Chirk Castle and a walk by the Canal

This was just a short break in the Llangollen area (we actually stayed in Glyndyfrdwy), having easily planned to fill our 4 days including a family visit. As always in Wales, you hope for rain free days. We had no rain, but at times it was very misty - we can`t have it all can we! 

The village is historically renowned for its association with Owain Glyndwr. It was here at his Manor of Glyndyfrdwy that Owain (Baron of Glyndyfrdwy) proclaimed himself “Prince of Wales” on 16th September 1400 so beginning his 14-year rebellion against English Rule.

This was our holiday let in the village of Glyndyfrdwy overlooking the river Dee and the village.

Quite a view from our bedroom window.

Angler fishing on the Dee just below our holiday cottage.

Sunday morning, and a short drive past Llangollen to this magnificent castle of Chirk, now owned by the National Trust. 

Chirk castle now stands proud amongst the chain of defence castles built in North Wales under the reign of Edward l, including castles such as Beaumaris, as not only a defence fortress but a family home too. Built in 1295 and completed in 1310 by Roger Mortimer, Chirk castle still boasts original features such as the 700 year old medieval dungeon and tower, laundry and servants’ hall. 

Sir Thomas Myddelton I was born in 1550, son of the governor of Denbigh Castle. With little hope of inheriting his father's position he left to make his fortune in London, which he did with remarkable success. He invested in the East India Company and the Virginia Company, was knighted, built a mansion in Essex, and in 1613 became Lord Mayor of London. 

In 1595 Sir Thomas I had bought Chirk Castle for £5,000 with the intention of turning it into his family seat. In actual fact he spent more time at his home in Essex, but he spent vast sums of money on the castle including building the north range and its State Rooms. 

Sir Thomas Myddelton II was a Civil War general, first on the side of Parliament, and then later, disillusioned by Cromwell's military dictatorship, as a Royalist in support of Charles II. 

Over the next 400 years the Myddelton family ruled a vast estate from Chirk Castle, subsequent generations were ambitious industrialists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. 

The award-winning gardens cover 5.5 acres of manicured lawns, herbaceous borders, beautiful rose, shrub and rock gardens, and the wooded pleasure ground – perfect for a stroll. A feature of these formal garden includes the vast and dominating clipped yew trees and topiary of different shapes and sizes, one being a squirrel. I didn`t find that one!.

On 23rd March 2013, the family favorite Cedar of Lebanon, planted over 200 years ago, fell during a period of heavy snow. To retain it`s memory, it was carved into this magnificent bench.

Plenty of naked people viewing the beautiful landscaped gardens.

The gatehouse entrance to the castle

Down in the magnificent dungeons, this was the state of the art loo! There was a lot more to this castle than we explored and to get a sense of the whole site, go to the National Trust site here.

After some lunch in a local pub, we took a walk along the side of the Llangollen Canal, and very peaceful too. This was one of the barges we saw on our ramble.

Then we made our way back to our village, stopping to photograph the station and signal box

Glyndyfrdwy railway station is a former station on the Ruabon to Barmouth line. It is now a preserved railway station on the Llangollen Railway, and was reopened by the heritage railway in 1993.

I was lucky to catch this steam locomotive coming into the station, albeit backwards! It was a `1940s` weekend and it was fascinating to see people getting off and on all dressed in their 1940`s gear!

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Birds at Lynford Arboretum

Lynford Arboretum is on the north side of Thetford forest and is well worth a visit as a beautiful walking area - if nothing else. However, it has made its name for the numbers of species of birds that it attracts, and this was the main reason why we made this visit.

The whole area, complete with Lynford Hall has an interesting history. The Hall is now an hotel, and we stayed there for one night to enable us to be on site reasonable early. 

But, before the history - to the birds we photographed. The main bird that was on the agenda was a Crossbill, neither of us having seen one before.

We joined the `throng` in one particular area by the river bridge where they had been seen before. We waited, then went for a walk and then returned to wait some more! Finally success - although none too close. However, here is the image.

Although not uncommon, they are not the easiest birds to see. It is a chunky finch with a large head and bill which is crossed over at the tips. This crossed bill is used to extract seeds from conifer cones. They are most often encountered in noisy family groups or larger flocks, usually flying close to treetop height. It feeds acrobatically, fluttering from cone to cone.

While waiting and wandering, we also manage to photograph some other birds The area is beautiful and well away from the hustle of modern life. So suits our feathered friends.

Female Chaffinch on sentry duty!

Marsh Tit - is, as indicated by the name, a member of the tit family. (clever me)

Brambling, a plump-looking migratory bird, which is medium-sized (similar to the chaffinch) belongs to the Finches family. Its distinctive white rump and attractive orange breast makes it easy to spot

Nuthatches can be seen all year round in the UK. The majority of Nuthatches like to live in mature woodlands or parkland in central and southern England and Wales where food is plentiful. So not surprised to see them here.

The Dunnock is a small brown and grey bird. Quiet and unobtrusive, it is often seen on its own, creeping along the edge of a flower bed or near to a bush, moving with a rather nervous, shuffling gait, often flicking its wings as it goes. When two rival males come together they become animated with lots of wing-flicking and loud calling.

Song Thrush - high in a tree and singing.

Lynford Hall Hotel, from the `bottom of the garden`

Once one of the greatest estates in England, Lynford Hall was a serious contender for royal ownership. Its location in some of the best shooting country in East Anglia attracted the attention of Queen Victoria’s advisers, who in 1861 had been instructed to acquire a suitable property for her son, Edward Prince of Wales, although eventually they settled on Sandringham.

A few miles outside Thetford, the Lynford estate covered 8,000 acres and came complete with a brand new country house. Designed by the fashionable architect William Burn and partly modelled on the Elizabethan architecture of Hatfield House, Lynford Hall was very grand indeed. It had a lavish entrance and several reception suites, plus a total of 50 bedrooms and dressing rooms, with state-of the art fittings such as plumbed water supplies and gas-lighting piped from a private gasworks.

The hall had been commissioned by millionaire banker Stephens Lyne-Stephens, reputedly “the richest commoner in England”, who had inherited a family fortune based on glass manufacture in Portugal. He had paid £133,000 for the estate but deemed the existing mansion too small and suitable only as temporary accommodation.

Stephens had intended to settle at Lynford with his French wife Yolande Duvernay, an ex-dancer famed for her beauty. But fate intervened and while building work on the new house started in 1857, Stephens fell ill. His love of wine, tobacco and fine food eventually took its toll and he died in February 1860 at the age of 58. His widow faced a turbulent future. Not only was the house not finished – the couple had been waiting to move in – but Stephens’s death prompted a rash of claimants to his riches.

Finally, when all the mess was sorted, his widow moved into the recently completed hall. Memories of her husband were everywhere, not least in the stone lettering of his initials that adorned the parapets. After she died in 1894, Lynford Hall then passed through a series of owners until 1924, when the majority of the estate was sold to the Forestry Commission. As many acres as possible were planted with fast-growing conifers to help replace the country’s depleted timber stocks in the wake of the First World War.

A major fire gutted parts of the hall in 1928 and total demolition loomed but the main parts of the building were restored by a new leaseholder, Sir James Calder. A wealthy entrepreneur, Calder was very well-connected and during the Thirties Lynford was buzzing with the rich and famous. Visitors included Ernest Hemingway, who was said to have regularly propped up the hall’s bar.

Other guests included Joe Kennedy, American ambassador to Britain, who was accompanied on several occasions by his sons Jack and Bobby. Their time at Lynford marked the close of a golden autumn in the estate’s fortunes.

Someone has been busy with this carved tree in the Arboretum area.

Scarlet Elfcup (Sarcoscypha austriaca)

Canada Geese making their usual noisy presence heard and seen by the river.

A really beautiful area in and around the Arboretum which is well worth at least one visit. There are many walks, including toward Lynford Waters. 

Lynford Water (opposite the Arboretum) is an area of flooded gravel pits in the Wissey valley now managed for recreation by the Forestry Commission, including an area of sandy beach. It is the closest the Brecks comes to having a seaside. 60,000 years ago it was a very different place, a chilly, open ‘mammoth steppe’ landscape with a very different wildlife and a population of Neanderthal humans. The evidence was found in an excavation here in 2002, at the eastern end of the site (see map on this site).

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Thorpeness & Peter Pan

In the late 19th century, the Thorpeness we know today was a tiny fishing hamlet on the East Coast, buffeted by the merciless North Sea and home to only a few houses that had not been taken into the waves by erosion.Just a couple of decades later, it would be transformed into a fantastical holiday village, with a beautiful boating lake, complete with Peter Pan islands, a 70ft fairy tale cottage on stilts, mock-Tudor homes and a luxury country club.

In 1859, Alexander Ogilvie, a civil engineer from Scotland, bought Sizewell House as a holiday home in Suffolk. Having made a fortune from his work around the world as a railway engineer, within 40 years he had expanded his estate to over 6000 acres, stretching from Dunwich to the north, down the coast to Thorpe, and inland to Leiston and Aldringham. In 1908, the estate passed into the hands of Alexander’s son, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, born in 1858. Ogilvie was an Edwardian architect, barrister and playwright.

After severe flooding in November 1910 reduced Thorpe to a mere puddly field, Ogilvie purportedly looked out to the land at the southernmost point of his estate and declared, “Let’s keep it, and build a holiday village around it.”

So Thorpe was renamed Thorpeness to distinguish it from the many ‘Thorpes’ in the country and Ogilvie’s plan, to create a fantasy, holiday haven for the upper middle classes, was put into action. Work began promptly and the new country club, known as The Kursaal, with an 18 hole golf course and tennis courts, opened in May 1912, the same year that the first properties were leased in the village. Development was interrupted by the First World War, but the construction of more accommodation and other planned facilities continued in the years afterwards.

A concrete-brick-making machine was imported from Australia and used to make blocks out of shingle from the beach, making Thorpeness one of the first enterprises in Britain to utilise the potential of concrete.

The waters of the Meare, bordered to the south and west by the Hundred River, were originally part of an Elizabethan safe shipping haven that had silted up over the centuries. Following the November floods of 1910, Ogilvie was inspired to block the river permanently and create the piece that is central to the village. 64 acres of safe and shallow water, and ornamental gardens, were hand dug in the winter of 1912 to 1913. With a maximum depth of two feet, six inches, it was billed as “The Children’s Paradise”.

Thorpeness was promoted as “The Home of Peter Pan”. JM Barrie, author of The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (Peter Pan), was a friend of the Ogilvies and regularly visited the village. His characters inspired the magical little islands in the center of the famous Meare. The landings are still marked with names from the storybook, and you can find locations such as the pirates lair and Wendy’s home, to play on. 

Looking across the Meare toward the windmill and famous "House in the Clouds", now a holiday let!

The picturesque Boathouse with a clock tower was built, rowing boats made available for hire, and teas served by the landing stage, all part of the fantasy

A water tower and flats of 1929 by William Gilmour Wilson as part of Thorpeness village development for Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie. Called The Sanctuary, I believe and is in Westgate.

This shows the less photographed east elevation of the tower. 

Ogilvie needed a water supply for the village, so he built “The Gazebo”, a tower with a water tank on top, the tank cunningly disguised as a house. Then he bought the Aldringham windmill and set it up in rather curious juxtaposition to pump water to the tank. The Gazebo, however, was not just a tower with a water tank at the top. Beneath the water tank lay a seven bedroom house designed for holiday makers. Its first occupant was a lady of creative inclination who wrote stories and poems for children. She re-christened the Gazebo “The House In The Clouds”, and so it remains today, a famous landmark, though the water tank has long since been removed. 

The windmill, which was moved from nearby Aldringham in 1923 

When Stuart Ogilvie’s son died in the early 1970s, the family state began to break up. The family was left with punitive death duties, which were met by the gradual selling off of the village’s buildings and businesses. Houses were sold to those intending to be long-term residents, or frequent visitors to the village. By 2000, the only sector still owned and run by Stuart Ogilvie’s grandson, Glen, was the Meare. 

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Aldeburgh and The Scallop

Aldeburgh is one of my favourite seaside town as it has many varied things to see, apart from beach and sea! These range from Maggi Hambling’s The Scallop, to a lighthouse in the town and a great Moot Hall. So, on another glorious day, we started our tour with a walk along by the river, and then explored the town. I must confess that some of the images were from a previous visit!

With your back to the river, this is your view of the town, as you start the riverside walk. Very pleasant too, with many birds (if you are lucky)

Fort Green Mill is a tower mill at which has been converted to residential accommodation, and was built in 1824. It was converted into a house in 1902.It was a four storey tower mill and had four patent sails and the domed cap was winded by a fantail. It had two pairs of millstones. Earlier photographs of the working mill shows that the sails were double patents carried on a cast iron wind shaft and the fantail had six blades. 

The lookout 

Copied from "Visit Suffolk" - The bonds between Aldeburgh, art, and the sea have always been strong ones. The Aldeburgh coastline has captured the hearts of many artists through the centuries, and when international art dealer Caroline Wiseman first set eyes on the dramatic landscape, she too found herself entranced by its siren call.Caroline has spent over 25 years working in the art world and has established successful open-house galleries in New York, London and Aldeburgh. She bought the Lookout, an extraordinary nineteenth century tower on the seafront, which came with a home on Crag Path adjacent, on the proviso that it must be used for artistic purposes. 

Benjamin Britten also famously did much of his composing on Aldeburgh beach. Citing artists’ retreat the Lightning Field in New Mexico as her inspiration, Caroline set about turning the Lookout into a place where both established and exciting up-and-coming artists could come and be seized by that same magic. 

Since 2011 Caroline has been offering week-long residencies at the Lookout, the rules of which are simple; firstly the artist must create new work over the course of the week, and secondly they must spend one full night in the tower. 

What a great idea! 

The Old Custom House, listed as 1703, has a fascinating raised front door but no-one is able to explain why. The two big ground-floor windows seem out of scale and were a late addition. 

Not sure of this cottage, but just loved the look. 

Perhaps one of the smallest houses you’ll ever see, right on the seafront in Aldeburgh, in the car park behind 152 High Street, is this tiny building. Consisting of a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, the house is the width of one parking space. Recently, a walled garden was added, taking the width of an adjacent car park. 

The Scallop, this iconic image of the Suffolk Coast arrived on Aldeburgh beach in 2003, courtesy of local artist, Maggi Hambling. The sculpture was set up to commemorate Benjamin Britten and displays a quote from Britten’s Peter Grimes ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’. 

Hambling, who was brought up in Hadleigh, Suffolk, first studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing 1962-4 and then at the Ipswich School of Art before moving to London where she would soon achieve worldwide acclaim. 

The quote from Britten’s Peter Grimes ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’. 

Yes, it can be windy on the beach! 

Moot Hall, the well known, timbered frame building near Aldeburgh seafront. It was built sometime during the early 16th century as a Council Chamber and Market Cross. Later, it was named Moot Hall, and the tall chimneys were added. 

Originally, it opened on to the town market - the arcade of four arches on the ground floor were filled in with brick by the Victorians, but would have originally been open, with space for market stalls beneath, as well as a pair of prison cells! When the infamous Witch finder General, Matthew Hopkins, was hired by the burgesses of Aldeburgh to search the town in 1646, six local women were found guilty and held in the cells at the hall until they ‘confessed’ to their crimes. They were hanged on specially constructed gallows. The houses between the marketplace and the shore have long since been swept into the sea.Today, Moot Hall is home to Aldeburgh Museum. 

The Church of St Peter and St Paul, Aldeburgh. 

There was a church here at the time of the Domesday Book, but the current church of St Peter and St Paul is largely an early 16th-century building, with an earlier 14th-century tower. There may have been an even earlier Saxon church at Aldeburgh, but if so, only limited traces of that building now remains in the altered roof line of the current church. 

As mentioned, the tower is the oldest part of the church, and it is such a notable local landmark hat it was used for many years by mariners to pilot their ships. 

Internally, the oldest feature of the church is the font, which dates to around 1320. You can see that several of the carved panels have been defaced; this destruction took place in 1643 when a local man named Thomas Johnson aided the famed iconoclast William Dowsing in destroying '20 cherubim and 38 pictures' as well as taking a sword to the carvings on the font. 

Johnson is buried in the floor before the altar - a strange honour perhaps, for a man who destroyed much historic architecture at Aldeburgh, but such was life during the Reformation! 

Before Johnson and Dowsing were active, the church was the scene of a much happier event. In 1573 a group of travelling actors gave a performance here. The troupe was known as the Earl of Leicester's Men, and they would later count among their number a certain young actor and playwright called William Shakespeare 

The south porch adjoins the pavement, and has arches in its east and west walls to allow processions to pass within the precincts of the graveyard. This was built by the Holy Trinity gild, right on the eve of the Reformation. 

The very well-preserved oaken parish chest 

The Benjamin Britten memorial window 

It is by the artist John Piper, in stained glass, and shows images from three of his church parables: The Prodigal Son, Curlew River, and The Burning Fiery Furnace. It sits in the north aisle, and gets enough light to fill the aisle with colour.

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The ghosts of Covehithe

Covehithe is a hamlet which lies on the North Sea coast around 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Southwold and 7 miles (11 km) south of Lowestoft. 

In the Middle Ages Covehithe prospered as a small town (no signs of that today!) It takes its modern name from the de Cove family who held land there at that time, and the fact that it had a hithe, or quay, for loading and unloading small vessels.There is also archaeological evidence of the linen industry having been carried out at Covehithe until the 18th century.

So that`s where the wealth came from, like many ports on the coast, but now you could be forgiven for not knowing the village existed at all.

A walk along the beach on a gorgeous day, gives you some idea of how deserted the area has become today.. It is just so peaceful on a day like this but, I reckon, very scary in stormy seas. 

The coastline in the Covehithe area suffers from the highest rate of erosion in the UK, and the settlement has suffered significant loss of land and buildings in the past. By the 17th century in fact, it had fallen victim, like nearby Dunwich, to coastal erosion. 

There were, about 10 years ago (2009), many trees standing like sentinels along the beach. Great to photograph - but now gone ! 

The large church of St Andrew, which had been built on the back of its wealth, was largely pulled down, although its tall tower remains, and a smaller church was erected among the ruins in 1672. (below) 

The west end of the 17th-century church is built against the tower. Its fabric includes much material re-used from the older church, and some brick. Its roof is thatched. 

Plain and simple.  Both the north and the south doorways have been re-used. The east window dates from the 19th century. At the west end are 15th-century pews with poppy-head carving. The wooden pulpit contains some 17th-century carving. 

The church has this 15th-century carved octagonal font. 

Walking around the ruins it is somewhat difficult to imagine the wealth which built this massive church. However, this was not uncommon in the middle ages. Much wealth was accumulated by the churches, which came to an end when Henry thought the church had far too much, and he and his mates could use it better. Like fighting the French etc! 

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