Welcome to this series of articles about a few days break in and around Bridlington in the English County of Yorkshire.
Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to each of the articles. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Monday 12 June 2023
Beverley Minster
Tuesday 6 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we caught the 121 bus service from Bridlington to Beverley to have a look at the Minster. Officially it is the Parish Church of St John and Saint Martin. It was originally a Collegiate Church - it is not a cathedral.
The journey took just over an hour and from Beverley bus station it was a short walk to the Minster, with plenty of signposts pointing the way. It has an ancient past. St John of Beverley was Archbishop of York from 706 to c714 and had founded a monastery at Beverley c700. He was canonised as a saint in 1037 - still in Saxon times - and somewhat incredibly his remains still lie beneath the nave of the present church. The Saint John of the church's name is, however, St John the Baptist - not it's own saint.
The original church was destroyed c850 perhaps, if not probably, by Vikings. It was rebuilt and re-endowed by England's first king, King Athelstan, grandson of King Alfred the Great in the first half of the 10th century. It was rebuilt again in stone following the canonisation of the saint, a high stone tower was added several years before the Norman Conquest and the Minster became a place of pilgrimage for worshippers wishing to see and pray at the shrine of St John of Beverley.
An enclosed wooden staircase. I don't know any other details I'm afraid, it may have led to the organ or to somewhere else. I've done searches for it but they all lead to a stone spiral staircase for going up the towers or to an interior staircase set into the internal wall of the North Choir Aisle which led to a now demolished Chapter House. If you know, please leave a comment.
There are some fascinating carvings, both in stone and wood. Whilst we have a look at some of these I'll just carry on with the history a bit.
Nothing remains of the Saxon churches now. A major fire in 1188 left the Minster in need of a total rebuild and the earliest work in the present church dates from this time.
Work to complete the Minster took several hundreds of years. There were a few hiccups along the way. The collapse of a new lantern tower required parts of the building to be started again. The Black Death halted work around 1348 until towards the end of the century.
The Nave was completed by c1400 and the west twin towers were built. It is said that they were the inspiration for the towers of Westminster Abbey.
A bit of stone sculpture instead of wood. Again, I've no idea who this lady represents. Neither can I work out from her expression whether she is in rapt prayer or looking up at her husband and thinking "thou great numpty!"
Standing towards the western end of the southern aisle of the Nave, these two statues flank a doorway. They were cast from lead in 1781 and depict King Athelstan on the left (would he really have dressed like that in the 900s?) and Saint John of Beverley on the right.
The fabulous font of Frosterley marble is a remarkable survivor of the earliest Norman church and dates from c1170. The wooden cover or canopy is 18th century.
Looking west from the back of the Nave towards the organ which was built by John Snetzler and set up in the Minster in 1769. The screen was carved by a local, James Elwell in 1880.
The West Front of the Minster is unusual for the number of statues it still contains. Many of our cathedrals lost theirs in those mirthless Puritanical times. Originally they would all have been bright with paint and gilding.
English Churches and Cathedrals Index
Sunday 11 June 2023
Bridlington Priory
Monday 5 June 2023. Staying for a few days in Bridlington, we went for a look at the Priory.
Bridlington Priory was established as a monastery of Augustinian Canons Regular in 1113. It was built over the site of a former Saxon church and nunnery.
It held the earthly remains of John Twenge, otherwise known as St John of Bridlington. Born in the nearby village of Thwing in the year 1320, he joined the monks after studying at Oxford. He held several offices during his time there, serving as Prior for 17 years before his death in 1379. Several miracles have been attributed to him. He is supposed to have changed water to wine once and on another occasion he appeared to a group of 5 fishermen from Hartlepoole whose ship was in danger of being swamped in rough seas and he brought them safely to shore, whereupon they left the ship at the harbour and rushed off to the Priory to thank him. I'm being careful not to comment... Anyway he became the last Englishman to be canonised as a saint before Henry VIII split up from the Catholic Church.
There is an appliqué of twelve panels, depicting the history of the Priory. This is an embroidery technique, but with the panels in 3D rather than a flat embroidered surface like the Bayeux Tapestry for instance. Having survived the Dissolution and the destruction of some 3/4 of its buildings, it was lucky to survive its use as an arsenal just over 100 years later. Buildings and explosives do not tend to go well together...
The organ dates from 1889 by Belgian firm Anneessens and was originally a three-manual organ. It came complete with a spectacularly large low-toned pipe for Bottom-C, the reed being 32 feet long and the pipe two feet in diameter. Rebuilds were necessary at various times during the 20 century and it was fully restored and enlarged 2004-2006.
A mind-boggling pedal board - the most I've ever played was a 25-key two octave pedalboard on a Hammond organ whilst I was learning to play in the practice rooms at Swanns shop in Manchester during the early 1970s. An octave is 12 keys but the extra one was to allow a lowest note of low C and a high note of middle C.
The Priory plays host to a few other musicians too...
All that music has soothed this savage beast by the looks of it.
We found several of these little mice - the trademarks of Robert "Mouseman" Thompson.
The great west window brings our exploration to an end.
English Churches and Cathedrals Index
Bridlington, Yorkshire, 3-8 June 2023
Saturday 3 June 2023. After Great Yarmouth we had just two days at home then set off for Bridlington, again on the east coast. Stand by for more icicles...
We had two days at home to wash clothes, refuel the car and call in to visit my Mum before heading out again across the country but this time more or less in a straight line across from West to East.
The weather was pretty similar to Great Yarmouth with the exception that the sun was also hiding from us. A mix of grey skies, great gusts of wind and the occasional flying seagull dropping somewhere alarmingly close meant layering up. T-shirt, hoodie and lightweight jacket wasn't cutting it. I bought a new heavier jacket before the shivering stopped. I started to sketch this scene of the harbour, sitting on a bench on one of the narrow piers with a "pirate" ship taking punters on a "10-minute cruise in the bay" from just behind me.That would be 2 minutes out of the harbour wall, 3 minutes along the bay, with 5 minutes doing the same in reverse then. At least it was twice as long as you got on a Speedboat ride...
We opted for a 2.5 hour cruise on the newly refurbished Yorkshire Belle to see the seabirds at Bempton Cliffs. This was more like it. We sat on the foredeck, huddled up against the wind, watching the odd seal surface briefly before diving to shout to its mates "No... still cold!". One did a spectacular backflip right next to us, luckily away from the boat - I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a seal landing on my lap! Then past Flamborough Lighthouse and the commentary started to mention birds, guillemots, kittywakes, gannets and occasionally the odd puffin. I couldn't tell them from guillemots unless you managed to spot the distinctive beak. They are a lot smaller than people think. Perhaps because they look a bit like penguins you expect them to be that sort of size. Anyway, whenever the commentator announced a puffin there was a chorus of "Oh yes! There!" whilst I was looking all over the place, spotting a bird, looking for the beak only to find it was a gull of some sort...
Our time at the cliffs came to an end and we turned round for the trip back. We gave up our spot and went into the enclosed deck where the heady odour of oil and marine fuel started to waft across us. Just out of dry dock, the boat had sprung an oil leak. We made it back to Bridlington and the Yorkshire Belle stayed where it was for the next few days whilst it got sorted out. As I stepped onto the pier a seagull welcomed me back. Well... front actually... "Oh! That's lucky!" called a middle-aged chap. "Yes, this too!" I laughed, nudging him over the edge of the pier. "Make a wish!" I advised just before he hit the water... (Disclaimer: The later part of this paragraph may not be strictly true...)
Monday 5 June 2023. We caught a bus out to Bridlington Old Town and Priory. I'll deal with the Priory in a separate article. Bridlington Old Town turned out to be just the one street. It was Monday. Most of the shops are closed on Monday... Never mind, we reached the end of the road and then crossed a main road upon which we were at the gates to the Priory.
The remaining bits of the Priory survived the Reformation being kept in use as a parish church. This was the Gateway to the Priory that apparently housed a museum. We didn't know that at the time...
Four beautiful white horses were being groomed on the green before the Priory. When we came back out later, a white horse-drawn hearse was standing waiting to be hitched up.
Plein air sketch of the harbour. I did some of the pencil bits in situ but it was numbingly cold. Too cold to sit for more than 30 minutes and I took the photo seen at the top of the page, then did quite a lot in the hotel bar, squinting at the tiny screen of my phone. I finished the last third of the pencilling on our last day. Luckily my original bench was free. Actually they were all free, no-one else was so foolish as to sit in the cold and wind. I did the colour in the bar on the last night.
Saturday 10 June 2023
Great Yarmouth, 25-31 May 2023
Thursday 25 May 2023. We set off for a week's holiday to Great Yarmouth in sunny Norfolk.
Well, sunny but just a bit breezy if you know what I mean. We had a hotel room with sea view which meant a grand view of a vast car park with a narrow line of sea behind it. Some of this seascape was taken up by Scroby Sands, a sandbank that as a kid I remember being full of seals with regular boat trips out from the beach to enable you to look at them. It's now full of basking wind turbines, the vibrations of which somewhat put the seals off anything but a short stop to catch their breath.
The hotel was nice though, it was our third time of visiting it and it has a few quirks like an ancient lift that you have to manually close the doors of - outer door and an inner cage door. If any of these doors are not shut tight the lift refuses to work, so sometimes when someone gets out on the third floor and leaves the door slightly ajar, no one can use the lift until someone has hoofed it up the stairs to shut the door.
The first night we were sitting quietly in the bar and Miss Franny saw one of these being made for someone else. Apart from a few dubious floaters (coffee beans, always highly-prized for a quick crunchy snack) it looked really good and she was quite appreciative, delicately spitting out the rock-hard beans. I'm sure it wasn't really her fault that one smashed the full pint glass of beer of the chap sitting opposite, bringing a look of swift surprise and soggy comprehension to his face...
Holidays for us have become much less exotic than in recent years. Now carrying a cancer about, I'd rather not pay more for insurance than I would for an actual cruise holiday and I find that walking any distance is more a series of short hops from one bench to another a few yards further along. A fair bit of pain comes on holiday with me now too along with a daily unknown quantity of lightning bolts to the side that can make me yelp like a kitten whose tail you've just trodden on.
So Miss Franny ruled out any thoughts I might have had about trying this out. It's ok Miss Franny... I wasn't really having that many thoughts about seriously wanting to go on it anyway. Interestingly whilst sitting nearby and listening to passers by, it was mainly small kids and teenagers who fancied going on it whilst Dads almost invariably said "Oh no, I'm not going on that - I can't even look up to watch it without getting light-headed!"
Miss Franny spent several interludes having sat me down on benches outside cafes, on the Promenade or near the shopping centre and/or markets, where she disappeared to empty her purse and bank account whilst I sat marvelling at what people seem to think makes them look more attractive these days. I've never been a fan of tattoos I'm afraid, but am happy to overlook them on others. The current fad seems to be to cram as many small and totally incompatably random subjects as possible onto shins. Weird.
Anyway, many a time Miss Franny would return to find me deep in conversation with someone who had sat down next to me, or had a dog that liked the look of me and rushed over, or in one case almost knocked my cafe table over in what appeared to be an unplanned and unexpected sudden woosh of motorised mobility scooter. Why such things, intended for use on pavements and around vulnerable pedestrians, are designed to zip around at 20 miles per hour with first point of contact at shin or heel height I'm not too sure. Perhaps it's the manufacturers' way of ensuring future custom? In any case, on Miss Franny's return I would be greeted with "I always find you talking to people when I get back!"
This made me laugh. My phone ringtone is a snatch of the chorus of a 1932 comic song by Al Bowlly and Leonard Henry called "Meet Me Tonight in the Cow Shed"... You'll find it on YouTube if you want. This was up near the old Windmill Theatre, now an indoor crazy golf course... There used to be so many theatres and summer season shows in Great Yarmouth that you could see a show headed by famous household names just about every night during a week's stay without repeating a show. Now it's just the odd karaoke bar. The Britannia Pier still has its theatre but there were no shows until July and then it seemed that they only did the one night before moving somewhere else. A great shame.
We did a couple of bus rides out during the week. One to Norwich to see the castle. We saw the outside covered in scaffolding but it was closed for the renovations. We went in the museum where I enquired about the 1549 rebellion led by Robert Kett who beseiged the city with a few thousand peasants, taking the castle and cathedral during the short reign of Henry VIII's son, King Edward VI. Not only was there no reference to it anywhere, the girl at the counter had never heard of it. There's an excellent novel about it in C.J. Sansum's Tombland, one of the Shardlake series of novels.
Also we took the car out one day and went for a ride on the North Norfolk Steam Railway at Sheringham. A couple of trains were running and the photo shows the steam locomotive Black Prince at the terminus, reversing back past the train to be re-attached ready to pull the string of carriages back to Sheringham.
I found the courage to brave the wind towards the back end of the week to sit and draw this sketch of the pier and bowling green with a couple of tea huts on the Promenade. I did all of the colouring in the hotel bar on the last night to the great interest of some members of a coach party. They turned out to be a County Bowling Team which led to a slightly surreal conversation thus: "Is that where we were playing this afternoon?"
Well for one I'm not a member of your party so I have no idea where you were playing and for two, there was no one actually playing on this green and if they had have been then the wind would have been blowing their bowls off course... (The wind snapped a sapling tree in half opposite our bedroom window one night!) Anyway the following morning one of the blazered gents turned up to breakfast with a wooden spoon around his neck. "Did you win that as a trophy?" I asked cheerfully. He looked at me with a heavy sigh. "We won it for coming last," he said, "I have to wear it now until the next match..."
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