Lincoln Cathedral

Wednesday, 26 October 2022. Our short break in Lincoln continues with a visit to the famous cathedral.

Wednesday morning starts with breakfast in the hotel as we look forward to visiting the cathedral and hopefully discovering the Lincoln Imp - a carving of a supernatural being, supposed to be a bit mischievous, but not supposed to be easy to find!

We walk through the grounds to the cathedral entrance. Some parts of the cathedral are free to enter, others require an entry fee. The upkeep of a building like this must be enormous (1.6 million pounds in 2021) so we didn't begrudge paying. Following the directions from the lady on the desk we arrived at the cloisters. Building started in the year 1072 and continued sporadically over several hundred years. In fact it was largely destroyed by a magnitude 5+ earthquake in April 1185. Only the lower part of the west end and its two towers exist of the former building. In 1311 a steeple was added to the central tower making Lincoln Cathedral supposedly the tallest building in the world for 238 years, the spire collapsing and somewhat spoiling the legitimacy of the claim in 1548.

The north walk of the cloister has open archways rather than continuous windows in a wall and an arch made a nice frame for a view of the central tower (previous photograph), whilst here you can see the grassed area that the cloister surrounds.

The Chapter House was the first octagonal chapter house in England and was used to depict that of Westminster Abbey for the filming of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code in 2005. Polystyrene replicas of Isaac Newton's tomb as well as other feature of Westminster were used, though the use of the cathedral for this purpose was not without controversy.

A painting of four former Bishops of Lincoln, all thought to be buried within this area of the church. They are: Robert Bloet 1094-1123; Alexander the Magnificent 1123 -1148; Robert de Chesney 1148-1167; and William of Blois 1203-1206. The painting is by Venetian artist Vincenzo Damini who in 1728 had been asked to restore an original painting from medieval times but instead just painted over it. As you do... The wall tablet beneath commemorates a bequest of the proceeds of bonds received by Dame Margaret Thorold after the failure of the South Seas Company "bubble" to be distributed between "Six poor old men of the city and Lincoln Cathedral".

There are so many sculptures of people, animals and imaginary beings on the walls of the cathedral that it is almost mind boggling. For instance, there are 33 different depictions of the Green Man (faces made up out of foliage or human faces with leaves and vines growing from facial orifices). Yes, I know... gross... but fun to spot!

A modern (2014) sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus by Aidan Hart in the Chapel of St Nicholas, or Cantilupe Chantry.

St Hugh's Choir. The stalls are in three tiers with the rear for canons, centre tier for Vicars Choral and the front row for choristers - where they can be kept an eye on! Hugh was elected Bishop of Lincoln in 1186, the year after the devastating earthquake. He had a pet swan that was devoted to him, eating out of his hand and following him everywhere, whilst attacking anyone else who tried to approach Hugh. He is the patron saint of swans, sick children, sick people and shoemakers. Work that one out...

The organ of 1898 has four manuals and 64 stops.

The pulpitum screen separates the nave from St Hugh's Choir. It dates from the 1330s and was originally colourfully painted.

On this detail photo of the pulpitum screen traces of red and green or blue pigment can be seen.

The head shrine of St Hugh - his head was detached from his body. I didn't find out how or why or if it was that turncoat of a swan... The modern iron sculpture represents the back and curved neck of the swan.

And finally... we found impish faces all over the place. But not the one we were looking for. In the end we asked and were told to look on a pillar above a king's head near the shrine of St Hugh. You can put 20p in a slot to light a spotlight that shines on him - thus picking him out but making a photo almost impossible against the surrounding gloom - The stonework looks a lot lighter here than it did in reality!

Someone had just invested 20 pence, so I waited until the light went out and took several photos of which this was the sharpest I could manage. The legend goes that Satan sent two imps to the region. They caused all sorts of mischief in many churches until at Lincoln Cathedral an Angel sorted them out after they smashed tables and chairs and tripped up the Bishop. One hid under the wreckage of the furniture but this one climbed the pillar and was turned to stone by the angel whilst the other escaped.

A general look down the nave. By now it is getting perilously close to time-for-a-cup-of-tea, so we leave the calm of the cathedral and rejoin the secular world outside.

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Short Break in Lincoln

Tuesday 25 October 2022. We take a two nights stay in Lincoln, staying at The Lincoln Hotel near the cathedral. This article will deal with our arrival day and further articles will cover a visit to the cathedral itself and a final round-up of the castle grounds and the Brayford waterfront in the city centre.

We go for a couple of nights stay in Lincoln, staying in one of the hotels Clive and I used for work more than a decade ago, right on top of the hill at the side of the cathedral. Before heading up the hill however, we stopped near the waterfront as Fran wanted a look around the town centre. At the top of High Street we found the Stonebow, one of the medieval gates to the city. It began as a Roman barbican of 211 CE, set just forward of the city's southern wall. It sits on the Romans' Ermine Street. The city's Guildhall was incorporated into the first floor over the gateway. It was demolished in the late 1300s and the present building completed c1520, being delayed due to funding difficulties.

We spent a couple of hours up and down the High Street and then went to check into the hotel. By the time we were ready to venture out again it was thinking about starting to go dark. This was taken from the entrance steps to the hotel and shows just how close we were to the cathedral. The low wall on the right surrounds a pit in which the foundations for the Roman East gateway to the city can be seen.

We start to look for somewhere to eat. Lincoln is a large university city so, lots of restaurants and pubs served modern menus which either we would find too spicy or too loaded with strange untried flavours... We ended up in the Duke William Hotel, the "Duke William" in question being the Duke of Cumberland, the youngest son of King George II, who fought and won the Battle of Culloden over the Scottish Jacobites of the Old Pretender earning himself the nickname of "Butcher Cumberland" for his savage reprisals after the battle. The food was ok though and gave us no savage reprisals at all!

The White Hart Hotel was another of the hotels where Clive and I had stayed. The car park was on the opposite side of the road with the entrance close by the bollards blocking the end of of the street (Bailgate).

Steep Hill. It is... It starts off fairly steep and then gets steeper. Lower down it becomes almost unbelievable and a handrail has had to be installed on the steepest part which approaches the Stonebow archway seen previously.

Exchequer Gate (Lincoln had its own mint at one time) with Lincoln Cathedral towering behind.

The Magna Carta pub on the corner of Steep Hill and Exchequer Gate is so called as the nearby castle holds one of the four surviving original copies of King John's Magna Carta document.

Lincoln Cathedral is spectacular and we shall visit it in the morning with a view to finding the elusive Lincoln Imp! Whether or not we were successful will be seen in my next article!

A night-time view of the cathedral from the hotel. In the next article you can have the same viewpoint in sunshine! You lucky people!

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Halifax Piece Hall and Minster

Wednesday, 7 September 2022. We had been invited as guests of friends, David and Jeannie on a coach trip to the Piece Hall in Halifax. We said "yes" immediately without any clue as to what the Piece Hall was, because we have never yet had a bad trip with this particular group which is made up of pensioners who used to work for British Gas.

The Piece Hall is the only surviving example of a Cloth Hall - a market place for handloom weavers to fetch their woven cloth or woolen "pieces" to display them for sale. It is in the form of a quadrangle and dates from 1779. It has the look and feel of an Italian Piazza and would not look out of place in Trieste or Venice. There are 315 rooms for traders. After the Industrial Revolution the larger mills sold their products direct to buyers and it fell into disuse, being bought by Halifax Corporation for a wholesale market hall in 1868. Many of the small rooms were combined to form larger spaces.

Our first priorities on arrival were a toilet and then a drink! The ladies decided we could have some dinner, so they had cake and David and I had a sandwich each.

On the left in the foreground is a statue of Anne Lister (1791-1840), generally known as Gentleman Jack whose diaries revealed her as a lesbian and contained coded accounts of her affairs and techniques of seduction. She is buried in the nearby Halifax Minster that we shall visit shortly. The Clicky Monster was keen to fill up his camera storage card, but we decided that we would head for the Minster before exploring the Piece Hall at closer quarters.

This is no York Minster - it is the size of most parish churches - unsurprising as that was its role until it was raised to Minster status only as recently as 2009. It dates mainly from the 1400s, but includes some stonework from a Norman church previously on the same site some 300 years earlier.

"Old Tristram", carved circa 1701 by John Aked, holds the alms box and is thought to be an effigy of a real beggar of the time.

The font is thought to be as old as perhaps the 15th century and the undoubtedly medieval cover was once painted and generously gilded.

The tomb of Archdeacon Charles Musgrave lies underneath the church tower. He was vicar of the parish church from 1827-1875 and was instrumental in improving the town's sewerage system from an open sewer and a single privy which had to cater for 221 people. The average lifespan of a labourer in the locality at the time was a mere 22 years!

Standing in front of the organ pipes is a pulpit on wheels. To the left is the chantry chapel of William Rokeby who was vicar here from 1502-1521 and who from 1511 also became Archbishop of Dublin and who baptised King Henry VIII's first daughter, Mary Tudor, later "Bloody" Queen Mary. On his death, Rokeby's heart was sealed into a lead box and buried within the chapel. The box also contains his bowels... There was an English language class being taught to some Afghanistan refugees in the chapel so we couldn't go in. We'll have to sniff out the bowels at some more convenient time.

The organ was rebuilt in 1928 but still contains pipes from the original Snetzler organ of 1766. The church's first organist was L. William Herschel before he became King George III's personal astronomer and became famous to this day and forever as the first person to discover the planet Uranus.

To either side of the chancel gateway are carved heads on bench ends. Happy-looking souls...

The Wellington Chapel in the south east corner of the church contains the Duke of Wellington's Regimental Colours - the flags seen here, carried by standard bearers onto the battlefield.

A set of chairs in the Wellington Chapel were made by the famous furniture maker Robert "Mouseman" Thompson - also known as "Mousey" Thompson. In the 1920s he had started carving a mouse on each piece of furniture. Even on a set they would be placed in different positions and were not always easy to spot. On this one, modelled by Miss Franny, the mouse is on the front right-hand chair leg.

Fran buys one or two things from the shop and we thank the guide who had come down to point out the mice on the chairs. The sky is not promising too much as we come out to look at the external features of the church. The clock and sundial on the tower and the gargoyles.

And so back to the Piece Hall, where I gratefully sink into a chair again and we have a drink. (A lot has happened since my last post - I was sent for a repeat of some routine blood tests in June this year and in short order over the next month was told that I had cancer on the liver, that it was too large to remove and that it was incurable and would mean regular visits to St James Hospital in Leeds to keep tabs on it.) Life has become precious!

As we walk around the balcony of the second storey we are treated to the sight of our waitress of a few moments ago, waving David's jacket and trying to get our attention... The balconies are lined with the doors to the old trading rooms, all now containing artisan and craft or specialised shops, such as the Christmas themed products. I walked around a few of the shops and then went back down to let the others complete the circuit of balconies whilst I sat down and nodded off. "Is John alright?" asked David. Fran apparently looked over the balcony to see me head down and said "Yes, he's asleep..."

The tower and steeple of the Square Church, a non-conformist church dating from the 1850s are all that remain of the church which suffered from two fires and gales and which was demolished in 1976, leaving the tower and steeple, now incorporated as part of the new Central Library of 2017. A spot of rain wakes me up - trust a bald man to know when it is raining... Then back to the coach for the trip home which includes a very good meal at the Calf's Head near Clitheroe in the Ribble Valley.

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Singing For The W.I.

Wednesday 3 November 2021. After going down well at the Over Wyre Social and Activity club I was asked to perform for the Women's Institute in Knott End at their AGM this week.

I had been contacted through my old school chum and long-standing friend Janet who is a member of both organisations. We first met when we were eleven and that is [ahem - CENSORED!] years ago now!

Janet made me laugh when she told me afterwards that one of the group had said to her 'When he went on stage I thought "Well... he doesn't look like a rock star! But boy! Can he sing!"' Agh - I don't look like a rock star???

Performing in Knott End

After not being able to meet for eighteen months due to the COVID pandemic the Over Wyre Social and Activity Club held their first comeback meeting at Knott End Working Men's Club on the afternoon of 16 September 2021.

Having been asked by the organisers who rang round the members to see what they would like to do at their first get-together, their response was to mention me!

Coming over all humble and shy, I jumped at the chance. After all, all those lockdowns gave me time to put several new sets together and learn lots of new songs and I gave them a trip through the 1960s with dips into decades on either side. I seemed to go down well and the organisers have since told me that feedback has been great. Phew! Happen as well seeing as I am due to play again at their Christmas party!

Lockdown Artworks March 2020- September 2021

It's perhaps not come as a surprise to regular readers that I haven't had much to post about during the last 18 months. A succession of lockdowns, interspersed with brief periods of a wary release have taken their toll on many. We've had close family calls with Covid, but (touching wood!) it's not hit directly, but our son-in-law had a brush with it and it was a relief when the horrendous coughing went away without our daughter or granddaughter catching it.

About the only thing I could do was get out the guitar for some practice (a lot of new songs into my own personal repertoire!) and the pencils and paints out for the occasional bit of artwork whenever I felt like it - sadly not as often as the music.

For most of these I couldn't even sit in front of the view whilst drawing it. Most came from images from the Internet which (either by design or because I'm a sometimes rubbish artist) are not quite a total rip-off of someone else's photographic talent. Equally sadly though, I have no idea where many of them are... 3 May 2020. The real bridge had just the two arches. I added another to allow for a gap between the foliage on the left and right banks.

10 August 2020. Lockdown had eased somewhat and we had ordered a replacement window for the living room as the original one opened inwards and immediately hit the venetian blind. In other words we couldn't open it at all. It's the coldest room in the house, only getting a mere sliver of sunshine if it happens to be shining before we get up, but even so... Whilst the workmen had asked us not to breathe out at all or sit somewhere else in the house I sat in the conservatory, itself waiting for workmen to start wrecking and rebuilding it, and did this pencil sketch over a couple of hours. I added a boat - look carefully! - and changed the nature of the building.

7 September 2020. We visited friends down in the village of Dulcote near Wells in Somerset, who have a guest house. This is it. The White House used to be a village pub and coaching inn and has flagged floors, a delicious atmosphere, and a resident ghost who sits supping in the corner "just where you are sitting, John!", Mary commented. Luckily the only beings sitting on my lap were Mary's dog and then later, the cat. Apparently they don't usually show so much trust. "It's like having Doctor Doolittle in the house!" I was told. "Aw, rubbish" I scoffed, "By the way, the goldfish says he wants a worm treat..."

Later that same day, we headed out to Cheddar, where we found a little cafe to have lunch in. The caves were all closed, as were many of the small shops. Fran had a wander as I started another sketch of a row of tiny cottages. It started to rain as I was doing this, gently at first but after Fran had come back to me it came down in earnest and we upped sticks and found refuge under the awning of a pub beer garden where a Guinness helped me complete the sketch!

9 September 2020. The Bishop's Gatehouse, Wells. We ate our lunch overlooking the moat around the Bishop's Palace and afterwards went into the garden through this wonderful gatehouse. There was a picnic area just inside and I sat on one of a few stray chairs at the back of it to do this. A woman at a nearby table came across to talk to me and have a look. At one time I'd have been horribly self-concious at that and worried I'd do something to cock it up. In the event the two sides should really be the same width, the right hand one is much too wide.

18 October 2020. A quick sketch on a Sunday afternoon. I find it so hard to draw human figures, and know I should keep practising. This was quite an attractive photograph - wasn't hard to stare at it for an hour or so! Typically proportions went a bit haywire, her back is a bit long and the miniskirt she was wearing looks more like a pair of shorts...

Miss Franny bought me a huge box of pencil crayons for Christmas and I sat down on the 27th December for around three hours, doing this study of Venice's Ponte Rialto in my A4 sketch book.

29 December 2020. Determined to get a drawing of a human figure right... I do one that looks all wrong! She has a longer back than the previous attempt! Friends of the male variety tried to console me by commenting on my mastery of buttocks...

4 January 2021. An afternoon's sketching of the view from Portofino's square in front of the Church of St George. This is looking in the opposite direction to the famous view of Portofino's approach and harbour and is from one of my own photographs.

25 January 2021. The castle came from an online photo and I've no idea where it is. If anyone recognises it, please leave a comment and let me know.

12 February 2021. Port Mogan on Gran Canaria from one of my own photos, during the post Christmas 2020 lockdown. Pencil in the A4 sketchbook from one of my photos taken in 2007. People! Not looking too horrendous!

24 February 2021. Human figures starting to look a bit more real, though the right eye widened a bit. In actual size this eye was only about 2mm from top to bottom so it was just a slight slip with the crayon. Two days later, the consensus on Facebook was that I should extend down and add the feet. This was a huge mistake as I was already perilously close to the bottom of the A4 sheet and I ended up giving the poor girl tiny feet on very short below-knee legs... You are not seeing that version!

I bought myself a new easel and spent a frustrating few days trying to assemble the thing. The bloke who drilled one piece didn't talk to the bloke drilling screw holes in the piece that was supposed to afix to it and screws just went through the top piece and said a firm "Whoa!" when they reached solid wood halfway through. However it finally got done and I attached an A2 piece of paper and tested out some new pastels on it with this picture of a Cotswolds scene.

30 April 2021. I had bought a set of sable brushes for watercolours and this was my test piece using the largest No.12 brush throughout. Watercolours are more difficult than pastels methinks! This was done on a piece of card slightly smaller than A4. Perhaps I needed a bit more room to work on!

29 July 2021. Going slightly stir crazy at all the time spent at home, we booked a few days down in Great Yarmouth for what should have left a few weeks gap after the release of all restrictions. In the event, the 21st June target got pushed back a month and we found ourselves acting as pioneers. We found that no cafes in the town would let you sit inside no matter what the weather (though no such problem with restaurants) and in nearby Cromer the cafe where we had lunch denied customers use of their toilets sending me and a woman at the next table in her 80s on a long walk with dodgy directions to the nearest public toilets. How inhuman and despicable can you get? If you sell food and drink for consumption on your premises, denying people the most basic human function is akin to torture and abuse. You should remain closed if you feel you cannot allow customers to use a toilet. I was so mad I considered pissing all over the floor behind their counter... This is the Harbour Master's office at Oulton Broad on our last day before coming home.

8 August 2021. One of my friends - an ex-boss in fact - who lives in France, took a few photos of the town of Poundenas on a trip out. I saw these on FaceBook and chose this one to have a go at. The town has several other viewpoints that just cry out for the same treatment. When I get the time...

Tuesday 24 August 2021. A morning walk into Poulton, since 2019 our home town a couple of miles inland from Blackpool, with Miss Franny and our granddaughter, Grace. I sat in the churchyard whilst the other two looked round the shops and brought back ice cream and coffees. It felt so good to be sitting outside and sketching a view from in front of me again. Plus a couple of people commented as they walked past which was nice too. It did cost me dinner in the nearby New Penny cafe.

Thursday 26 August 2021. We took Grace to the zoo for the afternoon and I sat sketching this building - the old airport clubhouse with observation tower from the time when Blackpool's airport was sited here in the 1930s. Amy Johnson flew from it and is remembered in the name of a road near the current airport at Squires Gate. The zoo opened here in 1972, the honours being carried out by much-loved TV presenter Johnny Morris, who rode in on the back of an elephant in pouring rain. This area was once shared by the elephants, rhinos and giraffes (though different species were kept well apart). The zoo no longer has rhinos and the giraffes got a new purpose built environment and more recently the last remaining elephant, Kate, was also moved into a very large new environment where she has been joined by more elephants. The camels have moved into residence here now and this sketch marks my very first attempt to draw an animal from real life. They don't stand still all that much...

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