The Fair Maid of Goole

I've been though Goole many times by train but never set foot in the place or, to be honest, given it much thought. So what can I tell you about Goole that you don't already know? You'll know that  a Dutchman, one Cornelius Vermuyden,  diverted the river Don (~1629) into a navigable cutting known to this day as the Dutch River which met the Ouse just above the confluence with the Trent. Where the Dutch River met the Ouse up grew or rather developed the village of Goole. (Goole is first mentioned in 1362 as Gulle, a word meaning channel or drain outlet.) The village of Goole was used then for shipping coal from the south Yorkshire coalfields in barges. It developed into a large inland port with the arrival of the Aire and Calder canal. This led to building a town proper, known then as New Goole. The railways arrived in 1848, it's on the Hull to Doncaster line, the motorway, M62, is close by. It now has light industries, Siemens are building a train factory there and the port is thriving and some 18,000 souls inhabit the place.

Now as to landmarks Goole I'm told has a church (below) and two water towers (above) known as Salt and Pepper. There's apparently  a fancy crane or hoist in the docks but I couldn't see that from the train...

... and as our train is departing so we must bid this place adieu...

The Ouse

So to avoid any confusion this is the Ouse. Not the Great Ouse the we met in King's Lynn, nor yet the Little Ouse not even the Sussex Ouse; just the plain old Yorkshire Ouse that runs down from above the city of York until it reaches the Trent and forms the Humber. Like the Great Ouse, this river brought trade and invaders up into the heart of the country to the ancient trading city of York. It has been estimated that a sailing ship could reach York in a few hours from Hull on an incoming tidal bore known locally as the aegir. In 1066 Harald Sigurdsson, king of Norway, aka Hardrada (the hard ruler) took his Viking fleet of several hundred ships up the Ouse to York in one day and defeated the inhabitants at the Battle of Fulford.

So the river is historically important, less so now that Hull took away York's trade, sea going vessels go no further inland than Goole and Vikings have found oil and gas in the North Sea and have settled down to making detective films instead.

The bridge we are going over is the Ouse rail bridge near Goole for we are on a day trip to Sheffield on an  errand so ridiculously silly that you really wouldn't believe grown up, responsible adults would countenance such behaviour.

Hull Fair Rides Again

Photo by Margot K Juby

It's that time of year again when a car park in west Hull is taken over by the biggest travelling fair in the country. It's the week of Hull Fair again, just as noisy, bright and brash as ever, just as crowded as well. This year more folk than ever have crammed into the place, so many the police had to close the street off at one point last weekend. I don't much like the thing itself but, as Margot reminds me every year when I moan about going, it marks the passing of the seasons, autumn can begin now the Fair is here.

The weekend in black and white is here.

A Big, Beautiful Wall

Before we leave Castle Rising to its slumbers just one last gaze upon the earthwork ramparts that reach 120 feet in places and the ditch that surround the keep and the two external baileys.

Such defences might make you think the place was under threat and was somehow of military importance. It seems, however, the place had no strategic value and was just a vanity project, an expensive, over done hunting lodge. The ramparts were just meant to impress and they still do.

The Neighbours

Sticking this castle in the Norfolk countryside involved shifting an existing village slightly to the north. The village, known then as Risinga, gets a mention in Domesday as belonging in 1086 to Odo,  half-brother of William the Conqueror and bishop of Bayeux, who, as a cleric, could not shed blood so took to the battlefield wielding a club. There's an old church you can see poking out from behind the trees named after St Lawrence or Laurence if you prefer ( I'm a 'w' Lawrence man myself). St L it was who, it is said, calmly sat up during his martyrdom by grilling, and stated that he was cooked on one side and would they kindly turn him over and cook the other ...

This tree bears a memorial that it was planted by the Princess of Wales on December 28 1865, there's another nearby allegedly planted by her hubby. They must have been bored between Christmas and New Year and popped out for a spot of gardening.

After one thousand years the village of Castle Rising belongs to the Sandringham Estate, yes, that Sandringham which is just up the road, the road where the elderly Queen's consort had his accident earlier this year. And, on the subject of keeping things in the family, the castle, though run by English Heritage, is still owned by a descendant of  the guy who had it built, William d'Aubigny ...one lord Howard of Rising.

Open plan with potential for improvement

Now I need you to use your imagination... don't think what a wreck, what a ruin, think grand medieval chamber richly decorated, with a roaring fire, and sumptuous feasts as guests from the monarchy downwards loosened their stays, put up their feet and had a good old time. OK it's a stretch ...

This is the Great Chamber, or it was. You can just about make out where the floor was by the beam holes about half way up the picture. That's a throne niche, so I'm told, on the left hand wall.

The wooden roof was held by beams supported on decorative corbels.

This was, according to a sign, once the kitchen just off the chamber. Yes an indoor, upstairs medieval kitchen with wood burning ovens and so on; a health and safety nightmare which I read was solved by being moved outside at some later date. The kitchen was, of course, next to the garderobes for the guests' comfort as an informative sign puts it, and why not? Germs hadn't been invented back then.

The Vestibule

You, as a person of importance, would not tarry long in the basement of this keep. Instead you'd be shown upstairs to the reception or vestibule. An informative little sign tells us that this would originally have been a draughty place with no glass just wooden shutters. The 16th century saw mullions and glazing being added and also the main doorway into the great chamber converted into a fireplace which strikes me as an odd thing to do but then folks these days are converting their front gardens into car parks so maybe it was just a passing fancy ...

The tiles above the fireplace are a 19th century addition.

This little door became the main entrance into the Great Chamber ...

The Fixer Upper

As promised  here are some shots from the innards of Castle Rising. We'll start at the ground level and work up, more tomorrow or whenever.

All's well that has a well, I suppose, though I would fancy drinking the stuff that came out of that hole.

Trifles make the sum of life

I've shown the old Customs House, the Purfleet and St Nicholas' Chapel (that's the spire peeking out in the background) before but they're worth another viewing this time from across the river. So what can I add? Oh yes, I remember now ... there's a new film out, some dire comedy based on David Copperfield, and the Lynn papers and media folk (for they are ubiquitous, even in Norfolk) are in a tizz that some of the film features the Customs House and it gives them a quite a frisson. Then last night the local, as in Hull, BBC news had a report featuring the same film and how it has bits of Hull in  it and doesn't that give you all a thrill (we don't do frissons in Hull) ... Bury St Edmunds also stars but we don't want to talk about that ... Oh go on then here's the trailer.

Castle Rising

Escaping from the conversations and chit-chats with people you don't know, have never met before in your whole life and will probably never meet again that followed Fred's funeral and declining the kind invitation to a get together with Fred's stepfamily for tea and ham sandwiches in a King's Lynn hotel, we made our excuses and left heading three or four miles out of town to this wonder: Castle Rising. Built in 1138 by William d'Aubigny this is one of the most famous castles in England or so say the people who run it. The gatehouse and keep are restored and in remarkably good condition and you can wander around inside (we'll keep that for another day). The embankments around the three baileys are also in fine shape and amazingly steep. 

This place is most famous for being the retirement home/prison of Queen Isabella after  she'd been deposed by her son Edward III in 1330 or thereabouts. Isabella, you will recall, had her husband, Edward II, murdered in a very particular fashion involving a red hot poker, she then set about ruling with her fancy man, Mortimer, it all ended in tears as it usually does ... she seemed to make herself quite at home here, making alterations to the buildings, running up huge debts and generally enjoying herself as any self-respecting mariticidal ex-monarch should; even her son, the king, dropped by for tea and scones.

Margot, who used to bicycle here as a youngster from King's Lynn, tells me of more recent goings on involving satanic effigies being nailed to the door back in the early 1960s, a sheep’s head with thirteen thorns stuck in it was also found... but I just call that NFN.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The old trade

King's Lynn was first and foremost a port, exporting grain, salt and wool to Europe and importing wood and pitch from Scandinavia and wine from our friends in France. While the import side may not be so grand exporting grain is still big business as witnessed the huge grain silos I  posted yesterday. This ship, the Arklow Castle, was bound for Bayonne and arrived there a few days after this picture was taken. The church in the background is St Margaret's.

Something quite old and something relatively new

In the centre foreground the little King's Lynn ferry has, in one form or another , been shuttling folk across the river for over seven centuries, since 1285 so they say. The service does not run on Sundays or Bank Holidays and the last ride is at 6.30pm. I must get round to trying it out sometime.

Looming in the background are the grain silos of the port of King's Lynn with a 25,000-tonne capacity storage along with drying and screening facilities. It seems, a few years ago, there used to be silos to the south of town that were considered an "eyesore" and have been demolished. These however are a soothing balm to the optics.

Are you ready for Brexit?

 J. Heebink is a Dutch transport firm with bases in Manchester and MIlton Keynes. Their bright orange lorries are a common sight on Castle Street as they head to and from the port. They've been in business for decades and with a bit of  common sense from all parties, will keep on trucking for many decades to come.

The theme for this month is orange. 

At the end of this month, if certain folk are to be believed and the UK does finally leave the protection racket known as the European Union, the sky will fall in, this country will run out of medicines, food, fuel, folk will be put out of work and we will collapse into a state of complete paralysis with lorries unable to transport goods to and from the EU. This will only happen if the EU chooses to make it happen, let us be clear, it will be their choice to mess with trade; someone, somewhere will have to choose to block or delay the transport of vital medicines...  thus showing what inhuman bastards they have been all along.
It's poppycock (a fine Dutch word), of course, but that is how these scaremongering idiots work. I've given up on the political machinations going on in Parliament, plots here, plots there, plots against plots, court cases to reverse the PM's actions, plots to change the PM, rumours of plots, denials of rumours and you think it and it is happening (possibly, who knows? who cares any longer?) ... all keep the BBC (the biased broadcasting conspiracy) salivating. This parliament is simply not working, the government cannot govern, the supposedly neutral Speaker is in cahoots and conspiring with the Opposition, ... The people cannot have an election because the Opposition is rightly scared of the result and won't let them, so much for democracy. It all boils to one thing: are they, a few hundred MPs, really going to overturn the votes of 17.4 million people and block Brexit completely? Do they think they can get away with it? Well the answer to that is, suck it and see: Oh the Great Reckoning there will be!
Meanwhile the Government is putting out adverts with the question: "Are you ready for Brexit?" to which my answer (and I guess a lot of others) is "Just get a bloody move on ..."

Morrisons, King's Lynn

I've been in several Morrisons stores in my time but none have anything like this stained glass window. With my limited local knowledge I spot a reference to the tidal clock on St Margarets, are those the sails of old fishing boats? There's probably other things hidden in there that I'm missing. Tucked away is the word Lenne, from the old latin name  Lenne Episcopi (Bishop's Lynn) as it was before it became Lenne Regis ...

Apart from the stained glass the store is just like every other Morrisons, a large dull box, but full marks for this little decoration.

I realise now all the lettering is back to front; maybe if I spin it by magic ...

The Red Mount Chapel

Taken by Margot K Juby

On our way to Morrisons for some late night shopping we passed this little beauty in the Walks. I won't bore you with the history of this place just say it's an amazing survivor through some turbulent times and has been recently restored and is open to the public though obviously not at nine o'clock on a September evening. Hopefully we'll be back for a better look round sometime.

Out to the Wash

Here we are again down the Fisher Fleet; this time with a bit of day light. If you carry on past the fishing boats you eventually fetch up at the river, the Great Ouse, which flows out into the Wash. The river no longer flows in its own free way but in a man made channel, dead straight. King's Lynn used to be much nearer the sea but land reclamation, drainage and such things means it's now a few miles inland.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The Fisher Fleet

The Fisher Fleet just after sunset with a bit of a tide to reflect the lights and ghostly almost invisible ducks quacking to themselves is an experience not to be missed. Sure it involves a wee bit of trespass on port authority land but no one will mind too much and even if  they do they can only politely advise you to leave.

Folk have been setting off from here to scour the Wash and North Sea for fish and such like for centuries, these days it's mainly shrimps that provide a living for dozens in King's Lynn.

The Fleet now lies strictly controlled with embankments between two docks and surrounded only by light industry. A painting from the 19th century shows a more rustic, even bucolic, place with folk having a nice family day out by the banks of the stream. I can't see that happening these days. I found a couple of other old paintings here.

Margot Juby took this

Just ignore this sign ...

MargotJuby  took this

And if you are a tad confused over the word fleet, here it means a creek not a collection of boats. In fact the Fisher Fleet is the mouth of the Gaywood river which flows with no great urgency for a few miles and empties into the Great Ouse here. So there you go, it's clear as mud ... There are other 'fleets' in and around Lynn, Millfleet and the Purfleet spring to mind.

Fleeting

Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a bloody-good cry
And always remember: The longer you live
The sooner you'll bloody-well die...

To King's Lynn for a funeral, at very nearly 90 years of age Fred Juby, Margot's old dad, just died while reading an Ian Rankin novel so he didn't miss much ... The service was a strange thing, though quite common these days, I'm told: a non religious event that nevertheless kept to the forms and structures of a religious service. So instead of hymns we had Glenn Miller's foot-tapping In the Mood, John Lennon's Imagine, instead of a prayer a poem (of excruciating banality) instead of a priest a 'humanist' person reading an obituary. I suppose we should mark these passages from life in some way but give me a good old burial in the deep clay complete, if need be, with "Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery...He cometh up and is cut down like a flower ..." or better still just feed me to the crows rather than being shuffled off behind a purple curtain while Bud Flanagan sings the Dad's Army theme tune.

So any way it was a good day especially as it wasn't my funeral and we got this grand old double rainbow stretching right across the town.

The Railway

This pub  in Cottingham has been closed since January and was only open for a few weeks over Xmas before that, the seasonal decorations are still up... Basically it's on its uppers and whoever owns it has decided enough is enough and has put in plans to erect "10 dwellings with associated access, parking, landscaping and infrastructure following demolition of hotel". You last saw this place way back in 2012 when it was positively blooming.