These are the last photos from our Friday day out to Mellington Hall, caught in a brief burst of sunshine. The far glimpse of two swans across the lake had magic in it – a gentle scene for All Hallows’ Eve.
November Shadows Day 4 Becky has the most fabulous shadows on show today. She’s flying high in a mass aerial display.
On Friday we were out for a family lunch just over the border in Wales: destination Mellington Hall. It is only a few miles from Bishop’s Castle, an impressive Gothic pile built in the 1870s by Derbyshire ironmaster, Philip Wright, and now run as a country house hotel and holiday park.
“Built by iron, saved by eggs and rabbits.”
This is how the current owners describe the hall’s more recent history.
They then explain how the present enterprise derives from some creative family entrepreneurship over sixty years ago:
The establishment of the Holiday Park in the 1960s and the survival of the Hall are inextricably linked: the Hall was in a terrible state when Mr Jack Evans, the grandfather of the present owner, bought the Hall and parkland in 1959.
Jack built his business on collecting rabbits, other game and eggs from the nearby farms and selling the produce to shops and markets in the Midlands. Coincidentally, Jack’s wife Margaret had been in service at the Hall as a young girl but by the 1950s the Hall was almost certainly going to be demolished.
Prompted by business contacts in the Midlands looking for a rural bolt-hole, Jack created the Holiday Park in the 1960s to generate revenue which would pay for the restoration and upkeep of the hall and thus save it from demolition.
What a project. And the restoration work is still ongoing.
You can see some photos of the Hall in its Victorian heyday HERE.
The grounds were originally landscaped by Joseph Paxton, but there has been further planting of specimen trees by Jack Evans. Work also still continues in the park, including the upkeep and creation of woodland paths, one of which links to the 177 mile Offa’s Dyke path, constructed along the England-Wales border in the late 700s CE by the Saxon king of Mercia.
Friday, though, was not a day for big walks, or even short ones. Too many fierce squalls to contend with. But between two showers, and armed with brollies, we did manage a brief stroll to lake where a sudden burst of sunlight yielded the header photo.
On the drive home, sun and rain together created a huge double rainbow over the Camlad Valley, casting brilliant prisms across the foothills of Todleth, Roundton and Corndon Hills, but not quite caught here as we sped along.
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November Shadows This month Becky invites us to post square-format photos on a shadowy theme, however we care to interpret it. You can join in as and when.
…from heavenly ethereal to eerily supernatural:
Herewith some recent views across the Menai Strait – from the island of Anglesey above Beaumaris to the Welsh mainland.
We’ve just returned from a week’s stay on Ynys Mon. It was our first March visit to the island, our usual time-slot being late December, and our arrival coincided with both the spring equinox and a spring tide. In fact we had never seen the low tides so low. When the sea went out, sand banks never glimpsed before, became exposed.
You can just make them out in the first photo. This reminded me of the tales of the Roman invasion of Anglesey around 60 CE and how Governor Suetonius Paulinus equipped his army with flat bottomed boats to deal with the uncertain depths across the strait. But it is possible, too, that there are/were low-tide paths, known only to locals. Perhaps Suetonius Paulinus found himself an informer. The conquest anyway was bloody: the object to smash the power of the Celtic tribes’ druid priests who made their last stand on the island.
There’s more about this at an earlier post: Island of Old Ghosts.
For the mystically or meditatively inclined, you can see how weather watching can enthral; you never know what may happen next; all the elemental forces conspiring: the ever changing light, coastal winds, cycles of convection and condensation, the lunar-solar ebb and flow of tidal waters.
So much weather in a week on this tiny corner of the planet. We had hot sun, biting winds, cloudless blue skies, deep gloom, rain (though not so much for Wales), drizzle, mist, stormy and glass glittering seas.
Late one afternoon we watched, with some sense of awe, as this white cloud moved low along the mainland shore, spilling out like dry ice till it reached the Great Orme headland.
And then one evening…
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At other times the mainland looked gauzy. It could be a mirage. Or there again it reminded me of the magic painting books we had as children – the wash of colours emerging from the empty page.
Copyright 2025 Tish Farrell
Lens-Artists: Wild This week Egidio at Through Brazilian Eyes wants to know what wild means to us. Go see what wild means to him.
This week at Lens-Artists, Elizabeth of Albatz Travel Adventures has us thinking about diptychs. This is what she says:
“A diptych is two images placed in proximity to one another, forming a pair. To make a successful pairing there should be several things in common, and something very different, contrasting.”
Please see her post for a range of inspiring examples.
My header pair is perhaps a bit daft, but it appeals to my sense of humour: man ruminates deeply on the ebb and flow of the Celtic Sea.
Man makes up mind: enough is enough.
Location: Anglesey, North Wales.
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The next pair also has a Welsh location, taken on the Tallyllyn Steam Railway. Some of the enthusiastic volunteers who help run the trains:
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Crab Apple Tree (with Japanese anemones) in our old Wenlock garden:
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Townsend Meadow, Much Wenlock and a fine crop of wild oats:
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Up in the Shropshire Hills: the Stiperstones
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Also on the Stiperstones – fields of gorse, once widely cropped for winter animal fodder; these days, more valuable to bees and other insects:
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And finally some light and shadow. Leaves – back lit and top lit:
Day two of Becky’s month of squares. The themes are burgeoning, move forward, reconstruct, renew to interpret how we will. The only rule: the header photo must be SQUARE
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Sometimes to move forward you need a flash of inspiration: the kind of serious ah-ha moment that brings clarity, or a shift of focus. Not always a comfortable process, mind you, but if it sparks momentum, then that alone can be salutary. Or as Tom Petty put it “if you don’t run, you rust.”
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This photo was taken one Christmas afternoon on the lane to Penmon Point on the island of Ynys Mon (Anglesey). The view is of the North Wales mainland across the Menai Straits. These extraordinary light shows over the water are a local feature, and so I tell myself that it’s not surprising that the island was the Druids’ last stronghold in the face of the Roman invasion, or that early Christian hermits settled here. (See Island of Old Ghosts.
Early morning above Beaumaris
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Whenever you visit Wales, you can always be sure of plentiful H2O. Whether it’s tumbling down mountains, as here at the foot of Cader Idris…
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Or filling rivers as in the Mawddach Estuary near Dolgellau…
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… and the River Glaslyn at Porthmadog (Wales’ tallest mountain, Snowden, in the background…
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Or on its sea shores…
at Harlech, North Wales,
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Broadhaven
…Newport and Fishguard, Pembrokeshire:
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or on the island of Anglesey
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Or simply dropping from the sky…
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You can tell we love visiting Wales, can’t you? Though usually best to take good rainwear.
Lens-Artists: water in motion This week Sofia inspires us with some wonderful compositions. Go see!
A pre-Christmas break a few years ago. We were in Hay-on-Wye, the quaint Welsh border town on the banks of the mighty River Wye. Its primary claim to fame is that it’s full of second-hand book stores, including the world’s largest started in 1961 by Richard Booth, he who later declared himself King of Hay and was all-round responsible for putting the town on the booklovers’ map.
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But even bibliophiles need a break from browsing the stacks, so there are also cosy cafes, quirky antiques shops and artisan crafts emporia to wander round. There’s even a castle, bought by Richard Booth in 1970 and recently restored to provide all manner of cultural events and exhibitions.
And talking of booklovers’ maps, here are some actual maps.
On the street below the castle we found a shop selling antiquarian ephemera, including prints and old Ordnance Survey maps. My eye was instantly caught by this well kitted-out young woman. She won’t get lost, I thought; a new-old take on tracking devices – rambling jacket made of maps. (You can just see the outline of the pre-restored castle in the reflection behind her.)
Here’s the full shop frontage.
That gaze says determination, doesn’t it. Madam definitely knows where she’s going.
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But back to the mysterious header photo;
It was a strange experience to find myself regarded through a slit in an otherwise blanked-out shop window. It makes me wonder, which of us is doing the window shopping? There she was – watchful, wistful, captive or femme fatale? – looking out from what proved to be a vintage costume store. She lured us in of course.
And finally, Hay at twilight:
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Lens-Artists: window shopping This week Ritva sets the challenge. Please see her post for creative tips on how to approach it.
When last year began we were on the island of Anglesey in North Wales – gathering with family for a belated Christmas celebration. It was good to soak up some blue tranquillity. At the time, we were fretting over the sale of our cottage, plus trying to find a bolt-hole to rent while we looked for a new home to buy. All unnerving in all sorts of ways; nothing straight forward.
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Finding a house to rent proved almost as hair-raising as selling the cottage (Huge demand, few available properties). Only by the skin of our teeth did we secure a place in time for moving day in early March. And then it snowed – for two days, an unexpected blanketing that closed most of the roads. Snow – of all things. The Farrells had not factored that in. Still, a day later than planned, and by devious routes, the removal lads came through. We were re-homed.
Then more unforeseen happenings.
View from one of Broseley’s many country paths: bright and cold in March
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By the time we moved to Broseley (East Shropshire), we had already set our house-buying sights on Bishops Castle or points well south-west of the county. For one thing, we wanted to be nearer to my sister, and I’d anyway dismissed Broseley as a final destination. I’d known it from an earlier chapter in my life and always thought it a plain and unalluring town.
Just shows what I know. I didn’t expect to fall in love with the place. It began with finding a maypole at the end of our street; and from it a sweepingly magnificent view above the Ironbridge Gorge. And it began with finding beguiling footpaths that meandered in and out of town and took us to some wild, wild places that seemed slipped out of time. And most of all it began when I discovered the network of thoroughfares and alleyways that belonged to Broseley’s ancient industrial past, the wonderfully named jitties, that to my mind suggested jetties, or things that jutted like prows of ships. Exploring them on our cool summer days felt like voyaging – through time, space, the imagination.
Go HERE for the jitties posts.
Here is one of many favourite finds: some historic re-purposing of discarded artefacts in an old wall on Gough’s Jitty. It’s been built from saggars. These earthenware boxes were once used for the packing of clay pipes, then stacked in a bottle kiln for firing. There were several factories in the town from the 17th century onwards. They exported their wares around the world. In fact clay pipes were often referred to as ‘Broseleys’.
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Apparently the spot for some illicit fist-fighting back in the day.
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Lodge Lane became a favourite walk. Once there would have been the heavy rumble of trucks hauling coal from Broseley’s mines, an area still called the Fiery Fields due to the old coal pits’ erstwhile tendency for spontaneous combustion.
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Broseley sits above the Severn Gorge, directly across the river from Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, so-called birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The town evolved from an early 17th century squatter community of immigrant miners. Coal, clay, ironstone and limestone were plentiful. There was timber for construction and for the making of charcoal for fuelling furnaces and forges. And there was the river for transport down to Bristol. The wealth of local resources attracted the likes of ironmaster-pioneer, John ‘Iron Mad’ Wilkinson, who lived here from 1757 in a very fine mansion opposite the parish church.
I loved these views of multi-period, multi-layered habitation.
And likewise across the River Severn on the opposite side of the Gorge:
Broseley’s neighbours – Ironbridge and the Iron Bridge (1779)
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I suppose if the little house in Bishops Castle hadn’t cropped up, we might well have stayed in Broseley. The folks were so friendly there. As it is, it’s good to think of our brief sojourn, even with the little pang of loss. Strange, how things turn out.
But now we’re here in an ancient agricultural town, where the folks are also very friendly. Clearly there’s many a tale to unravel here, or will be, once we’ve sorted out the house. This may take a while. For one thing, come spring there’s a new extension in the offing: this to remove an old conservatory and transform the space into a bright new kitchen with doors onto the garden. Apart from this, every room needs some serious attention, plus two chimneys to rebuild, and maybe the roof to replace. And then there’s the garden…
So all is in flux and not a little confused. But even so, with the turn in the year, it’s beginning to feel like home.
This week Amy at Lens-Artists wants us to show her contrasts. Here are some of mine from winter sojourns on the island of Anglesey in North Wales – a favourite destination for family Christmas gatherings.
And a favourite place for photo-taking too. The combination of solstice sun, cold air, mountain weather and light off the sea creates some striking effects, especially along the Menai Strait between island and mainland.
Lens-Artists: Contrasts Amy sets the challenge with some fine contrasting compositions. Go see!
