Indulgence

I suppose the price of indulgence rises just like any other commodity but this cake shop (Patisserie! hah!) on Beverley's Butcher Row does seem to be just a tad on the expensive side. Still you only live once ...

Here is Brindley Street and you can keep it.

There is a little stretch of East Hull that is dedicated to the memory of scientists and engineers of by-gone eras. Near East Park we find Newcomen, Savery, Telford, Kelvin, Faraday, Watt, Lodge Streets and so on and last but not least here is Brindley Street.

Brindley? who he? I hear you ask, (well I asked). James Brindley was an 18^th century  digger  of canals (really more a planner, others did the digging). OK the Bridgewater Canal since you ask, the start of all this hectic movement of goods and commerce, Industrial Revolution, the modern age and all that jazz. All his fault ... put the blame on James.
Fourteen or so years ago we almost bought a house on this street, a five bed-roomed monster of a terraced house. Dirt cheap (then) but no garden and quite a depressing outlook. Ended up buying a house on Portobello Street further along Holderness Road (a big mistake!). I noticed the Brindley Street house  is back on the market (you can just about make out the For Sale sign ). Am I tempted? Hah!

The Monks Walk

I sometimes wonder what happen to all those monks after the dissolution of the monasteries, did they find alternative employment elsewhere? I mean what skills did an ex-monk have to bring to the medieval employment market? Was there much call for praying for souls, Gregorian chanting and all that silent contemplation malarky? As it turns out they were simply pensioned off and with the inflation of the day that was probably not a lot to live on. (The monastery servants, however, were simply given the sack and cast out!)  So no doubt the old Brothers union would like as not drown their sorrows in the nearby hostelry, swapping their good habits for bad, dissolute monks, eh, who wants 'em!.

Enough, enough. This is the Monks Walk on Highgate, Beverley just a few steps from the Minster. It used to be the George and Dragon or just plain George. It was definitely a pub back in the mid 17^th century and probably before that. Anyhow a few years back when it was being refitted it was found to date back to at least 1420. What you see here is a Georgian facade on some medieval buildings. The blank white sign on the right used to say "Whitbread" but clearly the link with this brewer has been dissolved since Whitbread ceased to brew beer about fourteen years ago (the first pint of beer I ever bought was a Whitbread, terrible frothy stuff, but I digress). The building is listed Grade2, there's more by a much better informed author on this page.

Walking home

Hull Road, Cottingham

I could always catch a bus and pay whatever the fare is these days from Cottingham to Golf Links Road but then it's not like it's that far and it's hardly unpleasant ... so one foot in front of the other it is then. Perhaps I could get a bike!

Step away from the window

Here as promised is the West window of Beverley Minster. I'm told it depicts figures and events in early Christianity in Northumbria. Though this is fine late Gothic perpendicular style the glazing dates from restoration work carried out in the mid 19th century by a company called Hardman's of Birmingham formed at the behest of Gothic revival fruitcake A. W. N. Pugin. English Heritage (bless them) describes this as a " 9-light sub-arcuated west window", I suppose brevity is next to godliness...

John, Luke, Mark and Matthew

Somehow this massive 18^th century carved oak door survived the ravages of the Gilbert Scott's 'restoration' of Beverley Minster. The door depicts from right to left the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with their respective symbols. A family of craftsmen by the name of Thornton is responsible for this door and the baptismal font cover which I'll show some time soon. The same Thorntons also saved the North transept from collapsing.

In reality the door is a very dark brown  but my camera failed me (or I failed it) and underexposed it; so to make an anywhere decent image I've had to play around ending up with this black and white image, it's a bit clearer if you click on it for the bigger version. Below shows the impressive door surround (they did like their statues back then) and the base of the West window which I'll show tomorrow.

The Weekend in Black and White is here.

Goths, Vandals and so on

Strange how the term Gothic was originally one of abuse and denigration (and has become so again when applied to the youthful urge to wear black and look as if  death would be a blessed relief from the toils of the world!). This was, as Vasari commented, a barbarous German style of building. Christopher Wren, no doubt with a view to his own line of business, also piled on the bad vibes. This was the style of the Goths who had, it was supposed, destroyed all that was good in classical Rome. Well, hmmm. If you're trying to sell a new product you don't exactly want to praise the old competition now do you?
This top view is through the canopy of the Percy Tomb in Beverley Minster. I'm guessing it would, when new, have been brightly painted and gilded. It's thought to be no later than around 1340 in construction and was one of the last pieces of original building in the Minster. After this the building gradually decayed, it survived the dissolution of the monasteries because it was a parish church otherwise we would now be looking at a picturesque ruin (that would cost a whole lot less to maintain). The North transept almost collapsed in the 18th century and was saved and repaired. However much of what we see now in here has been cleaned up, marble floors and columns polished and walls scrubbed by George Gilbert Scott (yup him again) one of those Victorian Gothic revivalist maniacs. He did such a thorough job that the place now looks like a giant shiny polished museum, sterile, pickled and most definitely dead, others call it a Gothic masterpiece.