Lieux de memoire.

Lavenham 

  

Upper Bridge Street, Wye, Kent

This morning, [21/05] to a superb U3A talk called Boom and Bust in Mediaeval Lavenham by Jane
Gosling. I was particularly impressed by the quality and variety of the speaker’s photos of the many mediaeval buildings in the large village. Several featured various Crown Posts in different houses and suddenly, seeing them, I was taken back to my own much-loved old house in Wye, in Kent. I had left in early 2015 after over thirty years in the timber-framed semi-detached late fifteenth century house on one of the main streets in the village. I could barely afford to buy it originally but felt it to be historically, a dream house for me, with its beams, inglenook, Crown Posts et al. Despite strenuous modernisation, much of the original remained to be treasured and enjoyed over the years and it became one of a very small number of homes in my life which I have totally loved. Eventually, when I was eighty, I accepted that it was becoming a little too hard to care for it and I could see that, quite soon, it would become an increasing burden.

Crown: upper part of an arch
Post: upright support

Happily for me, this realisation gradually happened and coincided with a sudden impulse to live in Bruges which I had visited, and admired, every year for over twenty years and the excitement of making that adventure happen, quite took the edge off bidding farewell to my much-loved old house. Almost painlessly, I left, to remember it so fondly, but this morning’s photos of Crown Posts in the Lavenham lecture, called up the strongest desire to picture dear old No 1 and the Crown Post to which I awoke every morning for so long! It evoked a sudden, almost visceral, longing, not to return, but to savour the memory and the reflections and reminiscences it called up.

Now, all of this Crown Post remembering calls to mind the concept of “home” which has a strong connection to the image of “house.” When I think of my childhood home, I remember the house which was familiar and always there but which I don’t particularly remember admiring in any aesthetic sense, [it was just ‘there’] though I did love the garden; the “side-piece” adjoining the long garden which wasn’t ours, though we girls colonised it with our miniature patches of gardens; and the front lawn with the large Buddleia tree and its myriad summer butterflies where we so enjoyed our joint July birthday parties at the long, borrowed table. All of that was loved but the most important feature about a home is the person, or people, who make it home plus

Part of my childhood home minus front lawn. 2017.

the feelings associated with that person, and by extension, that home. And that, for my sisters and me, was our mother. One safely protective, always loving, adult was enough to make our home which

embraced us, and remains still, part of my precious internal landscape of memory.

Similarly recalled with strong feelings of attachment and love is the large house and garden where my children grew up; a happy, busy, spacious home with a garden garlanded with many trees and shrubs, ivy-covered old stone walls, a large pond [or little lake] with a stream, lawns and a Victorian greenhouse beloved by only me, I think! For a time we had a small boat made and loaned by a friend and for more years than I can remember, the daring swoop over the pond of an aerial ride, made by my husband to the astonished delight of the children, and much admired by young visitors too.

Waingroves Hall, Derbys.
Georgian-built, late 1700s, probably constructed around
the original Jacobean Clayton House; Victorian entrance porch
added c 1880/90.


Readers should find:
Geneology Blog: Robyn and the Genies
Waingroves Hall, Derbys.
Monday 26 October 2015 entry.
where an embarrassment of riches awaits.

Woensdagmarkt 9, Brugge
My apartment was on the top (floor 3rd)  behind the seven windows
with an eighth around the right-hand corner.
The terrace was hidden behind the top left corner of the building.
I meant never to leave, till old age intervened!

A Little World Apart

Recent arrival; cosmos

The arrival of Spring has brightened my terrace beyond imagining. For a season much-anticipated, Spring still manages to surprise. My roof-top garden is treasured both for its aesthetic value but also because it gives me, in a small second floor apartment, an ‘outside’ where blackbirds and pigeons occasionally visit, where fresh air feeds the lungs; where I can sit or work or linger to savour the views, perhaps the part of the cathedral tower which is visible or a peep at the next-door terrace to check on their display! It is, in fact, the very heaven to settle in a not-too-comfortable chair, embalmed by cushions, to enjoy my evening Duvel while I read or think. There is always a calm beauty about the terrace but at this time of year, there is extra delight in the increasingly rampant foliage which seems to have doubled in size and variety on certain plants while unremembered little blooms shyly decorate emerging shrubs. Somehow, to wander my tiny ‘estate’ provides both a daily reunion with the plants and the views, and a simultaneous celebration of their beauty. And the world beyond seems refreshingly further away; somehow, below me!

My sister and I playing Mah Jong on
the Bruges terrace in 2018.
She is very appropriately attired.

When I lived in Kent, my small courtyard garden which contained both a small proper garden and a brick courtyard filled with pots of shrubs and young trees, was much loved. I said Goodbye, I thought, to all things earthy when I left, but then I found a wonderful rented flat in Bruges where I moved to live. It was large, central, with great views and, amazingly, had a large terrace which overlooked the nearby convent garden as well as the mediaeval square in front of the building. There began my education in terrace gardening which is similar, though slightly different, from proper gardening!! When eventually garlanded with flowers and foliage, it became a favourite space to entertain visiting friends and family as well as a perfect bower for solitary pursuits. Even doing my Dutch homework was almost tolerable out there!

It did not occur to me that I could find a small apartment with a terrace, in Bury St Edmunds, when increasing age made it sensible to leave Beloved Brugge. But thanks to family living locally, I had no need to look far and I speedily ‘discovered’ my present home with the long roof-top terrace described above AND the tiny terrace off the kitchen accessed via the small glass folding wall.

The Bury terrace with much-travelled
charming statue.

Entrance view of the roof terrace ....

A most decorative standard laurel,
complete with curly stem,
on the tiny kitchen terrace.

... and the far [street] end of the roof terrace.

Adolescent Anxiety

 

As a nonagenarian, my own adolescence is far away; the adolescence of my children [all now in their sixties] seems pretty distant; that of my grandchildren, is much closer but was not closely observed by me as I have lived a distance away from them, though I did hear the occasional tantrum and witness dramatic despair which soon seemed to pass. SO I haven't observed familial teenage sadness myself but I seem to constantly read about it or hear of it on the radio. And we do know that adolescence is a huge transitional period for children when emotions are in a semi-permanent state of flux. But it seems there is an epidemic now, according, at least, to journalists of negative mental health outcomes. And I am stunned to read current statistics which show, for instance, that in 2023, the numbers of children and young people referred to mental health services reached a record high. NHS England record a shocking 20.8% of women aged 17-19 with an eating disorder while rates of hospital admission for girls and young women for self harm, have risen dramatically. [Adolescent boys’ numbers have risen slightly less dramatically.]

And then there is loneliness. Historically, people’s social networks shrink with age. Mine certainly have, in common with the majority of those in their eighties but, abnormally, the number of children reporting feelings of loneliness at school have more than doubled between 2012 and 2018, while Britons between 16 and 29 are more than twice as likely to report feeling lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’ as those above 70. Real and continuing loneliness can obviously be a worrying prelude to depression, mental health problems and the possibility of suicide. Unbearable thought! Is it chiefly that adolescent despair is talked about more in public and in print than in former times? Certainly public discussions about emotional states and problems ARE more common [I tend to think of it as the Americanisation of the public debate; some would say “the normalisation” of the concept.]

Looking back historically, the much stronger belief in society, in God and Church and religion may well have been a strong indicator of societal belonging as well as providing the expectation that Divine help was reliably near. Modern society is highly
individualised and atomised now, and religion much less widely followed, especially in Britain, than formerly. The wider consideration of other contributors to loneliness gives us poverty and economic insecurity; zero hour contracts; short term as opposed to one year plus, or permanent, jobs; the disappearance of youth clubs and community youth outreach; libraries and municipal swimming pools. Life in a deeply unequal world beset by austerity, has consequences particularly for the vulnerable.

Ian Russell: campaigner.

Which is where, no doubt, social media make an entrance. Teens spend several hours a day on their smartphones, often communicating with friends; their I-phones are their dearest possessions providing instant connection to TikTok et al. But the providers of the online world do not have the positive social connection of their users as their main raison d’etre; they are there to beat competitors and make money. And what can, and often does, happen is that social media use can isolate people from the flesh-and-blood community around them; can lead individuals to unhealthy places [witness the utter sadness of Molly Russell helped to commit suicide at 14 after viewing thousands of posts promoting suicide and self-harm]; can encourage anti-social behaviour by providing a willing audience for self-hype and undisciplined abuse directed at others. 

Molly Russell’s father, Ian, has become a campaigner for internet safety, calling for tech firms to be held legally responsible for exposing children to harmful content. And the Online Safety Bill of October 2023, establishes that social media companies have a statuary duty to ban illegal content aimed at children. These are hopeful signs of wider protective action afoot.

Gaza Revisited.

 

Conflict

I have recently tidied up both my filing system and various individual files. In doing so, I have come across a most interesting newspaper clipping dated 16/08/2014. It IS interesting but in fact, it is also riveting. I have obviously saved it because of its powerful testimony at the time but now, a decade later, it resonates with an uncanny eloquence given the present war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. It is written by the following people:

Jewish women and children arriving in Auschwitz 1943

Hajo Meyer, survivor of Auschwitz; The Netherlands.

Henri Wajnblum, survivor and son of an Auschwitz victim from Lodz, Poland. Belgium.

Norbert Hirschhorn, refugee of Nazi genocide and grandson of three people who died in France during WW2, and whose mother died in Auschwitz. London.

Suzanne Weiss, survivor after hiding in France; whose mother died in Auschwitz. Canada.

Felicia and Moshe Langer, survivors from Germany. Moshe survived five concentration camps. Other family members were exterminated there. Germany.

Michael Rice, child survivor, son and grandson of survivors. United States.

Plus 30 Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide and 260 children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and other relatives of survivors. [Full list at: ijsn.net/gaza/survivors-and-descendants-letter/]

Stutthof  Concentration Camp, near Gdansk, Poland
Post war, 1945.

The 2014 letter reads:

As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of Nazi genocide, we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonisation of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

Women and children walk towards the gas chambers,
Auschwitz 1943.

We are alarmed by the racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society which has reached fever pitch. Politicians and pundits of the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians, and right wing Israelis are adopting neo-Nazi insignia. Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages [Advertisement, August 11; Report, August 11] to promote blatant falsehoods used to justify the unjustifiable. Nothing can justify bombing U.N. shelters, homes, hospitals, universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.

We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism. We call for an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again,” must mean “Never again for anyone.”

Israeli/Gaza conflict 2014.

From Al Jazeera
"Criticism of the Israeli war and occupation is 
not anti-Semitism."

The Oxlip, County Flower of Suffolk

 

Engraving of an Oxlip plant

This was the first glimpse of carving to come

I have resumed my early morning walks, generally through the Spring-green Abbey Gardens and found, just beyond the West Front old houses, past the olive tree in flower, the tall cherry tree stump, its branches removed several months ago. It had puzzled me previously as to why the denuded trunk had been left. But now I see why!! Local wood-carver, John Williams, has begun his skilful work on the tall stump, and an oxlip flower carving is emerging! In fact, his entire design includes the profile of the Green Man, an environmental guardian, presenting the oxlip in cupped hands, to Nathaniel Hudson who founded the Bury St Edmunds botanic gardens in 1831. The carver’s aim is to finish this imaginative arboreal work of art by July.

The five-flowered Oxlip or
Primula Elatior

The oxlip is, in fact, the county flower of Suffolk, voted as such in 2002 following a poll by wild plant conservation charity, Plantlife. Its biological name, Primula elatior, signifies its membership of the primula family while ‘elatior’ suggests height. Its preferred habitat is open woodland and meadows, with damp earth for its roots though it grows happily on cow dung. Its common name comes from the Old English ‘oxan’ and ‘slyppe’ which may well refer to the fact that oxlips are often found growing on dung and in boggy pastures used by cattle. Alas, there has been a gentle but steady reduction in the density of oxlip plants in East Anglian in woodland sites over several centuries. Changes in climate, woodland management practices and the intensity of deer grazing are all likely factors in its decline. Oxlips colonise newer woodlands very slowly so it is hoped that the current trend towards the protection and retention of remaining patches of ancient and semi-natural woodlands will bear results.

The oxlip is not to be confused with the cowslip (Primula veris) which can easily be mistaken for the oxlip but has deeper yellow flowers which don’t all face the same direction as is the case with the five oxlip flowers. Leaves are very similar in shape but taper and do not stop abruptly like those of the oxlip. Cowslips are also more common than oxlips and can be found across much of the UK. while the oxlip, with its rare and charming flowers, grows only in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, blooming in April and May. The Oxlip is a nationally scarce species and is classed as ‘near threatened’ in Britain. As an early flowering plant, it provides nectar for early emerging bees and butterflies which will in turn pollinate the plant. It was traditionally used to treat coughs and rheumatism though nowadays, its compounds are thought to have antibacterial properties.

The charming cowslip which seems to be appearing,
planted among the grasses in and around the
Abbey Gardens and surrounds. It seems more
robust in structure and more yellow in flower
than the Oxlip.

The Oxlip carving so fae.

POST SCRIPT

September 7th, 2024

Meanwhile, the leaves are a different
bright green

Suddenly, this last week, the artist has 
coloured the stems  of the carved oxslips
a very bright yellow-green and the flowers
white with yellow.

                                      Not at sure I like this brashier late addition; considering it!

River Danube Cruise

 April 4-11, 2024

Our sleek home for a week 

Esztergom
Day 2

There has been a hiatus with the blogs as I have been away cruising on the peaceful River Danube finishing, nourished by the cultural sights seen, but weakened by the week-long physical effort. Since returning I have been ill, unbelievably, with a second visitation from the dreaded bronchitis.

My first river cruise experience was on the whole, great! Loved our cabin on the highest deck, with its glass wall and door overlooking the river and the shores beyond. Could not believe that the huge boat with around 156 passengers on board, plus crew, could possibly glide along the river without sound or apparent engine control noise in the background. It rendered the many gazing hours aboard, silently magical. The cuisine was fantastic as one realised that this nautical palace was, in effect, a marvellous up-market hotel-on-water!! The daily visits to nearby cities or occasional monasteries were eye-opening in the discovery of such elegant, often huge, always imposing, Gothic and Baroque buildings and city centres spaces, Local guides at each stopping point were splendid too, so knowledgeable and informative.

Bratislava
Day 3

Durnstein and Melk Abbey
Day 4

 

However, this latter benefit was also two-sided, Janus-like, for Cait and me. Neither of us really liked being in Group Two with perhaps thirty others, for instance, trailing with our tiny radio-reception kits, listening to the guide and picking out the high spots of the view indicated, around us. We were torn! The information we wanted but not the ambient, accompanying audience. Each time, eventually, we quietly peeled off the edge of the group and did our own thing. I imagine we missed out on some interesting facts but we hugely enjoyed wandering the centres, stopping for coffees at outside tables to watch the world go by. We became, in effect, happy flaneuses, lucky to have sunny, warm weather each day and the delight in individually exploring new cultural sights.

 

 

Vienna showing the New Danube; Danube Island; the
old Danube [left to right]
Day 6.

Salzburg
Day 5

Budapest from the Danube
Day 7.

One of our favourite treasures to behold was the Blue Church in Bratislava which was inexplicably omitted by the group tours. It is the church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and its style, sometimes known as Hungarian Secession, is repeated in the nearby grammar school on Grösslingová Street. Originally indeed, the Blue Church was the chapel for the Gymnasium. Both were designed by Budapest architect Edmund Lechner and built in the early twentieth century (the church foundation was laid in 1909 and consecrated on 11 October, 1913). Both the interior and exterior of the church are painted in shades of pale blue and decorated with blue majolica; even the roof is tiled with blue-glazed ceramics. 

Entrance to the Blue Church

The structure also incorporates a 36.8-metre round tower. Graceful lines and additional architectural attributes in the French Art Nouveau style popular in Europe between 1890 and 1910, give the building a truly fabulous look. It is believed that the architect, Eden Lechner, was probably a member of the Masonic fraternity. The interior of the church is literally strewn with various Masonic symbols: Here you will find the “all-seeing eye”, and the six-pointed star of Bethlehem, and the “radiant delta”, pentagrams and others. Even the choice of colours is associated by many precisely with the architect’s Masonic preferences. White for the Masons symbolizes purity, and blue is the colour of being chosen.

Blue pews continue the
colour scheme.

The 'all-seeing eye'
Mosaic above side entrance to the
Blue Church.

In the imposing cities we visited, all on or near the Danube, we saw so much to savour in the historical Gothic and Baroque buildings everywhere, but the charm of the Blue Church lingers.

 

 

Suffolk's Connection to Jamestown

Gosnold Memorial Plaque, Abbey Gardens, on the
Charnel House wall.

There is an interesting memorial plaque on the wall of the Chapel of the Charnel House in the Great Graveyard of the Abbey, Bury St Edmunds, which was erected in 2007 as part of the celebrations to commemorate the founding of Jamestown, the first British colony in the state of Virginia, U.S.A., in 1607. I have been intending to follow up researching this sign since I arrived in Bury St Edmunds but only now to the task! Astonishing to realise that the man behind the founding of Jamestown was a local lawyer, Bartholomew Gosnold, born at the family seat, Otley Hall near Grundisburgh in Suffolk in 1571. A member of a wealthy family, he had

Otley Hall

been educated at Jesus College in Cambridge University and subsequently studied law in the Middle Temple. It was probably at Cambridge that Gosnold met John Brereton a friend who accompanied him on his initial voyage of discovery in 1602 when he became the first Englishman to land on the coastline of Virginia.

A likeness of Bartholomew Gosnold
from Jamestown Museum

In 1595, Bartholomew married Mary Goldinge, of Bury St Edmunds, grand-daughter of Sir Andrew Judge, a wealthy London merchant and Lord Mayor of London in 1550-51. Mary’s wealthy cousin was Sir Thomas Smythe, founder and Governor of the East India Company and of the Virginia Company and thus, through the powerful family connections of his wife, Gosnold had moved from being a mere member of the Suffolk gentry to a strong national position of influence and power. Bartholomew’s brother, Anthony, accompanied him to Virginia in 1602, as well as a cousin, also Anthony Gosnold and though his brother died quite quickly, the cousin Anthony was still living in Virginia in 1615. In 1597, at the request of his uncle Robert, Gosnold joined the expedition of the second Earl of  Essex, Robert Devereux, to the Azores. It was not a success but Bartholomew spent several months afterwards in privateering, gaining some knowledge about navigation as well as piracy! In any event he managed to find investors who trusted him to lead an expedition to New England in 1602. 

Part of John Brereton's
1602 record of Gosnold's
first venture.
Now faded but still precious
after 422 years.

In both the Elizabethan and Stuart ages, exploration and colonisation were essentially private endeavours. The Crown did not share the huge expense involved but it did subsequently grant monopolies to an individual or corporation to develop and exploit an area or product, from the colony, selected by the Crown; obviously a potentially profitable venture, commercially. So a would-be coloniser like Gosnold had to raise significant amounts of money before gathering together the essentials for the long and dangerous trip into the unknown. There were considerable financial risks for the backers and obviously extraordinary physical and financial risks for the explorers /colonisers. Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, lost £40,000 in founding the Roanoke Colony, pledging still more to attempt to find and save the lost settlers. Hundreds of years later, it still astounds an observer today, that there were men brave enough, perhaps foolhardy enough, to sail into the unknown in search of new lands to settle, in the face of danger, loss and death. What seems to have been fundamentally needed for this early exploration and colonisation as well as courage, were wealth and the desire for gold and glory!

The choice of Virginia was not by chance. In the mid 1590s, Edward Hayes had written a report for Lord Burghley setting forth the rationale and procedure for would-be colonisers. The principal recommendation was that settlements should begin in North Virginia because the area’s climate compared well with the conditions and practices familiar to English settlers. Its agriculture was similar to that of England; the coast of New England produced a wealth of fish, prized in Europe, and therefore supportive of initial foothold success and eventual commercial profit. Captain Gosnold obtained backing to attempt to found an English colony in the New World and in 1602 he sailed from Falmouth, Cornwall in Concord, a small bark, with 32 on board, bound for New England and what they hoped would be a new colony. Gosnold pioneered a direct sailing route due west from the Azores arriving at Cape Elizabeth on the southern coast of Maine on 14th May 1602 intending to  set up a small fishing outpost with 20 of the crew. On the 15 May, he sailed into Provincetown Harbour which he named Cape Cod after the abundance of fish in evidence and soon sailed on, following the coastline for several days and discovering Martha’s Vineyard, which the group explored but found uninhabited. Gosnold named the area after his deceased daughter, Martha, and also after the extensive growth of wild grapes covering much of the land.

Faded map of Martha's Vineyard. Drawn two hundred
years after Gosnold discovered and named it.

Gosnold spent several years after his return to England promoting a more ambitious attempt; through his influential family contacts, he obtained from King James 1 an exclusive charter for a Virginia Company. To form the core of what would become the Virginia Colony of Jamestown, he recruited his brother, Anthony, his cousin-by-marriage, Edward Maria Wingfield, as well as John Smith [who eventually became Governor of Jamestown after Wingfield] in addition to the members of the 1602 expedition. Gosnold served as vice-admiral of this Merchant Taylor, three ship contingent. Gosnold also obtained the support of Matthew Scrivener, a cousin of Edward Maria Wingfield who became Acting Governor of the new colony but who drowned in a sad accident in 1609 along with Anthony Gosnold, Bartholomew’s brother.

Gosnold was popular among the colonists and opposed the choice of site for the colony at Jamestown Island as he perceived it to be an unhealthy location but was anyway appointed a member of the resident council for the new settlement. He was, however, over-ruled about the choice of location by Edward Maria Wingfield, President of the Council but Gosnold nonetheless, helped design the fort for the initial colony. He died from malaria [some sources say ‘dysentery and malnutrition’] four months after the party landed on 22 August, 1607, rather sadly underlining his opinion of the unsavoury climate of the new Jamestown location. By the first winter of 1607, only 50 of the original colonists remained alive and the colony suffered continuing hardship; Jamestown did not prosper until the 1640s.

In 2003 Preservation Virginia announced that its archaeological dig at Jamestown had discovered the likely location of Gosnold's grave outside the James day fort. A skeleton the dig found was of a white European male in his late thirties, between 5 feet and 5 feet 6 inches tall, buried between 1607/10; carefully aligned in the coffin was the ceremonial staff of an officer. Grave goods were never buried at this time and though the description of the skeleton could have applied to five of the original explorers, it had been recorded that Gosnold was buried "with full military honours." DNA testing was abandoned after attempts to match Gosnold's with his sister's in Suffolk proved unsatisfactory, perhaps because of the age of the remains.

Gosnold's grave, established in 2005/6

 

Painting of the early Jamestown settlement