Marriot's Warehouse, King's Lynn

How does a sculpture on the subject of the medieval practice of drying cod grab you? Hmm? Well outside this late 16^th century warehouse they've put up a  grey metallic thing with a little plaque telling us that dried fish was imported into King's Lynn back in the days before Beko fridge-freezers and this is so we don't forget how barrel loads of the stuff were transported inland from here ... *yawn, stretch...*  I liked the squawking gull but found the rest was a bit "so-whatish" but maybe others will find it fascinating.

Here's the front of the building (or is it the back?), it seems from what I read that the place was used for storing salt, wine, beer and building materials. Ships apparently moored inside the place which indicates the river has been pushed back a few dozen yards since those days. It's reckoned the stone base comes from demolished Friary which was just behind here. The building is now a restaurant and exhibition space and is run by a trust to keep it open to the public.

I'd like to see this "rain barrel" in a downpour ...

By the Millfleet, King's Lynn

As I mentioned in yesterday's somewhat rambling post I have been in King's Lynn for a few days and naturally took several gigabytes of photos. More to come over the next few days.

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 Bentinck, Loke Road, King's Lynn

Lord William George Frederick Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, or George to his pals, was the member of Parliament for King's Lynn for twenty years or so until his death (from apoplexy) at the age of 46 in 1848. He was a mate of Disraeli, lending him money and opposing the repeal of the Corn Laws and later getting rid of Peel thus making his man, Dizzy, PM. I still don't see how a Lord could sit in the Commons but those were different times ... There's a Bentinck Dock around the corner and this pub to continue the name. I'm happy to see the place still open and, as the sign says, under new management. The last time I was in there was near forty years ago to buy a bottle of sherry, or rather get an empty sherry bottle refilled from a porcelain barrel of sweet sticky alcohol that had probably never been near to Jerez or even Spain. This view is along Lansdowne Street towards Loke Road.

Some more bobs and bits

Here's some more snaps from King's Lynn. Starting with a compass structure by the Purfleet, commemorating historical activities and notable people associated with the town.

There's a maritime trail you can follow should you wish to become a full time tourist. Maybe later.

This cattle trough is near the museum in what is now the bus station and shopping centre but at one time was King's Lynn cattle market. There's a very similar one on High Street , Hull.

And a final cute memento mori from St Nicholas' that should have been posted a few days ago but somehow slipped through the net.

St Peter's Church, West Lynn

This little church made a brief appearance in a post sometime back (here) without any comment. So today here's St Peter's over in West Lynn from the King's Lynn side and below a little bit closer. The building dates from Norman times and has had bits added over the years including the tower in the 14th century with the last renovation in the 20th century.

The Government has decreed this evening that we shall not leave our homes save for essential shopping, medical needs and exercise once a day. Meh! I usually only ever leave my house for essential shopping, medical needs and exercise once a day in any case so this don't impress me much. Non-essential shops are being closed (*gallic shrug*) and bus services are being cut back but then they never ran on time  so I doubt we'll notice. All should be well unless tell-tales, nosy neighbours and the police decide to play silly buggers in which case all will be far from well. It's hardly the end of the world, yet. It's weird how many folk want their liberties taken away from them ("Please lock us up for our good"!). Oddly (or perhaps not) the most vociferous are those on the left who, well you might have thought they'd know better... I might write to my MP or then again I might not... I am bored by all this tedious nonsense as I'm sure most folk are and will try not to mention it again. You will not find me writing a diary of the "lockdown" (God forbid!) I shall just muddle on here as I always do. Oh before I go, never forget in all this no matter what you do or how you play it ... mors vincit omnia!

The Purfleet, Customs House and Vancouver

Turning our backs to the river we come across what is now a little tourist attraction but was once a medieval harbour of sorts. This is the Purfleet, the old, and I do mean very old northern boundary of the town. I remember it being run down and seedy little car park back in the late 1970's when I first came to Lynn but it's been spruced up. The Customs House has been renovated and is now a Tourist Information office with a small museum upstairs (see below). Outside there's a statue of local lad Captain George Vancouver after whom the local shopping centre and a bit of Canada are named.

The Customs House was built in 1683 as both a merchants exchange and Customs office. By this time though Lynn as a port was in a bit of a decline with more and more shipping going through that evil place up north called Hull.

The bewigged person with his oh so subtle rod and dangling tassles is Charles II.

This is the Long Room upstairs in the Customs House.

This is to let us know who is in charge.

Some tools of the Customs trade

I was tempted by this long case clock but I really can't find the room for it at home ...

The pink bag is Margot's

In medieval times King's Lynn was in the Hanseatic league hence the models of Hanse vessels in the Long Room.

PS. I almost forgot this area appeared in a film, Revolution, starring (if that's the word) Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland and Nastassja Kinski  with King Street and the Customs House pretending to be New York. If you haven't heard of it that's probably because it was a monumental flop at the box office. Here's a snippet from You Tube.

The Public Library, King's Lynn

One thing I have learned in all my years is that when you come across a library dating from the turn of the last century looking overly ornate, beyond the reach of any ordinary town council's budget, then it's a good bet that Andrew Carnegie's vast wealth lies behind it somewhere. Here, on London Road, is a fine thing opened in 1905 by the very man himself (see below). It's still the library of this town though I've read that modernity in the form of WiFi and digital computery things are available as well as old-style books.

The library is reputed to be haunted by a monk no doubt wandering in from the old Greyfriars monastery just behind.

Somewhere in that impressive crowd stands Mr Carnegie so I'm told. There's a tale, little more than scuttlebutt, that he built this particular library to get a knighthood as it's close to Sandringham and the then king's winter retreat. Firstly I wouldn't like to walk all the way from Sandringham to take out a book and second I can't see Mr C being impressed by mere baubles. (This picture courtesy of the generosity of the internet)

There's a Carnegie library in Hull, here, that also opened in 1905 a busy year for Mr C as he tried to give away all the wealth he had accrued. Now I come to think abut it there was a Carnegie library in my old home town, Hartlepool.

I'm a hairin’ scarin’ fisherman...

‘I’m a hairin’ scarin’ fisherman and I hail from Kings Lynn town,
And in this old life I’ve seen many an up and down.
And when we’ve spent our stocker bait and had a jolly spree
Away we’ll crack, on board the smack, and plough the angry sea.’

To watch her and trigger and pipe her as she goes,
Give her the sea and let her rip we're the boys to pull her through
You want to see our Ally when the wind is blowin' through
Sailing from the Dogger bank to Great Grimsby.

I find that is a variation of an old song "Dogger Bank" ( which is in turn probably from another Music Hall song ) given to us by the grandly nicknamed Trunky Bunn of King's Lynn. Quite how it ended up engraved on a granite boulder in a playground on Loke Road I really don't know but there it lies, a gift to future generations, what they'll make of it I can't imagine.

On a similar theme I can include this little plaque on a former pub down the road and around the corner mentioning Ralph Vaughan Williams' dalliances with the natives of North End. If you listen to old RVW long enough you find yourself thinking I know that tune it's such and such ... well he's only gone and nicked it hasn't he ... plagiarism, as somebody once said, is basic to all culture.

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 ...

Palm Paper Factory, King's Lynn

Earlier this year I posted that this place was a sugar beet factory. Well I was just showing my age and my ignorance. There was a sugar factory here many years ago when I first came to this land (early 1980s) seems it closed mid-1990s. Now it's this magnificent, steamy place. This I read has the "world's widest, largest and most powerful newsprint machine in the world" and to show you just how whoopy big that is I read that it can produce 2000 metres of 10.3 metre wide newsprint every minute, that's ample space for a lot of lies I think you'll agree.

There are in fact two bridges across the Great Ouse in this picture, the front is for local traffic to and from West Lynn, the rear one carries the A47 road which goes from Birmingham to Great Yarmouth (and back again) should you wish.

St Nicholas Chapel of Ease

Approaching King's Lynn along the A17 you know you're nearly there when you can see the spire of St Nicholas chapel and the twin towers of St Margaret's on the horizon. (There's also a old concrete silo but that's not quite so attractive). St Nicholas chapel was built as a chapel of ease for the rich merchants and fisher folk of north Lynn as St Margaret's was too small to hold everybody and a bit of walk across town and you don't want to get your Sunday best dirtied by medieval squalor now do you? The building is mainly 15th century with some earlier bits. The lead spire dates from 1869 and is by our good friend Sir Gilbert Scott replacing a wooden one destroyed in the 18th century. (Sir Gilbert seems to have renovated every old church in the country) St Nick's is open to the public but we got there too early so we'll have to come back here later to see a surprising literary connection with Hull and angelic musicians.

Horace

Horace had the misfortune to encounter the Prince of Wales (not the present droopy muppet, nor yet the even more useless one before him who ran off with his American floozy but the one before that, the habitué of Parisian brothels, him, Albert, I think was his name, do try to keep up)  in Jeypore back in 1876 when the sun never set on the British Empire (as one wit said God didn't trust the British in the dark). Horace sat for a few years in Sandringham before the Royals got bored and fobbed him off to the King's Lynn Museum. So since 1928 Horace has been both scaring and fascinating generations of small, young Lynn folk. And as Margot was one of those youngsters we had to go see him again. He sits in the entrance foyer so it was no trouble. I even bought a postcard.

I've been saying Horace and using masculine pronouns but it turns out Horace is more of a Horatia really. But in these days and in the current climate of political correctness if she wants to identify her herself a he I'm not going to argue. Especially not with a tiger.

St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn

While in Lynn this was the view that greeted me each day on my way to get the newspapers in Norfolk Street. Bit different from the usual streetscene.

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.

Escapism

I mentioned at the start of this month how Henry Le Strange built a very successful railway to get folk from King's Lynn to Hunstanton, well thanks to 1960s profligacy that line no longer exists. You'll have to find other means of escape that's if the CovidNazis will ever let you out of your house again. Above we have the neatly decorated KL station still pretending it is run by British Rail (Queenie regularly uses this place and they haven't told her about denationalisation) and below all that's left of Hunstanton station where the trains ran into the sea...

Here's a little something extra, a relatively young John Betjeman (younger than me, let us say) taking us on a day trip from Lynn to Hunstanton. Look, listen and learn not least how to pronounce Hunstanton and Snettisham. A different country in so many ways.

An alley off Hextable Road, King's Lynn

 

Hextable, in case you were wondering is "a pleasant place to live, it is an attractive rural village surrounded by beautiful Green Belt. The village is inside the M25 in north west Kent in the Sevenoaks District..." and no, I've never heard of it except here in Lynn, it wins the obscure street name award for October.

Take a pew

It was the fashion at one time to carve grotesque figures in churches, you'll find them supporting the roof, hidden on screens but quite often you'll find them on the ends of seats. So here's a couple from St Margaret's. I don't know their age, possibly not as old as they are pretending since the place was renovated back in the 19th century; they might be Victorian projections of medieval fantasy.

And below is the tout ensemble. Weird, eh? These were supposed to ward off evil, they scare the devil as it were, though just what the devil might be doing in a church in King's Lynn I cannot imagine despite the local legend. You could, if you wished, see this a sexual thing, the hare (or is it a rabbit?)  symbolising prostitution and licentiousness, or maybe that devilish figure has too much of a caricature Jewish face for modern comfort? You can read what you like into them like since whoever made them is long gone and past caring. Personally I think they were a bit of fun, permitted silliness that no-one took seriously,  they were a distraction through the tedious enforced sermonising of the medieval church. Nowadays we have grotesque figures beamed into our homes and we call them celebrities or worse.

 The weekend in black and white is here.

All pictures by Margot K Juby.

Dieu et mon droit

"In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end."

                                                                                        Alexis de Tocqueville.

A monarchy is these days and indeed any days a ridiculous institution, the head of state chosen by who puts his squawky head first into the world from between the legs of the reigning monarch's consort. We live in unusual times in that the next one in line came direct from the monarch's crotch but no mind, it's bonkers, you know it, I know it and even they know it. 

But that is just the beginning, as it were, for once monarchised the individual has no point in life other than to be a dumb rubber stamp for the Government. There are, of course compensations, the pay is good, the lodgings palatial and the fawning lackeys infinite. And all you have to do is roll up once a year in a horse and cart, read a short speech, written for you (on goat skin parchment) declare Parliament open for business and then bugger orf for another year. 

But as someone once said no sane man can be anything but ashamed of the government he lives under so it is mightily demeaning for us to continue this constitutional failure of the English Revolution (1649 and all that ...) year after year. But what to replace it with? Hmm? An elected president, I hear you say. But what powers would such a person have? Queenie has been around now for over 60 years but she can't say boo to a goose without the Government telling her to. An elected person would clearly have some mandated power simply by being elected. This would, like the fabled gun on a West End stage, have to be used at some point and then comes constitutional mess. We would not want to end like our colonial cousins with their elected monarch and spend three out of every four years arraigning (Thank you Freud; I meant to write 'arranging' but we'll let it stand as it is) his successor clearly those founding fathers hadn't thought this through. But that is not our concern.

Well then let us have a president with only "meet and greet" functions, a puppet (or muppet) to call Head of State, someone to wheel out for special ...

So who would want the job and what qualifications are needed? Would a sane person be fit to appoint to such a meaningless and thankless position surely they would tire and want more, be bored, get diverted. The sort of person who might put themselves forward would be instantly suspect. No, much rather pick some slow witted person, someone who has shown no great intelligence, a person who has perhaps been the product of generations of breeding and selection, a special someone for the purpose (horses for courses, as they say). Where would we find such a fellow ... where indeed? I think I know just the man.

The picture is the top of the old county court house which I would say was on London Road but I see is now officially on St James' Road but, never mind, both roads are in King's Lynn. That the English monarch should have a French motto comes as no surprise to us poor bloody English and if Les Français should tire of Monsieur le President I'm sure Lizzie would be only too glad to take over the reigns; I believe they still secretly lay claim to bits (if not the tout ensemble) of La Patrie. Bonkers!