Clockwork treasures from the Forbidden City

In November 2012 I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Forbidden City in Beijing at the end of a tour to see some of the last surviving real steam operations in China. I’m not sure how much homework I had done, but my reaction to discovering the zimingzhong in the Hall of Worshiping Ancestors was unequivocal:

The absolute highlight of my day was, rather unexpectedly, a visit to the exhibition of clocks in the Hall of Worshiping Ancestors. I was completely blown away by the utterly amazing timepieces on display – the most elaborate, inventive and beautiful clocks I have ever seen – and all utterly amazing in their own right. I had timed my visit for the day’s second display of working clocks (at 2pm) with about five clocks wound up for people to watch their extraordinary movements (towers rising, pieces twirling etc).

I had enthused endlessly on my return to the UK, but the trouble with such things is that you really need to see them for yourself to appreciate just how elaborate and utterly bonkers these are. I was therefore absolutely delighted to discover that 23 of these marvels would be going on display at the Science Museum in the exhibition Zimingzhong: Clockwork Treasures from China’s Forbidden City and that I could share my delight with friends and family.

Clockwork treasures on display at the Science Museum

The label of ‘clock’ hardly seems to do these justice, so I thought the exhibition title of ‘clockwork treasures’ particularly apt. These extraordinary creations, made in Britain and China during the 18th century for the emperors of China, have never been exhibited in the UK before.

Forget what you know about clocks on entering the exhibition and marvel at zimingzhong in the form of birds, rams, elephants, towers, temples and even a pond with three lotus flowers.

I thought it a particularly nice touch that various mechanical demonstrators had been set up around the exhibition to demonstrate how they worked, such as opening domes and waterflow mimicking features, which you could wind up and let go. Some of the zimingzhong had useful cutaways to show the mechanical marvels that lay inside, while others were demonstrated in videos provided by the Palace museum.

It is a real privilege to see these up close once again and marvel at the intricate details, crafted and assembled at extraordinary expense by highly skilled workers. It is mind-blowing to think that 1,500 of these zimingzhong exist in the care of the Palace museum and are lovingly looked after by the staff of the The Palace Museum Conservation Hospital.

I thought it was one of the most enjoyable exhibitions in a long time, so was rather surprised at how quiet it was when we visited, though to be fair it was Easter Monday. It is such a pity – these amazing creations deserve to be seen and appreciated. However, a quiet visit does allow you to get up close and marvel at the intricacy of the design.

Zimingzhong: Clockwork Treasures from China’s Forbidden City is at the Science Museum until Sunday 2 June 2024.

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Exploring in and around Southend

In my short stay in Southend-on-Sea I had time enough to explore a bit more of the local area, taking the time to enjoy the lovely walks along the coast to Chalkwell, Leigh-on-Sea and up to Hadleigh Castle.

The weather on Good Friday was distinctly grey and blustery, with the odd burst of rain, but the next day delivered blue skies and sun, far exceeding the weather forecasts. It was just warm enough for folk to head to the beach and there were queues at every pub in Leigh-on-Sea as folk came out to enjoy a little Easter sunshine.

The Crowstone

I was pleased to finally get around to visiting the Crowstone, having known about this for years. The Crowstone is one of those wonderful historical relics that you find dotted around the country, a granite obelisk erected in 1837 marking the limits of the City of London’s jurisdiction over the Thames. This replaced a post from 1755, which in turn was a replacement – with some accounts hinting at a succession of posts stretching back centuries before this. Indeed, the rights the stones were in place to protect were purchased by the City of London from Richard I in 1197.

At one time there was a tradition of the Lord Mayors of London coming out by boat to check on the Crowstone every seven years, accompanied by great festivities. The names of visiting Lord Mayors were then inscribed upon the stone. All of this ceased in 1857 when the Thames Conservancy took over control of the river. The Crowstone was never entirely forgotten though, and in 1950 a plaque was added by the Port of London Authority when the heavily worn and crumbling 18th century post that sat alongside was moved to a location inland, in the grounds of Prittlewell Priory.

In my time in the area I visited twice, once early in the morning at low tide, so I could get up close, and then later in the afternoon, at high tide, to appreciate just how much the water envelopes the stone (well remembering Diamond Geezer’s account of visiting at high tide). The blog A London Inheritance has a wonderful account of the Crowstone and its counterpart, the London Stone, on the opposite side of the Thames.

Another interesting spot just along the coast offers a sight of the minesweeper HMS Wilton, now adapted as the home of the Essex Yacht Club. HMS Wilton was the world’s first warship made from glass-reinforced plastic (leading to its nickname of HMS Tupperware). The warship was laid down on 7th August 1970, decommissioned in 1994 and purchased by the Essex Yacht Club in 2001.

Plaque on the Crowstone

The unexpectedly lovely weather had drawn many folk out onto the muddy footpaths up to Hadleigh Castle and once I made it into the ruins myself I soon appreciated just why. The grassed over courtyard made an excellent spot for picnics with fine views over the coast.

Hadleigh Castle (1215) was one of Edward III’s favourite residences, which he lavished with enormous sums to rebuild and refurbish in the 1360s. Among the new additions were two drum towers with bands of flint decoration. It’s hard to tell from the surviving drum tower, but these featured the latest in 14th century mod cons, including high quality tiles imported from Europe, large fireplaces, plaster ceilings and chandeliers. Even better, it was surrounded by prime parkland for hunting. All befitting of a residence that was a luxury retreat for the King in his later years as much as a defensive fortress guarding the Thames estuary.

When I visit castles I imagine that the decay has been the work of centuries, but here the rot had set in only three decades after the completion of the original building works and the reconstructions of Edward III were no more protected from these natural forces. The soft clay was never going to provide a stable foundation and landslips soon contributed to major structural problems which saw sections of the wall collapse and continued to cause problems to the very end. The castle had an ignominious end, sold off for building materials in 1551.

More of the castle was still standing when Constable visited in 1814, capturing the scene in his painting Hadleigh Castle (1829).

Hadleigh Castle

Finally, I returned to Southend to take a peek at the finds from the Anglo-Saxon prince’s grave uncovered in 2003, an extraordinary story told brilliantly at Southend Central Museum. The Princely Burial exhibition explains how archaeologists had opened up a small plot during preparatory works for a road widening scheme and remarkably hit upon an intact, timber lined, burial chamber.

The international significance of the find can’t be overstated. The burial chamber held the remains and grave goods of an Anglo-Saxon prince, the earliest discovered in England, as well as being the earliest Anglo-Saxon Christian burial in the country.

Copper alloy bowl found hanging on its original hook when the chamber was uncovered

The rich and exotic nature of the grave goods speaks volumes for the status of the individual in the grave, many having originating far from these shores, such as flagons from modern day Syria. The grave also contained the only piece of painted wood surviving from Anglo-Saxon England.

A wonderful interactive burial chamber app allows you to explore the finds and their positioning in the burial chamber in more detail.

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A ride on the Southend Pier Railway

The long Easter weekend presented an opportunity to get away for a couple of nights and tick off another destination from my long list, Southend-on-Sea. While this may seem like a strange choice, I have long wanted to see Southend Pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world at 1.34 miles, with its battery powered railway.

In one sense I have already been to the pier, having stopped off at the pierhead on a pleasure cruise in 2015 but have never actually travelled the length of the pier for myself. To right that omission I picked up a ticket for the first passenger service of the day (10.30) and travelled to the twin track station at the end of pier before wandering back on foot at my leisure in rather blustery conditions.

Southend Pier Railway

The first pier at Southend was opened in 1830, though it only acquired its record breaking length after a series of extensions in the 1830s and 1840s. This wooden pier was eventually replaced by an iron pier in 1890. It was at this point that an electric railway was added, running from a lower level station out to the pier head on a single 3ft 6in gauge track using carriages built by Brush traction of Loughborough.

A single track proved inadequate for the continually growing visitor numbers and in 1930 the existing passing loops were connected, doubling the track. This in turn required proper signalling, with two signal boxes constructed that were manned during operations. The railway continued with this arrangement through the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s but by 1970 the changing demand of holiday goers had seen one line taken out of use.

The greatest moment of peril for the pier came in 1976 when a fire at the Pierhead gutted at the wooden buildings. Two years later the council closed the railway and sold it for scrap, arguing it was too dangerous to use. In 1980 the council permanently closed the pier, prompting a campaign that drew in public figures like Sir John Betjeman, the first Honorary President of the National Piers Society. Sir John said that closing Southend Pier would be “like taking the lung out of a living person” and like “taking the lungs out of London.” In his view Southend Pier was a wonderful bit of engineering and utterly irreplaceable.

The campaign was successful. Southend Council found the funding needed and set about restoring the pier, commissioning a completely new railway. Southend Pier was re-opened by Princess Anne on 2nd May 1986, with one of the new diesel powered trains named after Sir John Betjeman. The new railway used a single 3ft gauge track with two tracks at each station and a passing loop at the midway point. Standing on the shore it is impressive to see how far it stretches out into the distance.

The Southend Pier Railway: The last service of the day returns from the pierhead

The pier can be accessed at two levels at the landside end. Walkers are steered to the upper deck, where they walk down a ramp onto the pier walkway, while train passengers are directed straight ahead to the two-track lower level station. The journey takes somewhere around 9 minutes to make the journey up the line to the Pierhead station, leaving you with a short walk up to the RNLI boathouse and shop at the furthest end of the pier.

In an interview in 1976 Sir John Betjeman waxed lyrical about the journey, describing it thus: “You find yourself, when you got to the end of it, at sea without having to be seasick. You don’t go up and down. The sea is just quietly whispering round you. When you get back on land again, it’s like coming away from abroad.”

It sounds wonderful the way he describes it. While I didn’t quite have that sensation, travelling at a low point of the tide it was impressive to see the sands stretch way out from the shore and yet for the train still to deliver us to a point out to sea. The walk back alongside the railway certain makes you appreciate the distance you travelled with such ease on board the train.

The view from the train

One of the original train carriages, fondly nicknamed ‘toast racks’, can be seen in the marvellous Southend Pier Museum, located under the railway station in the old workshops (accessed from a doorway to the right of the station entrance on the lower deck of the pier). The museum also contains an example of the streamlined trains that took over in 1949 (beautifully restored after it was discovered in North Wales) and the diesel powered trains that replaced them in 1986 (complete with in-cab video showing the drivers eye view of the journey along the pier). Todays railway runs using eco-friendly electric trains that arrived in 2021, powered by lithium batteries that are recharged each night.

It is well worth making the time to have a good look around the Southend Pier Museum as the volunteers have done a terrific job of telling the story of the pier and its remarkable survival despite a number of fires and ship collisions, as well as surprising facts like its renaming as ‘HMS Leigh’ during wartime. There are so many fascinating exhibits, from the sobering charred and molten remains from previous fires to a delightful collection of restored penny slot machines. The museum also includes a wonderfully reconstructed signal box from the Pier.

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip out to Southend and to have finally travelled the length of the pier and entirely agree with Sir John Betjeman’s view that this is a national treasure.

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Spring at Warkworth

The first hints of spring tempted me on an hour long bus ride out of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, heading north to Warkworth. Once the X18 bus had dropped me off at a stop on the edge of the village I took a wander over to my destination for the day, the impressive ruins of Warkworth Castle.

Warkworth is a pretty village today, with a population hovering somewhere around the 1,500 mark, so it is a little hard to imagine how much power was centred here back in the day. In its time Warkworth Castle was one of the most important castles in the north, home to the all-powerful Percy family. If you are not well versed in the noble dynasties of medieval England, then the name Harry Hotspur may be more familiar. The knight that Shakespeare elevated to legendary rebel in Henry IV, Part 1, was born as Henry Percy at Warkworth on 20th May 1364.

The Great Tower at Warkworth Castle

Unlike other places which have long since lost any sense of their medieval form, here you really feel the connection between village and castle, following the road up from the fortified 14th century bridge, past the 12th century church, along the stone-clad high street and up to the castle on the high ground above it.

The earliest sections of the castle are thought to date to the 1200s but the most impressive sight is the Great Tower, commissioned by Henry Percy (1341-1408), first Earl of Northumberland, which may have been designed by the same architect as Durham Cathedral. It survived intact until the late 17th century but was then stripped of useful material and left to ruin. As stunning a sight as it is today, we have to imagine how much more impressive it must have looked with all of its battlements, turrets and ornamentation intact.

Approaching the castle in the spring is a joy with daffodils planted up the outside slope running up to the Great Tower. To be honest, everything about the castle screamed magnificence in the morning sun – from the exterior walls, to the impressive 13th century gatehouse and then, once inside, the elaborate 15th century Lion Tower which prominently features the Percy Lion in a rich display of heraldic sculpture. At one time this would have led in to the hall range, now reduced to the merest hint of its layout traced through the base stones.

You can wander the Great Tower on three levels. On the ground floor are the service chambers, which includes the beer/wine cellars and food stores that you would expect, but also an accounting room which I can’t recall seeing in other castles. The accounting room was a secure and self-contained chamber, complete with its own toilet and a safe beneath the floor. On the upper two floors you have the kitchen, great hall, chapel and private chambers. It doesn’t take as long as you might expect to explore, but definitely needs a guide book or an audio guide to fully understand what you are looking at.

The entrance hall in the lowest level of the Great Tower

It is fascinating to think that this was once a fully functional everyday home, as the favoured residence of the Percys, despite having a larger, swankier and generally more prestigious pad just up the road at Alnwick.

The castle suffered quite a come down in the 17th century, reduced to a shelter for sheep and goats, but from this low eventually recovered with a phase of rebuilding directed by the Percys in the late 18th and 19th centuries (including the roofing of a couple of rooms in the Great Tower for use by the Percy family for picnics). It seems extraordinary to read in the guidebook that the Great Tower was even approved for use as an air raid shelter in 1940!

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the castle and my wander through the village afterwards. The castle may be a ruin today but it still impresses even in its diminished state.

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The 1940s time capsule beneath Rochester

It is often said that some of the most surprising sights in this country lay hidden away behind the least likely of doors. This was never more true than the doorway that took us from a rather unremarkable suburban landscape in Rochester into an astonishing underground complex.

The site of today’s visit (with Hidden History Tours) was a complex built by Shorts Brothers underneath their factory buildings ahead of World War Two to accommodate their 11,000 workers, linked up by connecting tunnel to an underground aircraft factory! The exact location is a secret, necessitated by the destructive acts of vandals who have broken in time and again.

A reminder of the incredible contribution of the Short Brothers at Rochester

The three Shorts brothers were farsighted enough to establish Britain’s first aircraft manufacturers, initially building an aircraft factory on the Isle of Sheppey. However, the site soon proved inadequate for the construction of the seaplanes and flying boats that would come to dominate air travel in the 1920s and 1930s. A new site at Rochester was acquired in 1913 with ample space for the workshops and concrete slipways to build these leviathans of the air, utilising the Medway for take off and landing.

It is hard now to believe that Rochester was the centre of aviation innovation in the early 20th century and what amazing sights you could see on the Medway, like the Empire flying boats designed to operate cross-Tasman services. I imagine it was like having the runway at Heathrow on your doorstep given the colossal scale of the planes roaring up from the water.

On first approach it feels like there is little evidence of the vast industrial complex that once stood here, now replaced by housing, but the slipways into the water remain as a last tantalising reminder of what once took place here. Thankfully there are plenty of photos and film footage that gives us a little glimpse of that world.

Footage from the British Pathé news reel archives gives us a little hint of the wonders that graced the Medway with the first trial flight of the Canopus at Rochester (1936), the visit of the Air minister to see the Canopus (1936) and the launch of the the Aotearoa at Rochester (1939). In a similar fashion, press reports recount the visit of King George VI and the Queen in March 1939, visiting the factory, the underground air raid shelters and getting to see the latest plane take off from the Medway.

One of a few minor obstacles on the way into the tunnel complex

There were originally eight entrances into the system when it was built in 1941, including one from the company playing fields. All but one have now been blocked up.

Once you enter the complex you immediately have a series of obstacles to tackle, ranging from sewage pipes to knee high wall openings, so this is not a neatly cleared and cleaned experience but all the more fun for it. Once you have made it into through what awaits is quite special. The air raid shelters here were built to an unusually high quality, with the tunnels lined with cement and white engineering bricks, then grouted with cement. They are still in remarkably good condition today.

On our tour of this part of the complex we were able to see the stores, decontamination area, ARP rest rooms, hospital, well room and control room. Our guide from Hidden History tours was able to show us a number of contemporary photos that give you much more of a sense of how these would have functioned in wartime, bringing it all to life.

Although the fittings have largely been removed, you can still see the wooden struts for the benches that would have lined the corridors and the remains of the ventilation and electrical system. In conjunction with the factory spaces, the two parallel 300m long tunnels of the air raid shelter (with 14 connecting cross tunnels) were intended to hold the 11,000 strong workforce and it has been suggested that 6,000-7,000 of these would have been seated.

The particular highlight of this tunnel is the sheer volume of graffiti that has been drawn onto the walls in pencil by the workers. This includes the tallies from card games, noughts and crosses, depictions of planes, names of sweethearts and even a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem rudely re-worked for wartime! Armed with our torches (there is no lighting) we eagerly scoured the walls for more examples.

A wartime reworking of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem ‘Excelsior’

Our tour guide has been running tours here for 10 years but said that he was still seeing new things after all this time. On this visit it was an image of Hitler re-imagined as the devil that caught his eye.

After leaving the air raid shelters behind we followed the 400m long connecting tunnel to the much larger factory spaces. This was comprised of two 100m long tunnels connected to four 75m long tunnels that ran up to the cliff face, providing an additional 12,000 square foot of workspace. We could see one of the unlined tunnels leading into the chalk, though stepping inside is not recommended.

The factory spaces were completed to a higher standard – whereas the air raid shelters had mobile toilets with curtains for privacy, the factory space had fully kitted out toilet cubicles with porcelain and cast iron toilet fixtures.

The Shorts factory closed down in 1948 with all operations now shifted to Belfast, but the buildings remained until the 1990s.

One of many artistic pencil drawn renditions of aircraft in the tunnels

In the years since then it has acquired a degree of fame among the urbex community and not troubled the headlines, except for an incident in 2010 when four youths found themselves lost in the tunnel system while a fire broke out in the Blaw Knox archives stored in the factory tunnels (the charred debris of papers and microfiche from that fire still coats the floor in some sections of the tunnels). Firefighters had to break through a breeze block wall to rescue them on that occasion.

It’s a fascinating complex to visit but one that really needs the expertise of a knowledgeable guide to make sense of. I’ve been on a few tunnel tours in my time but rarely encountered someone armed with the depth of knowledge of our guide from Hidden History tours.

I am extremely grateful to a work colleague who hails from the area for alerting me to this wonderful company and their excellent tours. Take my word for it, this is one place you don’t want to miss.

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Wrapping-up Durham and Newcastle

My short break in Durham and Newcastle has been a great way to re-connect with the place and visit some places that have been on my wish-list for so long that I had well and truly forgotten about them! However, it would feel wrong to finish up the trip without mentioning a few other highlights that I haven’t picked up on already.

The first day of my trip to Durham just happened to coincide with the Fire and ice festival in Durham which saw a trail of 10 ice sculptures installed around the city, so armed with a map handed out by a volunteer I set about tracing them. Now, these were not just your average ice sculptures but a rather amusing set of TV and film themed ice sculptures, so we had an ice dalek and an ice demogorgon! On top of this there was some impressive live ice carving of Sonic the hedgehog and a spectacular ice carving show.

Ice dalek

Understandably, most visitors to Durham focus on the Cathedral and the Castle, but it’s really worth seeking out the Durham World Heritage Visitor Centre located within Palace Green Library which provides to access to one of Durham’s hidden gems, the Cosin Library, and the wonderful Museum of Archaeology.

Cosin’s Library, founded in 1669, is the oldest surviving public library in the North East. Admittedly, the definition of public at this time was limited to the clergy and men of education, but it was still an important development in widening access to learned thinking. Once the university was established in 1832 the Cosin Library and neighbouring Exchequer Building became the university library.

Cosin’s Library

I was astonished to read that it was in the Cosin Library that the arrangement of bookshelves along the walls was a European innovation first introduced here. It’s something that we take for granted now that it’s hard to imagine that someone came up with this idea! It’s a beautiful space to visit too.

The Museum of Archaeology is relatively small, but features some cracking finds. The absolute star here was the Lanchester Diploma, discovered by a metal detectorist in County Durham in 2016, consisting of two inscribed rectangular bronze plates. It is the first complete Fleet Diploma discovered in the country, telling us about the career of Veluotigernus in the Roman navy, the second oldest known sailor in the country. A rare survival too, as most diplomas were broken up and passed on to family, allowing them to claim Roman citizenship.

One plate from the Lanchester Diploma

In addition to the sights I have already written about I also spent time in Newcastle, notably revisiting the castle which I haven’t set foot in for over twenty years. It was great to be reacquainted with the story of how the castle keep survived numerous threats and the arrival of the railway. Of course, it was also great to be remined of what a great view over the railway you get from the battlements too!

I’ve had a great time in the north east once again, but rather than shortening my list of places to see the list seems to grow ever longer as I discover new places and historic buildings to visit that I was not aware of. Not really a problem, as it is always a pleasure to come back.

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Inside Durham Castle

I have long wanted to take a peek inside Durham Castle, which is among the few building complexes with the rare distinction of being continuously occupied for almost a thousand years. First as as a castle, then as a palace and now as a university (the third oldest in the country). The castle looks stunning from the outside, but the interior includes some really stunning features that are well worth making the effort.

The only way to access the castle as a tourist, for most of the year, is through guided tours that can be booked online or through Palace Green Library if they have any availability left on the day. Slots for guided tours are only offered about a week or two in advance, so it can be tricky planning a trip around a visit, but I was lucky that everything fell into place on this occasion. If you happen to visit in the summer, outside of term time, there are self-guided tours available using audioguides.

Durham Castle

Our student tour guide took us through the gatehouse and into the courtyard for a bit of a history lesson, before leading us on a tour that lasted just under an hour, taking in the Norman Chapel, Tunstall Chapel, Tunstall Gallery, Black Stairs and Great Hall. The Keep tower, which looks impressive, was not on our itinerary but we were reassured that it really isn’t very exciting on the inside – mainly taken up by uninspiring student accommodation.

The Norman chapel, dating to the late 1080s, was the astonishing highlight of the visit. The chapel is the oldest surviving building in the city, supported by six stone columns with the most extraordinary carved capitals featuring medieval Christian symbols that include a hunted stag, lions, a snake, an ox and a mermaid. The mermaid is particularly interesting as it is believed to be the oldest depiction of such a creature in the world.

Carved stone columns in the Norman Chapel

Another Norman relic is the original ceremonial entrance to the castle which is now hidden indoors, located within the Tunstall Gallery. The archway was added to the castle in the 12th century and is an extremely fine example of its type and all the more incredibly, it is in really good condition.

To be clear, this is not one of those weathered Norman arches that you have seen in other locations giving hints of past glory. Instead, this arch still looks really sharp, albeit without the painted finish that would originally have given it a vibrant colour. It is thought that the reason for its exceptional condition is that it has been under cover most most of its existence – initially under a porch, then as part of the Tudor era gallery that made it a feature of the interior.

The neighbouring Tunstall Chapel was constructed in the 1540s and been extended and adapted in the centuries since. It’s a lovely space but it is the carved woodwork that really draws the attention here. The misericords (on the underside of the folding seats, designed for long spells standing at prayer) follow the usual practice of skilful and subversive carvings, with some fascinating choices of subject that include a pig playing the pipes and a man pushing his wife around in a wheelbarrow!

The Black Stairs

At the other end of the Tunstall Gallery we got to see another opulent feature of the castle, the Black Stairs. These ‘flying stairs’ were added in the 17th century to impress visitors to the restored castle, wowing with the way that they worked their way four storeys high without any need for vertical supports, relying completely on support from the exterior walls. The extravagance of the design was further cemented by the addition of magnificent woodwork pineapples (or at least, what the sculptors thought they looked like) which were expensive rarities at this time. Inevitably, the flying staircase developed a sag and vertical supports were added not too many years later.

Our tour of Durham Castle may have been short but it certainly packed in some incredible sights and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone, especially at the very modest price currently being charged (just £5 per adult at the time of writing).

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A stop at St Mary’s Lighthouse

On leaving the hall I made a short hop by bus to take a quick look at St Mary’s Lighthouse, just north of Whitley Bay. The lighthouse, operational from 1898 to 1984, sits on a small island reached by causeway that covers over at high tide. It was a splendid spot to stop off at and soak up the sun on a wonderfully clear winters day.

St Mary’s Lighthouse

The island sits within a local nature reserve and the island presents a perfect spot to observe roosting birds and seals basking on the rocks. As the causeway covered over the last few intrepid humans splashed their way through and a couple of birds took up a safe spot on the causeway, as if to say this was their territory once again. Among the birds you might spot are sanderling, dunlin, turnstones, curlew and redshanks – attracted by the abundance of food on offer on the beach here.

I’ve been here once before, many years ago, but it was nice to take the time to wander around and get a proper look at the outside. You can go up the lighthouse for splendid views along the coast, but my timings were off, arriving just as they were closing up. Opening times are tide dependant, allowing enough time for safe crossing to and from the island (take a look at the daily timings published on the official website).

Taking time out from my walk, I found one of the many benches along the coast, popped on some music and watched the tide steadily sweep in then continued on my way, heading south to Whitley Bay and back into Newcastle.

Along the coast to Seaton Delaval

On a gloriously sunny, if a little frosty, morning I headed out from Newcastle armed with an Arriva coastliner ticket for a ride out to see a couple of the sights on the coast around Whitley Bay and Seaton Sluice. My first stop was Seaton Delaval Hall, one of the finest stately homes in the north east.

The estate at Seaton had been home to the Delaval family since they had been granted the land by William II, but it almost fell out of family ownership when hard times forced Sir John Delaval to put the estate up for sale in 1717. Luckily, the buyer was his cousin, Admiral George Delaval, had ambitious plans.

The central hall at Seaton Delaval

Admiral George Delaval commissioned one of the most sought after architects of the age, Sir John Vanbrugh, whose fame was built on projects like Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, to create a new family home in place of the crumbling mansion. It’s a marvellously dramatic building with some lovely naval elements to the design (harpoons, tridents and sea creatures) but sadly neither man would see the realisation of their shared vision, both dying before the completion of works. Today, the hall stands as a fine tribute to Vanbrugh’s genius, with relatively little alteration to his designs – whereas his grand buildings in other places have been much modified by later architects.

Over the coming decades the hedonistic next generation of the family acquired a reputation for notoriety, earning the family the nickname of the Gay Delavals, with many of their extravagances centred on the hall. Among many lavish events, the family had a stage erected within the hall for theatrical performances.

The last of the Delavals died in 1814 and six years later a great fire engulfed the hall. Over five hours the blaze inflicted catastrophic damage to the central hall and one of the wings, but the east and west wings were spared. For four decades the central hall was exposed to the elements, until a new owner, Baron Hastings, had the hall re-roofed. This was as far as any plans to reconstruct the hall got.

After a spell of use as an army barracks and prisoner of war camp during the second world war, the Hastings family regained control and set about restoring the buildings so that they could be opened to the public. The National Trust took ownership in 2009 and set about a new phase of conservation.

Anchor in the basement

As the fire destroyed most of the interior furnishings the National Trust have filled the rooms with a series of creative and playful installations that connect us with the story of the house and the family. Among these is a giant anchor in the Housekeeper’s Room and a ship in a bottle, reminding us of the family’s maritime connections, while a table made from coal reminds us of the source of the family wealth. Some of the rooms in the wings celebrate the Delaval’s love of playing tricks. In the gardens a couple of mirror installations provide some added delight.

The central hall is not completely unoccupied though, as the cool and stable temperature of the hall has made it a popular hibernation spot for bats, who return every winter. Five species of bats have been recorded here.

One other surprising and delightful find here was the collection store, a display of items brought into the collection of the National Trust after being accepted by the Acceptance in Lieu (AiL) scheme that allows folk to pay inheritance tax through the donation of significant artworks and historical objects for public ownership. Among the varied items on display today were an 18th century bust of a young Marcus Aurelius before his ascendancy to Roman emperor; a 16th century etched and gilt steel target shield; and a 16th century oil painting on panel of John Astley of Maidstone, Master of the Jewel Office.

Funeral hatchments in the Church of Our Lady

After visiting the hall I made my way over to the Church of Our Lady, outside of the National Trust lands, which was luckily open to visitors on the day I stopped by. The church, rebuilt by Hubert Laval, was consecrated in 1102 and is still in use today.

The interior is well worth seeing, including four striking diamond shaped funeral hatchments for the Delavals; the font from the original Saxon church; and an unusual stained glass window depicting Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII. The stained glass image of Arthur was originally part of the London Colosseum, at Regents Park in London, until that was consumed by fire in 1841. Thanks to the volunteers for the wonderful tour and pointing out the rich array of features that make this church so fascinating.

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Stained glass, lego and an extraordinary stone vault

I reckon it has been around 25 years since I last made the short hop by train from Newcastle to Durham, a journey of around 12 minutes. On this occasion my interest was piqued by the return of the lego model of the cathedral after three years in storage, which made headline news on the BBC. It was certainly a popular draw with families queuing in the cloisters to take a peek.

It was a good excuse to return as it is always quite something to step inside the cathedral, which has retained the vision of its Norman architects without significant modification over subsequent centuries. The cathedral was constructed from 1093 to 1133, replacing an earlier cathedral on the site with an astonishing architectural feast that includes massive carved stone pillars and the earliest surviving stone vault on this scale.

The Illumination window

However, what really caught my eye on this visit was the extraordinary stained glass on display, including two windows that had been installed since I last visited. The RAF Memorial Window (1965) gives us the striking image of a RAF airman being lifted aloft by a black eagle and presented before the angels, high above a Durham shrouded in cloud. The image is thought to represent the mist that protected the city from a bombing raid on 1 May 1942, one of many feats over the centuries ascribed to St Cuthbert.

The three newer additions are the Millennium window (1995), commemorating 1000 years from the founding of the first cathedral, which features local industry from a depiction of Robert Stephenson’s Locomotion to the Tyne bridges; the Transfiguration window (2010); and the Illumination window (2019), an extraordinarily colourful window created as a memorial to a young student, with the most beautiful images of birds worked into the design.

There is, of course, much more to be discovered in the cathedral, including the shrine of St Cuthbert with a modern tester hanging overhead; the Miners’ Memorial and book of remembrance (illuminated by a miners’ lamp); the Durham Light Infantry chapel; the striking views from the central tower; an exquisite wooden 15-16th century clock; the treasures of St Cuthbert in a museum space in the Great Kitchen; and the 13-14th century murals in the Galilee Chapel that give some sense of how colourful the cathedral would have been at one time.

In short, it was wonderful to come back and reacquaint myself with all these wondrous marvels.

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A ghostly gate

My weekend away in Essex and Suffolk came to an end with an early morning stroll to the station to catch the 6.11am Greater Anglia service from Ipswich to London Liverpool Street.

Along the way I passed an archway on College Street which grabbed my attention and made me stop long enough to get a shot in the dark, illuminated by street lights and the glare from the occasional passing car. It struck me as such an odd but incredibly grand Tudor gate, sandwiched between the red brick offices of the manufacturers Burton, Son & Sanders (boarded up) and the medieval church of St Peters (now a music venue rather than a working church).

The Wolsey Gate

This rather incongruous group all turned out to be listed buildings. The gate is Grade II listed, while the buildings on either side are Grade II listed. It’s name rather gives away the immense history that lays behind this solitary gate.

The Wolsey Gate, was originally a Water Gate, constructed as part of a grand plan by Cardinal Wolsey to establish a school to rival Eton. To achieve his goal Cardinal Wolsey (c.1475-1530) had the priory of St Peter and Paul earmarked for suppression in 1527, with the support of King Henry VIII. The priory buildings were to be incorporated into the college alongside new buildings, while the church of St Peter was to be repurposed as the college chapel. The foundation stone of the college was laid in June 1528, but with the existing buildings the school was able to begin operations soon after.

The school was to have a rather short life span. Cardinal Wolsey was indicted in October 1529 on charges of having overstepped his authority, leading to the stripping of his offices and his eventual arrest for treason in November 1530. Thomas Wolsey, Ipswich’s most famous son, died on 29th November 1530, while on his way to London to face the king.

The college lands were forfeited to the king and the college dissolved by October 1530. It seems that this was not enough of a statement, for the college was ordered to be demolished by order of the king, with the stones to be re-used in the expansion of Whitehall Palace in London. A symbolic and brutal demonstration of the king’s retaking of power from a man who was once referred to as ‘alter rex’ (the other king).

The solitary gate to a long vanished vanity project remains, a sure reminder of the folly of man.

Sunday outing to Sutton Hoo

I have long wanted to visit Sutton Hoo, the extraordinary site where a long forgotten Anglo-Saxon royal burial ground re-emerged in 1939, while also wondering just how much there was actually to see. The finds from Sutton Hoo are actually to be found at the British Museum, so I knew that this wouldn’t be the focus of my visit, which would be more about the landscape in which these finds were located.

Many of the reviews I read online at TripAdvisor had described an underwhelming experience, despite the best efforts of the National Trust, who reopened the site in August 2019 after a significant revamp. This wasn’t necessarily a deterrent, as I have visited many a site where I have disagreed with the high expectations of reviewers (notably, a review of an extraordinary Swedish Palace where one reviewer had commented that it was not worth visiting any palaces in Europe as all were surpassed by Versailles!). However, I did wonder where I would stand with my experience of this site…

The Royal Burial Mounds at Sutton Hoo

I took a bus out from Ipswich to Melton, then walked to the site from there (about 30 minutes walk). All pretty straightforward. Once I had paid up I took one of the paths out to the royal burial grounds and took in the view. The mounds are striking in their concentration, particularly now that you can climb a viewing tower (opened in 2021) to get a panoramic view over the lot.

It must have been quite a feat for the warriors of the day to haul the three ships up from the shore to their resting place, followed by an extraordinary effort to build the mounds to cover them. As a start for a voyage to the next world it was quite something. However, as exciting as I knew the finds were and how they rewrote history, I found it hard to get too excited about the empty mounds that were left behind. I really didn’t want to be another person who found the sight a little underwhelming, but there you go…

After visiting the burial mounds I stopped off at Tranmer House, the home of Edith Pretty, whose curiosity sparked one of the greatest archaeological finds in Europe. A display on the ground floor takes you through the archaeological dig in 1938 and was probably the most interesting part of my visit. The exhibits and descriptions here helped capture some of the excitement of the thrilling finds emerging from the mounds.

I was particularly taken by one room here that focused on the work of Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff, amateur photographers with an interest in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, who hoped that through their photographs ‘some idea of the process of uncovering the boat may be conveyed to later generations who cannot have the chance of seeing it emerge from its sandy grave.’

The final part of my visit took me into the High Hall exhibition which includes reconstructions of some of the finds from the graves, such as an unusual sandstone sceptre topped by a cast bronze stag; the king’s helmet, probably the most well known find associated with Sutton Hoo, and his shield; an ornate purse with gold buckle; and shoulder clasps.

Reconstruction of a Byzantine bucket

As well as finds from the royal burial ground the exhibition presents discoveries from an earlier cemetery in which a striking Byzantine bucket was found, presented alongside a reconstruction. Among the most poignant displays here is that of a young warrior who met an untimely end, buried in his finery alongside his horse, a discovery made as late as 1991.

Overall, I was glad to have satisfied my curiosity and visited the site. While it won’t be right up there with other historic sites I have visited I did gain a better appreciation for the landscape these unusual graves were created in and the archaeological dig that uncovered them. It was worth a visit and will drive me to go back to the British Museum for a better look at the array of finds.

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Britain’s oldest recorded town

Another weekend, another adventure to a part of the UK that I have not seen before. Today’s trip brought me to Colchester in Essex, which is Britain’s oldest recorded town (thanks to a reference from Pliny the Elder in AD 77); the first capital of Roman Britain; and newest city (city status having been granted in 2022). Strictly speaking, I have been here before, around twenty years ago, visiting a friend at his family’s turkey processing plant, but as I never saw anything of the city I think we can say this doesn’t count!

Colchester was originally known as Camulodunum in the iron age and well established enough that coins were minted with its name. The city was the main target of the Roman invasion in AD 43, led in its final stages by Emperor Claudius. However, the city was poorly defended, effectively little more than a retirement colony for former soldiers, making it an easy target for Queen Boudica and the Iceni in AD 60. The Iceni razed the city to the ground and slaughtered all the inhabitants, but a determined Roman force later re-built the town.

Model of the Temple of Claudius at Colchester Castle

The most famous building in Roman Britain was the Temple of Claudius, built to commemorate the emperor after his death. It was destroyed in the revolt and subsequently re-built. After the Roman Empire crumbled the temple was abandoned for centuries, but the Normans realised that they could re-use the foundations of the temple for their new castle in Colchester – one of many ordered built by William the Conqueror. The choice of location had a second purpose, providing a subtle hint of the line of authority that William was inheriting from the Romans.

Today, you can visit the castle and marvel at the rich history of the city (for the somewhat pricey fee of £12.50 per adult) which unsurprisingly contains some choice Roman finds.

Highlights include the creepy Colchester Sphinx, recovered from an elaborate Roman tomb; a particularly fine Roman bronze statue of Mercury found at Gosbecks; the Fenwick Treasure, a hoard of Roman coins and jewellery buried beneath a house thought to have been destroyed by fire during the Boudican revolt; and the tombstone of Marcus Favonius Facilis, the earliest Roman sculpture from Britain. Beyond the Roman era there was also a particularly lovely 13th century aquamanile water jug in the shape of a ram, found at St John’s Green.

Besides the main exhibition space, you can visit a display focusing on the castles use as county gaol from 1226 until 1835. This is appropriately located in the 1787 prison extension.

Colchester Castle

Time your visit right and you can take a guided tour (at additional cost) to the vaults, where you can see the re-used Roman foundations; walk up the great stairs, apparently the largest spiral staircase in a medieval castle; and get some rooftop views. Sadly, I can’t vouch for this from personal experience as the tours stopped surprisingly early on the day I visited!

My visit to the castle was the main focus of my visit to Colchester, but it was far from the only sight I saw on my wanders. Other sights included the church from St Botolph’s Priory (1177) which has been in ruins since the the English civil war, having been caught in the crossfire during the siege of Colchester in 1648; St John’s Gatehouse, an unusual building decorated in East Anglian ‘flintwork’, the last surviving building from the Benedictine abbey of St John; and the gorgeous clock atop the tower of St Peter’s church.

Nave of the Priory Church

Another highlight of my wanders around the town was the ‘Jumbo’ Water Tower, the largest remaining Victorian water tower in the country (completed in 1883, decommissioned in the 1980s). The tower cuts a striking sight, visible long before you get up close, standing at 40m tall with a tank that could hold 221,000 gallons of water. Apparently, some 1.2m bricks were used in the construction of the tower. Although closed to public access, a handy display board nearby provides a great cutaway drawing showing how a cast iron spiral stairway leads to the tower room (known as Wick’s Folly) at the top of the building.

Unexpected find of the day would have to be the series of concrete anti-tank blocks alongside the River Colne in the centre of town. A helpful display board nearby explains that these were part of a defensive line that ran through Castle Park, originally connected up by steel cables. These were aimed at preventing German forces from taking advantage of an easy crossing point in the event of an invasion through the flat landscape of Essex.

A special mention should also be made of the fantastic 1970s murals from the husband and wife team of Henry and Joyce Collins which can be found in the subways under Southway, depicting aspects of Colchester’s history, including an ear of corn from a coin minted by King Cunobelin; Emperor Claudius; a Roman galley; and shields celebrating the UK’s joining of the European Union. These were beautifully restored in 2017 and presented a wonderful surprise to a wanderer who had no idea of their existence until he stumbled across them. More murals, recovered from the BHS store before redevelopment, can be seen on a wall near Firstsite.

Some of the murals by Henry and Joyce Collins in the subways under Southway

My plans were not as well researched as usual, so I would just point out one embarrassing fact that momentarily threw me. There are two stations in Colchester, named Colchester (formerly Colchester North) and Colchester Town respectively. The latter is next door to St Botolph’s Priory and a short walk from the castle. Not that the main station of Colchester is far – it is only around a 20 minute walk from the centre of town.

I thoroughly enjoyed a wander around Colchester and delighted in the many other wonderful buildings and historical treats dotted around the city. I quite quickly realised that this was a city that I had unjustly overlooked for far too long and was glad to have corrected this error!

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Camels, donkeys and trumpet blowing rodents

In the 1990s one of the highlights of my television year was the sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey, created by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. The sitcom was set in the back offices of GlobeLink News, a TV news station that has just been taken over by a media mogul. Unusually, each episode was scripted and filmed in the week before broadcast, giving it a topical bite that was quite delicious.

Over six seasons we got to explore the dysfunctional personal lives of the team before the TV studio was shut down in the final episode, broadcast on 9th December 1998. All of the characters were wonderful in their deeply flawed ways, but it was impossible not to love Damien Day (played by Stephen Tompkinson) with his deeply unethical methods, usually involving some degree of fakery that routinely unravelled.

The programme for Drop the Dead Donkey at Richmond Theatre

The news that the surviving cast were re-uniting for a stage show 26 years on was quite impossible to resist and we had tickets booked from the day they went on sale. However, as with any revival you always wonder if it can possibly live up to your memories. Thankfully, those doubts were dispelled the moment the play started, bringing those wonderful characters back to life. The love of the audience was apparent from the applause given to each cast member as they appeared on stage, revealing what had happened to their characters in the intervening years.

The writers were back too, delivering a wonderful script that matched the quality of the original series and felt like an extended episode. The premise of the revival being that the characters have mysteriously been brought back as a team to staff a new operation called Truth TV, where an AI powered algorithm determines which news stories to cover.

Over the course of 2 hours and 10 minutes (including interval) at the Richmond Theatre we were in stitches with the unfolding story, rich vein of topical jokes and ultimate reveal(s). The show is just at the start of its national tour, but will be returning to Richmond in June.

The British Museum

Moving on from dead donkeys, we made a visit to the British Museum for their new exhibition Legion: life in the Roman army which explores the lives and careers of soldiers across the empire. Some of it was quite familiar, but there were plenty of surprises.

Among the exhibits that revealed unexpected aspects of Roman history were a lead toy of a camel from Egypt, accompanied by text that reveals that Roman cavalry units in the region rode camels as well as horses; a fearsome sounding Draco, dragon standard, adopted from the Sarmatian foes of the Romans; and a little rodent trumpeter made from copper alloy.

It was also more than a little surprising to discover that for something as voluminous as the Roman legionary’s long shield only one complete example exists, displayed here on loan from Yale University.

My favourite exhibit would have to be a Roman anti-cheating device for gaming. This device took the form of a tower, allowing gamers to drop dice in at the top, where it would then fall through various levels before emerging down some steps at the bottom. Conversely, we then got to see a Roman grain measurement vessel from Northumberland which held more than the measurements marked on its exterior suggested, cheating suppliers.

The exhibition (1st February 2024 to 23rd June 2024) was one of the best that we have seen at the British Museum and is well worth a look in.

Highlights and lowlights

A weekend visit to North and South Shields did not go entirely to plan. A combination of metro replacement buses, poor planning on my part and some footwear that left me hobbling all conspired to make this a frustrating trip. However, when it worked it was glorious. The sight of the lighthouses on either side of the Tyne in the first and last light of the day was rather special.

My first lighthouse of the day was Herd Groyne, a small red lighthouse which is just 13 metres tall, in South Shields. It has the look more befitting of a homemade moon landing craft than a lighthouse. However, make no mistake, this is a functioning navigational aid operated by the Port of Tyne complete with an active fog horn.

Herd Groyne Lighthouse in South Shields

The Herd Groyne lighthouse was built in 1882 and formed an integral part of an earlier navigation system, along with lights in North Shields, before the completion of construction on the North and South Piers in 1895.

A walk along the coast path to the ferry provided an easy way to cross to North Shields and see the parts of the old system that remain standing – the old low light, the new low light and the high light.

The high light (1808) was built high on the plateau and worked in combination with the new low light on Fish Quay to guide ships into a safe channel up the Tyne. Both take the form of tall white towers.

The old low light, built inside a gun battery at the mouth of the Tyne in 1727, is now a wonderful heritage museum and art gallery. To be honest, on your first approach the three storey brick building of the old low light is not really what you expect a lighthouse to look like. In practice the key feature was its third floor light window, the sole window on this face of the building. Once the baton was passed to the new low light the gable was painted black and the window blocked to prevent it being misinterpreted as a navigational aid.

Around the old low light you can find plenty of lovely little cafes, a RNLI station and a smattering of artworks and navigation buoys repurposed as public installations. It’s well worth a wander.

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Conisbrough Castle

A short 8 minute hop by train, followed by a ten minute walk, took me from Doncaster to Conisbrough and its magnificent 12th century castle.

The castle has long been a picturesque ruin, having been abandoned by the early 16th century, but somehow amidst all of the decay the Great Tower built by Hamelin de Warenne in the 1170s/80s has stood strong. In more recent times the tower has been re-roofed and floored, making it the central focus of a visit with its audio visual displays. However, overall, this is one castle where you need a trusty guide book to bring the story together.

The Great Tower at Conisbrough Castle

The design of the imposing Great Tower at Conisbrough Castle adopted by Hamelin de Warenne is really rather unusual, following an architectural trend for circular great towers that tends to be associated with the French kings.

It is not just the outward form of the tower that is unusual. There is no continuous staircase from top to bottom – instead visitors had to cross each floor to reach the next staircase, with each flight getting narrower as you progressed upwards and deeper into the ranks of the privileged few. Oddest of all, the doorways to the upper chambers could only be locked from the outside. Quite a lot of trust placed in the loyalty of the attendants guarding the entrances.

The ruins certainly captured the imagination of Sir Walter Scott, who set his novel Ivanhoe (1819) at the castle. I can see why it would stir the creative juices. Personally, I found the view from the top quite inspiring, especially the terrific view of the 465 metre long Conisbrough Viaduct, now a cycle path.

A view of Conisbrough Viaduct from the rooftop of the Great Tower

After visiting the castle I took a little walk up the road to St Peter’s church (circa 750 AD) which holds the distinction of being the oldest building in South Yorkshire. Sadly, the church was all locked up but I enjoyed a little wander around the perimeter before returning to the station, making the short hop back to Doncaster and taking my onward train back to London.

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24 hours in Doncaster

My 24 hour stay in Doncaster was formulated relatively hastily so it was not as researched as some of my trips, aside from the glorious library that I covered in my last post, allowing for a surprise or two.

I must admit that I did wonder what I had done when I first arrived, late at night, taking a walk to my hotel through a bus station that was a little too lively, under some arches and through a deserted car park. Once in my hotel room I looked out of the window to see a brightly illuminated Esso garage, hardly fuelling my enthusiasm. However, once the sun came up and I saw the historic city centre on a morning wander everything changed!

A stroll around the centre armed with a map from Visit Doncaster revealed some of the many historic buildings, such as: the neo-classical Corn Exchange and associated market buildings (1847-9, 1873 and 1930) with its echoes of the Crystal Palace, currently undergoing a multi-million pound refurbishment; the Mansion House, Christ Church; and Doncaster Minster. Alongside this there were nice surprises, such as the striking Sunny Bar Gateway, a modern art work from 2002-3 featuring bronze animals on two plinths, leading to the main market area.

Doncaster Minster

The story of Doncaster Minster was fascinating and I was delighted by the warm welcome and enthusiastic explanations from the stewards when I wandered in. There have been a few churches on this spot, but this one dates to 1858, replacing a medieval church destroyed by fire in 1853. The church had a star architect with George Gilbert Scott, perhaps best known for St Pancras railway station and the Albert Memorial in London, who delivered a parish church that feels more like a cathedral as you approach. It was fascinating to hear the story of two later fires that resulted in some clever thinking to repair the damage to stained glass, stonework and to the pews.

I was surprised to learn that Doncaster Minster has long been sought out for its organ. The organist at the time of the rebuilding sought out the finest organ he could find, eventually commissioning a monumental organ from Edmund Schulze (1824-1878) which would go on to become his greatest work. A panel in the minster explains that it was regarded as one of the greatest organs installed in the latter half of the 19th century, which effectively led the way in a new way of thinking, establishing a new ideal and influencing other organ designers.

My visit to the minster was one of those occasions where I thought I would just pop in for a minute or two, then stayed far longer, leaving me with a dash to make my train out of the city. Despite the stressful dash, making my train with seconds to spare, I was glad that I didn’t pass by without seeing the splendours inside.

Unfortunately, the incoming Storm Isha led me to cut short my trip. If I had stuck around a bit longer I had hoped to see the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum (based at the former RAF Doncaster) and Cusworth Hall Museum and Park, as well as sample some of the many interesting eateries and watering holes I saw on my wanders.

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The library in a glass snow globe

The next stop on my winter tour of the UK has brought me to Doncaster, a town which I have long overlooked. Whizzing past in the train with barely a glimpse it was all to easy to accept the widely repeated label of it as a grim place, which really does it a disservice. Indeed, the autobiographical lyrics of a prog-rock song from a local lad made good refers to his father’s “dirty grey home town” which hardly screams come visit!

It has to be said that the most eye catching of the sights in Doncaster is the new Danum gallery, library and museum complex, which opened to the public on 29th May 2021. The architects have done an extraordinary job here, encasing the frontage of the former Doncaster High School for Girls in glass alongside the more conventional book shelves. When illuminated at night this gives the library the appearance of an unusual snow globe.

Danum gallery, library and museum

I took a little wander out during a particularly colourful sunrise to see the effect for myself and then came back later to explore the building when it opened. The architects cleverly adapted the frontage of the former school to house a cafe and meeting rooms, while a staircase from the school has been preserved to lead down to the basement.

On an adjacent wall there is a wonderfully playful quote from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, which reads “In that pleasant district of Merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest… and the pleasant town of Doncaster” with the name of the town represented by a loco nameplate. The nameplate and display of railway lamps next to this gives the first hint of what has been described as Doncaster’s best kept secret.

Descend the stairs and you find yourself in the Rail Heritage Centre. I can’t imagine there are any other library complexes with a couple of standard gauge locos in the basement – in this case, Ivatt 4-4-2 Atlantic No. 251 (1902) and LNER Class V2 4771 Green Arrow (1936), both locos built at Doncaster Works and currently on loan from the National Rail Museum.

Green Arrow in the basement

As amazing as these locomotives are, there is something more unusual and special here – a selection of 500 items from one of the most significant collections of railway memorabilia in the country. Most remarkably, this collection was started by the Doncaster Grammar School Railway Society. The inaugural meeting of the society took place on 8th May 1936, attracting 50 schoolboys at a time when loco spotting had reached a level of popularity that is rather hard to comprehend now.

The collection soon moved into a rather unusual home in an empty clock/water tower in the school’s new extension, once the tower was discovered to be unsuitable for its original purpose. Despite the challenges of an awkward space, accessed by a steep and narrow spiral staircase, the collection would grow to an estimated 10,000 items. A significant factor in the success of the society was their foresight to collect railway plates and other memorabilia at a time when hardly anyone else was looking at this, resulting in some rare and spectacular acquisitions.

In October 2020 the collection left its home of 70 years and today we can see a wonderful selection of items in the display cases in the Rail Heritage Centre, ranging from a collection of steam whistles to a huge display of nameplates. I thought it was a particular nice nod to the history of the collection that a cupboard door from the water tower, used to display smaller plates, was now itself an exhibit in one of the glass cases.

The full story of the collection is wonderfully in the book ‘Treasures in the tower’ (Doncaster Council, 2021) which is available to purchase from the library/museum shop.

Breakdown by Jonathan Waller on display in the gallery

As if this was not enough, the gallery, library and museum complex includes a delightful museum about the history of Doncaster; the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Regimental Museum; and a terrific art gallery which really should not be overlooked. Among the highlights in the art gallery were the oil painting Giants refreshed: Pacifics in the Doncaster Locomotive Works (Terence Cuneo, 1937); Breakdown by Jonathan Waller; and the moving bronze sculpture Soldier mourning a friend (Charles Sargeant Jagger, 1937).

As great as all this was, my visit to Doncaster included much more than the Danum complex, taking me to the gorgeous Doncaster Minister, around the historic buildings on a trail through the city centre and then out to Conisbrough Castle by train, but I’ll leave that for the next posts…

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All in the detail

One of the things I have long heard from the supporting artists (extras) that I know is that the film and tv sets they work on go to incredible depths with the detail. It’s something they get to really appreciate up close, while for most of us it is simply background detail that we may barely glimpse or pay any attention too. So, it was great to get an opportunity to look at some of the sets, costumes and props from The Crown at a special exhibition today.

The exhibition, at Bonhams in New Bond Street, has already been to New York, Los Angeles and Paris. London is the final stop, ahead of an auction in early February. The proceeds from the auction will go to setting up a scholarship at the National Film and Television School (NFTS). Tickets can be obtained free online.

Full size replica of the Gold State Coach

Once you enter Bonhams the exhibition is spread over four floors, starting with some of the largest and showiest items, including a full size replica of the Gold State Coach (estimate £30,000-50,000). However, for me it was the incredible attention to detail that went into the set of paintings of the Royal Family featuring the cast that really stunned me (estimates ranging from £800 to £3,000).

The level of detail that went into the costumes and replicas for the coronation is truly astonishing – the reproduction of the Imperial mantle and stole, supertunica, anointing gown and robe of state looked simply stunning (estimate £20,000-30,000) alongside a replica of the Coronation chair (estimate £10,000-20,000). It was interesting to read the logic behind this – essentially, to gain the trust of the audience so that they could have greater freedom with other costumes.

The absolute highlight though was the astonishing model of the Queen’s funeral procession from the final episode of The Crown (‘Sleep Dearie Sleep’) in the basement level. The model took 6-8 weeks to complete, featuring some 800 figures (around 500 Britains models, supplemented by 300 3D printed models) that took two weeks to paint up. Above the model a video gave a wonderful insight into this extraordinary set piece and it was great to hear that it will be sold as one lot rather than be broken up (estimate £8,000-12,000).

The exhibition runs from 11th January to 5th February 2024, ahead of a live auction on 7th February 2024. An online auction is already underway and closes on 8th February 2024. Free tickets are available through Eventbrite.

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Edith Cavell (1865-1915)

The most poignant sight on my visit to Norwich was, of course, the grave of Edith Cavell (1865-1915), the nurse who was executed by firing squad at dawn on 12th October 1915 after helping 200 soldiers escape from occupied Belgium.

I can’t really say when I first learned of Edith’s sacrifice, but I do know where that was – at the foot of the striking monument to her at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square in London. The monument is inscribed with a shortened form of her unforgettable and astonishingly powerful words: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.” It is quite something that those words still reach out to us today, over one hundred years later.

At the time, I hadn’t realised that those words had originally been left off the monument, unveiled on 17th March 1920, and were only added later, in 1924, after a campaign by the National Council of Women. I have walked past that monument on so many occasions in my life and can rarely pass by without reading and reflecting on those words afresh.

On a visit to Norwich you can’t miss the connections with Edith Cavell, who was born at Swardeston, a village four miles to the south west of the city. A good example is the Edith Cavell public house, which can be seen on the approach to the cathedral on Tombland.

The Edith Cavell monument outside Norwich Cathedral

Outside the cathedral walls stands another of the many monuments to Edith Cavell. This striking sculpture by Henry Pegram shows a soldier reaching up to offer Edith a wreath, representing the many men that she nursed and protected. The monument was originally located a little further down the road, opposite the Cavell Rest Home for Nurses, which became a part of the Maids Head Hotel in 1956. On its opening by Queen Alexandra in 1918 the roads were swamped by thousands of onlookers, many of whom would have undoubtedly contributed to the public inscription to create the monument.

Inside the cathedral another memorial can be found on either side of the entrance to St Saviour’s Chapel, where a series of fourteen specially commissioned paintings by Brian Whelan hang, forming ‘The Passion of Edith Cavell: The Way of the Cross’ (2015). These panels take you through the story of Edith’s life, from the charitable works she carried out as a child (her father, a local vicar, sent his children out with bowls of food for villagers in need before their own Sunday lunch) through to her trial, execution and eventual return home.

Edith’s body had initially been buried at the Tir National (national shooting range) at Schaerbeek in Brussels where she was executed. After the war Edith’s body was exhumed and brought back from Ostend to Dover on board HMS Rowena, where the coffin was guarded by Connaught Rangers overnight. On May 15th 1919 her coffin was transported from Dover to Victoria Station and on to Westminster Abbey for the funeral service. Afterwards, the body was transported to Liverpool Street Station and then on to Norwich.

The grave of Edith Cavell, with the new headstone

Once inside the cathedral grounds you can follow the exterior wall round to a spot on Life’s Green, outside St Saviour’s Chapel, where Edith Cavell was finally laid to rest after an astonishing homecoming, on a quite unprecedented scale, transported on a gun carriage through the streets of London, accompanied by soldiers and military bands throughout. All witnessed by over 200,000 onlookers of all classes who wanted to pay their own tribute.

Edith’s family had suggested that her tomb should follow the design used by the Imperial War Graves Commission for fallen soldiers. This request was finally adopted for the centenary of Edith’s death in 2015, when a new headstone was unveiled to replace the cross that had been in place previously. It is striking in its simplicity and echo of the graves familiar to anyone who has explored the battlefields of France and Flanders.

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Escaping the winter blues

In an attempt to stave off the winter blues, satisfy my itchy feet and fill in some gaps in the places I have visited in the UK I am taking advantage of some cheap railway tickets and inexpensive hotels to get around the country in my weekends over the next few months.

My first stop is Norwich, around two hours by train from London. I’ve changed trains at Norwich once, on the way to Great Yarmouth, around 13 years ago but that is the closest I’ve got. To be honest, that’s also the only time I’ve ever been to Norfolk! So a step outside the rather splendid station was long overdue, even if it does still leave me needing to visit much more of the county.

The Grade II listed Norwich Station (1886)

Norwich gives an incredible first impression with a striking red brick and stucco station building, a real statement piece, which dates to 1886. Originally there were three stations serving the city, but this is the only survivor. And what a survivor it is…

The station, originally known as Norwich Thorpe, was the northern terminus of the Great Eastern Main Line. The station opened on 3rd May 1886 after just under two years of construction at an estimated cost of £60,000. An article in the local press from just before the completion of works lovingly described the building in Ipswich red brick with Bath stone dressing; the bold 80 foot high dome with its zinc fish-scale roofing surrounded by stone balustrade; the handsome porte cochere with what was, at that time, a sky-lighted roof; and booking hall decorated in the Italian style.

I imagine that many of the lavish details that the papers gushed over have long since gone, such as oak mantlepieces fitted with Venetian mirrors, delicately carved wood panelling and even a room dedicated for the filling of foot-warmers (a feature of train travel that thankfully is no longer required!). Nevertheless, it is testament to the designs of J. Wilson and W. N. Ashbee that the building still has something of that wow factor over 130 years later.

The Cow Tower and Spontaneous City

One of the beauties of travelling in winter is that many of the historic buildings that would be well hidden by leafy foliage can be viewed in their full glory through the tangle of bare branches. Such was the case with the Cow Tower, one of the earliest purpose built artillery blockhouses in England, dating to 1398-99. The tower defended the city from attackers approaching the city along the River Wensum.

While the Cow Tower was on my list of sights to visit I was delighted to be surprised by the Spontaneous City, an inhabitable city built by London Fieldworks in a nearby tree for the use of birds and insects as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in 2011.

The undoubted highlight of any visit to the city is the magnificent cathedral (1096) with its stunning roof bosses and cloisters which shone brightly in the first hour of winter sunlight. The stunning tower, topped by the second tallest spire in the country (dating to 1485) after Salisbury, looked utterly resplendent. However for me, it was the grave of Edith Cavell, next to the Cathedral’s St Saviour’s Chapel that was the most poignant sight on my visit.

Other highlights on my wanders included a sighting of the castle (currently closed whilst undergoing renovation) at the centre of the city; an exterior view of Norwich Guildhall (1413) with its striking flint and ashlar stone walls; an exterior view of the Great Hospital (1249) and associated church of St Helens; the watergate (1647) at Pull’s Ferry; and the quite stunning art deco Norwich City Hall (1938) with its two striking heraldic lions poised with raised paws.

Interior of The Cosy Club

While in the city I also had the chance to attend a performance by the string quartet called Chaos Collective at the historic Assembly House. Their candlelight rendition of some of the most striking pieces by Hans Zimmer was rather special, along with some interesting insights into his work. I think his body of work is rather extraordinary, but it also happens to be the music I put on when I need to focus on a particular piece of work or project!

A special shout out to the Cosy Club, in the magnificent Old Provincial National Bank building (1925), which served up some wonderful breakfast in an extraordinarily beautiful dining room. I also have to recommend Macarons and More in the Arcade whose oozing cappuccino filled cookies are quite probably the most amazing cookies I have ever enjoyed.

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Farewell to 2023

Farewell to the first fully normal year since the pandemic, often speeding along at an incredible rate in sharp contrast to the exceedingly slow months of lockdown. Some things have permanently changed, such as the switch to hybrid working, but in other areas it was definitely back to business as usual.

Travel

To quote J. R. R. Tolkien, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

This year was a rather mad year for travel, partly driven by the unwinding of travel restrictions. My travels led me to five continents, beginning with a trip to see family in NZ. Trips to Chicago and Montreal helped use up vouchers from the pandemic before they expired.

I booked trips to South Africa and Argentina with FarRail, thinking that only one of these trips would secure the numbers to go ahead. In the end both managed to meet the threshold and ran, requiring a little raid of my savings, but the experience was unbeatable. The incredible steam scenes I witnessed and the friendships forged/renewed (usually accompanied by hysterical laughter) made both trips quite unforgettable.

Steam in South Africa

In the end, I was glad to have seen the astonishing La Trochita in Patagonia and only hope that the line continues to amaze folk after the terrible news of the derailment in November (sobering to think this was the same train we used in September, though we didn’t traverse the stretch of line where this incident occurred).

I feel lucky to have seen the places I have on my travels in search of steam, especially as that list diminishes further. This year we have seen the end of steam at Sandaoling, Xinjiang province in China, which had been the last real steam operation in the world with regular line duty. Operations were dieselised in October 2023. I visited in 2009 and 2012. This leaves only shunting operations in Bosnia, Indonesia and North Korea under real steam.

Theatre

I managed to see 33 plays this year (or 34, if you count the musical I saw twice), sticking to the plan to not go quite so mad on my theatre going as pre-pandemic. My top seven for the year were:

1. The motive and the cue – National Theatre
2. Cold war – Almeida
3. Bacon – Riverside Studios
4. Arms and the man – Orange Tree Theatre
5. Two strangers (carry a cake across New York) – Kiln Theatre
6. Accidental death of an anarchist – Haymarket Theatre
7. Standing at the sky’s edge – National Theatre

I was absolutely blown away by The motive and the cue, Jack Thorne’s clever play depicting the behind the scenes machinations by John Gielgud, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as they brought their production of Hamlet to 1960s Broadway. It has some gorgeous staging, almost cinematic in quality, matched by incredible performances from Johnny Flynn and Mark Gatiss that really bring you into the heart of the rehearsal room.

It is an unusual play that captures the remarkable road the actors took to what was regarded as a triumphal production, drawing on a meticulous account of the fractious backstage arguments from one of the other actors who went to extraordinary lengths (including a spell hiding under the stage with his tape recorder in the rehearsal room during closed rehearsals). It just felt like a wonderful love letter to the theatre.

A selection of the many terrific plays in 2023

The year came to a close with another cracking play, Cold War, based on Paweł Pawlikowski’s film of the same name. I haven’t seen the film but the play was achingly beautiful, incredibly well acted and really poignant. It’s a passionate, tempestuous and doomed love story across the borders accompanied by absolutely marvellous Polish folk music combined with songs from Elvis Costello. The subtlety and sheer brilliance of Luke Thallon’s performance in the lead, conveying everything about his complex character from the joys of first love, through self doubt and shame, to utter despair, was something to behold. Some of the bleakest scenes I can recall on stage, but would still recommend wholeheartedly.

It’s probably just as well that I booked a second viewing of the new British musical Two strangers (carry a cake across New York) to finish up on a lighter note just before Christmas with songs like New York, What’ll It Be and If I Believed. Utterly delightful.

I kept better track of my personal ratings this year. There were no plays in the 1 or 2 star categories. 11 in the 3 star category (33%). 14 in the 4 star category (42%). 7 in the 5 star category (21%). One play was so wonderful that it merited the creation of a 6 star category (3%).

Other noteworthy plays and monologues I saw were: Just for us (Alex Edelman); Noises off; Dancing at Lughnasa; Retrograde; 4000 miles; Dear England; Untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play; Owners; and Merchant of Venice 1936.

Music

I don’t get out to many gigs, but I managed more in 2023 than in any previous year – including The Adventures, Andrew Cushin, Bright Light Bright Light, Circa Waves, Dermot Kennedy, Marillion and New Order.

It has somehow taken me 34 years to get around to seeing New Order live after discovering them relatively late in the day with their album Technique, so that was rather special (hearing ‘Your Silent Face’ live was simply wonderful). However, nothing could top the extraordinary sold out hometown gigs by Andrew Cushin at City Hall in Newcastle. Selling out City Hall (capacity 2,500) twice in the space of six weeks or so was quite something and the experience inside the venue quite unlike anything I have ever experienced elsewhere. I had seen him as a support act at the beginning of the year, playing without his band, and the evolution in his stagecraft was staggering.

Top albums of the year

There has been some terrific music released in 2023. My top albums from this year mostly reflect my taste in indie rock/pop plus a bit of folk with artists from Detroit, Liverpool, Newcastle, New York and Wigan.

1. Waiting for the rain – Andrew Cushin
2. Never going under – Circa Waves
3. I Miss You Already + I Haven’t Left Yet – Del Water Gap
4. From Nothing to a Little Bit More – The Lathums
5. Javelin – Sufjan Stevens

Andrew Cushin’s debut album, Waiting for the rain, is that rare beast – an album with no weak points. It’s such an incredibly strong showcase for Andrew’s talent as a songwriter with a great sound matched with some smart lyrics. There’s a really neat video on the making of the album that talks about the origins of each song and the work that went into re-arranging the tracks for the album.

Among the new songs that I loved this year were Living in the Grey (Circa Waves), Hoping Maybe (The K’s), All we ever do is talk (Del Water Gap) and Overcome (Nothing but thieves).

It’s not all about new music though, a recommendation led me to Bright Light Bright Light and I soon wondered how I had never stumbled across the artist before. By the end of the year Apple Music’s Replay told me that Bright Light Bright Light was the artist I played most heavily in 2023, particularly his bittersweet album from 2014 ‘Life Is Easy’ which features an extraordinary duet with Elton John on I wish we were leaving suffused with such sadness and hope.

Other artists in my Replay Top 10 included Rina Sawayama, Chvrches, Thirteen Senses and Troye Sivan. According to Apple the album I played the most was last year’s ‘Hold the girl’ by Rina Sawayama, though ‘Waiting for the rain’ by Andrew Cushin was only a few plays behind. Outside of my album plays, the individual song I kept returning to was Dream for a moment by Andrew Cushin.

Among the artists that were new to me, but now firmly on my play list are The K’s and Del Water Gap. I am hoping to see both acts at the Electric Ballroom in Camden next year.

Sport

It has been an incredible year for sportscar racing with the hypercars really delivering on their potential. The entertaining and often chaotic 100th anniversary running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans served up a fairytale result with a first outright victory for Ferrari since 1965. I haven’t been to Le Mans in person for many years but it was enough to start me thinking that I need to see some live sportscar action before too long.

I haven’t really seen much live sport at all this year, though it was lovely to finally make it to the Herne Hill Velodrome to see the South London GP in July.

My year in numbers

Statistics for 2023 show just how much things have changed since the transition back to normality in 2022.

15,609 travel photos taken (up by 2,353)
2,248 songs played
332 albums played (up by 60)
163 days in the office (up by 62)
84 blog posts written (up by 12)
34 plays attended (down by 1)
14 gigs (up by 10)
13 steam locos seen in action (up by 3)
5 countries visited (unchanged)
4 rounds of minigolf played (unchanged)
0 rounds of ten pin bowling (unchanged)

Over the last 12 months the blog racked up 20,456 views (up from 17,137 views) from 4,874 visitors (down from 5,083 visitors). Still a long way short of the figures from 2015 (45,918 page views and 13,486 visitors). Having said all that, I was rather slow at writing up my travels from late August to early November which wouldn’t have helped.

The top three most popular posts in 2023 were Ashburton High School from March 2021 (170 views); The last inhabitants of the Bourbon Tower from May 2017 (160 views); and Socialist Sofia: Mound of Brotherhood from May 2016 (85 views).

Stunning in Gunnersbury Park

Our year of local culture began in Ealing with Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, so it seemed appropriate to finish it with a visit to neighbouring Acton and the Gunnersbury Park Museum.

The museum occupies Gunnersbury Park House, built in 1802 and re-modelled by the Rothschilds when they purchased the estate in 1830. The family sold the estate to Ealing and Acton councils in 1925 and it was opened as a public park the following year (with Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health, doing the honours).

Gunnersbury Park House

The mansion was repurposed as a museum in 1929 but had deteriorated by 2009 when the buildings were listed on the Heritage At Risk Register. Since then a £50 million restoration plan for the estate has seen the museum buildings revived. Today, they present the story of the local area and life at the mansion under the Rothschilds.

Our reason for visiting was a new free exhibition, Set to Stun, which opened on 20th October 2023 and runs to 2nd June 2024. The exhibition celebrates the workshops and design studios of west London that created the look for some of the most iconic shows in British science fiction from the 1960s to the present. Exhibits are spread throughout the museum with a handy map available to help you find them.

Those exhibits are pretty splendid, including: a white and gold dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) that Ace and the Doctor battled in Coal Hill School (shot in Hammersmith); the Robot of Death costume made for Doctor Who by a local costume maker at Ealing studios (1977) in a setting freshly imagined for this exhibition by a designer from the show; the mask of Davros from ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ (1984); a device used by the Master in ‘Castrovalva’ (1982); and a re-creation of the Dalek conveyor belt from ‘Power of the Daleks’ (1966).

A Federation trooper’s gun from Blake’s 7

An upstairs room contained models from Red Dwarf, Star Cops (1987) and The Tripods (1984-5). However, it was one of the exhibits in the pull-out drawers that delighted me the most, a Federation trooper’s gun from Blake’s 7, a TV programme that I absolutely adored back in the day. That certainly dredged up a few memories.

There is much to fascinate and delight in the exhibition, with fascinating insights, such as the innovative video techniques used in The Tripods; storyboarding in Doctor Who; and the marvellous story of how one bit of set design made its way from Alien to Blake 7 and then onto The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! It’s well worth taking a look if you are in the area – and the park is quite lovely too.

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A ruined priory and fortress

The ruined priory at Tynemouth sits in splendid isolation in a stunning headland location, surrounded by gravestones, where once monks and soldiers would have roamed. It’s hard to think of a more dramatic setting. It wasn’t always like this though and the story of the site is complicated, featuring many buildings that are now invisible to us.

A mind boggling 2,000 years of occupation are known about on the headland, beginning with the Votadini, an iron age tribe, and ending with the closure of the garrison in the 1950s. No small amount of history is connected to this site. Three kings have been buried here and many others have stayed here. Notably, Edward II, his wife Isabella and favourite Piers Gaveston sheltered here in 1312 before being forced to flee by sea to Scarborough.

The Priory Church

The ruins we see today are from the second monastery to grace the site, thought to have been constructed in two bursts, in 1090 and from 1190 to 1210. It’s monastic life ended in 1539 with the dissolution of the monasteries, but the nave of the priory church continued to function as a parish church for the folk of Tynemouth until the 17th century. It cuts a striking sight today with its heavily worn yellow sandstone contrasting against the rich green lawns.

The most intact building in the priory complex is the Percy Chantry, which dates to the 15th century. It is a small and beautifully decorated chapel with a rib vaulted ceiling and carved bosses.

The headland has long been fortified and today you enter the grounds through the medieval gatehouse, which dates to around 1390, and fortress walls from different eras run round the edge of the complex. However, the most recent phases of fortification and defence are to be seen at the far end of the complex where the gun batteries from the late 19th century can be found. From this commanding position the guns protected the approaches to the Tyne.

The 6 inch gun battery

Fascinating photos show the whole headland occupied by buildings, including a lighthouse, barracks, governor’s house and a massive ammunition magazine with some of the buildings dating back to the 17th century. The lighthouse was demolished in 1898 and the rest of the buildings were swept away in the 1960s by an attempt to clear the site of any trace of the post-medieval occupation. One new addition was added in the 1980s, a coastguard station, which closed in 2001.

It was terrific to be able to wander the ruins of castle, priory and burila ground. I particularly liked that you could explore the interior of one of the gun batteries, complete with mechanical hoists to transfer cartridges and shells to the 6-inch gun above. Overall, I spent coming up to two hours wandering around the complex soaking up the layers of history. Highly recommended.

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Winter wanders in Tynemouth

A gap of six weeks was all it took for my next visit to Newcastle, once again for a gig. Being an unusually mild day for mid December prompted a short hop by metro to Tynemouth, a coastal town which you won’t be surprised to hear is located at the mouth of the River Tyne. It’s one of those places that immediately impresses as you step off the metro.

King Edward’s Bay

The vast station at Tynemouth was a real surprise, a beautifully restored Victorian marvel with ornate ironwork canopies and footbridge complemented by gothic station buildings in red brick. It was one of those stations built with vast capacity to serve the excursion trains of the late 19th and early 20th century. One writer described it quite superbly as the St Pancras of the Tyne & Wear Metro.

It is quite shocking to see just how close we came to losing this. The station was placed on the English Heritage ‘at risk’ register in 2008, but removed from the list in 2012 after a stunning £3.68m restoration project. Today, it is a popular destination in its own right as the canopied space that once covered the bay platforms now serves as a market place at the weekends.

After escaping the crowds, I took a wander down to the seafront at King Edward’s Bay and was astonished to see folk braving the sea. It was not chilly but still only about 11 degrees, so rather on the cool side for a dip. Have to be impressed by that while I was wrapped up in a shirt, jumper, fleece and winter jacket!

Continuing on, down Pier Road, to Spanish Battery gave me a marvellous view of one of the main draws in the town – the castle, priory and gun battery on a striking defensive position overlooking the Tyne. I later returned and spent a good couple of hours exploring the fascinating site, of which more in the next post.

The Collingwood Monument

Nearby stands an impressive monument to Admiral Lord Collingwood, second-in-command to Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar, complete with four guns from his ship, HMS Royal Sovereign. After the recent rain the approach was something of a mudbath but I found a way through. The monument was erected through public subscription. Collingwood was born in Newcastle in 1748 and died from illness on board his ship, in 1810, after seven years away from England. He is buried in St Pauls Cathedral in the City of London.

I had originally planned to continue my walk down to The Old Low Light at North Shields but ran out of time, so that will have to go on the list for another time. I headed back to the market in the station where I was delighted to be able to pick up some local treats, including a superb lime and chilli flapjack, before braving the Christmas shoppers and footie fans on the jam-packed metro back to the city centre.

An extraordinary underground wagonway

On my previous trips to Newcastle I had no idea that one of the most interesting sights lay beneath my feet.

The Victoria Tunnel is a remarkable underground wagonway that ran for 3.6km from Spital Tongues to the junction of the Tyne and the Ouseburn, passing under the centre of the city near City Hall. Today, you can visit a section of the tunnel on a guided tour. It was an opportunity I could not pass up and booked myself on a two hour long tour covering its construction, operation and later use as a shelter during wartime.

It’s hard now to imagine the world in which the tunnel was constructed. Newcastle was surrounded by coal mines feeding an insatiable demand for more coal from industry (to put this in context, 25m tonnes of coal were produced by the UK in 1825 but by 1853 this had risen to 71m tonnes). The quayside at Newcastle was packed with colliers waiting to transport the coal to London and beyond. The city was sufficiently synonymous with coal mining that the phrase “like taking coals to Newcastle” emerged as a way of describing a pointless activity.

The challenge of efficiently transporting coal from the collieries to the docks was nothing new. In the late 17th century wooden wagonways, known as “Newcastle roads”, were being developed across the Great Northern Coalfield to provide a smoother and faster route to the waiting ships. Initially these would have been horse drawn, but steam locomotives started hauling coal trains in the early 1800s. The earliest surviving steam locomotives in the world are from the coalfields surrounding the Tyne such as Puffing Billy (1813-14), Wylam Dilly (1813) and Killingworth Billy (1816).

The Victoria Tunnel

The owners of the Spital Tongues Colliery were still transporting their coal to the Tyne by horse and cart through the streets of Newcastle. Not only was this unpopular with the local residents, it was also slow and expensive. Envious of the other collieries, the owners applied to build their own surface level wagonway through Jesmond. After this plan was rejected by the town council, a new plan for an underground wagonway was proposed and accepted. Work on construction started in 1839 and the wagonway was officially opened on 7th April 1842.

The wagonway devised by William Gillespie for Porter and Latimer was ingenious. Fully laden coal wagons would roll down to the quayside with their rate of descent kept in check by a rope attached to a stationary steam engine at the colliery. Once the wagons were emptied the steam engine would haul them back up.

The effort of constructing the wagonway was soon repaid with a dramatic reduction in costs. However, this was not enough to save the colliery from financial troubles and eventual closure. In the end, the wagonway lasted for less than 20 years.

The tunnel got a new lease of life as a shelter during World War Two, which saw the addition of blast walls; a new floor with drainage channel; electric lighting; benches/bunk beds for a small number of the occupants; and seven entrances.

The contrast with the impressive shelters built in London is stark and it is not a surprise to hear that they remained a damp and unpleasant space to shelter, prompting complaints to the Minister of Health. A civil servant sent up to investigate the situation reported back his patronising conclusion, that this being a mining district, the “persons who will shelter in this tunnel are possibly better fitted constitutionally to resist underground and damp conditions than those in the south.”

Blast wall inside the tunnel

The tunnel is no longer navigable from end to end. The northern end was filled in and the quayside entrance demolished long ago; the middle section was incorporated into the city sewers; and another section is accessible to investigators but in an unsafe state for visitors. However, one section in Ouseburn was made fit for visitors and first opened to the public in 1998.

Once we were kitted out with hard hats and torches we were able to enter the tunnel. Over two hours our wonderful tour guide gave us a brilliant insight into the construction of the tunnel and its operation, plus its later use as a shelter. It certainly needed a guide to point out the features that survive from that wartime period and help us appreciate how uncomfortable a space it would have been. Finally, on our return to the exit we heard the particularly tragic tale of the only known death in the tunnel that felt all the more chilling in the tight space where it occurred.

On a tour like this so much hinges on the volunteers to bring the story to life and our guide did that in spades. I can honestly say that it was one of the best guided tours that I can recall, far surpassing my expectations. Absolutely fantastic and well worth making time in your schedule for.

Back on the Tyne

Somehow over 20 years have passed since I last spent any time in Newcastle. There was a time, around the turn of the century, when I was around a bit – going to the clubs and bars, catching up with mates and exploring the sights around the city and on the coast. Some of that I can remember quite vividly even today, but there must be plenty I have long forgotten. One thing was clear – the moment I arrived I knew my way around like I had never been away. It was good to be back.

It was strange to go exploring as things that were new or up and coming on my last visits were now well established. The last time I visited the quayside was awash with new artworks installed in the mid to late 1990s, plans were afoot to convert the Baltic Flour Mills into an art centre and install a new pedestrian bridge over the Tyne. All of that is now a couple of decades old and part of a well trodden tourist trail.

A view across the Tyne. The High Level Bridge (1849) and Swing Bridge (1876).

The Tyne bridges are still every bit as magnificent to behold as they ever were. The Tyne Bridge (1928) is probably in similar shape to the last time I saw it – it is just about to undergo the next refresh (it was last refurbished and repainted in 2001). Meanwhile, a campaign has been launched to secure funding to get the swing bridge turning again (it last turned in 2019) in time for its 150th anniversary in 2026.

It was good to wander round the city centre and remind myself of familiar sights, but also to finally get the chance to visit the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art where I checked out The Waiting Gardens of the North by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz, a fascinating indoor garden featuring a recreation of a relief panel from Nineveh using food wrappers from local South Asian and African grocers. The views across the Tyne from the balconies of the centre are pretty impressive too.

Detail from the recreated panel in The Waiting Gardens of the North at the Baltic

The reason for my stay in the city was a rather extraordinary sold out hometown gig by Andrew Cushin at City Hall. I don’t usually follow artists from early-ish in their career, but picked up on a recommendation from Sam Fender on Twitter in mid 2020 after the release of his second single. It has been great to see how the momentum behind him has grown since then. As the Independent so neatly put it, there has to be something rather special to unite the somewhat unlikely combination of Pete Doherty, Louis Tomlinson and Noel Gallagher.

I don’t think I can recall seeing a more passionate and wide-ranging crowd (from youngsters to oldies) supporting an artist before, nor such a great pre-gig buzz. Maybe, I haven’t experienced gigs in Newcastle though! Before Andrew appeared on stage there were folk waving giant NUFC flags and a crowd boisterously singing along to the Jimmy Nail song Big River, but that was nothing compared to the rapturous welcome extended to Andrew mid-gig with the 2,500 strong crowd singing “Andrew Cushin he is one of our own.” No wonder Andrew was so emotional on that stage – he seemed understandably choked as he described it as the best night of his life. It was a brilliant gig.

Andrew Cushin headlining at Scala, London, earlier this year

While in the city I couldn’t miss the new Sam Fender mural (part of an Adidas advertisement campaign) that has appeared on Morden Street. It’s great to see the recognition for such an incredible and unique local songwriter, even if the mural doesn’t seem to be the greatest likeness.

The one thought running through my head as I wandered around was how on earth I had allowed over 20 years to pass before returning to a city I have always loved and with the friendliest folk you will find (as demonstrated on a few occasions, most notably when the trains went into meltdown). I won’t make that mistake again and already have the next tickets booked…

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Looking down on Borough Market Junction

A family birthday led us up the Shard for a delicious afternoon tea at Ting and reacquainted me with the splendid views from the lobby before you get into the restaurant. I think I prefer the panorama from this point to the views on offer higher up the Shard as it somehow feels a little more human.

View from the Shard

It’s hard not to be impressed by the view down on to the triangle of railway lines at Borough Market Junction. The old signal box that once stood guard at the junction has long gone (re-installed at the National Railway Museum in York) but the base it sat on can still be seen if you know what you are looking for.

Goodbye Chicago

Our short time in Chicago came to an end all too quickly. It has been a fascinating weekend, from that first impression of the city approaching on the CTA blue line from O’Hare airport to the loop, where we stayed. Although our focus was very much on architecture there is much more to the city and we only really scratched the surface there.

Beyond the architecture, we had a fantastic visit to the Museum of Science and Technology. There are so many incredible exhibits in that place, starting with an exquisite streamlined diesel powered Pioneer Zephyr train, also known as the Silver Streak, in the entrance hall.

The highlight of our visit was the coal mine tour, the longest standing exhibit in the museum, first installed in 1933. The interactive coal mine tour involves a miner’s lift, a walk through tunnels, a safety lamp demo, train ride, and a demo of coal mining machines. You completely forget that you are still inside a museum and it feels like you have somehow been transported into a mine. It’s one of the coolest tours I have ever enjoyed in a museum.

One of the machines demonstrated during our coal mine tour

Other exhibits included a charming Swiss Jolly Ball, a giant mechanical pinball that transfixed all the kids that approached; the striking sight of U-Boat 505 in its hangar surrounded by a series of panels that recount the fascinating story of how the US executed their plan to capture a u-boat; the Aurora 7 spacecraft; a marvellous model railroad; and a massive tornado replicator.

There were some pretty incredible art exhibits around the city too. The striking Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor was out of reach, surrounded by construction works until Spring 2024, but we still get a glimpse through the barricades. The Crown fountains, two fountains set 15 metres apart, spewing water from the mouths of faces on their video screens were incredibly fund and quite mesmerising.

The weather was pretty wet for a large part of the trip which presented its own challenges, despite some hairy moments (thinking of the moment where we dodged the rain by ducking into a fast food restaurant only to have some slightly deranged soul come and sit next to us, take some drugs and proceed to stare at us intently throughout as much of our meal that we could stomach before giving up). There were a few scary characters on the “L” as well, such as the chap high on drugs who seemed to be imitating a snake, slithering around one platform. Somehow we made it through unscathed. I think it’s a great city, but you do need to keep your wits about you.

We made it to a couple of restaurants, but our favourite was the State and Lake Chicago Tavern gastropub at the base of our hotel, which served up some stunning octopus and lobster. The Italian-Croatian food of Rose Mary in Fulton Market district of the West Loop served up another meal that impressed us greatly (octopus, cevapi and beef gnocchi were highlights, washed down with a wonderful grapefruit APA). Oh and not to forget, Stan’s donuts, with their stunning sweet treats (and a surprising backstory of how a Los Angeles legend transferred to Illinois).

The flight home was relatively smooth, taking us just north of New York, across the Atlantic and then over Cornwall before flying along the coast up to Portsmouth and up from there. Sadly, once we walked landside we were met with an impressive combination of signal failures on the Elizabeth line and Piccadilly, ensuring a long slow homeward journey. Welcome back to London!

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Architecture galore

Our exploration of the astonishing architecture of Chicago didn’t end with the Open House Weekend. We enjoyed four marvellous guided tours during our stay in the city.

The tours offered by the Chicago Architecture Centre helped us understand more about the way the city evolved, with the Elevated architecture: Downtown “L” train tour led by docent Steve proving to be a highlight of our trip to Chicago.

The history of the “L” and the buildings that line it proved to be a gob-smacking tale of real estate speculation, politics and a heady mix of bribery and blackmail! Along the way we saw some of the most striking buildings in the city that could be seen from the loop. I’m not sure I would have noticed the unusual triangular prison in the heart of the city (Metropolitan Correctional Center) with its narrow windows without it being pointed out.

One of many wonderful art deco lobbies in Chicago

We also took enjoyed Art deco skyscrapers: The Riverfront tour and got to see inside the lobbies of five buildings. All ended up bankrupt but have survived and now thrive with new uses. One (the Chicago Motor Club building) came close to being demolished relatively recently but now thrives as a Hilton Hampton hotel.

No visit to Chicago would be complete without visiting the urban homes created by the most famous and prolific architect to work in the city – Frank Lloyd Wright. We visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (1889) and followed an audio tour of the area to see some of the other homes he designed. The tour of his home allowed us to appreciate its role as a laboratory of ideas. It was quite amazing to see the way he bought a Steinway piano but to avoid it taking up too much floor space simply cut away part of the wall so only part of the piano sits in the room – the rest overhangs the staircase down to the ground floor!

A tour of the Robie House (1910) gave us further insights into the clever thinking behind this unusual family home, such as the use of an overhang to ensure the house didn’t overheat in the summer. It was very forward thinking for its time, with a three car garage including maintenance pit at a point when folk didn’t yet have family cars. It was sad to hear that after all the love that went to crafting this that the Robie family were only able to live there for one year before they were forced to move after hit financial troubles. It is had to believe there was once a threat to demolish this.

Tiffany glass dome in the Preston Bradley Hall (Chicago Cultural Centre)

Besides this, we got to see a few other marvellous buildings that are open to the public in Chicago – including the Rookery Building (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1888); the Chicago Cultural Centre (Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, 1897), formerly the Chicago Public Library, which houses a Civil War memorial and a beautiful Tiffany dome; the grand lobby of the Old Chicago Main Post Office (D. H. Burnham & Company/Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, 1921); and Chicago Union Station (/Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1909).

It is well worth making a stop at the Chicago Architecture Centre to understand the evolution of the city and how the three day long fire of 1871 wiped out 18,000 buildings and changed the course of development in the city.

Whatever you choose to do in Chicago you will never be too far away from an architectural marvel. What’s not to like about that!?

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