Mistley - short walk with Gill Moon

When Gill offered this morning walk with coffee and cake at the end, who could resist? As it was, the morning was misty and atmospheric over the river, and then onto a walk through the woods. So, a few images I managed of the morning.

Being by the river side, the morning mist was still lingering over the water, while everywhere was tranquil and quiet.

Looking up river, the clouds appeared black and threatening, making the autumnal colours somewhat muted. Having walked along the waterfront past Mistley Towers, we entered Mistley woods.

This was called `old knobble` and was certainly gnarled and broken. Also, very old I would say.

Another old tree in the woods which was very deformed.

Some autumnal colours beside the road on our way back to our start.

Being Remembrance Sunday, a short service was being held beside the memorial. Back at the start we were treated to hot coffee and cake - lovely! Thanks Gill and Simon.

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Storm Babet in our area of Suffolk

Storm Babet which hit Britain on 19th October, caused huge amounts of damage in Scotland and other parts of the UK including where I live in the Suffolk area. Most of it was water damage, as it dumped huge rainfalls in several places. Met Office figures show between Thursday and Saturday morning, 79mm fell in Charsfield, Suffolk. That's a little over three inches in two days. The rain was even heavier further north. In Angus and Aberdeenshire, in Scotland, some areas had 200mm of rain.

The name Babet was selected by the Dutch weather agency KMNI - and was named after a woman who visited an open day at its headquarters and put her own name forward, with the additional reason "because I was born during a storm".

When the weather abated a little, I recorded some pictures in our area.

The view from the front of our bungalow showing how water encroached on our side of the river for the first time since we have been here - some 23 years. Luckily, the land slopes away from us as can be seen, so the water runs across the fields away from us. 

The local playing field where nobody was playing football today!

Anyone for a picnic? Another view on the playing field.

A walk into Hadleigh showed Bridge Street, which was too deep for me to wade through. A shame as I heard that the big building site beyond was under water.

Tinkers Lane is impassable. This is one of my regular walking routes, but not today.

Unfortunately, a lot of small animals such a chickens and Guinea pigs lost their lives as the river swept through this small yard. The bigger animals and the 30 odd geese managed to survive.

Another favourite walking route of mine is this waterside path - not today though!

Looking back toward Hadleigh on my way home.

Next day the morning weather changed, and we could see blue sky and sunshine! So, we wandered back toward Hadleigh and took some more images of the field with their retreating water line.

A couple of images taken just outside our village showing the ever so slightly retreating water line.

So, although it was quite spectacular, I hope we don't have more any time soon, as it caused a lot of people a huge amount of heartache. So, my record of this momentous storm.

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The New Forest for two days

We recently had a pleasant couple of nights in Lyndhurst in the New Forest, which allowed us to explore some wonderful woodland scenery and glorious trees, of many shapes and sizes.

A general view of the forest with a carpet of autumnal leaves.

Shapes of branches

Patterns on trees - gnarled trunks

Looking down, there were fungi to be seen. An important part of the life of these areas.

Then there were other lives to be seen in the shape of ponies and piggies!

Dotted about were remains of trees which sometimes make an interesting pattern. 

Then, of course, you could try to hug a tree - but what a whopper to hug!

All in all, we had a a wonderful time wandering in a couple of areas of the New Forest. I was a bit disappointed that we were not able to photograph the deer - even though we went to a recognized watching area. We did spot someone on the far side of the area who probably spooked them. But that's lady luck for you! 

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Lyndhurst and Alice in Wonderland

On our break in the New Forest, we stayed in a great place called The Stag, in the centre of the town. It was just great `all round`. The food was good, the staff brilliant and the accommodation comfortable, clean and quiet. We would go back another time if in the area.

We were amused by their preparations for Halloween which they appear to put a lot of effort into. 

This fellow was positioned in the entry hall, so that he detected your presence and started to dance and play his guitar - brilliant!

These two were in the restaurant / bar area along with numerous smaller objects dotted all around. Magic!

We didn't have time to explore Lyndhurst itself, apart from me wandering one afternoon to see their spectacular church on a mound looking down on the town. I saw it in passing and obviously (for me) had to have a look.

Situated at the top of the High Street, Lyndhurst Parish Church is dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels. For a village of modest size, it’s an incredibly imposing, Gothic, primarily red-brick structure with towering 160 feet high spire that can be seen for miles around.

Constructed between 1858-69, the Parish Church was designed by William White, and is well-known for its fresco by Lord Frederick Leighton showing the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, with biblical characters said to be modelled on local people. Other parts of the church were rather lost on me as I had to hurry a bit with a children's club about to start!

Although I have no images of them, apparently, there are fine Pre-Raphaelite windows designed by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Kempe. The west window is by Kempe. His signature, a wheatsheaf taken from the family coat of arms, can be seen in a triangular window below the rose. Shame I didn't have time.

Evidence of Lyndhurst’s earlier Parish Church can be seen within the present building, for a number of memorial tablets were taken forward, including one designed by John Flaxman, R.A. commemorating the life of Sir Charles Philip Jennings, Bart, who lived at nearby Foxlease, and others connected with past owners of Cuffnells and Northerwood House.

I have seen many angels on ceilings of churches, these were huge - life size in fact.

The grave of Alice Liddell, who inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Although the grave inscription refers to ‘Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves', it was Alice’s married name. She died in 1934 at the age of 82 and is buried in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels Church where her sons were christened. She lived in the New Forest village with her husband Reginald Hargreaves, a Hampshire cricketer, for almost 50 years.

So now for the story.

In 1856 the classical scholar Henry Liddell, of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, moved into Christ Church, Oxford, where he had been appointed dean. With him were his wife and their sizeable brood of children, the most interesting of whom in the light of developments was their second daughter, Alice. The family soon became close friends with one of the Christ Church bachelor dons, the mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Himself the eldest brother of eight siblings, Dodgson got on well with children, who liked him and relished his ability to tell them strange, exotic and engagingly whimsical stories.

On that particular July day, when Alice was ten, she and two of her sisters set out from Folly Bridge in a rowing boat with the 30-year-old Dodgson and a friend of his, a Trinity College don called Robinson Duckworth, along the Isis for a picnic at Godstow. On the way the girls asked Dodgson to tell them a story and he responded with a tale he made up as he went along about the fantastic world that a girl called Alice discovered when she went down a rabbit-hole. The real Alice was so delighted that she asked him to write it down for her, which he presently did, with some extra episodes added, as well as his own illustrations. He later showed Alice’s Adventures Under Ground to his friend, the Scottish author George Macdonald, whose children were so taken with it that Dodgson was encouraged to look for a publisher. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland duly came out from Macmillan in 1865 under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, which was arrived at by a complicated process that involved turning the names Charles Lutwidge into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus and inverting them. The book had the benefit of amazing illustrations by John Tenniel. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There followed in 1871. The two works are among the most popular and most famous children’s books in the English language and, like the best children’s literature, are also loved by adults. An authority on the subject and a children’s writer himself, the late Roger Lancelyn Green, called them ‘the perfect creation of the logical and mathematical mind applied to the pure and unadulterated amusement of children...’

There is no doubt that Alice Liddell gave her name to the fictional Alice, though Dodgson always denied that he intended a portrait of her. The fictional Alice had the same birthday as the real one, May 4th and, in the poem in Through the Looking Glass that starts ‘A boat beneath a sunny sky,’ the first letter of each line spells out the real Alice’s full name – Alice Pleasance Liddell. Incidentally, it also seems that the character of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass owed something to the Liddell children’s alarming governess.

The friendship between the Liddells and Dodgson had broken down in 1863, for reasons that are not clear – the relevant page in his diary was cut out by one of his descendants – but it may be that Mrs Liddell was uneasy about him and Alice. Polite relations were resumed after a few months, but the earlier warmth did not return.

Still to come in 1876 was another masterpiece, The Hunting of the Snark. Dodgson also published other volumes of poetry, as well as learned books on mathematics, and he invented gadgets, puzzles and games, including a forerunner of Scrabble. He remained a bachelor to his death in 1898, a few days before his 66th birthday. Quantities of ink have been spilled on what exactly was the nature of his feelings for Alice Liddell and the many other young girls he knew and loved. He was an excellent photographer and his liking for taking photos of young girls in the nude makes it hard not to think that there was a deep core of sexual feeling there, but the evidence strongly suggests that this was never openly manifested and that he never molested any of them.

Alice Liddell grew up a beauty and in the 1870s she seems to have attracted Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, but nothing came of it, though he was later godfather to one of Alice’s sons. In 1880 she married a man called Reginald Hargreaves. Dodgson sent them a wedding present. When Hargreaves died in 1926 Alice was so short of money that she put the manuscript of Alice’s underground adventures that Dodgson had given her up for auction at Sotheby’s. It fetched £15,400 (equivalent to £450,000 or more today). 

 A memorial plaque can be found in the cemetery dedicated to her life, which reads: “Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves, the “Alice ” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.”

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Morwellham Quay - The Victorian mining village

Today, a visit to Morwellham Quay. Firstly, a brief description of today's destination which is an historic river port in Devon that was developed to support the local mines. The port had its peak in the Victorian era and is now run as a tourist attraction and museum. It is the terminus of the Tavistock Canal and has its own copper mine. The open-air museum includes the restored 19th-century village, the docks and quays, a restored ship, the George and Charlotte copper mine which is toured by a small train, a Victorian farm and a nature reserve with trails.

In July 2006, UNESCO (the cultural arm of the United Nations) awarded World Heritage Site status to the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape area. Morwellham is strategically sited at the centre of the Tamar Valley Mining District which, together with nearby Tavistock, forms the easternmost gateway area to the rest of the World Heritage Site.

The site has been imaginatively preserved to give an impression of Victorian industrial and rural life. The assayers' offices have been carefully preserved and Victorian cottages, farm and schoolrooms presented. The ore-crushing plants driven by a 32-foot overhead waterwheel can be seen. A battery electric-powered tramway, constructed as part of the tourist attraction in the 1970s, takes visitors for tours on a single level of the copper mine. Old lime kilns can also be seen.

The day that we visited was dull and overcast for most of the day. However, we enjoyed immersing oursel;ves in the history of the place. We did go on the train into the mines, which was certainly worth doing. How did people spend their lives underground and working in those conditions?

Now for a small piece of history:

The port was originally set up by the Benedictine monks of Tavistock Abbey, which was founded in 961, to carry goods to and from Plymouth on the River Tamar, since the River Tavy was unnavigable. From this point it grew and grew.

By the 12th century, tin ore was being transported through the quay, followed by lead and silver ores in the 13th century.Later, copper deposits were also discovered at the Quay itself and the George and Charlotte Mine opened in the 18th century. In addition, by 1800, manganese deposits were being extracted from the northern and western edges of Dartmoor and being brought to Morwellham.

By the end of the 18th century, the trail of pack horses across the rugged terrain was too much, and in 1817 the 4.5-mile-long Tavistock Canal was opened. The canal included a 1.5-mile tunnel which ended 237 feet above the quay at Morwellham. From here an inclined plane was constructed to bring the iron barges down to the quay, powered by a water wheel.

Morwellham Quay was at its peak during the time Devon Great Consols (the copper mine) was in production. The mine was only four miles north of the port and shipped copper and later arsenic via the quay for a period of almost 60 years beginning in 1844. Morwellham became known as the "richest Copper port in Queen Victoria's Empire", and the queen herself visited in 1856. Another inclined plane was built to transport the ore down the hill and a new quay was added to handle the 30,000 tons of ore that were exported each year. Arsenic was also extracted, and it became the world's largest supplier of the mineral in the latter part of the century. However, by 1903 the Consols' wealth was exhausted and the mines closed.

By this stage, the railways had taken over and Morwellham's usefulness was also ended. The canal tunnel was used as a water supply for a hydroelectric plant and the inclined planes were abandoned.

The Victorian school - I don't think it would go down too well today!

The privy

Some barrels outside the blacksmiths

The village pub where we had a great meal

This small lime kiln it thought to have built around 1787 and worked up until 1857, by that time the centre of the village where the kiln is situated was congested with buildings and the canal inclined railway ran alongside the kiln, not the best place to burn lime, so the kiln fell into disrepair. The kiln was restored in the 1990’s.

The 32 ft (9.8 m) overshot water wheel, which once powered a mill for crushing locally mined manganese.

Victorian Shop interior

The Garlandstone

The Garlandstone today can be seen in dry dock at Morwellham awaiting the go ahead for a major restoration project.

It is a gaff-rigged sailing ketch, typical of the kind of craft that carried copper from Morwellham round to Wales for smelting. Built by James Goss, in his boat yard, about 2 miles downriver near Calstock, her design was based on the boats carrying cargo up and down the Tamar in the mid 19th Century. Launched in 1909, she was the last cargo-carrying sailing vessel to have been built in the West Country. She was named ‘Garlandstone’ by her first Captain after a rock off the coast of Pembrokeshire and is considered to be a masterpiece of subtle design; elegant, yet strong and serviceable. She is 76 feet long, 20 feet wide, draws 4 feet unladen and 9 feet when fully laden, with an unladen weight of 75 tons and a cargo capacity of 100 tons. She carries eight sails in total: two on the mizzen, two on the main, a stay-sail and three on the bowsprit. She had a crew of just three men. Garlandstone had a varied life mainly carrying cargo between Ireland and the Bristol Channel. She is a rare survivor of Goss’s work, having continued to work through two world wars and up until the 1960’s.

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