While we are in Folkestone ...

Although we were going to visit Folkestone this week anyway, it was brought forward, as a tyre was needed! However, we spent time exploring, so no time lost. Folkstone is the terminal for the Eurotunnel, the rail link to Calais in France. Just 35 minutes away it says. Needless to say, we kept away from that side of the town. Although these images were not all taken the same day, they blend together quite well, starting at the Hythe end and progressing along to Folkstone. Then a short hop to Dover.

After starting our walk from Hythe, one of the first things to catch our attention were the beach huts.

I couldn't believe that there was no system in the display. I was right, as we came across a notice advertising `Creative Folkestone Artworks`. These beach huts were part of this display which covered all areas of Folkestone. If I had only known earlier!

Rana Begum - No. 1054 Arpeggio

Commissioned for Creative Folkestone Triennial 2021 in partnership with Folkestone & Hythe District Council

No. 1054 Arpeggio is the title of Rana Begum’s extraordinary colourful design that transforms around 120 beach huts on the seafront between Folkestone and Sandgate along Lower Saxon Way. The number refers to the sequence of the artist’s completed artworks, while an ‘arpeggio’ is a sequence of notes from a chord played in a rising or descending order.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s decision to refurbish its entire stock of beach huts presented Creative Folkestone Triennial with a challenging and idiosyncratic opportunity to commission an artist to make a major artistic statement. Rana Begum’s response to the invitation was both extremely ambitious and also generous, an astonishing blossoming of her studio practice (and its concern with geometry, colour and light) on a vast scale. Her superimposed, graduated colour scheme, and the insistent rhythm of her trademark chevron design, have turned a half-mile marching rank of beach huts into notes of colour on a keyboard, certainly one of the largest and most joyful artworks in the country.

Although No. 1054 Arpeggio is clearly an articulation of colour, it is in fact the play with light itself that is key to Rana’s work – the absorption and reflection of varied densities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial.She has a talent for the distillation of spatial and visual experience into ordered form, blurring the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture.

This I believe was part of the same work.

Pablo Bronstein - Beach Hut in the style of Nicholas Hawksmoor, 2014

Pablo Bronstein is one of the most exciting artists of his generation, combining interests in art and architecture with performance, installation and sculpture.

Bronstein has described his Beach Hut in the style of Nicholas Hawksmoor as a ‘monument to architecture’, paying homage to the quintessentially English architectural vocabulary of the 18th Century Baroque architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor. In the 18th Century the use of this heroic style was chosen deliberately for lighthouses along the south east coast because of the defensive nature of the line of ports and castles from Hastings to Dover. This architecture no longer exists in Folkestone, therefore Bronstein’s work will take the form of a lighthouse, filling a gap in the town’s history. Situated next to other brightly coloured beach huts on the waterfront, alongside the Council's mundane arrangements for park maintenance, Bronstein's sculpture's dramatic presence invokes a delightful and piquant sense of folly

Jason Wilsher-Mills - I Am Argonaut

In recent years Jason Wilsher-Mills has focused on using digital painting using technology such as iPad and Wacom tablets. The use of these technologies, in place of the more traditional artistic mediums, came about through the convenience and accessibility of tablets which allow him to produce large scale sculptures and augmented reality experiences, despite the physical challenges presented by his disability.

For Creative Folkestone Triennial 2021 the artist has drawn on his experience as a disabled artist to create a contemporary figurative sculpture (monumental in ambition but relatively intimate in size) – I Am Argonaut – to be placed ‘in conversation’ with the monumental statue of William Harvey, son of the Mayor of Folkestone, Royal Physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood. This dialogue has a very particular and personal significance for Jason, since his disabilities have been caused by a disease of the blood in his childhood. For him it has been an opportunity to pay his respects to a great scientist whose studies paved the way for some of the great advances of modern medicine.

Major themes that consistently run throughout Jason’s work include his experience as a disabled person and the struggles he has endured through illness since childhood up until the present day, trying to translate his daily experiences and challenges to the audience. A major aspect of his work also focuses on the treatment and perception of disability and disabled people in society, as well as social history and the democratic process.

Mark Wallinger - Folk Stones, 2008

Mark Wallinger’s ‘Folk Stones’ at first appears like an almost banal numbering exercise, a “significant yet pointless act” as he puts it, recalling the labour of a modern-day Sisyphus. Yet the precise number of beach pebbles collected and laid out into a massive square reveals a profound underpinning: 19,240 individually numbered stones stand for the exact number of British soldiers killed on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The work is inspired by the millions of soldiers who left from Folkestone Harbour to fight on the battlefields of France and Flanders, and is located adjacent to other older war memorials. But, by using metonymy to create the idea of a crowd ‘numberless as the pebbles on a beach’, Wallinger has created a very different form of remembrance monument in which numbers replace names.

Folkestone was the main point of departure for hundreds of thousands of soldiers leaving for the battlefields of northern France during the First World War. The poet Wilfred Owen spent a night at the Metropole hotel before embarking for France, and later described its lush carpets as being as thick as the mud in the trenches. For countless other soldiers too, Folkestone must have provided some final home comforts, and its beaches and cliffs would have been the very last glimpse of England many would ever see.

This one certainly makes you think.

Before moving along the coast to Dover, another church with an interesting story in Hythe.

The church itself was open but the crypt which houses my interest had just been shut for winter. St Leonard’s Church has the largest and best-preserved collection of ancient human skulls and bones in Britain. The collection consists of shelves in four arched bays that contain 1,000 skulls in total, and a single stack of bones and skulls measuring 7.5m in length, 1.8m in width and just over 1.8m in height. The stack of bones was reassembled on its brick base in 1910. To read more about research being conducted, Click Here. (Safe - it's an internal link!)

Dover Castle commands the Strait of Dover, the shortest sea crossing between England and continental Europe, a position of strategic importance throughout history.

Castle Hill was shaped into massive defences capped by medieval walls and towers and later, from the mid 18th century, by the earthworks of a garrisoned infantry and artillery fortress. Beneath the surface, cut into the chalk of the North Downs, are networks of tunnels to enable the garrison to move, plan and live in safety.

King Henry II began to build the present castle in the 1180s, and over the next 800 years its buildings, defences and tunnels were adapted to meet the changing demands of warfare, right into the era of nuclear weapons. Its use during C20 two great wars is as follows:

THE FIRST WORLD WAR - When Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Dover Harbour became the home of the Royal Navy’s Dover Patrol to defend the Dover Strait, particularly against German submarines, and to protect communications for the Army in France and Flanders.

Dover had a garrison of around 16,000 troops, with the castle as headquarters, to defend a perimeter occupying the high ground around the town for up to 1.5 miles distant. Within the perimeter were many training camps for soldiers destined for the Western Front.

The harbour approaches were defended by coast defence guns, while the new threat from airships and airplanes was addressed by anti-aircraft guns, including two near St Mary in Castro. Entry to the harbour was regulated and the control building, the Fire Command Post (established in 1905) and Port War Signal Station (1914), survives in Dover Castle, with a commanding view over the Channel.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR - In 1939, Dover resumed its former role when war came again, with the castle as headquarters, but for the Army garrison defending the town, and for the re-established Royal Navy base. The empty underground casemates were re-commissioned as bomb-proof offices for the vice-admiral in charge of the naval base, and as headquarters for army units co-ordinating coast artillery and anti-aircraft defences and for the units defending the Dover fortress.

These commands expanded throughout the war, as Dover became the nearest town to enemy-occupied territory in June 1940. Vice-Admiral Ramsay’s naval headquarters played a central role in Operation Dynamo, with the evacuation of 338,226 British and Allied troops from Dunkirk.

Two new levels of tunnels were built (the old ones were now called Casemate level). The first, called Annexe, was completed early in 1942 as a small hospital. The second, called Dumpy, opened in 1943 as a Combined Operations Centre with provision for large-scale communication transmission. The latter played a significant role in Operation Neptune, the naval side of the plan for D-Day, and also in a successful deception operation known as Fortitude South, which convinced the Germans that the main invasion of Europe would be in the Calais area, not Normandy, and that it would be launched from the Dover area.

The Romans built an octagonal tower-like lighthouse (pharos) on Castle Hill. This lighthouse supported fire beacons to act as navigation lights for ships approaching the narrow river mouth, enabling them to find a quayside outside the fort. I think that this is one of only two left from that period.

The pharos was later reused for the church of St Mary in Castro as a chapel and bell tower, and can still be seen in the above image.

The church of St Mary in Castro (meaning inside the castle) dates to around AD 1000. Its exceptional size hints that it might have had a royal patron – Godwin, Earl of Wessex (r.1020–53), father of King Harold (r.1066), is one possibility. A cemetery discovered during archaeological excavations in 1962 indicated that a community lived nearby.

These were the main places we visited, although a round of Crazy Golf and some shopping mustn't be forgotten. All in in all - a great week!

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Elham in the depths of Kent

A few days during the school half term to charge the batteries before the darkness of winter descended. Although we had been to Kent before, the village of Elham was a new area and allowed us to show Hayley and Izobelle some of the places we had visited before. The village of Elham was a picturesque and a very quiet place, and the house we had for the week was very well equipped, having plenty of room and a beautiful garden. Shame it wasn`t summer time! The only minor problem was getting to anywhere else was rather slow, as all surrounding roads were so small and potholes everywhere! 

The village sign.

Our holiday house with the view from part way down the garden.

Looking toward the bottom of the garden.

View of St Mary`s Church from the bedroom window.

The village itself was full of historic buildings. After the Conquest, William I granted the Elham estates to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and, following Odo’s disgrace, to William d' Aubigny. Later John, Earl of Eu, a relative of the Conqueror, established himself in Elham by building a palace near to St. Mary's Church.

South view of the current 800 year old, Grade 1 listed building. The porch has just undergone additions of new doors, toilet facilities with baby changing, new access aids and also fitted new central heating. All paid for by donation! Brilliant! Obviously an important hub for this pretty village.

The rectangular piers of both north and south arcades with their pointed arches and boldly carved stops are of late C12 date. Between them hang some C18 text boards. The character of the church is given in the main by late C19 and early C20 work. Typical of many of our churches.

Nearby, in the main street, sits `The Abbot's Fireside`- originally built as an inn called the Smithie’s Arms in 1451. The pub still retains features from the 15th and 16th centuries - including a huge medieval fireplace. It was sold in 1671 and some time after was converted into four cottages. This remained the case until the tavern was re-opened in 1939 and at some point before 1965, the inn’s name was changed to the Abbot’s Fireside.

It has its share of legend. One being that King Charles II hid from the Roundheads in a “priest hole” within the main fireplace, and another being that the Duke of Wellington is reported to have been based here before the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Who knows? but it adds to the atmosphere.

Timber framed Old Bakery. It consisted of a house and shop dated around C18 or earlier, with C18 alterations. This is in the Square, Elham and illustrates some of the beautiful buildings in Elham.

One of the lanes running past the church. Obviously someone with a sense of humour!

And finally, it's Halloween soon!

A great place to stay and to explore. As for those narrow, potholed roads I mentioned - it's off to Folkestone and Hythe tomorrow to get a tyre replaced. Just what we needed!

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MOMENTS - Modern art in Bury St Edmunds

An exhibition of modern art taking place in Bury St Edmunds at Moyes Hall, (with a mention of artists such as Banksy and Tracey Emin) caught my eye and, thinking it would be a good morning out, we determined to visit.  It was well worth the visit. However, the artists who really caught my eye were the `Connor Brothers`- who are not in fact related at all!

Art has always asked us tough questions about where truth ends and where artifice begins — and indeed, whether there can or should be a boundary at all. However, in an era of obsessive social media use, competing cultural narratives, ‘fake news’ and post-truth, it is a matter that may have never been more pressing for our world.

It is into such a world that The Connor Brothers have stepped — and are already enjoying staggering commercial success and cultural currency. But in the case of this once-mysterious duo, it is now a little easier to separate fact from fiction — or at least, that may seem so on first inspection.

They just bonded in their art work and have become an international success story, making people smile while empowering them to pursue humanitarian projects. The brothers created their original pieces as a project to reshape their lives. When you see their work you have to smile, its one step away from Banksy’s two-dimensional style using vintage images with a new twist.

Here are photographs of three of their images (this was allowed by the organisers!), but first a `Banksy`.

Hula Hoop Girl

Removed from a salon in Nottingham and offered temporarily to Moyes`s Hall for the `Moments` exhibition a week later by its new owner, Brandler Galleries. The owner of the salon had wanted the work removed as it appeared to be leading to criminality such as theft and vandalism, not only to the salon but the `Hula Hoop Girl` herself. Unfortunately, not an unusual occurrence for these street art works. 

Now for three images from The Connor Brothers which made me smile, and made me think - hope they do for you as well.

There were several other prints by these artists, but I just picked these three to photograph, as they were all hung together. Some of the artists `humanitarian` ones were very thought provoking. To give a little background to the artist, I have quoted the following:

`Mike Snelle and James Golding—who make art under the moniker “the Connor Brothers”—juxtapose pin-up style portraits of women with blocks of solid colour and deadpan snippets of text. The British artists’ chic, slick paintings and works on paper explore artifice and sensational storytelling, themes that they initially folded into their fictional artist personas: The Connor Brothers at first maintained that they were twin brothers who had escaped from a California extremist Christian cult known as 'The Family.' At sixteen the twins escaped to Brooklyn where they began creating artworks in order to make sense of the world they had been deprived of. However, in October 2014 these characters were revealed as a myth and art dealers Mike Snelle and James Golding exposed themselves as The Connor Brothers.` 

A great exhibition which I am pleased I visited.

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What has Bawdsey to offer?

In answer to the question posed in the title, my initial reply was "not a lot". After two recent visits, I can now answer "Quite a lot"!

Sitting on the opposite shore of the Deben to Felixstowe Ferry, it is a beautiful river estuary with mooring for large number of small boats. Then it has Bawdsey Manor where Bawdsey Radar Transmitter Block was the first operational radar station in the world, and the exhibition it has, is housed in the original 1937 building. The exhibition tells the story of the "Invention that Changed the World". It reveals how scientists, engineers and technicians came together at Bawdsey in the 1930s in total secrecy to prove that radio waves could locate aircraft, ships and other targets. Bawdsey became the world's first operational radar station in 1937 and played a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

The Manor itself is now a School Adventure Centre.

Just shows how wrong you can be! My visits during the past week were as part of a group photographing the area with a view to looking really closely at Bawdsey and these are some of my images from this couple of days.

On the second visit, we were hoping for a sunset across the river, but not to be. So, as the light mellowed, a couple of shots of moored boats.

The shingle beach in the area is littered with World War remains. Constructions of various sorts are strewn around in various stages of decay.

Gun tower making an interesting image.

To add a bit more drama, one of the above images turned into a monochrome image.

Patterns in the crumbled buildings.

Patterns in nature

The geology of the cliff area is described in Wikipedia as `providing the largest exposure of the Early Pleistocene Red Crag Formation, and it is rich in fossils of marine molluscs. It is described by Natural England as having great potential for the study of non-glacial Pleistocene environments.`

Furthermore, `it is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, also a Geological Conservation Review site, and is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.` Well worth a visit.

Then, we came across this structure perched on the cliffs and asked `How did that get there?` It turns out that Amazon have been filming `The Power`, and this building is the Convent, supposedly in North Carolina! It plays a major part in the book (by Naomi Alderman) so will probably in the film. Then it will be demolished!

I managed to scramble onto some highish rocks to get this image. Security was not pleased with people photographing from the top of the cliff!

Shame about the lack of a sunset across the Deben, but well worth photographing the other parts of the area.

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Thomas Seckford and Woodbridge

On a walk around Woodbridge, it doesn't take long to realise that there is a name that crops up time and again - Thomas Seckford. It is remarkable that the life of one man, living in the turbulent Tudor era, should have had such an enduring impact on the town of Woodbridge and the surrounding area of Suffolk: an impact that is as powerful today as it has been down the centuries.

Thomas Seckford was born in 1515 at Seckford Hall, the family seat outside Woodbridge which is now a luxury hotel. His country house was the Abbey, now the junior school for Woodbridge School.

He built for the town the Shire Hall to serve as the local court, which it continued to do until the late 20th century and now houses the Council Chamber and the Foundation’s archives.

For a time he owned the iconic Tide Mill, one of only two working tide mills remaining in the United Kingdom. Seckford was a prominent lawyer who served Queen Elizabeth I in a number of important judicial roles. He amassed a considerable fortune and when he died in 1587 he left his estate in Clerkenwell, then comprising pasture land just to the north of the City of London, to endow an almshouse for thirteen poor men of Woodbridge. I believe they were actually started before he died.

Although Seckford had made generous provision in his will for his brothers and their offspring – he himself had no children – much of the first one hundred years was occupied by challenges to the endowment made by various members of the Seckford family, but one consequence of these legal wrangles was that the Master of the Rolls and the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas were appointed to be the governors of the charity, with administration being delegated to the churchwardens of St Mary’s parish church in Woodbridge. As income from the estate grew, surplus funds were used to teach, clothe and care for poor children and the pensions paid to residents of the almshouse were increased and as London expanded and finally engulfed Clerkenwell, so the rental value of the endowment increased significantly, facilitating the construction in the mid 19th century of a magnificent new almshouse, the Seckford Hospital, not far from the centre of town, which today remains the centre of the Foundation’s care activities.

In 1662 Dorothy Seckford, the widow of Seckford’s nephew Henry, last of the Seckford family, joined with a number of other eminent locals to found a free school which was housed in a property in Seckford Street, just off the town’s Market Hill, donated by Robert Marryott, after whom one of the current school’s buildings, now housing the Foundation’s administrative headquarters, is named. The school was to teach ten “sons of the meaner sort” of Woodbridge residents, along with others who were to be charged £1 a year. They were to be taught Latin and Greek to prepare them for university; or, if not capable of mastering these subjects, arithmetic and writing as preparation “for trades or to go to sea”. Over the first two centuries of its existence the school had its ups and downs, including a headmaster disappearing in order to escape from his creditors, and despite educating an increasing number of boys, a number of whom went on to build eminent careers, its fortunes had dramatically declined by the mid nineteenth century and its premises had fallen into disrepair; in contrast to the increasing fortunes of the almshouse charity.

In 1861 it was therefore agreed that the Almshouse charity should merge with the Free School charity. As a result of the merger, the Seckford Foundation was created, facilitating the move of the School to a spacious new site on the edge of the town which still houses Woodbridge School as well as the administrative offices of the Foundation. As well as providing funds for more bursaries, the merger freed up the original school building in Seckford Street for use as a dispensary and a lending library and reading room, both funded by the Foundation. 

The original school building in Seckford Street which, in 1861, was converted for use as a dispensary and a lending library and reading room - both funded by the Foundation.

The Foundation has not stood still since then: the past 150 years have seen continuous development of the activities of the Foundation and its facilities, and since the turn of the century alone the Foundation has entirely remodelled the Almshouses, providing exceptional accommodation for its residents; constructed a 350 seat theatre, the Seckford Theatre, for the benefit of the School and the local community; has substantially upgraded the teaching facilities of Woodbridge School, to include a new classroom block, sixth form centre and technology centre; opened three new Free Schools, in Beccles, Ixworth and Saxmundham, providing educational choice in those areas; launched Seckford Springboard to help young people under 25 to access education, employment and training; and led on an initiative called ‘Flourish’ to help tackle the issue of rural poverty within Suffolk.

It seems incredible that one man from the Tudor era could have such an impact even today! The man himself was buried in St Mary`s Church, so a visit was on the itinerary.

There has been a church here since before the Norman Conquest. The parish church was begun in the early C15 and the spectacular 100 foot tower about mid C15. Much of the interior was remodeled around 1870, although there are a few medieval remnants - the font (below) being one of the best.

St Mary's Seven Sacrament font is one of thirteen survivals in Suffolk. It now stands at the west end of the south aisle, under the exquisite 1937 font cover by Walter Forsyth.

The panels show the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and are a reminder that our Medieval churches were not built for congregational Anglican worship. The panels are a bit battered, but are all recognisable. The one on my image above is the Crucifixion scene, this panel, anathema to the protestants of the 1540s, has been paid particular attention by them

The panels are, in clockwise order from the north, Ordination, Matrimony (the two sacraments of service), Baptism, Confirmation (the two sacraments of commission), Reconciliation, Mass, Last Rites (along with Reconciliation, one of the two sacraments of healing) and, in the final eighth panel, the Crucifixion. 

The survival of so much Catholic imagery in this church, when we know that the 17th century puritans were particularly active in this area, may seem surprising. But, ironically enough, it is a result of the destruction of a century earlier. During the early Reformation of the 1540s, Woodbridge was wholeheartedly Anglican, and the wrecking crew went to work with a vengeance. The destruction here probably took place in the Autumn of 1547, during the first months of Edward VI's reign, when there was a free-for-all in places like Suffolk. The easiest way to deal with the font was to knock off the more prominent relief, and plaster the whole thing over. When Dowsing and his Biblical fundamentalists arrived at this church almost a century later on the 27th January 1644, they found very little to do.

The tomb of Thomas Seckford, the great benefactor of Woodbridge

The Deban Millennium Frieze. Designed by Michael Coulter and created by the Deban Decorative and Fine Arts Society, this 20 foot long and 3 foot wide frieze gives a brief history of Woodbridge over the past 2000 years. Rather clever, I thought.

The window of 1890 to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. St Patrick, St George with a dragon, and St Andrew are the three figures.

I hold and am held

This rather eye-catching 2016 sculpture by Rick Kirby is in the churchyard of Woodbridge Quay Church. Funded by a church member, this work is made of small pieces of welded sheet steel in the shape of a pair of supportive hands, which reflect the church's statement of faith and hope in God.

The Sisters

Installed in November 2020, ‘The Sisters’ sculpture, commissioned by Woodbridge Boatyard and made by Andrew Baldwin, celebrates Molly and Ethel Everson who, along with their brothers Cyril and Bert, managed the yard inherited from their father until 1969.

Cyril and Bert built boats and handled the river work, so ‘living’ memorials to them can be seen in the many Everson boats that still sail these waters. The sisters managed the chandlery, sail store and office, where the rowing club now stands. This sculpture celebrates their contribution. These two tough, resilient women now watch over the Deben once again and their story is remembered.

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