Loddon Church, mainly in pictures (including the mini-museum which is partway up the church tower).
Loddon Church is a remarkable edifice, and there is much that is remarkable in the inside of the building as well. There is also a mini-museum of local history up a tricky flight of stairs (it is one floor up in the church tower). The church is also a meeting point for several footpaths. If you are in the vicinity of Loddon it is a must visit.
Yesterday was Heritage Open Day 2021, and this is my account of the day as I experienced it.
Heritage Open Day in King’s Lynn happens on the second Sunday in September (except last year when for reasons not needing elaboration it did not happen at all), which this year was yesterday. This post describes the day as I experienced it, and is rather longer than my usual posts.
THE BEGINNING:
TUESDAY MARKET PLACE
There is a classic car show in the Tuesday Market Place in conjunction with Heritage Open Day, and viewed as the museum pieces that such contraptions should become some of the specimens are seriously impressive…
THE CUSTOM HOUSE
The first building I visited this time round was The Custom House, one of the two most iconic buildings in Lynn (The Townhall/ Guildhall is the other). They have an excellent little display upstairs, and it was well worth venturing indoors to see it…
THE RED MOUNT CHAPEL
A favourite of mine, standing on its own in the middle of an area of parkland, with the bandstand visible through the trees and the ruins of the Guanock Gate about 100 yards away. There are actually two chapels, the upper chapel and the lower chapel, and the thick walls and small windows that the outside of the building features are testament to the need to guard against religious persecution in earlier times…
THE JEWISH CEMETERY
This is near the top end of Millfleet, and most of the year if one spots it one can glimspe through the gate and see some of it. It was fully open for Heritage Open Day, and with lots of extra information made available…
ST NICHOLAS CHAPEL
I know this place well, but was interested to see what might be happening there in Heritage Open Day, and have no regrets about having ventured in.
VOLUNTEERING:
HAMPTON COURT GARDEN
I was assigned the 2PM to 4PM shift at Hampton Court Garden, also referred to as the Secret Garden, because most of the time very few people are aware of it’s existence – the only clue from the street any time other than Heritage Open Day is a very ordinary looking navy blue door set into the wall, an even the passage providing direct access from the courtyard is one that you would only know as such if you had been told (the extreme lowness of the door into the garden that way means that it cannot be used on Heritage Open Day for Health and Safety reasons). There are at least three places called Hampton Court, the famous one in Surrey, another in Herefordshire, and this one (Wolsey’s former pad in Surrey is the parvenu of the three). This Hampton Court is named in honour of John Hampton who was responsible for the newest side of the courtyard, which actually made it a courtyard (even this, two centuries younger than anything else there, dates from the 17th century). He was a baker who made good use of being based at the heart of a town that was the third busiest port in England at the time – he specialized in ship’s biscuits, for which he had a captive market.
The part of Hampton Court visible from the garden dates from 1440 and started life as an arcade fronted warehouse facing directly onto the river (it is the last surviving example of such a frontage in England). The earliest part of Hampton Court dates from 1350, and the first expansion happened in 1400.
The warehouse lost its raison d’etre through two factors: ships got bigger, and the river silted up. A new quayside was constructed resulting in the relocation of the river to its current location fractionally east of Hampton Court, and this left the warehouse quite literally high and dry.
It was nearly lost forever in the mid 20th century, because in the 1930s Hampton Court was basically derelict. At one time the council intended to knock it down and replace it with a modern block of flats but then a very determined lady by the name of Mrs Lane came on the scene. She bought the place up bit by bit and renovation work started. From this the King’s Lynn Preservation Trust came into being, and they own the freehold on Hampton Court to this day, with the individual flats, which are all different from one another, being leasehold properties.
My chief responsibility in my stewarding role was take note of numbers of people coming to visit. These numbers were reassuringly high – by the end of the day the tally was in the region of 500 visitors, and there were many expression of surprise and delight from those to whom it was a new place.
OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS
These remaining photographs were taken at various places in and around town during the day but do not belong in any specific section…
Sharing some of the best recent finds from the internet, and also some of my own photographs.
I have some bird pictures to show you from earlier today, and also a lot of fabulous pieces I want to share with you. I will start with the sharing and finish with the pictures.
I start with a gem from whyevolutionistrue, titled “An open letter to Charlotte Allen, an ignorant, evolution-dissing writer“, which takes the person it is addressed to to task for a poorly written, ill-informed (indeed virtually uninformed) article.
All the rest of the pieces I am sharing with you have to do with…
I start with a piece from a blog which is new to me, anotherspectrum, and a piece title “I am atheism“. The piece tackles a particularly vile commercial put out by anti-autistic hate group masquerading as autism charity Autism Speaks, the title of which was “I am Autism”.
Another new find is Discovering My Authentic Self, and I point you to “Autism Resources“, which is precisely what you might expect from the title.
My third autism related share comes with a challenge attached. It is Autism Mom’s piece “THE CONFUSION OVER THE LITTLE WHEELCHAIR” which tackles a problem that the recognised symbol for disability reinforces – the assumption that disability always means physcial disability. The challenge is this: can you come up with a replacement symbol for disability that acknowledges the full range of disabilities? If you create a post about your idea, linking back to this post, and I am impressed by it, I will reblog you.
I end this section with a reference to The Autistic Bill of Rights. The success of the original post on this theme from stimtheline has resulted in a shareable image from the same source (I printed one out at the library today), reproduced below:
Please follow my example in sharing this as widely as you can!
For the first time in its 154 year history Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack has a woman on it’s front cover. Anya Shrubsole who bowled England to victory in the 2017 World Cup is the woman thus honoured:
Identifor produced this gem earlier today
Finally we come to my photographs…
An account of a hectic and sometimes stressful work week.
This post covers Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Monday and Wednesday were auction days.
This auction consisted of 455 lots, mainly stamps, with some first day covers at the end. The feature of the day was a selection of rare Chinese stamps, which it was hoped would fare well. Arriving at the shop bright and early I had a little time to myself before anyone else arrived. The IT setup and audio/video checks went smoothly, and exactly on schedule at 10:00 the first lot went under the hammer. Here are some pictures from before the auction…
Most of the lots early in the auction were very large, and they did not attract much attention. There were hints of things to come when some of the first Chinese stamps sold well. Before we get to the main meat of the day, there is one essential stop…
Coming a little bit before the rare Chinese stamps were due to appear this was a Japanese railway stamp, and I got it unopposed. Here are the official images that were available online:
Here are a couple of pictures of it taken at home…
The Chinese stamps did better than any of us had dared to hope. A Chinese man living in Chelmsford had driven up tlo Fakenham (something in excess of two hours each way, though quicker than the public transport option of train to Norwich, bus/walk from Norwich station to the castle and then bus to Fakenham) to bid live, and he with some vigorous internet competition ensured that these stamps sold between them for over £10,000 (his own spend was over £9,000). Here are some the stamps at the heart of this story:
The remainder of the auction after the last Chinese stamp had gone was anticlimactic. Once I had disconnected the IT it was time for me to switch focus for a day and a bit to…
The link between these auctions and our final auction of the year, which will take place at our shop in Fakenham on December 13 is that there are some more Chinese stamps goign under the hammer. This auction will start with 50 lots of banknotes, including some very valuable uncirculated Australian and New Zealand, before proceeding to 100 lots of coins, 150 lots of military themed postcards, the stamps and some ephemera. I had already done the banknotes and one of the coins, and on the Monday afternoon I was scanning stamps.Â
On the Tuesday I started on the postcards, and also did some coins. Here are some pictures of what you have to look forward to…
While I was doing this the van was being loaded up to go Norwich, and as you will soon see the fact that I could not be spared from imaging to help with the process had consequences…
I managed to get my intended bus, and arrived at Norwich bus station at about 7:30 AM (to arrive early enough to help with the setup and then run the IT a Norwich auction I need to be on the First Eastern Counties X1 which departs Lynn at 5:30). I walked down to the venue, arriving there at about 7:45, got the room unlocked, fired up my computer and checked my emails, and waited for my colleagues to arrive. Finally, at about 8:20, they did, having got stuck in heavy traffic on the route between Fakenham and Norwich. Once the van was unloaded it was time to set up. Unfortunately no one involved in loading the van had thought to include a multi-point extension lead, the camera or the microphone. The Maids Head were able to lend us most of what we needed, and I was dispatched (with cash provided) to purchase a usb attached web camera. My first port of call was Rymans, in the pedestrianised shopping area of Norwich, where I had to wait a few minutes for the shop to open. Rymans did not have the necessary, but they did have an assistant who was able to point me in the direction of Maplin on Castle Meadow, close by albeit in the opposite direction to the Maids Head, and I found precisely what we needed there (though it took me a few minutes – the place was organised rather strangely, at least to me). I was back at the hotel by 9:20, and fortunately there were no technical hitches in the IT setup. Here are some pictures from this early part of the day…
The books fared much better than I for one dared to hope, with those that sold going for good money. On the Tuesday, along with the imaging for December I had corrected a problem with some of our online images, deleting two images and renumbering about 25 others so that images and descriptions matched. Unfortunately, when we came to these lots on the day my editing had been over-ridden by someone at the ATG Media end of things and the wrong images were back in place. Lots 901 to 1,000, which concluded the auction were military themed postcard lots, and they sold incredibly well, one single lot going for £200. The sales made at this auction were a welcome bonus after Monday’s extraordinary success.Â
The auctiuon concluded it remained only to take down the IT and reload the van.Â
My colleague Andrew had decided that he wanted to spend some more time in Norwich and go back by bus, so before heading off for my own extra time in Norwich I showed him where to pick up the bus from. I then headed for the library, which I always like to visit when I am in Norwich and did a few other things. Here are some photographs from Norwich, some taken that day and some on the previous Thursday evening, when I was also in Norwich…
The last of my series of “Super sharing Saturday” posts, includes some of the lighter moments of the last few days.
I finish this day of sharing with my last few bits. These are in the main fairly light-hearted pieces, although more than one touches on serious issues.
For more about this statue, possibly of Ramesses II, please click on the image below to read the article posted on livescience.com
Somebody failed to proofread a church bulletin, resulting it being much funnier than intended. The image is below, and links to the piece on whyevolutionistrue where I first saw it.Â
This one was also brought to my attention by WEIT and is a classic example of the fictional (and very foul-mouthed – you have been warned) newscaster at his best. Here he is getting seriously aerated by the fact that there is ban on public swearing in Salford (where the BBC are based these days):
Here are some of my pictures to end this post:
I am treating this as the first of a series of related posts owing to the fact that time restrictions on Wednesday when I took the photographs that are its raison d’etre meant that we (my mother and I) accounted for barely a tithe of the interesting buildings in the village (East Rudham).
We had hoped to start with the Manor House but this was not accessible, although the publicly accessible part of its driveway provided an angle to capture the rear window of The Old Reading Room and also a section of brick and flint wall…
Having got a shot of the rear window of the building, The Old Reading Room was an obvious next port of call…
Just across the road from the Old Reading Room, is the Wesleyan Chapel, these days a private residence rather than a religious building…
After the Wesleyan Chapel came several very quirky specimens of local archiecture at the near end of School Road…
From the near end of school road, we proceeded round the south side of the village green, starting with a shot of a section of brick and flint wall and continuing with a couple of a large barn behind which lurks a modern house…
Before proceeding to take front on shots of the barn and the cottages that adjoin it, I took a couple of panoramic views from the green…
The barn has a very fancy weathercock above it…
Next we come to two cottages painted in pastel colours (one yellow, one blue)…
These two properties are separated by the width of what I have called “Fox Gate” from the detached cottage called Caradon…
Between Caradon and the old post office (a very short distance) were a number of other properties to be photographed…
The building that used to be the post office is now much improved from the mouldering wreck it had become before restoration…
From here, via a shot of the side of the pub it was on to the church, the approach to which goes past an old cottage…
I took several shots of the church, was is almost entirely 19th Century, with a few hints of older stuff around…
Although it involved some mildly unpleasant walking, the churchyard provided a few other good brick and flint shots and a slightly tree obscured shot of the Manor House…
The penultimate phase of this picture gathering expedition involved taking close ups of London House and the adjoining building that had not so long ago been an eyesore and a health hazard – there were loose tiles on the roof, and a not terribly wide pavement between the front of the building and the A148 (and for all that for that part of its length IT IS THE VILLAGE STREET not many motorists take due note of this important fact)…
The final picture was this ‘home shot’ – on the right of the shot as you look is Mulberry Coach House and straight ahead is part of Mulberry Barn (this property now forms a right-angle, as two loose boxes have been converted into extra rooms)…
aspiblog 