Where there's muck ...

I'm much too young to have any knowledge of the great smogs of London but I am old enough to remember when each house in the land burnt coal and the fuss and bother of the clean air legislation that meant we had to change to smokeless fuels: coke at first (which was a bit like having a mini blast furnace in the living room) and then later converting to good old North Sea Gas. I think all towns and cities in the in the UK are now smokeless zones however East Riding of Yorkshire has no smokeless zones at all so in Cottingham there are still the odd one or two coal burning houses pumping out the vile reeking smoke. It's amazing the intolerable, acrid, throat stinging stench from one coal fire and yet I don't recall this from thousands of coal hearths when I was a young lad; that was just how things were then. So no, I don't miss the old ways, the days starting cold and freezing as the fire obviously had gone out over night and wouldn't "catch" unless a sheet of newspaper was held over it to pull a draught up the chimney, the ashes needing carrying out, the regular delivery from the coal merchants, the sweeping of the chimney every so often to stop it catching fire (that was fun though, for a young'un, watching the brush poke out of the chimney with a cloud of soot), really cold bedrooms with ice on the window in winter, no central heating, no double glazing, no instant hot water, the singular joy of a frozen toilet and so on... I'm feeling a cold shudder just writing about it (but that could be because it's only 14C outside) ... give me a nice, efficient, clean gas boiler with instant central heating any day. But I digress ...

It was not just the bronchi of every living soul that were covered in a patina of soot and tar but the buildings were coated in grime, some with centuries of soot, as well. You might imagine that after nigh on fifty years of clean air these buildings would all be sparkling and for the most part you'd be right but ... well there's always one isn't there? This reminder of how things used to be is 46 Whitefriargate. It was originally a bank built in 1904 and despite, or maybe because of, its sooty grime it is Grade 2 listed. Now imagine, if you can, every building in every town similarly coated, ... no wonder old films were black and white ...

Moon Clocks and High Tides

High up on the southern tower of St Margaret's is this oddity; a moon phase and tide clock. The writing on the edge says Lynn High Tide, each letter representing an hour. The hour hand is a little green dragon with a cross in his mouth (a Lynn motif). The moon phase appears through a circular hole but as it was new moon on the day I arrived you can't actually see the moon . (But don't you take my word for it here's another view) The clock dates from 1681 and was the gift of one Thomas Tue, clockmaker, churchwarden and one time mayor of King's Lynn. Thank you Thomas.

St Margaret's has undergone much needed repairs and renovations this last year, so I've read. The porch needed fixing as bits might have fallen on someone's head. The new stone is a bit off putting but it'll weather and does show how bright the whole church would have looked when new just six or so hundred years ago. Must have been stunning. (Ignore the little red sign saying "Minster open"; St Margaret's was apparently turned into King's Lynn Minster some years back by the Bishop of Norwich, but, like Holy Trinity in Hull, also recently minsterised, no-one seriously uses the term. Seems you can't overturn centuries of use by episcopal degree)

King's Lynn, like Hull, is prone to flooding. The Wash is just up the river and beyond that the big old North Sea prone to tidal surging every now and then. At the entrance to the church these markers are reminders of high water levels over the years. The renovation has somewhat blurred them but the highest, at nearly four feet, was just back in 1978 but the worst by far for the whole east coast of England was in 1953 when hundreds died. There are lots more flood protection measures in place now and regular exercises to test them, so I've read, let's just hope they work when the next surge comes.

Wanna buy a bank?

I've shown bits of this building before but for some reason never the tout ensemble. This was until recently the HSBC bank on Whitefriargate. Imposing old pile isn't it? The usual outlook for buildings of this nature is to be transformed into a bar/club/restaurant and perhaps given the HSBC connection something with a little Mexican/Columbian flavour might be appropriate. They could called it El Cartel, just a suggestion.