Trip to Northern England - November 12-19, 2015

The Selby Abbey was founded as a monastic church in 1069. It was closed in 1539 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, and the majority of the buildings have since been demolished. The central nave of the abbey church survived and in 1618 it became the parish church of Selby.

Selby Abbey is one of the largest parish churches in Britain and is larger than several cathedrals, even though the town only has about 15,000 people, and there are other churches in town. Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for me to get these outside pictures, and discard the picture I took of the model on display inside the abbey.

The altar seems quite ample for a small parish church!

There were many beautiful windows, but with the gloomy day outside, the pictures were not very vibrant.

A feature of the abbey, among it's stained glass windows, is the Washington family coat of arms from the 15th century. They were the ancestors of USA President George Washington, and the window has stars and red and white stipes, that perhaps led to that part of the American flag. Yes that is an American flag displayed in the Church of England ("God Save the Queen").

Quite by coincidence Jenny's friend for 50 years was visiting her cousin near Saltaire, very close to where we were. It was great fun to see Andrea Pool again and spend the day with her.

Richard Freeman (Andrea's cousin) is an active volunteer supporting and operating the Shipley Glen Cable Tramway built in 1895. He and his wife Christine took us on a ride on the Tram (up and back down). Richard retired as a wool and alpaca buyer and manager for the Salts Mill, built in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt.

Saltaire is the mill town build by Sir Titus Salt on the Aire river (hence the name) and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The canal is in the front of this picture, and the river runs parallel, barely visible in the background. At the time the mill was built it was the largest industrial facility in the world.

Sir Salt built the entire town to support the mill, but instead of shabby "company town" housing he built neat stone houses that are still in use.

This is one of the schools Salt built for the children of his workers. The town included a hospital, a library with reading room, a concert hall, a billiard room, a science laboratory, a gymnasium, garden plots, a park, and a boathouse. Sir Salt wanted happy workers.

Salts Mill closed in 1986, but the primary mill building has since been converted to a craft shop (covering multiple large factory floors), art gallery, and restaurant.

The diocese of York was established in 314, with some evidence of Christianity in the area as early as AD 180. Needless to say, there were smaller predecessors to the current York Minster largely built from 1220 to 1472.

The octagonal chapter house was built between 1280 and 1296. Then it was, of course, Roman Catholic, but now is Anglican, in the high church "Anglo-Catholic" tradition.

This is the second largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe, 173 yards long. Behind the high altar you can see the entrance to the choir, where smaller services are held.

In the choir everyone sits sideways, like the monastic choirs. We attended sung matins with organ and choir. The highly trained choir sat in the seats with candles; we sat behind a very loud tenor.

When the rain slowed a bit, we started our hike back to the car, at a grocery store with paid parking.

It was cold and wet enough that we did not spend a lot of time wandering York, but passed this interesting architecture.

The minster was inside the city wall; the grocery store where we parked was outside. Only one lane of cars can go through the wall at a time, so the cars wanting to leave wait at the red light until the direction of the road through the large opening in the wall on the right changes.

This is the one lane bridge over the North Tyne river near our hotel. Finally I remembered that most rivers run North and South (now that global warming ended the ice age), and Hadrian's wall goes East and West. Therefore there needs to be bridges in Hadrian's wall to cross these rivers.

Chester Bridge in the wall was a 5-10 minute walk from our hotel. The fort on one side of the river was closed on weekdays for the winter, but there was a walking path (popular throughout England) to the bridge on the other side of the river

The wall leading to Chester's bridge, and the footings of the bridge, are readily accessible. Jenny can say she stood on Hadrian's wall!

and I can make the same claim.

It was easy to see the remains of the fort on the other side of the river.

A short drive west, following the wall, we came to Housesteads Roman Fort. The rain had let up some, so we explored a bit.

The site was well labeled. Although it was cold and muddy, and there was no admission charge today (beyond the parking fee) clearly they were set up to charge admission during the peak season.

The rain came back while we were there. For people who want to draw rainbows, note the red is ALWAYS on the outside, the blue is on the inside. (If there is a double rainbow, the smaller one is inside the primary rainbow, and the colors are reversed since it is a reflection of the main rainbow.) Trivia - in an airplane in the sun and rain, the rainbow is sometimes a full circle, not just an arc.

Yes the fort is actually in a sheep pasture.

A little further down the road was another fort, with way too much advertising. The parking lot was arranged to try to keep you from seeing the fort without paying. It was in way too good shape for anything that was supposed to be many hundreds of years old. I kept expecting to see Mickey Mouse jump from behind a bush singing "It's a small world." We didn't stay.

Next we headed southwest through the lake district. Remember it had been raining so much that we considered getting an ark.

This is the passenger window. We were really at the edge of the lake and the edge of the road. (In a few places the divider between the lake and road was under water). Note in the mirror that a car was following us, unaware of the danger he was in, with us in front of him. Jenny rarely screamed.

We just slowed down (no car behind us here). This is not a walk next to the lake, this is from the car on the road.

Finally we got some pretty scenery. Looks like Scotland. Oops, we are pretty close to Scotland.

On Tuesday we visited "Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House" built in 1898-1900 as a vacation home for Sir Edward Holt, a wealthy Manchester brewer. It is in the Cumbria area, overlooking Lake Windermere

The columns were very thin, with highly decorative capitals. The house was interesting but with less furniture than I had expected.

You enter down a dark wood hall but at the end reach the "White Drawing Room" with a great view of the lake.

This barrel chair was on display.

Over the main hall was an elevated minstrel gallery with elegantly carved valance facing the hall.

The inside of the valance, facing the musicians, was rather crude.

The secretary was quite attracive

and when open seemed quite functional

These side chairs were not part of the dining room set (which we were not allowed to photograph).

One of the upstairs bedrooms had this wall lamp which everyone else seemed to like.

Standard bedroom furniture of the day

As was this wardrobe, since closets were not yet common.

It was a cold and rainy day, so we needed to find something to do indoors. Boy did that work out well! Peter Hall & Son Limited is a custom (bespoke) furniture maker in the area, who has a shop with picture windows into the furniture and restoration areas. The furniture in their showroom was probably the finest workmanship I have ever seen.

I had the privilege of chatting (at length) with Jeremy, the "and Son" part of the company and current "boss." I also watched one of their apprentices working on dovetails, and got some ideas about improving my technique.

Click on this link to see more of their designs.

I know how a dry dock works, but this is the first time I have seen one in actual use.

The waterfront has some grand old buildings

And the requisite jumbo ferris wheel or "eye" that every city seems to need.

Half way between Liverpool and Manchester (where we would be leaving in the morning) we arranged to finally meet and go to dinner with my college roommate's daughter and her family, who only recently moved to England. Abbey Janis-Dillon, her husband Bob, and their kids Abe and Stella (who moved at the wrong time) are absolutely the nicest people, and were one of the highlights of our trip.

The Owl Pub was our first stop, for two days. It is literally a pub, with a few rooms and an annex building with 20-30 rooms. When we asked some locals where to eat, the Owl Pub was their strongest recommendation. We really enjoyed our stay and their food.

The George Hotel is a fairly large, historical facility near Hadrian's Wall. The food and rooms were fine, and the internet worked well but the arrangements to use WiFi were not nice. Boy Scouts (past or present) should admire the guest book entry of June 26, 1896, of Lord Baden Powell (founder of Scouting), is on display in the lobby.

We spent two nights at the Meadowcroft Guest House. The current owner is retiring at the end of the year, so I cannot predict how the new owners will do with this fine facility.

Meadowcroft served breakfast but did not have dinner service. She recommended a pub just down the street (as she joked, "close enough that you can easily stagger back.") We enjoyed the food there both nights. There were two bars in the pub - one for those with dogs, and the smaller for those without dogs.