July 2018)
Bringing together sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and his inspiration, Pheidias (c. 490–430 BC).
"....tan avasallante y fidedigno el sufrimiento era, que la restregaban por unas sábanas sin acomodar desde el comienzo matutino resaltando en su cara gestos de un horror mudo, ya cuando las cuerdas vocales le mutaron en nudos y las manos en diccionario."
Fragmento de "Verdades Absolutas Dixit" de "Amelia G. - Cuentos de un despertar mental" por Juan Pablo Tamagnini (en proceso)
"Fragments" typography with a photo of irregular, glass beads in a random arrangement on a linen background.
This was a display of "Disfigurative Art' showing in Chapter House, Canterbury Cathedral by the artist 'Blake'. The bronze sculptures represent the terrible reality created by landmines.They are to be sold to assist in the work of the 'no more landmines trust' www.landmines.org.uk/
John Ward of Hull - British, 1798 - 1849
The Northern Whale Fishery: The "Swan" and "Isabella", c. 1840
West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 91
Three tall sailing ships, each with three masts and full sails, float in calm, arctic waters, surrounded by fragments of icebergs and ice floes amid a smattering of arctic animals in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a quarter of the way up the composition so the sails and rigging of the ships are shown against the sky. The clouds have ivory tops and lavender-purple undersides, and they curve in a C-shaped bank to cover most of the left half of the painting and to span the horizon. The three ships closest to us are spaced evenly across the composition, with the left-most the closest, and therefore the largest. The ship to our right is set a bit farther back, and the center ship is the farthest away. A rowboat holding several men has pulled alongside the boat to our left, and more men haul massive slabs of whale blubber up the side of the ship. Others walk on an ice floe nearby. Close inspection reveals more rowboats around and beyond these ships, and several more ships fading into the hazy distance along the horizon. Jagged edged chunks of icebergs as tall as the ships float around them. Closer to us, a trio of seals sits on an ice floe near the lower center of the composition, and a polar bear stands nose to nose with a cub to our right. Two narwhal whales with long tusks break the surface of the water between us and the ships, as does a whale’s tail near the boat to our right. Two walruses with long tusks sit on a floe near the center ship. A couple dozen birds, many white with black wing tips, fly low over the surface of the water across the painting.
The city of Hull, an important British port for commercial and fishing fleets, was a center for whaling until the middle of the nineteenth century. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it attracted a number of accomplished marine painters. John Ward, one of the finest of these artists, enjoyed wide patronage from ship owners and merchants and produced numerous ship portraits and harbor views. His most original and striking works are whaling scenes he painted from the early 1820s to the early 1840s. He began exhibiting such works at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, and the Royal Society of British Artists in London in the 1830s, bringing him recognition beyond his hometown.
The Northern Whale Fishery: The "Swan" and "Isabella" was unknown to modern scholarship on Ward until its appearance at auction in September 2006. Several other similar paintings of the Swan and the Isabella are extant, each with variations in the placement of the ships, the details of human activity, and the variety of marine animals shown. The Gallery's newly acquired picture is among the most beautifully painted of all Ward's creations. The two principal ships are painstakingly rendered to capture exact details of rigging and overall form, while other vessels are depicted in the distance. Ice floes drift on the sea, and icebergs loom in the background. The scene is filled with activities associated with whaling: strips of whale flesh are loaded on the Swan at the left; a long boat tows a dead whale in the middle distance; and a boat pursues a sounding whale near the Isabella at the right. Most remarkable is the array of wildlife present, including three seals and pairs of polar bears, walruses, and narwhales; seagulls skim the water and ice, searching for, and in some cases finding, morsels of blubber.
The Gallery's collection has only a few marine pictures by British artists and none depicting an Arctic scene. The Northern Whale Fishery: The "Swan" and "Isabella," with its charming and appealing subject and the exceptionally fine aesthetic level of its realization, is thus an important and welcome addition.
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The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is a world-class art museum that displays one of the largest collections of masterpieces in the world including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 13th century to the present. The National Gallery of Art collection includes an extensive survey of works of American, British, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, Dutch, French and German art. With its prime location on the National Mall, surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, visitors often think that the museum is a part of the Smithsonian. It is a separate entity and is supported by a combination of private and public funds. Admission is free. The museum offers a wide range of educational programs, lectures, guided tours, films, and concerts.
The original neoclassical building, the West Building includes European (13th-early 20th century) and American (18th-early 20th century) paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and temporary exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art was opened to the public in 1941 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original collection of masterpieces was provided by Mellon, who was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and ambassador to Britain in the 1930s. Mellon collected European masterpieces and many of the Gallery’s original works were once owned by Catherine II of Russia and purchased in the early 1930s by Mellon from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, Ginevra de' Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery_of_Art
Andrew W. Mellon, who pledged both the resources to construct the National Gallery of Art as well as his high-quality art collection, is rightly known as the founder of the gallery. But his bequest numbered less than two hundred paintings and sculptures—not nearly enough to fill the gallery’s massive rooms. This, however, was a feature, not a failure of Mellon’s vision; he anticipated that the gallery eventually would be filled not only by his own collection, but also by additional donations from other private collectors. By design, then, it was both Andrew Mellon and those who followed his lead—among them, eight men and women known as the Founding Benefactors—to whom the gallery owes its premier reputation as a national art museum. At the gallery’s opening in 1941, President Roosevelt stated, “the dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on.”
www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/national-ga...
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Iron wood (tieli wood) table, chairs, parts of beams and pillars from dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
One of Ai's most ambitious sculptures, Fragments is an amalgamation of his Furniture and Map series. Created using architectural salvage from four temples and items of furniture from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the work at first appears to be a random construction made from unrelated objects. As Ai says: 'Everything is misfit and connected wrongly.' Yet when it is seen from above - a physical impossibility within the gallery - the timber frame is revealed as a map of China including Taiwan (represented by the conjoined stools).
The sculpture can be traversed, allowing the visitor obliviously to permeate the borders of China and cross the country freely, much as tourists do when they visit, in a way that the Chinese citizens cannot. The different geographic and ethnographic identities of the country are rendered immaterial and China is presented as a skeleton. Despite its robust construction, this skeletal form suggests an inherent fragility that can be seen as a commentary on the concept of 'One China', the state-sponsored policy aimed at protecting and promoting China's sovereignty and territorial intergrity.
Offcuts of the salvaged timbers used to make Fragments were kept and used to create Kippe.
Duncan Rawlinson created this piece using a combination of contemporary photography and artificial intelligence techniques. The image explores the latent space, presenting a futuristic and abstract vision that reflects the intersection of technology and art. The intricate patterns and forms highlight the potential of AI in generating unique and compelling visual aesthetics.
Fragments of 15th century stained glass, all that remains of the church's pre-Reformation glazing, gathered into a south clerestorey window in the chancel.
The most northerly church in Leicestershire is also one of its very best, St Mary's at Bottesford is a grand enough structure in its own right, a fine building of mainly 14th/15th century date with a soaring spire, but a chancel full of monuments to the Roos and Manners families (the successive Earls of Rutland) make it unmissable, like Westminster Abbey in miniature.
Despite Leicestershire's notoriety for locked churches this one is happily normally open daily from 9am-5pm.