Month: October 2022

On the Road In Much Wenlock ~ ‘A Rip Van Winkle Kind Of A Place’

Sheinton Street looking towards Holy Trinity Church

It’s a while since I posted any photos of my home town. These shots are all from the archive, but I had a notion to edit them in sepia tones, along with a touch of over-exposure here and there to accompany the century-old quotation from Shropshire writer Mary Webb. I mean to say, even with all the cars, it still has that look. There’s definitely a sense of Winkle time-slippage. This may well have something to do with the fact that this small town has been continuously occupied for more than a thousand years. And before that, there would have been Romans and Romano-British wandering around the place with the likelihood of a villa/bathhouse on the site of the medieval Wenlock Priory. And before that, itinerant Bronze Age smiths may well have passed through, one of whom lost his stash of arrow and axe heads in the River Severn not far from Wenlock. Or maybe it was a donation for a safe crossing.

Many of the facades you see in the photos have been added on the front of much earlier buildings – this during periods of particular market-town prosperity when there were attempts at gentrification. I say ‘attempts’ because by all accounts even in the late nineteenth century there was a smelly open sewer running through the town. Also the place was regularly doused in limestone dust with every blasting at surrounding quarries. And there would have been some evil smog too from lime burning kilns (this to produce lime for building mortar and fertiliser).

Looking down on the High Street

The Bull Ring where once the popular sport of bull baiting took place on fair days and holidays

The Square (looking past the church towards Wilmore and Sheinton Street) with the Museum on the left (once the Butter Market and then a cinema) and the 16th century Guidhall opposite. The assizes were held on the upper floor, the lock-up down below. These days the town council holds its meetings there.

Queen Street and Brook House Farm, one of the last surviving town farms, now ‘done up’ into several desirable residences. I remember it with cattle in the barn.

The High Street featuring our star timber-framed residence – Reynolds Mansion, a fifteenth century hall with a grand 1682 frontage

Top of the High Street. This row of stone clad cottages contains some very ancient inner parts.

Looking down Sheinton Street from the Farrell house

Downs Lane beside Wenlock Priory

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: roads

Across The Gulf ~ Mirage Or Mountains?

I’m still not sure if the Taygetus mountains of the Mani Peninsula are fact or figment, and I stared at this view for an entire week – at daybreak, at twilight, in sun and in storm. Real or not, these mountains beckoned. And I was entranced. Still am, when I look at the photos. They were taken from Harakopio (Peroulia Beach) in Kalamata, Greece, overlooking the Gulf of Messenia.

I’ve read my Patrick Leigh Fermor (Mani: Travel in the Southern Peloponnese) which sets off most beguilingly, penetrating on foot this all but impenetrable mountain peninsula (that until recent times scarcely had a road into the interior), but then, after some stunning episodes, the account digresses into convoluted regional history that this reader found more uphill-going than the near-vertical terrain. Still, it’s a book worth tackling for the magical inside-Mani experiences. It truly is.

But if the mountains have long kept people out, then it’s a different story for the coastal foothills. Some settlements along the shore, accessible only by sea, have been occupied since Mycenaean times, i.e. the Ancient Greek Bronze Age (c1750-1000 BCE). If you squint, you can see signs of humanity in the first photo.

But that’s enough of the prosaic. These scenes are just for dreaming.

Lens-Artists: the mountains are calling This week Amy sets the challenge.

Communing With The Ancestors At Dyffryn Ardudwy

Scan an ordnance survey map of Wales, and especially the county of Gwynedd where we were a couple of weeks ago, and you will soon spot a host of prehistoric remains: hut circles, standing stones and chambered tombs. They can be found on the coast, in the immediate hinterland and in the uplands of Snowdonia, thus giving an impression of a very busy ancestral landscape.

Of course there is no way of knowing if these are the scant remains of many more monuments, lost to collapse, deliberate destruction and/or repurposing by later populations, or if they roughly represent the sum of the stone-built prehistoric past. Another problem is dating them. For example, Neolithic chambered tombs appear to have served the whole community, were constantly re-used and so remained in use over a considerable period of time. On our recent Wales trip we found a good example in the little village of Dyffryn Ardudwy (OS grid ref: SH585235), one of a group of 6 similar monuments between Barmouth and Harlech.

The unusual feature here is there are the two burial chambers in close proximity, the earliest (far right in header photo) dating from around 6,000 years ago and built by Neolithic farmers. This was originally covered by a small oval cairn, but with a forecourt facing east. Shards of Neolithic pottery were found during excavations.

Sometime later, the larger easterly chamber was constructed, and the whole area including the earlier chamber and its surrounding cairn, was covered by a large trapezoidal barrow some 100 feet (30 metres) long. This construction phase also included a forecourt facing east. These forecourts are thought to have provided the ceremonial setting for funerary rituals. The big scatter of rubble is all that is left of the mound. Over succeeding millennia it has doubtless provided a handy source of building material.

The building of such monuments suggests that Neolithic communities had both plenty of human-power and the spare time to do the building work. And while the large chamber slabs most likely came from the immediate vicinity, they still had to be shifted and lifted.

From our consumption-heavy perspective is easy to think that stone age life was tough and impoverished. But the coastal region would have been very rich in resources – not only a range of seafood, especially shellfish, but also the wildfowl, fish and game of the salt marsh estuaries to supplement farm produce.

The immediate hillside area was anyway still occupied two plus millennia later by Bronze Age-Iron Age people. In the next field to the burial cairns are the stone foundations of two circular houses together with evidence of field terracing and an enclosure. So life went on there, though probably with settlers of quite different/or at least mixed cultural origins.

But one of the most beguiling features of the Dyffryn ‘house of the dead’ in our era is that it feels embraced. The path to it runs beside the village community centre and then beside the primary school, the setting is cared for, pastoral, almost domestic. It’s reminding me of a chambered tomb of the cromlech variety I once spotted on a lane skirting a Breton farmyard. The tomb had been incorporated into the outbuildings; the past very purposely repurposed and impressively too. Adaptive re-use as conservation persons are wont to say. I like it.

Related: Pentre Ifan chambered tomb.

Seeing The Wood Through The Trees

Croft Castle estate, Herefordshire

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Tree Art And Trees

Good Heavens: A Real Sand Castle?

We did not go inside the castle on our recent visit to Harlech on the Mid-Wales coast. To tell the truth I’m rather offended by the tyranny that these brutish bastions of Edward I represent. He, the irascible English monarch (1272-1307) built a whole string of overbearing fortifications between 1277 and 1304 (Caernarfon being the very grandest), this in a bid to subjugate the Welsh. Of course, in a nice twist of historical irony, the castles are now major international tourist attractions, bringing welcome income to the Welsh economy. (Take that, Edward Longshanks!)

What interested me was a little photo exploration of the castle’s present setting.

For instance, the header photo is something of a trompe l’oeil. Quite misleading in fact. The castle does not sit among the massive sand dunes that have invaded much of the Welsh coast over past centuries and are still growing. It sits on a 200 foot (61 metres) eminence of ancient Cambrian rock (the Harlech Dome), whose footings were once lapped by the sea, and where ships bringing in supplies would once have docked.

So yes, here we have a fascinating case of falling sea levels, or rather, rising land levels. Parts of Britain’s landmass have risen, and apparently some are still rising (e.g. Scotland) in response to the post-glacial ice weight reduction (isostatic rebound), as in ten thousand years after the event, while others, e.g. south east England, where there are newer rocks and/or compacting clay strata (as in London), are sinking or eroding each year.

Geology has much to answer for. It is ongoing, never static. A pity that most of us (and that very much includes Mrs. Farrell) know so little about it, or the forces that have shaped and continue to influence the planet. I seem to remember my geography teacher, aeons ago, telling us that Britain was tilting. And it’s far from being the only place where geology is still moving upwards or downwards. [e.g. an unrelated phenomenon in the Pacific where satellite data show many atolls and islands are growing in size rather than eroding].

But back to Harlech. There’s a diagrammatic reconstruction of the early 14th century castle’s outer defences and setting above the sea here:

This photo above gives you a glimpse of the golf course that lies between Harlech (castle and lower town) and the massive dune system behind the now distant beach.

And looking from the other direction:

It should be said that the Welsh people did not take English oppression lying down. There were a good few revolts and uprisings, and one in particular in 1400 under Owain Glendwyr, an actual Prince of Wales (as opposed to the fabricated English ones of recent times). He captured Harlech in 1404 and made it his family home and military HQ for four years. He also held his second parliament there in 1405. However, for all that, Welsh rule was short lived. English forces retook Harlech in 1409 during the reign of Henry V.

Looking from the castle towards North Wales, to Eryri, the mountains of Snowdonia, and the plain below where once there was sea.

It is intriguing how things change, and how if we fail to grasp in what ways they change and why, we truly risk losing the reality plot. As we headed to the beach I was amused by this sign on the golf course:

Where once there was passage for ships, the biggest risk is now flying golf balls. Who’d’ve thought it.

And finally an old image of the castle around 1890-1900 courtesy of the Library of Congress on Wikipedia:

More about the Morfa Harlech dune system HERE. Yes, it is still growing.

Lens-Artists: One Subject Three Ways Patti wants us to look at our subject from different angles.

The Texture Of Water?

The Mawddach River after the storm. There’s a tension here – a case of estuarian counterflow as the sea tide washes up against the river’s downflow. There’s an odd perception, too, of evolving solidity – of molten metal perhaps – artisan silver with flecks of gold; or of liquid thickening in the making of a sauce. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting effect.

The photo was taken last Wednesday as we arrived in Mid-Wales on the tail of a colossal downpour. We were starting a 4-day stay, and very much fearing a wash-out sojourn. But we needn’t have worried. We did have some fine days.

This is where we were staying – Borthwnog Hall on the banks of the estuary. A return visit after several years, but this time with a balcony view across the salt marsh at low tide. Fascinating places tidal rivers and estuaries. More photos in following posts.

CFFC: Texture

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge