Saltaire, England - Rydal, Sweden

2018 windows

Traditions New, Traditions Old
Saltaire Living Advent Calendar has been running since 2006. Villagers are invited to “release” their windows gradually between 1st and 24th December each year. I have posted pictures before of this experience and it has become a tradition to take friends and meander round the twilight streets, admiring the creativity and wit of the residents’ designs.

2018 windows

In another town far, far away
Other towns in the UK have developed their own tradition but in 2019, a direct link was made with another place in Europe. At Rydals Museum, on the banks of the river Viskan near the town of Kinna, in southern Sweden, museum staff met with the Saltaire Inspired Living Advent Calendar team to discuss expertise and arrangements for a window “swap.”

The Mark Council
Local dignitaries decided the local council (The Mark) wanted to include some decorative windows in their Town Hall and so some jolly competitiveness began!

2019 Swedish windows

Similarities
A theme of recent years is that we all have “More In Common” than we might think. Certainly the regeneration of Salt’s Mill from Titus Salt’s original vision into Jonathan Silver’s commercial and artistic community hub is also reflected in what has happened at Rydal Museum in Sweden. Originally Rydal’s was a spinning mill and now houses a museum, a meeting place, private businesses and craft boutiques.

Recovering from man flu
Much of December saw me laid low with a persistent cough, high temperature and feeble levels of energy so come the New Year it was a delight to take our customary stroll with the Thompsons round the 2019 Saltaire Advent Windows. Carrie Fisher and the Star Wars saga featured poignantly, as did the message “Keep Well” which I took to heart after my recent illness. Let’s hope 2020 proves to be less divisive year than 2019.

Did I have a 2019 favourite?
Of course the Swedish window (below top right) is a special favourite this year, as was the one quoting Shelley in the third picture from the top (If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?) (which, if I'm honest, was from 2018) but I am a sucker for dark silhouettes and I do like the one in the centre of the collage immediately above which shows a cat prowling across rooftops beneath a lurid moon. Flying off out of the top right of the design is one Father Christmas. No doubt he and the windows will be back next year.

"Truly Heart-stirring Relic"

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, begun in 1847, looks after key properties and materials today

September 1847
September always feels like a time of renewal – throughout my school years and my career as a teacher it always signalled the start of the new term, new books, new pens, turning over a new leaf. It signals the month when Autumn begins and the Summer fades fast. April, wrote T S Eliot in The Wasteland, “is the cruellest month” but for me April means my Mum’s and Sister’s birthdays and (not-so-secretly for those who know me) Shakespeare’s birthday on the 23rd April (which was also his death day and has been designated the feast of St George…) We often make unremarkable dates significant by remembering personal events – the first time or the last time we did something…. September also contains a historical twanging thrill for me, a secret celebration, I know, for many Shakespeare fanatics…. In 1847 an auction took place in London advertising the sale of “The Truly Heart-stirring Relic of a Most Glorious Period, and of England’s Immortal Bard.” What we now know as Shakespeare’s Birthplace was up for public sale and celebrities as grand as Prince Albert and Charles Dickens were promoters of “saving the house for the nation.” Stratford-upon-Avon has never looked back, though it was an uphill struggle to keep the project on track and every year sees challenges to the promotion of Shakespeare’s genius. One of my favourite blogs (The Shakespeare Blog by Sylvia Morris) details the struggle and the commemoration of the auction in 2017.

Shakespeare flirting with both Comedy and Tragedy in a Richard Westall painting at the Birthplace Trust and London scenes from recent visits to The Globe on the South Bank in London.

Undercliffe Cemetery

Magnificent Memorial
As part of this year’s Bradford Literature Festival, we booked onto a twilight tour of the famous Undercliffe Cemetery. The haunting site overlooks the city and contains impressive Victorian funerary edifices and tombs, as well as areas of neglected dilapidation. There are also over 200 military graves from different conflicts in history. The site features memorably in the 1963 film of Billy Liar.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
It’s hard not to reflect on humanity’s ambitions and the fleeting span of lifetimes as you contemplate the inscriptions and imagine the forgotten stories of the great and the good, the greedy and the vain, the humble and the tragic. In Victorian times Bradford was one of the richest cities in Europe because of the thriving textile industries; civic pride is evident as you wander across the enormous site. Six of the memorials have listed building status and the place is now run by the Undercliffe Cemetery Charity.

Iron Ring of Castles

Peaceful Now, Iron Ring Not Needed
Knowing that Edward I built his “Iron Ring of Castles” in this area of north Wales to control the rebellious Welsh is easy to forget when you stand on Conwy beach and look across to the Great Orme (the massive chunk of limestone rising up near Llandudno.) The beach has golden sandbanks and dunes, as well as charming bluebell walks to reach it from certain directions.

Penrhyn Castle (Castle Penrhyn)
Was NOT one of Edward I’s Iron Ring – in fact is is a Victorian pile with faux medieval features, but with the attraction of enchanting William Morris decoration and pre-Raphaelite paintings. The displays about the impact of the building of the railways and the use of the local slate quarry were compelling, probably because the information honestly and imaginatively confronted the slave trade’s role in contributing to the growing economy of the Pennant family in the 17th and 18th centuries.

From “pretend” Castle Penrhyn to Fortress Caernarvon
Sturdy Caernarfon (Canarvon Castle to English tongues) is a lynchpin of the Iron Ring and has been home to several important historical events, not least of which was the investiture of Prince Charles in 1969 and, five decades earlier in 1911, the future King Edward VIII, both becoming Prince of Wales. The mighty, heavily restored Caernarvon boasts Castillian octagonal turrets (no less than three on the Eagle Tower.) 

Multimedia Castle
Imaginative multi-media displays brought different periods of the castle’s history to life. There was a circular projection that helped fill in the timeline, a giant “chess board” depicting the ownership of the title “Prince of Wales”, a shadow-puppet pageant of Eleanor of Castille’s life and a dramatic depiction of Edward I’s manipulation (to his own ends) of the myths of King Arthur.

The Museum of the Royal Welch Fusiliers
Within the Castle is an account of the distinguished Welch Fusiliers (yes, spelled with a c not an s!) The regiment was raised in 1689 and the museum contains fascinating material, including an account of Jenny Jones and Mother Ross, women who dressed as men to fight beside their comrades. A goat has been the regiment’s mascot since 1777 and, since 1844 and Queen Victoria’s “gift,” the goat has always been a “royal goat.” The new royal baby, Archie, appeared in early May, so it seemed somewhat fitting that we were visiting one of Archie’s ancestor’s large-scale Defence of the Realm F-Off castles. Will Archie ever be crowned Prince of Wales? (As Seventh in line to the throne, it is unlikely but, then again, who would have predicted Edward VIII’s life choices back in 1911?)

Harriet was off camping on this holiday; and this pic includes the longest town name in the UK

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Sally, me, Harriet, Emily, Chris at Bolton Abbey bonfire 2017 - all pictures from the night by Emily, Harriet or Chris

Chariots of Fire
Fireworks to make the brain gasp…. food, drink and a mighty bonfire…. 2017 November 5th at Bolton Abbey. Mulled wine and stodgy snacks…. a treat of a night after a sunset walk along to the Strid and through the spooky woods.

No Flaming Guy
Happily there was no guy on top of the bonfire so Guido Fawkes (and my Primary School teachers) can rest easy. No “Let’s burn the Catholic” sentiments…. I assume Fawkes’s school in York, St Peter’s, continues to refrain from burning their former student. And there were no bones either, as far as I could tell, on the Bolton Abbey bonfire, even though that’s where the word comes from: bone-fire, the fire that burnt all the dug-up bones when medieval priests needed to make more room in the cemetery…. ah, the lovely traditions of the UK…. we’ll stop burning human bones after the Gunpowder Plot and instead celebrate the incineration of a particular Catholic who was caught red-handed in a London cellar on November 5th 1606.

36 barrels
The conspirators positioned 36 barrels underneath the House of Lords. Robert Catesby’s plot may well have succeeded had (probably) one member not warned off his brother-in-law. It’s possible the gunpowder might have been degraded so far as to be useless since the event kept getting postponed. But if Guy Fawkes (aka John Johnson – an excellent secret agent name!) had indeed lit the fuse and the explosion succeeded it would have taken out an area with a radius of 500m from the impact, certainly enough to kill the king and a great number of peers of the realm gathered for the State Opening of Parliament. Although the original cellar was destroyed in a fire during the Victorian period, the Yeoman of the Guard still parade through the cellars of Westminster, looking for explosive devices, in the hours before the State Opening of Parliament today.

Pope Day
Why don’t we commemorate Robert Catesby, the ringleader, rather than Guy Fawkes? The recent BBC dramatisation of events suggested Catesby was fuelled by personal revenge as much as political and religious belief. The design of the production certainly caught the tensions and paranoia throughout the land following the end of Elizabeth I’s long reign. And captured accurately the arbitrary and often violent punishments given to recusant Catholics. In America Bonfire Night was called “Pope Day” throughout the 17th Century.

Broken neck
Do we remember Guy Fawkes because James I apparently admired the guy for surviving two days of torture before finally (supposedly) making a confession? The Attorney General ordered that each of the (surviving) conspirators would be drawn backwards to his punishment, by a horse, with his head nearest the ground. They were then to be be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both" by cutting off their genitalia which would be “burnt before their eyes.” Their bowels would then be removed in full view and, if the condemned were still alive, their hearts would be removed. They would then be decapitated and their dismembered bodies displayed in “different corners of the land so that they might become prey for the fowls of the air and the instruction of all.” Guy Fawkes, refusing to have his bollocks removed whilst alive, jumped from the dismemberment platform to break his own neck.

Josh's Screaming Skull pumpkins and creations by neighbours

The U certificate rhyme

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot?

Impressive pumpkins by Harriet and friends

The (now-forgotten?) verses (note the later ones!)

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow

By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match
So, holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King!

A stick and a stake for King James’ sake
If you won’t give me one, I’ll take two
The better for me and the worse for you

A rope, a rope to hang the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him

What shall we do with him?
Burn him!
Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.

Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah!

Terrorists or freedom fighters?