Saturday Market Place

If you feel a little cheated, let down perhaps, by all the build up of yesterday's post then the feeling is mutual. Saturday Market Place is, as they say, nowt much to look at. These were taken on a Saturday and, well, it's just a car park; the market having suffered as have many others from the progress of the online shopping. Still and all the surroundings are pretty spectacular I think you'll agree. On the one side St Margaret's church and on t'other the splendid town hall, Trinity Guildhall and old prison or gaol house ...ça vaut le détour, n'est ce pas?

Entrance to the old prison

A sign advertising the delights inside the Guildhall. We didn't have time to see these. Another time perhaps.

From Tuesday to Saturday

Right, we are on our way from Tuesday Market Place to Saturday Market Place via High Street. High Street is a medieval thoroughfare, a little over a quarter mile in length, packed with shops and adjacent to the Vancouver shopping centre. Although the picture doesn't show it the whole area was very busy with folk doing their shopping and/or having a good old gossip. The place looks pretty much as when I first saw it in the late 70s. OK Woolworth's has gone and Timothy White's is now Boots but Burton's is still there and the large selection of shops is just as I remember it. I noticed only two or three closed shops, one of them was a fire damaged charity shop. The comparison with Whitefriargate in Hull a similar street which was once the vibrant go-to place in town but is now effectively dead could not be more striking, but let us not dwell ...

I think I found the only broken lamp on High Street.

Some pagan winter festival is about to be celebrated ...

Another of Mr Burton's art deco style shops that grace many a high street up and down the land.

Street names change over the years. Briggate (Bridge Street in modern parlance) sounds better to me but it's not my town so I don't get no say.

Archilenses and Tuesday Market Place

We can't stay in Tuesday Market Place forever as there's lots more to see but before leaving there's just time to show this quirky installation. It called an archilens, there's apparently two of them though to be honest I only saw this one. (The other is by the Ouse and is just about visible in the middle of  this picture. I did not notice until I read up about it) It's pretty clear what it is and what it does ("Glass panels with inlaid magnifying lenses ... which distort and change the images of the Tuesday Market Place and the Ouse, producing new and exciting views.") so I won't go on.

And before we bid a final farewell to Tuesday Market Place a word about this space which serves as a car park for most of the time but from Valentine's Day each year this place is given over to the King's Lynn Mart, a two week funfair which "pulsates with the sound of loud music, screaming youngsters and whirling machines". This is the first fair in the showmen's guild calendar (Hull Fair is the last). This year was the 814th fair and they don't look as if they're going to stop any time soon. Being in February, Mart weather has entered into the local vocabulary as shorthand for nithering with showers of sleet and snow, Hull Fair weather used to be similar (cold, wet and autumnal) but recently climate changes have meant Hull Fair is balmy, almost muggy (Ew!!). Finally , finally there may even be a market held here on Tuesday's ... who knows; I was here on a Saturday.

The Corn Exchange

The corn exchange, on Tuesday Market Place, was built in in 1854 with a fine baroque style façade featuring the town's  crest (below) and topped off with a statue of Ceres or Demeter with a sickle and a bundle of corn (below, below). As I was on an very short stay I had no time to go inside and see the transformation into theatre/cinema community arty place along with compulsory coffee shop.

The crest of King's Lynn features three dragons regurgitating a cross. This is an allusion to the story of the town's patron saint, St Margaret of Antioch, who, as was the custom in those days, was swallowed by a dragon but as she was so holy she was indigestible (holy types often are I find) and so was chucked up to use the vernacular. Atop all this nonsense stands a pelican in her piety. This crest appears all over the town in various guises.

The Victorians, in their pursuit of profit in the exchange, seem to have had no qualms about mixing Christian symbolism with pagan idolatry so why should we?

The Globe Hotel

Seemingly not shrugging at all old Atlas is still carrying the world on his shoulders. Like the witch's heart Atlas is one of those little things to look out for in King's Lynn. He adorns the Globe Hotel at the junction of King Street and Ferry Street forming a corner of Tuesday Market Place. This is yet another merchant's town house from the early 18th century turned into a hotel. As with the Duke's Head it has been much altered and extended. It is also another of the wannabe designs of Henry Bell though many doubt it. And like the DH the Globe is also haunted, this time with a 'Chill' associated with a murder in the stables many years ago ... or maybe they should just fix the windows.

The Duke's Head Hotel in Blue

Here's the Duke's Head also on Tuesday Market Place. Now memory is a funny old thing but I distinctly remember this place being pink so a rummage through the dusty depths of Google brought forth a confirmation that back in the late 1970s this was indeed a hideous pink confection, you can see for yourself here. I'm not so sure that the blue is much of an improvement; but as I don't live here I don't have to look at it. The building was the house of a local merchant and MP and built in 1683 supposedly to a design by Henry Bell, he of the Customs House (but the Grade 2 listing doubts this attribution). It has been much altered and added to since then having been a bank at one stage. Being built on the site of a much older hotel and being in King's Lynn it is of course reputedly haunted by spectres from its long past.

The Witch's Heart

Here is the tale as told to me by reliable and truthful sources who had themselves heard it from equally fine and upstanding folk who ... well you get the idea. Now many years ago, in the 16th century, to be precise 1590, seems as good a year as any, a young woman by the name of Margaret Read was charged with being a witch and sentenced to be burned in the Tuesday Market Place. She must have been a proper witch as burning was three times dearer than a good hanging by the South Gates. Now Margaret didn't think this burning was such a good idea as she had the strange notion that she wasn't a witch at all. So she prophesied that if she was innocent her heart would leap from her body and strike this building and the first person to leave through the doorway would die instantly. Now the good folk of Lynn weren't too impressed by this and weren't going to waste a good pile of wood, (they'd baked cakes and had ale, for a good witch burning was a merry sight) so they went ahead and gave her the full 180°C for twenty minutes per 500g plus twenty minutes at the end. So anyhow you can see how this is tending. As she slowly roasted her heart leapt out across the market place struck this building and then merrily bounced off towards the river and with a splash was never seen again. Whether young Margaret was heard to say " I told you so" was not recorded but just to be sure that no-one forgot her warning the doorway was blocked up and a witch's heart crudely carved into the wall. So now you have my story you can pass it on to others, every word is true I tell you, as true as my name is William Braquemard.