Some bits and bobs

Today is an assortment of photos taken because I was in full tourist mode photographing anything without much discretion. First off is Pilot Street close by St Nicholas chapel and the exorcist's house.

King's Lynn was rich enough to have no fewer than four monasteries leaching off it before good King Henry put an end to such parasitic simony and other restrictive practices. I've shown the Franciscan Greyfriars tower, there were also Dominicans, Carmelites and the above wall is the remnants of the Augustinian monastery. Because Augustinian was a bit of a mouthful for medieval folk it was shortened to Austin; this little road is still known as Austin Street.

The Tudor Rose Hotel with its fine original doorway is just off Tuesday Market Place. It's a 16th century building that comes with resident ghost , a woman in a long white dress who wanders around the place ...

This odd shaped building on Nelson Street, was a medieval pub known as the Valiant Sailor until 1925.

Last for today is St Margaret's Lane which has hanseatic warehousing dating from 1475 and leads down to the river.

and then back to St Nick's ...

So at the end of what was quite a hectic few hours of touristic traipsing through the delightful street of King's Lynn it was time to head back to base and put our feet up before the return trip to Hull. But not before passing by St Nicholas chapel (which was now open) and having a goodly gawp inside. I promised musical angels and a literary connection to Hull and I try to keep my promises.

The first thing I noticed on entering was the warmth of the place, it was mafting to use a colloquialism, so warm it was positively unchurchlike. Electric heaters beamed out the calories like no-one was paying the bill and indeed no-one is, there's a large array of solar panels on the roof sucking up sunshine and warming us poor sinners down below. Any how I'm sure you can make out the roof beams in the above photo; each is decorated with an angel playing an instrument or singing from a hymn sheet. These carvings are over 600 hundred years old (the chapel was already old by then). As you can see this is no ordinary chapel, it oozes past opulence, the stained glass windows, the altar screen, the ornate and oversized baptismal font cover and last but not least the numerous plaques to rich benefactors (described by a really nice and helpful friend of St Nicholas as the "millionaires' row"). This delightful place reflects the enormous wealth of King's Lynn in the medieval period. It is now a community church being used for all sorts of events, musical, artistic both sacred and secular and seems to have found a new use for itself in the modern age. It is not just a monument to past religious devotion and finery (though it is that most definitely) it now serves a purpose and has a bright future.

I appreciate that this is not a very good photo so if you want to see all the angels there's this gallery of photos from the chapel's website, here.

You don't expect font covers to go missing (did nobody notice this thing leaving the building?), then turn up in an auction and finally return after a fund raising effort by the Friends of St Nick's but that is what happened to this ornate canopy. It's a copy of the original 17th century on which the Victorians destroyed. This dates from 1902 and is 17 foot in height and I suspect is screwed tightly to the floor.

This is a very rare consistory court, set aside in a corner of the chapel to try matters relating to church law.

And here as promised is the literary link to Hull. The memorial to Robinson Cruso and his family. Daniel Defoe visited King's Lynn and seemed to have had a good time: "Here are more gentry, and consequently is more gaiety in this town than in Yarmouth, or even in Norwich itself – the place abounding in very good company." Cruso is or was a common name in the area (the Corn Exchange, for example,  was built to a design by Cruso and Maberley of King's Lynn) so he no doubt purloined it for his wee book. The connection to Hull is that the fictional Robinson Crusoe set sail from Hull as I posted many years ago. Defoe, of course, could not have seen this particular memorial as he died in 1731. (Did I just debunk a local myth? Ooops!)

More memorials with attractive memento mori features.

This marble urn memorial to Sir Benjamin Keene dates from 1757 and is by Robert Adam, close inspection shows details of the Customs House and the Purfleet and goods being loaded from a ship.

Millionaires' Row. There's a saying that you cannot take it with you when you go so why not leave some of it hanging on the church wall (sorry chapel wall) to show the world what fine upstanding folk you have been.

True's Yard

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a slum once cleared must be brought back to life with a museum and so it is that the vestiges of King's Lynn's North End fishing community have become the True's Yard Fisherfolk Museum. I'd like to say it's worth a visit but in truth I didn't have time to go in and only noticed the whopping girt anchor parked up in the yard. Nor do I know who Mr True was or if indeed he was true to his name ... 

PS William True purchased the yard in 1818

Margery Kempe: Author, Pilgrim, Mystic

I must confess to having no idea who Margery Kempe was nor why she should merit this bench memorial close by St Margaret's church. An odd looking bench indeed, one might think it has the shape of a book falling open. And therein lies a clue. Mrs Kempe, I find, was a medieval Christian mystic who wrote a book, called rather unimaginatively, The Book of Margery Kempe. I say wrote but most think she dictated as she could neither read nor write. Margery, if we may be less formal, came from well-to-do Lynn folk and married well, had fourteen children (ouch!) and started having visions of Christ after the birth of her first child (as you might)... She went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, met up with the anchoress Julian of Norwich and ... there's obviously more to this woman, her "demonic torment(s) and Christic apparition(s)" and her book than I could possibly do justice to in this little digital scrapbook ... so you can find out more yourself with a quick exercise of your Google powers and if you really want to read the book, described as the first autobiography in English, then it has been transcribed from the only known copy in the British Library and is available on line here. And oh yeah, it's in Middle English, so watch out for synful caytyfs ...

And for your further delight I find the BBC have a podcast all about Margery Kempe but it does feature (Lord) Melvynn Bragg whose voice is not to everyone's taste.

Finally, I didn't try it, but that bench looks mightily uncomfortable.

At Old Year's End

As this little speck of sand on which we sit goes round the fading twinkling little light bulb in the ever expanding Universe it has somehow come round to that time of year again. Out with the old and in the new and all that cobblers. The doom sayers say their doom again, like they have for as long as, well, forever, but I guess I'll still  stick around to see what happens next. Until tomorrow  ... Chin up and keep buggering on.

The Old Junk Shop

When I was young we'd have called this a junk shop but now it's 'antiques' and 'collectables'; so spins the world.

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.