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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...
Each side of the stone steps is lined with the hydrangeas.
Meigetsuin 明月院
www.kamakuratoday.com/e/sightseeing/meigetsuin.html
www.treep.jp/kamakura/cate_temples/meigetsuin.html (Japanese)
Located at Bond University, "The Thinking Steps" require some navigation! Designed to be almost 1.5 paces for the average height Australian, the idea is to slow the pace for students & academics, "encouraging them to take time for reflection".
The colonaded steps line each side of the Arch Building, created by the leading Japanese Architect, Arata Isozaki.
2014_042
Traversed the river along the bank. The rocks were like oversized lilly pads perfect for photo opportunities.
I’ve been wanting to take a city break in summer, rather than in the cold months for a while, so rather than heading for the Lake District for a week of toil on the fells when Jayne could get a week off, we took off from Liverpool for Paris. Flight times were nice and sociable but it meant we were on the M62 car park at a busy time in both directions – it’s a shambles! I’ve stopped over in Paris a dozen times – on my way to cycling in the Etape du Tour in the Alps or Pyrenees – and had a few nights out there. Come to think about it and we’ve spent the day on the Champs Elysees watching the final day of the Tour de France with Mark Cavendish winning. We hadn’t been for a holiday there though and it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision. Six nights gave us five and a half days to explore Paris on foot. I had a good selection of (heavy) kit with me, not wanting to make the usual mistake of leaving something behind and regretting it. In the end I carried the kit in my backpack – an ordinary rucksack – to keep the weight down, for 103 miles, all recorded on the cycling Garmin – and took 3500 photos. The little Garmin is light and will do about 15 hours, it expired towards the end of a couple of 16 hour days but I had the info I wanted by then. This also keeps the phone battery free for research and route finding – I managed to flatten that once though.
What can I say – Paris was fantastic! The weather varied from OK to fantastic, windy for a few days, the dreaded grey white dullness for a while but I couldn’t complain really. We were out around 8.30 in shorts and tee shirt, which I would swap for a vest when it warmed up, hitting 30 degrees at times, we stayed out until around midnight most nights. It was a pretty full on trip. The security at some destinations could have been a problem as there is a bag size limit to save room in the lifts etc. I found the French to be very pragmatic about it, a bag search was a cursory glance, accepting that I was lugging camera gear, not bombs around, and they weren’t going to stop a paying customer from passing because his bag was a bit over size.
We didn’t have a plan, as usual we made it up as we went along, a loose itinerary for the day would always end up changing owing to discoveries along the way. Many times we would visit something a few times, weighing the crowds and light etc. up and deciding to come back later. I waited patiently to go up the Eiffel Tower, we arrived on Tuesday and finally went up on Friday evening. It was a late decision but the weather was good, the light was good and importantly I reckoned that we would get a sunset. Previous evenings the sun had just slid behind distant westerly clouds without any golden glory. It was a good choice. We went up the steps at 7.30 pm, short queue and cheaper – and just to say that we had. The steps are at an easy angle and were nowhere near as bad as expected, even with the heavy pack. We stayed up there, on a mad and busy Friday night, until 11.30, the light changed a lot and once we had stayed a couple of hours we decided to wait for the lights to come on. This was a downside to travelling at this time of year, to do any night photography we had to stay out late as it was light until 10.30. The Eiffel Tower is incredible and very well run, they are quite efficient at moving people around it from level to level. It was still buzzing at midnight with thousands of people around. The sunset on Saturday was probably better but we spent the evening around the base of the Tower, watching the light change, people watching and soaking the party atmosphere up.
Some days our first destination was five miles away, this is a lot of road junctions in a city, the roads in Paris are wide so you generally have to wait for the green man to cross. This made progress steady but when you are on holiday it doesn’t matter too much. Needless to say we walked through some dodgy places, with graffiti on anything that stays still long enough. We were ultra-cautious with our belongings having heard the pickpocket horror stories. At every Café/bar stop the bags were clipped to the table leg out of sight and never left alone. I carried the camera in my hand all day and everywhere I went, I only popped it in my bag to eat. I would guess that there were easier people to rob than us, some people were openly careless with phones and wallets.
We didn’t enter the big attractions, it was too nice to be in a museum or church and quite a few have a photography ban. These bans make me laugh, they are totally ignored by many ( Japanese particularly) people. Having travelled around the world to see something, no one is going to stop them getting their selfies. Selfies? Everywhere people pointed their cameras at their own face, walking around videoing – their self! I do like to have a few photos of us for posterity but these people are self-obsessed.
Paris has obviously got a problem with homeless (mostly) migrants. Walk a distance along the River Seine and you will find tented villages, there is a powerful smell of urine in every corner, with the no alcohol restrictions ignored, empty cans and bottles stacked around the bins as evidence. There are families, woman living on mattresses with as many as four small children, on the main boulevards. They beg by day and at midnight they are all huddled asleep on the pavement. The men in the tents seem to be selling plastic Eiffel Tower models to the tourists or bottled water – even bottles of wine. Love locks and selfy sticks were also top sellers. There must be millions of locks fastened to railings around the city, mostly brass, so removing them will be self-funding as brass is £2.20 a kilo.
As for the sights we saw, well if it was on the map we tried to walk to it. We crossed the Periphique ring road to get to the outer reaches of Paris. La Defense – the financial area with dozens of modern office blocks – was impressive, and still expanding. The Bois de Boulogne park, with the horse racing track and the Louis Vuitton Centre was part of a 20 mile loop that day. Another day saw us in the north east. We had the dome of the Sacre Couer to ourselves, with thousands of tourists wandering below us oblivious of the entrance and ticket office under the church. Again the light was fantastic for us. We read that Pere Lachaise Cemetery or Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise was one of the most visited destinations, a five mile walk but we went. It is massive, you need a map, but for me one massive tomb is much the same as another, it does have highlights but we didn’t stay long. Fortunately we were now closer to the Canal St Martin which would lead us to Parc de la Villette. This was a Sunday and everywhere was both buzzing and chilled at the same time. Where ever we went people were sat watching the world go by, socializing and picnicking, soaking the sun up. As ever I wanted to go up on the roof of anything I could as I love taking cityscapes. Most of these were expensive compared with many places we’ve been to before but up we went. The Tour Montparnasse, a single tower block with 59 floors, 690 foot high and extremely fast lifts has incredible views although it was a touch hazy on our ascent. The Arc de Triomphe was just up the road from our hotel, we went up it within hours of arriving, well worth the visit.
At the time of writing I have no idea how many images will make the cut but it will be a lot. If I have ten subtly different shots of something, I find it hard to consign nine to the dark depths of my hard drive never to be seen again – and I’m not very good at ruthless selection – so if the photo is OK it will get uploaded. My view is that it’s my photostream, I like to be able to browse my own work at my leisure at a later date, it’s more or less free and stats tell me these images will get looked at. I’m not aiming for single stunning shots, more of a comprehensive overview of an interesting place, presented to the best of my current capabilities. I am my own biggest critic, another reason for looking at my older stuff is to critique it and look to improve on previous mistakes. I do get regular requests from both individuals and organisations to use images and I’m obliging unless someone is taking the piss. I’m not bothered about work being published (with my permission) but it is reassuringly nice to be asked. The manipulation of Flickr favourites and views through adding thousands of contacts doesn’t interest me and I do sometimes question the whole point of the Flickr exercise. I do like having access to my own back catalogue though and it gives family and friends the chance to read about the trip and view the photos at their leisure so for the time being I’m sticking with it. I do have over 15 million views at the moment which is a far cry from showing a few people an album, let’s face it, there’s an oversupply of images, many of them superb but all being devalued by the sheer quantity available.
Don’t think that it was all walking and photography, we had a great break and spent plenty of time in pavement bistros having a glass of wine and people watching. I can certainly understand why Paris is top of the travellers list of destinations.
These steps are no more. The sea front in Scheveningen (The Hague) has been undergoing restructuring. The beach is being widened and the dyke is being strengthened: one of the steps that need to be taken to help protect us from from rising sea levels - and living below sea level we need plenty of help to keep our toes dry :)
This shot is part of my first SoFoBoMo project - if you haven't heard of it, then take a look here: www.sofobomo.org/HomePage It's a fun challenge and it's free.
Hey, Rocky, try running up these steps! It would make the Philadelphia Museum of Arts steps look like child's play.
Cliveden at dusk: 172 steps down to the River Thames...
inspired by Rob Hudson's project Songs of Travel
All Saints, Hitcham, Suffolk
If you don't know mid-Suffolk, you may well be surprised by the hills which roll across the space between Stowmarket and Hadleigh, as if this was not East Anglia at all. In this remotest part of the county, miles from the nearest town, villages take on a self-sufficient air, and Hitcham is the largest of them. Its church, All Saints, sits high in a wide open churchyard on the outskirts of the village. The house opposite the entrance to the graveyard was the medieval guild hall. This is a big church, and was once the centre of one of the county's largest parishes. It was the Priory of Ely's most valuable living in the whole of the county, worth twice as much as any other, and was therefore bestowed on favoured clerics.
This situation continued when the patronage was taken over by the state after the Reformation, and to be made rector of Hitcham remained a desirable appointment well into the 20th Century. As the excellent guidebook notes, some rectors of this parish achieved fame and influence. Take Adam Easton, for instance. In the 14th Century, he was made a cardinal while still rector here. However, as he was also Archdeacon of Shetland, Orkney and Dorset, as well as Prior of Saint Agnes at Ferrara in Italy and the personal secretary to Pope Urban VI, one assumes that he didn't spend a lot of his time on parish business. His successor John Bremore was the personal secretary to the antipope John XXIII at Avignon, so presumably he didn't live in the parish either.
John Whytewell, Rector throughout the Reformation, was chaplain to Thomas Cranmer, although, unlike that stubborn character, he received a royal pardon from Mary. Coming forward to the 17th Century, Laurence Bretton was a solid Laudian, ensuring his inevitable removal by the Puritans as a scandalous minister (for which, read 'liberal intellectual'). His successor, Miles Burket, had also been a Laudian, but in a Vicar of Bray fashion he became the Puritan preacher here, and died in poverty after the Restoration.
Mostly, the Rectors here seem to have been a jolly lot. John Matters, in the first decades of the 19th century, was famous for his befriending of, and care for, the poor of the parish, matched only by his neglect of his ecclesiastical duty. He is quoted in the guide as having a favourite saying: He that drinks strong beer, and goes to bed quite mellow, lives as he ought, and dies a hearty fellow. And his successor was Hitcham's most famous rector of all, but we'll come back to him in a minute.
Hitcham was not home to a great landed family, so it was the power and wealth of Ely priory that built this church. It is a grand affair, entirely rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries. One look tells you that this was not a piecemeal building. Mortlock observes that the grand flushwork porch is very like the one at neighbouring Bildeston, but it does not seem so imposing here against this big building. There is a very odd stop on the 15th century doorway. The one on the left is a lion, but on the right there appears to be a wild man and a tree surrounded by a picket fence.
At first sight, the interior is slightly disappointing. Large and plain, it is as if it had been scraped clean by Miles Burket's cronies, perhaps in reaction to the incumbency of Laurence Bretton. The brick floors are attractive, and the fine 14th century aches of the arcades reach right up into the clerestory, but the heavy Victorian woodwork gives it all a sombre feel.
The hammerbeam roof was rebuilt after the Reformation, and includes lots of unfamiliar secular imagery, the heraldry of the State. However, there is some dispute about exactly when this happened, why, and how much was renewed. The arms of both James I and Charles I are here, giving a date in the first third of the 17th century, but the pineapple pendants appear more recent. At the west end, however, there are a couple of secretive green men on the hammer beam ends, which must be from an earlier age. One theory suggests that the roof was repaired in a hurry after a fire, and then beautified later.
The chancel is a 19th century rebuilding (a photograph of this event, which used to be at the west end, is rather alarming, like a gap-toothed Madonna) and it is evidence of the Anglo-catholic enthusiasm of Alexander Grant, Rector for the last 40 years of the 19th Century. At nearby Kettlebaston, this enthusiasm was realised by the Vicar there in the form of a gorgeous little shrine, but here, something more grandiloquent was intended. Hence the five steps up to the chancel, and two more up to the sanctuary, representative of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, and familiar from 19th century London Anglo-catholic churches. There is no evidence that Anglo-catholicism ever took such a firm foothold here, though.
The chancel is so grand, some visitors must easily overlook the remains of the rood screen. Only the dado survives, but it is worth a look because instead of saints the panels depict angels holding the instruments of the Passion. Something similar can be seen at Blundeston in the north of the county, and there are also angels on the screen at Southwold of course. Not surprisingly, they were vandalised by the 16th century reformers. What is more surprising is that they have survived at all. Presumably they were moved to their present position at the time of the 19th century reordering, but when Arthur Mee came here in the 1930s, he could barely discern them as figures, and thought them saints. So they've been restored, probably under the influence of Munro Cautley when he was diocesan architect.
In such a wealthy parish, perhaps it is not surprising that little else medieval survives. The converse of this, of course, that the restoration of this church has generally provided work of quality. Although the benches are heavy, they do carry several bench ends which are probably the work of the great Ipswich woodcarver Henry Ringham. The best are the four evangelistic symbols towards the front. In fact, the guidebook suggests that the benches were removed from the church towards the end of the 19th century and replaced with chairs as at Rattlesden and Kettlebaston, only to be returned at the behest of the eccentric and splendidly-named Maxwell Maxwell-Gumbleton, who was jointly Bishop of Dunwich and Rector of Hitcham in the 1930s and 1940s. Maxwell-Gumbleton had a Bishop's throne built, which he installed in the chancel. It must have given his parishioners something to think about. It is still there today, and is replicated in slightly more modest form by the churchwardens' seats at the west end. Maxwell-Gumbleton's also are the George VI coat of arms, dated 1937, and a lovely modern font cover, given as a memorial.
From an earlier age are the very elaborate brass inlay in front of the sanctuary, and the mid-17th century memorial to a Waldegrave in the north aisle, more austere than it would have been twenty years before or after. In the south aisle there is a copy of the Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, which is in Kings College Chapel. At first, I couldn't work out why it looks a little odd, and then it hit me - it is in reverse.
Many years ago, I chatted with a churchwarden here, and she told me tha, although 42 men in this parish lost their lives in the first world war, only 28 of them are remembered on the war memorial here. She suggested that this was perhaps because the others were from chapel families, or perhaps the families had moved away before the memorial was installed. Whatever, it gave me pause for thought, for if a similar situation exists in other parishes, then we may assume that many hundreds of people who gave their lives have, in fact, been forgotten.
But one name stands out in this parish as forever being associated with it. You might overlook the simple memorial in the chancel by Thomas Woolner, and you'll certainly miss the little memorial plaque above the door as you came in, but both are worth a look because they both remember the same person, the great John Stevens Henslow.
Henslow was a remarkable man by anyone's standards. He was Regius Professor of Botany at Cambridge University in the 1830s, and was looked on with enough favour to secure the lucrative Hitcham rectorship. However, rather than send a poorly-paid curate to do his work for him, which would have been the usual early 19th century Trollopeian way, he followed in John Manner's footsteps, and came to Hitcham himself.
It is hard now to imagine what a contrast this remote place must have been with cosmopolitan Cambridge, barely 40 miles away. Henslow wrote in his diary that he had come to "a woefully neglected parish, where the inhabitants, with regard to food and clothing and the means of observing the decencies of life, were far below the average scale of the peasant class in England." It is recorded that his first congregation here in this vast space was insufficient to fill one pew.
Over the course of the next 25 years, he turned his parish upside down, applying his scientific knowledge to the antiquated and conservative farming methods of the local farmers. He increased their prosperity, and that of the poor farm labourers. He started a school, and an institute of adult education. He led outings through the local countryside, and would sometimes take the whole parish on the train to London, including one trip to the great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. It was said that the entire village emptied on these occasions, travelling by cart and on foot to Stowmarket railway station, and then on to London.
"Everyone is to be in good humour", he told his parishioners, "accommodating to all, and especially attentive to the ladies of the party. If the weather should prove unpropitious, every one is to make the best of it, and not to complain more than he can possibly help."
It is said that, on holiday at Felixstowe, he realised the fertilizing properties of the coprolite nodules in the cliffs there, and interested two local farming brothers so much that they set up a fertiliser processing factory at Ipswich docks. Their name was Fison.
But an even more famous name associated with Henslow is Charles Darwin, one of Henslow's students at Cambridge. Henslow encouraged Darwin to investigate the development of species, finding him a place aboard HMS Beagle, the scientific survey ship. Darwin sent his notes and samples back to Henslow, who circulated them in the scientific community. Darwin came back to England to find himself a celebrity. The basis of The Origin of Species was put together at Hitcham Rectory, although Henslow would later repudiate its conclusions.
Most importantly, however, as far as my children were concerned when they were younger, Henslow was the guiding light behind the opening of Ipswich Museum, which still retains one of the finest 19th century natural history collections in the country. A portrait of him hangs in the entrance hall, and the name of a road in the east of the town remembers him.
He died at the relatively young age of 65. His predecessor had been the jolly John Matters. His successor was the Anglo-catholic enthusiast Alexander Grant, who, as well as rebuilding the chancel, is still remembered in the village for taking the side of the workers during the lock-out strike of 1874, when he allowed them to use the church building for their meetings.
These three extraordinary men between them spanned the entire 19th century here. Trollope himself could not have written a better novel.
I really liked how the sun was grabbing the lens to drench the steps in sun.
I've been on vacation this past week, and while I couldn't afford to take a trip, I've been traveling locally to visit some of my favorite local gems. View what I've shared so far here Staycation 2013
*canon 7D; sigma 10-20mm