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Age and rust no doubt played its part in this field gate’s collapse but the resident horse using it as a scratching post probably helped as well.
Frost on the grasses around old gateposts at Scout Dyke. Before the building of the reservoir, Scout Dyke was a stream surrounded by fields. In many places, remains of the old field walls can still be found.
Craftsmanship in gritstone is evident on these gateposts and their acorn-like toppings. Seen at All Saints Church in Youlgreave.
Walking along the upper lawns of the Italian Gardens you will come across a shady little "secret" garden. It is flanked by two tall bluestone columns topped with finials which act as gateposts for a set of elegant Victorian wrought-iron gates. Elegantly carved with sweeping curls, they would not look out of place in a garden in England.
The Forest Glade Gardens are well established European inspired landscaped gardens of six hectares that are to be found on the Mount Macedon Road in the hill station town of Mount Macedon.
The Forest Glade Gardens are just shy of one hundred years old. The gardens were originally two adjoining properties that comprised orchards and lush grazing paddocks. In 1941 local family the Newtons purchased and extended the property and set about creating one of Mount Macedon's most stunning gardens.
In 1971 the Forest Glade Gardens were acquired by Melbourne property developer Mr. Cyril Stokes who together with his partner Trevor Neil Bell, developed the gardens even further. Cyril was a great collector of European antiques, and his love of European antiquity is reflected in the gardens, particularly in the many classical marble and bronze statues dotted about the grounds.
Unfortunately the Forest Glade Gardens were partly destroyed by the tragic Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983. However, after many years of hard labour put in by Cyril and Trevor, The Forest Glade Gardens were reborn from the ashes. The gardens are built on a sloping block and consist of a range of terraces all of which offer wonderful vistas. A garden designed to give pleasure all year round, the Forest Glad Gardens contain several heritage listed trees and are made up of smaller themed gardens including; the Italian Garden, the Japanese Garden, the Daffodil Meadow, the Peony Walk, Hydrangea Hill, the Topiary Gardens, the Bluebell Meadow, the Fern Gully and the Laburnum Arch.
In 2011 the property was gifted to a registered charity - The Stokes Collection Limited - with the intention of keeping the Forest Glade Gardens maintained and open to the public.
The Mount Macedon township is located east of the Mount Macedon summit, which is approximately 60 km north-west of Melbourne.
The name of Mount Macedon is apparently derived from Philip II, who ruled Macedon between 359 and 336BC. The mountain was named by Thomas Mitchell, the New South Wales Surveyor General.
Settled in the 1850s by gold miners and timber cutters, the railway arrived at the Mount Macedon township in 1861, providing a vital connection to Melbourne, and sealing the town's future as a 'hill station' resort for wealthy Melburnians escaping the summer heat in the 1870s. With the land deforested, large blocks were sold and beautiful and extensive gardens were planted around the newly built homes. The rich soil and good rainfall also made the area suitable for large orchards and plant nurseries who could send fruit and flowers back to Melbourne. Newspaper owner, David Syme, built a house, "Rosenheim" in 1869. It was acquired in 1886 for Victorian Governors to use as a country retreat, making Mount Macedon an attractive destination for the well heeled of Melbourne society. A primary school was built in Mount Macedon in 1874, and as the decades progressed, hotels, guest houses, shops, a Presbyterian Church and Church of England were built. In 1983, Mount Macedon was devastated by the Ash Wednesday Bush Fires. A large portion of the town was raised, and a number of lives were lost. However, like a phoenix from the ashes, Mount Macedon has risen and rebuilt. Today it is still a popular holiday destination, particularly during spring time when the well established gardens flourish with flowers and in autumn when the exotic trees explode in a riot of reds and yellows.
Seen during a short visit to the Andalusian city of Sevilla: looking through the gateposts of the Teatro Lope de Vega.
On a Saturday morning in April 1957 a 30-year-old woman by the name of Sheila Cloney from the village of Fethard-on-Sea in County Wexford left home with her daughters, six-year-old Eileen and three-year-old Mary, bound for Northern Ireland.
Such was her anxiety to get away before one of the neighbours spotted her that she hit a gatepost as she tried to manoeuvre the heavy family car out of the entrance to the farm where she lived.
When her husband Seán returned from working in the fields, he called on Sheila’s parents and siblings to see if they knew where she was, before he alerted the Garda Síochana.
What led an ordinary woman from a quiet farming community in rural Wexford to flee home with two small children?
Sheila, the daughter of a well-liked farmer and cattle dealer and his wife, was a member of Fethard’s small Church of Ireland community.
In 1948 she was working in London as a domestic servant when a neighbour from Fethard – on his way back home from attending to the affairs of a deceased relative in Suffolk – called on her.
Seán Cloney, a Catholic farmer, had grown up less than a mile from Sheila. Seán and Sheila started going out together but because he was a Catholic and she was a Protestant their relationship caused difficulties in Fethard.
The local curate, Fr William Stafford, made known his displeasure at Seán for going out with a Protestant by banning him from the dramatic society in the Catholic parish hall.
Despite opposition at home, on 8 October 1949, Seán and Sheila were married in a registry office in London.
But two months later, a priest tracked them down to Bury St Edmunds and persuaded Sheila to get married in a Catholic church.
As stipulated by the Catholic Church’s Ne Temere decree, Sheila agreed to raise any children from the marriage as Catholics and signed a document to that effect.
It was this act which was cause such trouble later on. In 1950 Seán and Sheila returned home to Fethard. Eileen was born in 1951; Mary two years later.
The events leading up to Sheila’s decision to flee home began at the beginning of 1957 with the approach of Eileen’s sixth birthday. The Cloneys had not yet decided where Eileen would go to school. The couple had a broad understanding that the children would be raised in both religious traditions. Despite this, Sheila believed that her wish that they be partly raised as Protestants was being undermined.
For example, the nuns in the Catholic nursing home where Eileen and Mary were born had had them baptised immediately.
This removed the possibility of them also being baptised in the Church of Ireland, because, whereas the Church of Ireland did recognise baptisms carried out by a Catholic priest, the Catholic Church did not recognise Church of Ireland baptisms as valid.
During the spring of 1957, Catholic priests were regular visitors to the Cloney household, putting pressure on the couple to send Eileen to the local Catholic national school.
Finally, the parish priest, Fr Laurence Allen, pushed Sheila too far.
One day he landed in her kitchen and told her that Eileen was going to the Catholic national school and that there was nothing that she could do about it. Sheila had other ideas and on April 27, 1957 she fled across the border with the children.
Sheila’s decision to seek help in Northern Ireland was probably influenced in some small part by coverage of the Maura Lyons case, which many recall as the first time they heard Ian Paisley’s name.
It was associates of Paisley, who were also involved in the Lyons case, who were responsible for hiding Sheila and the children in Belfast and later smuggling them across the Irish Sea to Scotland.
Sean later followed his wife to Belfast to try, unsuccessfully, to recover his children through the courts.
At the same time, the clergy in Fethard, especially the apoplectic curate Father Stafford, hatched their own plan to force Sheila and the Cloney children to return home.
On May 12, Fr Stafford let fly at Sunday mass. He denounced Sheila of robbing her children of their faith and groundlessly accused the Protestants of Fethard of having financially aided her departure.
He announced that it was now up to the Catholics of Fethard to exert pressure on the missing woman and her co-religionists to make sure the children were returned, and that this was to be achieved by a boycott of Protestant-owned businesses and farms.
The next day the majority of the Catholics in Fethard stopped going into the two Protestant shops. On Wednesday, the Church of Ireland school was forced to close when the Catholic teacher walked out.
An elderly music teacher living alone in Fethard lost her dozen Catholic pupils. Catholic labourers told Protestant farmers that they would no longer be able to work for them and Catholics no longer bought their milk. Shots were also fired outside the homes of Protestants in the area.
Most Catholics obeyed the priest — many out of fear — but some, mostly old IRA men who had fallen out with the Church during the Civil War, opposed the boycott.
One in particular would heckle the vigilantes — organised by Fr Stafford to make sure the boycott was enforced — as they came out of their weekly meetings to discuss tactics in the parish hall.
The boycott became a national scandal in Ireland and was reported abroad — there was even a mention in Time magazine. Donations flooded in to a relief fund set up to provide financial assistance to Fethard’s distressed Protestant community, especially from Northern Ireland.
The huge response from northern Protestants prompted the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, John Percy Phair, to write to the Belfast Telegraph thanking ‘our friends in the North’ for their financial assistance. About £1,000 was deposited in the relief fund in total.
The Catholic hierarchy was initially tight-lipped about the boycott.
But at the end of June, about a month and a half into the boycott, during a solemn high mass in Wexford town, the Bishop of Galway, Michael Browne, thundered from the altar: “There seems to be a concerted campaign to entice or kidnap Catholic children and derive them of their Faith.
“Non-Catholics, with one or two honourable exceptions, do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”
Despite the hierarchy’s support for the boycott, many ordinary Catholics were disgusted at what was occurring in Fethard-on-Sea — most significantly, the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera.
On July 4, less than a week after the intervention of the bishops, de Valera condemned the boycott in the Dail “as ill-conceived, ill-considered and futile” and repudiated “any suggestion that this boycott is typical of the attitude or conduct of our people”.
De Valera was instinctively appalled by the actions of the Fethard boycotters but also furious at the damage it was doing to the reputation of the state.
His worst fears were confirmed on the Twelfth when speakers on Orange platforms across Northern Ireland denounced the treatment being meted out to the Fethard Protestants.
The Prime Minister Lord Brookeborough said the boycott was a reminder of what would happen if Northern Ireland was subsumed into an all-Ireland Republic. Eventually, a deal to bring the dispute to an end was brokered in the house of the Republic’s Minister for Finance, Jim Ryan.
That September, the parish priest went into the Protestant-owned newsagent in Fethard to buy a packet of cigarettes to signal that the boycott was over.
Sheila and the children returned home on New Year’s Eve. But though the boycott was now officially over, old wounds remained and the Protestant shopkeepers found that many of their old customers never returned.
Life was certainly never the same for the Cloney family.
Eileen and Mary never went to school. Instead they received lessons from their parents at home and helped on the farm. In some small way, the boycott marked the waning of the influence of the Catholic Church in the Republic. The bishops themselves recognised that they had failed to win over public opinion.
As for the Church of Ireland, many critics were quick to point to a lack of leadership. Certainly, Bishop Phair was quick to blame ‘mixed marriages’ and Sheila Cloney for leaving her husband and refusing to honour her promise to raise the children as Catholics, rather than concentrating on the injustice of the boycott.
In 1998, the Catholic Bishop of Ferns, Brendan Comiskey, apologised for the Catholic Church’s role in the boycott.
It was some small consolation for the Cloney family who have had to deal with a significant amount of tragedy down the years.
In 1998, Mary died of a rare liver disease. Sean died in 1999, four years after being left paralysed from the neck down after a road traffic accident. Eileen and her sister Hazel, who was born a few years after the boycott, still live locally. On June 28, 2009, Sheila Cloney’s funeral service was held in the tiny St Mogue’s church at the entrance to Fethard.
It was a low-key affair: there was no eulogy, no death notices in the newspapers. Sheila wished to draw a veil over those extraordinary events of 1957 but she will be remembered by many for standing up to the clerical bullies and raising her children as she saw fit.
Tim Fanning is a journalist and author of The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott, Collins Press, £12.99, available from all good bookshops and also at collinspress.ie
I was originally planning a trip down to Curbar Edge in the Peaks yesterday evening, until the clouds rolled in and all looked grey. By 6.30 the clouds were beginning to break up a bit, so I dashed up to Royd Moor (a bit closer than the Peaks) to catch the evening light, which developed in to the most wonderful of sunsets.
One of my pet hates is barbed wire, which I think is the blight of our countryside. However, on this occassion I have to admit that it made quite a useful subject!
The National Trail starts to climb out of the trough created by Graining Water - on one of those ancient stone flagged paths, which are common to the Calderdale area.
Part of my A-Z Project, a local derelict barn that has pretty much looked like this for as long as i remember.
Taken at the end of March when they flowers were beginning to peek over the top of a flower tub on the top of a garden gate.
Better viewed large and thank you for your favourites. :O)
A home-made stone gatepost into which a free-standing wooden gate could be slotted was cheaper than paying a blacksmith to make an iron one on hinges, or even chains as used here. Bit IRONIC to find this on Cleveland Street, an old footpath connecting the ironstone mines of East Cleveland with local villages
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/08/big-vagina-energy-t...
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Big vagina energy: the return of the sheela na gig
Some say the explicit medieval carvings were fertility symbols; others that the figures were meant to ward off evil. Now a group of Irish feminists are bringing them back – as a reminder of women’s struggles.
@jenny_stevens - Mon 8 Mar 2021
Carved into stone, these women squat, naked, sometimes cackling, pulling open their enlarged labia: it’s no wonder Victorian clergymen attempted to destroy or hide the glorious, mysterious figures known as sheela na gigs.
The carvings are found on medieval churches, castles and even gateposts in Ireland, the UK and much of mainland Europe. They seem to have their origins in the 11th century; the oldest discovered in the British Isles so far dates back to the 12th century, the youngest to the 16th. Yet their beginnings are an enigma. Early theories from art historians claimed they were grotesque hag figures to warn against the sins of lust – a way of keeping the minds of churchgoers and monks pure. Others suggest they are a talisman against evil: the act of women flashing their genitals has been believed to scare off demons as far back as the ancient Greeks. More recently, researchers have leaned towards the idea that the sheela is a pre-Christian folk goddess and her exaggerated vulva a sign of life-giving powers and fertility. Even her name is an enigma – although one theory is that “sheela” could mean an old woman or crone, and “gig” was slang for genitals.
If there ever was such a thing as “big dick energy”, the sheela na gig is the embodiment of big vagina energy. She has long fascinated and inspired academics and artists alike – a PJ Harvey song is devoted to her: “You exhibitionist!” Harvey sings on her 1992 single Sheela-Na-Gig; Sarah Lucas has also incorporated them into her work.
And now, the sheela is being given another lease of life. In Dublin this week, new sheelas crafted in clay with 22-carat gold-lustred labia and beautifully glazed vulvas will be covertly placed in sites that are significant to women’s struggle.
The friendly and noisy cat that ran to meet us along a wall in Earlsferry (best viewed on black). The pussy-cat jumped up on the gatepost of one of the larger houses and was rolling about and seemed in danger of plunging about 8 feet to the ground. Despite its worried look it was very happy, as it was both miaowing and purring loudly at the same time. Then it jumped into the garden and didn't reappear.
Graffiti on a gatepost on Stokes Croft Street not far from the big railway arches. This was a favourite of mine and a number of other people I know. Unfortunately, it got painted over recently so I guess the owner of the property wasn't so keen.
The entrance stone come gatepost to the hut circles on the slopes above the hamlet of Hammerslake near Lustleigh on East Dartmoor.
Gordon Lightfoot has a song that comes to mind:
"It's snowin' in the city, and the streets are brown and gritty."
(from 'Alberta Bound')
Although it wasn't snowing, the streets were indeed, 'brown and gritty'.
Two textures by Flypaper Textures
In 1836 the first pastoralists moved into the Geelong region with David Stead and John Cowie on the Moorabool River and Alexander Thompson on the Barwon River (Kardinia estate meaning sunrise in local Aboriginal language). By 1837 there were enough pastoralists and their workers in the region for Magistrate Foster Fyans to be stationed at the Barwon River and Constable Patrick McKeever to be the first police officer there. The town of Geelong was surveyed in October 1838 with the first land sales in 1839. The first general store, the Wool Pack Inn and a wool store opened around his time and by 1841 there were 82 houses and over 400 residents and the town had its own newspaper. The main streets were named after places and people mainly who were early settlers– Moorabool, Yarra, Bellarine, Corio, Gheringhap, Swanston and Malop, Ryrie, McKillop, Myers, Brougham, Fenwick and etc. The name of Geelong came from a local Aboriginal languages meaning either “white sea bird” or “cliff” or “going up”. Within a short time there was a saddler, Wesleyan place of worship (not quite a church), a post service etc. In 1848 Geelong was declared a port for exporting wool, grain, hides, tallow etc. A year later (1849) it was officially proclaimed a town with its own Town Council and a mayor as the self-governing colony of Victoria was created from NSW. The growing Industrial Revolution in England and the great demand for wool for England’s woollen mills boosted the town’s growth and optimism which was exploded by the discovery of gold in central Victoria and Ballarat. Geelong was able to supply needed goods for the goldfields etc. In 1851 Geelong had 8,291 inhabitants but by 1853 it had 22,000 thanks to gold from Ballarat being received and exported from here. The basalt and sandstone Customs House was built in 1856 in Brougham Street when exports began from here rather than at Williamstown near Melbourne and immigrants landed directly in Geelong. The first Town Hall was built in 1855 and a telegraph connection with Melbourne was established in 1854. The fine sandstone Telegraph Station with a timeball for shipping on its roof was built in 1858 and still stands next to the former Post Office. The first railway in Victoria linked Melbourne and Geelong in 1854. A private company began building the Melbourne to Geelong railway in 1854 but it was not completed until 1856. The first railway station was replaced with the current one between 1877 and 1881 hence the polychromatic brick work which was popular at that time. A new railway line was built from Geelong to the goldfields at Ballarat starting in 1858 with completion of the link in 1862. A short tunnel was cut through the hill beyond the railway station in 1875 to allow trains to travel to South Geelong and on to Colac. By the mid-1850s Geelong was the third biggest town in the Australian colonies and a well-established city and it continued to greatly significantly in the 1860s. Brougham Street near the bay was lined with impressive wool stores and warehouses at this time and they still grace that street.
Early doors for the1V91 Holyhead - Cardiff - WAG train.
67029 'Royal Diamond' at the head - wasn't sure whether it would be leading - it was- so worth getting up early for. One of the two loco hauled along the N.Wales Coast. The other being the Manchester - Holyhead. 1D34 and return.Two coffees to get the body functioning at this early hour - one cup featured ! The 2 horses that were in shot wandered off about 5 minutes before the train, despite my encouragement to keep them closer!
Happy Fence Friday to everyone ;o)
I've been taking shots of this gatepost all year, since I first saw the stubborn little bit of grass growing out of the top .... after looking at the shot, I was struck by the out-of-focus background rather more than the gatepost ;o)
My Fence Friday photos set: Elisa Fence Friday