Souvenirs: Blue & White Porcelain Mug, The Foundling Museum, London WC1N, c.2008.

Tags

17th Century, blue and white porcelain, Georgian Britain, Grahame Clarke, London, Mug, Museums, Porcelain, Souvenirs, Ted, The Foundling Museum, Thomas Coram

This mug means a lot to me and it usually has pride of place on my welsh dresser (when its not being photographed next to Ted).

Firstly, it represents my first attempts to explore London in any great depth. When I was a Boy Scout (which was so long ago the notion of girl Scouts wasn’t even entertained) I visited London and had my photograph taken outside Buckingham Palace, but this, and subsequent sightseeing tours and theatre breaks required little organisation on my part. I think it was an article in the BBC History Magazine that inspired me to visit The Foundling Museum and lead me to investing in a map of London, so I could walk there from Kings Cross Station. I felt very adventurous!

Secondly, this is the best souvenir in my collection; in that it rekindles so many thoughts and memories relating to what is a very emotional subject. The mug depicts Captain Thomas Coram finding an abandoned child, a foundling, which was such a common occurrence in 17th Century London that the Captain felt it necessary to establish an institution to take care of some of these abandoned children; The Foundling Hospital. The museum, like the mug, contrasted the charitable figure of Coram and the levels of poverty that drove women to abandon their children or to leave them in the care of Coram following the foundation of the Hospital. The mug, for me, is about hope and despair, in equal measure; plus any personal feelings I might have about that particular day in history when I spotted it behind the museums reception desk.

Thirdly, this was my first souvenir mug. The base of the mug informs me that it was crafted by Grahame Clarke who produces the “finest of hand-made porcelain”, according to his website. It is very well done and my photograph does not really do it justice.

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Photo Archive: The Bullring, Birmingham, c.2009.

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Birmingham, Bronze, Bull, public art, sculpture, The Bull, The Bullring, The Bullring Birmingahm

The Bull.

A certain on-line encyclopaedia informs me that The Bull (or “The Guardian“) is a bronze by Laurence Broderick, which I didn’t know before today; I’ve always just thought of it as The Bull. I have only seen it once, on one of only a handful of visits to Birmingham, but I remember it attracting a lot of attention; especially from photographers. Is it iconic? Timeless? Does it receive as much attention now? I don’t know, but when ever anybody mentions Birmingham my first memory is of the day I visited The Bull. 

The view from the Pier Slipway, Cleethorpes, 23/10/14.

Tags

Cleethorpes, Cleethorpes beach., Coast, Humber, Humber Estuary, Sea Views, Seascapes, Seaside., The Pier Cleethorpes

The Pier Slipway.

The Pier was closed, so I couldn’t take a “View from the end of The Pier” photograph for you! This was as close to the end of The Pier as I could get without getting sand in my shoes.

The view of the end of The Pier.

Photo Archive: Reconstruction of a Roman Gateway, Manchester, c.2009.

Tags

Ancient Rome, British History, Fortifications, Gateway, Manchester, Roman Britain, Roman Fort, Romano-British

If memory serves me, this reconstruction of a Roman gateway is only a short walk from Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, on Liverpool Road. The gateway marks what would have been the North entrance to the fort at Mamucium, a garrison town on the road between the Romano-British centres of Chester and York. The reconstruction is definitely worth investigating, especially if you are visiting the MOS&I anyway.

The Chimney, Morrisons Supermarket, Foss Island Retail Park, York, 12/05/14.

Tags

bricks, chimney, Industrial Revolution, York

This redundant factory chimney stands in splendid isolation on a retail park, next to a supermarket. I’m sure I walked all the way around it and found no clues as to its history, but I’m guessing it once belonged to an industrial complex that now lies beneath the supermarkets car park.

Wellington Boot Planter, The Stone Yard, York Minster, York, 12/05/14.

Tags

flowers, gardening, green, plants, stone masonry, The Stone Yard, Wellington boots, York, York Minster

The creation of a green fingered stone mason.

The Writing on the Window, York Castle Prison, York Castle Museum, York, 12/05/14.

Tags

glass, graffiti, Museums, names, vandalism, York, York Castle Museum, York Castle Prison

I wonder how many names it took to achieve this rather interesting result? At some point the curator must have had the bright idea of blacking out the windows of the Prison to lower the light level and make the place even more atmospheric than it already was. Soon after [I image] visitors must have started scratching their names into the paint.

One or two names stood out for me, but it was the jumble of letters that appealed to me, but I didn’t feel a compulsion to add my own name. It felt like just another layer of the Prisons history and I think some else must agree with me, because it would have been quite a simple task to paint over the scratches [I image; I’ve never blacked out a window before].

Can you spot your name?

The Chinese Bell, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, August 2014.

Tags

Bell, Bristol, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Bronze, China, Chinese Bell, Chinese History, Museums, Museums and Galleries, tea.

To quote the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery’s website:
“Where else can you order your food with a view of a 17th-century chimney piece from Lewins Mead and eat your food with your back to a huge 18th-century bronze Chinese bell while being overlooked by two stone lions as two floors above a dinosaur skeleton rears up on its hind legs?”

I did indeed eat my delicious chocolate muffin and drank my tea with my back to this “huge 18th century bronze Chinese bell” and enjoyed every minute of it, as did my sister and four year old nephew [in fact my nephew still refers to the Bristol City Museum as “The Cheese Museum” in reference to the soft cheese triangle he ate on the day this photograph was taken].

A Bristol based associate of mine remarked that it must have been incredibly difficult to remove from its original position, but I’m not so sure. The plaque attached to the bell describes how the bell was acquired  by a Royal Navy officer in aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion and I wonder if the bell could be moved quite simply with the right application of man power and an adequate amount of rope (two things readily available on a Victorian man-of-war, I would have thought).

Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is completely free, so why not pop in to have a look at the bell, as well as some of the other interesting exhibits and have a cup of tea like I did.

“The Railwaymen’s Friend”, Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station, August 2014.

Tags

Bristol, Bristol Temple Meads Station, flowers, Memorial plaques, memorials, Miss Emma Saunders, Public Transport, Railway Stations, The Railwaymen's Friend, Victorian., Victoriana

The plaque is on the wall behind the rather impressive flower arrangement.

This flower arrangement was probably worth a blog post all of its own, but it is obscuring something I found even more interesting…

Going deeper into the flowers…

It seems that Miss Emma Saunders, known as The Railway Men’s Friend or “The lady with the basket” was a Victorian woman with a mission. In brief Miss Saunders sort to stop the ever increasing numbers of Bristol railway employees from turning to alcoholism by handing out Christian literature and posies from her basket of flowers. She also set up Bristol & West of England Railwaymen’s Institute, the forerunner of the British Rail Staff Association, which offered railway workers with access to a canteen and a skittle alley. You can read more about Miss Saunders here: http://www.redland.org.uk/cgi-bin/page.cgi?20:20:32

Here’s a close up.

To quote Clifton Online’s “famous and infamous” section:

“Her funeral service at Christchurch on her 86^th birthday was conducted by three vicars and Clifton society rubbed shoulders with over a thousand of “her” railwaymen, all of whom wore a daffodil in her memory of their friend”.