Whalley St Mary and All Saints

Back in the 1980s I was writing regularly for a Lancashire-based magazine and had a series of articles called "John Burke's Curious Lancashire" that featured half a dozen or so images from around the county with a bit of text covering the sort of antiquities and rarities that most people would pass by without a thought.

This is the church of St Mary and All Saints at Whalley in the Ribble Valley. Already mentioned for its abbey ruins on these pages, Whalley also has an interesting church, built on the site of or as an enlargement of a Norman church of the 11th century which itself was built on the site of an even earlier Anglo-Saxon church mentioned in the Domesday Book. Remnants of both earlier churches stand in its churchyard and fragments that are built into its walls.

This is one of three Saxon crosses to be found in the sunshine close by the church door. You can also find them in rain, snow and fog (not as easily in fog...) but they do look better in sunshine and I was lucky on this visit!

Equally so on an earlier visit, this photograph dating from 1983 and one of several taken for the magazine work. It was rare for magazines to use colour photos in those days apart from on the cover. The Saxon crosses have lost the actual arms of the cross, but the surviving shafts have carvings placed there by stonemasons in the 10th or 11th century.

The current church was built mostly in the 13th century, the tower added in the 15th century and the south porch in 1844. Subsequent restorations and additions took place in the 1860s and in 1909. Inside, the stalls were carved in 1430 and came from the Abbey after the Dissolution. They have the name of the carver, Mr Eatough.

The octagonal chunky font of gritstone dates from the 15th century and has marks suggesting that a lock was fitted in the 16th century, quite possibly to stop the local witches from trying to steal the Holy Water. We are in Pendle country here...

Coming back out of the church I found this old stone coffin.

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Boscastle

Friday 9 August 1996. We left Tintagel and a few miles away we came to Boscastle where we had tea.

We looked in vain for the real cottage that is the inspiration for one of Fran's models. As we were in the last shop before going back to the car I found a postcard of the cottage and we were able to ask the shop owner where it was.

Boscastle is another of those never-changing fishing villages of Cornwall. The cliffs make a natural harbour, protected from the sea by a long inlet and harbour wall.

The village winds its way down alongside the River Jordan - what? Well not the one in the Holy Land perhaps but another smaller River Jordan that flows into the River Valency, seen here. There is a Museum of Witchcraft here, apart from the gift shops, perhaps the only nod to tourism. It very bizarrely contained the skeleton of a local "witch", Joan Wytte, who died in Bodmin Jail after being jailed in 1813 for brawling. She had been known for a local healer and clairvoyant and before her death aged 38 had become quite bad tempered violent, possibly due to a tooth abscess. Her body was somehow not buried and instead her skeleton became used for pranking the locals and for use in seances and eventually spent 40 years hanging on the wall of the museum. She was eventually decently buried two years after our visit, in 1998, after poltergeist activity in the museum.

We wandered down to the harbour and its boats with the neat coils tangles of rope. They young-uns must ha' been at they scrumpy agin'...

There was an aged bridge crossing the River Valency and I sat on the river bank to do this sketch. Eight years later it was totally destroyed by the great flood of 2004 and is now an elegant, though much less pleasing steel footbridge.

There was the gentle creaking and clank of a water wheel, almost hidden in shadow. The shop on the left promises books, music, crystals, candles, arcane artifacts & pictures. I do like a good arcane artifact!

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The Legend of the Dun Cow's Rib

In Whittingham near Preston is an old farmhouse with a rather strange object over the door.

It is the decaying remains of a cow's rib bone. The legend that goes with it states that in the 17th century there was a great drought. So that neighbours would not die from lack of water, a farmer sent his great dun cow to roam about so that villagers could milk her at will. However the local witch milked her into a sieve, which never filled up and so the cow was milked to death. It's likely isn't it? You can see just how it must have happened...! Anyway, the cow's rib was taken and mounted over the door of the farm and if ever owners were tempted to throw it away, they were plagued by poltergeist activity until the rib was reinstated over the doorway.

Here's a photo from 1982, there was a bit more rib still in existence then, but still far less than the brackets were made for! Strangely the legend doesn't name the witch. The famous witch around the villages in this part of Lancashire was Meg Shelton, whose grave can be seen to this day, covered by an enormous stone to stop her rising from the grave. That... will be for another day!

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Knaresborough and Mother Shipton

30 June 2000.

A family outing to Yorkshire. With Mum and Dad we call off first at Knaresborough, an extremely pretty town on the River Nidd.

An afternoon on the River Nidd is a very popular pasttime in summer. Rowboats, punts and canoes are available for hire and there is plenty of scenery to be enjoyed.

The building shown here is the entrance to the home of Mother Shipton. She was a foreteller of the future - England's Nostradamus.

She lived in the 1600s and left a legacy of prophecies including cars, telephones and World War II. She probably wasn't as pretty as Nostradamus though... A hunchbacked hideous crone, she would have been burned at the stake anywhere else, perhaps proving that the people of Knaresborough were more enlightened than those of places with similarly disfigured women who were promptly ducked in the river - "Look, she's not drowned! Burn her!" or "Oh... that's a bit of a bugger... she's drowned... must have been innocent then... ah well, mistakes happen..."

On the other hand it could be an indicator that the people of Knaresborough were scared out of their wits by her. "Try to duck me, you buggers and I'll call up all the demons of the Underworld to nibble on your privates!"
"Is that bad, Dad?"
"Aye, Sarah lass, it means... er... well you just concentrate on your tatting..."

In any case, just to add to her air of mystique, (if a hunchbacked, warty-faced, wrinkled old crone needed to add to her mystique) instead of living in an unspeakable hovel like anyone else, she lived in a cave.

Caves were known to be entrances to either Fairyland or the Underworld and it was a brave and somewhat reckless chap in the 1600s who decided on a spot of adventure caving for an afternoon's diversion. Besides, the cave that Mother Shipton scattered her few belongings around had a somewhat strange property. It still has.

A cascade of water falling from a rock face and known as The Dropping Well contains so much mineral content, coming out of a spring fed by an underground lake, that anything it falls on, as long as it stays still for long enough, acquires a coating of minerals that over a few months - 5 to 6 months for porous items such as soft toys, clothes etc., "turn it to stone".

It is England's oldest tourist attraction, being opened to the public in 1630.

Absence of large versions of the photos: From 1999 to 2001 I'd started to go digital but the quality of photos was such that I only saved them at small sizes.

Down To The Depths

Friday 23 September 1996

After leaving Corfe Castle on the previous day we decided to head northwards a little so as to have a more leisurely journey home.

We broke our journey on Friday to visit Wookey Hole Caves, sharing our visit with a crowd of children who were on a school trip. One little girl decided as soon as we were inside that she didn't like it and a teacher, sounding quite relieved herself, immediately offered to take her back out and wait for the others!

Wookey is one of England's great show caves. They make a big thing about the witch, but I've never been able to see that to any satisfaction - perhaps it's more wishful thinking, I'm not sure!

The floodlit pool - really the River Axe - is splendidly atmospheric, with its tethered boat or coracle. The river flows through the cavern, flooding several other caves that can only be reached by divers. Yet more caves in the system wait to be discovered.

I've never understood why caves have the fascination for me - as my one phobia would be about getting stuck and unable to move. You wouldn't find me doing any so-called "adventure caving". I'll stick to the easy lit pathways thanks!

Once out of the caves, Wookey has much more to offer. A paper mill still making quality paper is the first thing you come to followed by a display of fairground memorabilia and carvings.

Then there is an Edwardian Penny Slots arcade, with the vast majority of exhibits in working order and just waiting for you to swap your modern money for some old big heavy copper pennies so you can have a go!

Many of the coin slot entries to be found on this blog have photos that were taken at Wookey.

Large Versions of the Photos: the cave, carousel lion