Summer arrived at last, hurrah! So here is July 2024, and a funny thing happened. While I was choosing this months selection I noticed repeating elements that were occuring from different places that I visited during the month, so I started making visual links and ended up, just for a bit of fun, trying to make a flow of links throughout the post. Some are very obvious and some a bit more tenuous.
Tenuous - Very weak or slight or having little substance or strength. Late 16th century: formed irregularly from Latin tenuis ‘thin’ + -ous.
I like the fact that it is late 16th century as several of the photos this month will fit in to that time period quite well. The two definitions above seem to me very different though, bearing in mind that we are discussing something that is "slight" in the first place. I am going for some links which are "slight" rather than some links which are "of little substance". Little substance seems to be more damning, while slight is giving me some credit at least.
The links idea means that the photos are grouped according to link and not according to where they are taken. We start with flowers both mundane and exotic. Poppies are mundane although this example at Cotehele House in Cornwall is wearing some exotic colour.
In the walled garden at Cotehele is a section called the cut flowers garden where flowers were grown specifically for use as decoration in the house. If you were rich and the original occupants of Cotehele were, then you could afford to employ herds of gardeners to make things pretty.
In a private garden in Torquay was a collection of tropical looking Abutilons. This garden is only open for a few days a year for charity and occupies a small plot at the back of a 1950's bungalow on a housing estate. It is a unique creation of a hobbyist that totally covers the entire garden with greenery and flowers joined by paths through tunnels of leaves and vines, in a twisting turning route that disorientates you and doubles back on itself, into a confusion of space that leaves you bewildered and exhilarated by the profusion of colours and shadows. A bit like that sentence. It is impossible to view the whole garden from any one place as each piece is hidden from the next, so when you leave, you have no idea how big it was.
Abutilons are in the large mallow family of plants and are found in many parts of the world, but Torquay is not their natural home. Some of those on display survive the winter and some don't, so the owner collects and plants new ones regularly from seed to replace those that fail. Cross pollination also means that he gets many different colours appear from those seeds.
Still on the theme of plants is this fernery. Yes, I know it is a 4x4 vehicle but in this part of the world, if something stands still for long enough, a fernery is the natural result.
Here in the wheel arch is the start of a nature takeover, where enough light, moisture and shade makes a perfect habitat.
On the Drake Trail, which is a disused railway line north of Plymouth, the path, which is now a public asset for recreation for walkers and cyclists, takes you through an old tunnel which is permanently and artificially lit, so of course here are the ferns again.
At the end of the walk at Clearbrook is a pub called the Skylark and inside, next to where I was sitting, is this artificially lit scene of a village, complete with railway, inside an old bread oven.
On a rare trip to "The Smoke" as London used to be called is this memorial to another bread oven. Not as tenuous as you thought. This is "The Monument". So significant was the Great Fire of London in 1666 that the memorial to it is simply called "The Monument".
The Monument, literally towers above you with stunning details on all sides. On this massive panel is a depiction of the destruction of the city on the left hand side and the construction of the new city on the right. It's design and construction are highly symbolic. It was built in 1671. Above this panel is a column and the whole structure stands on the site of the first church to burn down, St Margaret's. It is exactly 202 feet in height, the same distance to the spot in Pudding Lane where the fire is believed to have started.
Pudding Lane was the site of the bakery of Thomas Farriner, the King's Baker. The first Rebuilding Act, passed in 1669, stipulated that "the better to preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation", a column of either brass or stone should be set up on Fish Street Hill, on or near the site of Farynor's bakery, where the fire began.
It is believed that as many as 13,500 houses, 87 churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral and many of the city's prisons, the General Letter Office and the three western city gates were consumed by the flames. The equivalent financial loss today was £2.1 billion. Miraculously, due to the relative slow speed of the fire and the warning received by occupants it may well be that the dead were in single figures, although because of the ensuing chaos the death toll has never been established, and some accounts suggest it could have been in the thousands. Far more died subsequently from exposure and lack of shelter because as many as 200,000 survivors fled into the countryside carrying what little they could of their possessions, to survive the winter that followed.
The fire raged for five days. Despite the mayhem, within two days "the markets were operating well enough to supply the people". Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades".
More signs (OK slightly tenuous, or should that be slightly slight?), tell us that we are halfway between Plymouth and Tavistock, on foot, with no trains running anymore.
This is a Public Byway which I discovered nearby. This byway leads to a ford. You can tell from the name on the sign.
Byway - A byway open to all traffic (BOAT) is a highway over which the public is entitled to travel on foot, horseback or pedal cycle but not by BOAT, and by wheeled vehicles of all kinds, including mechanically propelled vehicles, but which is used by the public mainly for walking or for riding. Most of these highways do not have a surface suitable for ordinary motor traffic.
At the ford, people on foot can cross the stream on this beautiful bridge made from a single slab of stone. The road itself has no surface, just rubble and more ferns. This slab interested me because of the circular hole cut through it. I have seen similar holes in vertical slabs used as stiles where they either allow water to run through or can be used as a foothold to climb over. One edge of the slab is thicker than the other and may have been below ground level in a previous life. I am fairly sure this has been repurposed. You can see what I mean in another post here.
Holes in stones, not even slightly tenuous. Here is my favourite beach spot, I love rock formations.
At the moment you can walk through this hole. Sometimes when the beach level changes it can be twenty feet up in the air.
From a stone arch to some brick arches, back on the Drake's Trail, because there are spectacular viaducts as well as a tunnel.
....and here is the natural green tunnel leading to the ford on the byway.
....and the tunnel carved out of stone by Isambard Kingdom Brunel."Shaugh Tunnel was one of the three tunnels on the Great Western Tavistock Branch. It opened in June 1859, and the railway line was closed there on December 29, 1962. The line was demolished there in the spring of 1964, and then it became a part of Drake's Trail, the cycle network.
The tunnel has a permanent waterfall inside as natural spring water drips on your head when you walk through. Back on the beach though and well set back and hidden in a gully is this secret waterfall emerging from the rock to splash into a pool where the water disappears slowly into the sand.
Too much water here to just drain away. This is the river Tamar that forms the Cornwall Devon border for most of its length. Here is the stretch just below Cotehele House, where there was once a very busy quayside.
This is the next most famous Devon river, the Dart at Dartmouth. A common sight now in this deep water port are small cruise ships or large yachts, with some that meet halfway. This is more of a large yacht than a small cruise ship.
Superyacht Elysian is 217 feet long. Fifteen feet longer than The Monument. It is owned by John W Henry. Mr Henry makes money, lots of it, probably lots more than the former owners of Cotehele House. I'm sure Mr Henry probably has herds of gardeners too. He certainly has several sporting trophies. Parts of his trophy collection are Liverpool Football Club and The Boston Red Sox, and a new one on me, The Pittsburgh Penguins. I'm not sure if those are actual penguins or players of some form of sport. I suppose if you have US$4 billion, that would buy you quite a few penguins.
Mr Henry is a self made man and he had asthma as a child so think about that kids. There is nothing stopping you but lack of belief in yourself. If you want to see the interior of this boat/ship here it is.
From marine architecture to the very land based variety, and we're tenuously back in London, quite near Pudding Lane where some mice from the bakery have found a piece of cheese to fight over. These are The Philpot Lane Mice.
Philpot Lane is a short street in London, United Kingdom, running from Eastcheap in the south to Fenchurch Street in the north. It is named after Sir John Philpot, Lord Mayor of London from 1378 to 1379.
It is the site of London's smallest public statue, The Two Mice Eating Cheese, on a building near the junction with Eastcheap. The sculpture supposedly commemorates the death of two workmen, who are said to have fallen from scaffolding either during the construction of the building in 1862, or during the construction of the nearby Monument to the Great Fire of London in the 1670s. Some versions of the story have both of them dying, others say that one pushed the other from the roof. The story goes that the workmen were arguing over the theft of a sandwich, which was later revealed to have been taken by mice. Wikipedia
Carrying on with architectural details and by pure chance I have for you, four very different roofs. This one is in Atherington church in North Devon. Most of its exceptional timber work is 15th and 16th century and it is a gem, which I drove for over two and a half hours especially to see. I will be doing a separate post on all the details at some point. The stand out feature of this waggon roof are the carved bosses, of which there are over 100, each one estimated to have taken a skilled sculptor about a week to carve.
Back at Cotehele and this beauty was for the birds. Sparrows probably. It is the roof of the great barn. Stately homes were country estates, which were working farms and businesses, which created the wealth of the nation and fed everyone. The markets of London set up so quickly after the Great Fire were supplying food from farms and barns like this one. Today it is the restaurant feeding the tourists who come to see the place which is now run by The National Trust.
This is the posher roof inside Cotehele House itself. Here is the history of England writ large. Battle flags, armour, guns, axes and hunting trophies.
Here is the roof of one of those markets of London, Ledenhall. Ledenhall Market is one of the oldest markets in London, dating from the 14th century, and is located in the historic centre of the City of London financial district. The early history of Leaden Hall involves the Mayor (1446), Simon Eyre. According to John Stow, "Eyre, a draper built Leaden Hall for a common garner of corn for the use of this city".
Garner - The word garner comes from the Latin granarium which means "store-house," usually for grain. The current use of the word carries with it the sense of something being stored up.
Above the market, soar the towers of the modern day financial markets. Here is the egg frying lens commonly known as The Walkie Talkie building, looming large over the Philpot Mice on that ornate building of brick arches below.
20 Fenchurch Street is a commercial skyscraper in London that takes its name from its address on Fenchurch Street, in the historic City of London financial district. It has been nicknamed "The Walkie-Talkie" because of its distinctive shape, said to resemble a walkie-talkie handset. Designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and costing over £200 million, 20 Fenchurch Street features a highly distinctive top-heavy form which appears to burst upward and outward.
During the building's construction, it was discovered that for a period of up to two hours each day if the sun shines directly onto the building, it acts as a concave mirror and focuses light onto the streets to the south. Spot temperature readings at street-level including up to 91 °C (196 °F) and 117 °C (243 °F) were observed during summer 2013, when the reflection of a beam of light up to six times brighter than direct sunlight shining onto the streets beneath damaged parked vehicles.Temperatures in direct line with the reflection became so intense that City A.M. reporter Jim Waterson managed to fry an egg in a pan set out on the ground.
This is a different sort of tower, at Atherington church, as old as the original Ledenhall Market.
At Calstock on the river Tamar, is this stone construction which I particularly like. It is a contemporary piece of work with some nice detail. Stare at it and your eye wanders across it joyfully. Or is it just me?
Also in Calstock is this coffin rest under the lych gate of the ancient church. But this is a modern addition and it is nicely done and sympathetic to its environment. This granite piece is a memorial to the Honeycombe family.
Calstock church is the ancestral church of the Honeycombe family and a couple of plaques remind us that they have been since the 1300s and that Gordon (d 2015) was a household name as a television newsreader.
.....while back at Atherington is this older coffin rest, complete with side benches for the mourners to rest. Coffins could be carried a long way across country in a rural parish, it was hard work. The lych gate was a highly symbolic and ceremonial place where the deceased entered the consecrated area of the churchyard, met by the priest.
English Heritage date this as 1880 and while I can agree with the timber work being of that date, to me, a nobody of the architecture world, the lower stone parts look to be much older.
Further investigation seems to agree with that although I cannot find a suggested date. It looks like the church restoration of 1880 swept away the structure that was here then or at least what may have been left of it.
This is the porch of Calstock church, which I was looking forward to seeing inside. Unfortunately that will have to wait for another day when it isn't locked.
Now at Calstock we segue from stone carving to wood carving. This is the same porch, and I rather like these modern stylised flowers lining the roof timbers.
What follows is just a hint of what you can expect from Atherington church which I am not going to say much about here. This is fine and rare.
These sharp and expertly carved faces that look like they were carved yesterday, were actually made around 1540. As I said, fine and rare. If the woodcarver had picked up a newspaper or switched on his TV, the headlines would have been about the King getting his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled. Henry VIII's fourth wife managed to keep her head. Only nineteen days later, and he married Catherine Howard, she wasn't so lucky.
At Cotehele House, this fellow is carved on a panel backed armchair circa 1780-1830. He is described as "a bearded man in profile in sixteenth century costume beneath an arch and set within gadrooned frame, flanked by scrolling arms of round section carved with leafy scales."
From a hidey hole in a cupboard upstairs in a bedroom there is this view of the great hall below and there is the chair mentioned above.
Back in Atherington church, and upstairs in the gallery which I am keeping secret for now is this similar view down to the church below.
Down below lies this brass featuring Honor Grenville, a face on the Basset memorial named for her husband Sir John Basset who was nowhere near as famous as Honor was. He was her first husband and when he died she married Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle the illegitimate son of the English king Edward IV, half-brother-in-law of Henry VII, and an uncle of Henry VIII, at whose court he was a prominent figure and by whom he was appointed Lord Deputy of Calais. We have already mentioned two of Henry VIII's wives, well Honor was a Lady in Waiting to that other unlucky wife Anne Boleyn. Honor is one of the most documented ladies of her day thanks to the Lisle Papers, a set of surviving letters sent to her and her husband while stationed in Calais between 1533 and 1540. Sent from several servants, courtiers, royal officials, friends, children and other relatives, they are an important source of information on domestic life in the Tudor age and of life at the court of Henry VIII. More on this interesting character when I complete the Atherington Church post. Here ends my July links edition. I hope you enjoyed it.
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