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Category: Herefordshire

Up and Down and Round and About.

Up and Down and Round and About.

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Two for the price of one! You lucky people!

Work on the house is still progressing satisfactorily and this coming week will be a significant stage as the scaffolding around the house is coming down. smilies

We are, however, still managing to make a few trips and this time we did a half day walk followed a day later by a trip to Leominster ( pronounced Lemster ).

Trip 1. (Powys)

We walked from the top of Panpunton Hill at Knighton along the ridge to Cwm Sanaham Hill near Knucklas. We have walked up Panpunton Hill before and I even took a photograph of Knucklas Viaduct from the top but we didn't get anywhere near Cwm Sanaham Hill that time.

It was a fine warm day, which is unusual this summer smilies, and we set off towards Cwm Sanaham Hill with Amanda in the lead; quite a bit in the lead actually (that's her on the skyline).

You can see that there is plenty of Gorse in flower at this time of year and you should be able to see that we are still going up. Then we get our first sighting of Cwm Sanaham Hill; the one dead ahead.

As we cross another path we can see Knucklas down below and if you look carefully you should be able to see the railway viaduct.

Cwm Sanaham Hill is getting nearer and, on the extreme right of the next picture, you can see our path curving round the edge of the trees just below the horizon.

We have been following undulating ground all the way along this route but this is the final undulation. We are now going downhill into a small valley and then we start our final climb along the path which passes just below the trees on the left.

We finally reach the summit to be rewarded with some tremendous views and Amanda tries to stop the trigonometry point from falling over.

We didn't stop here for long as we were soon accosted by a big buzzy fly which we suspected was some sort of biting fly looking for a free meal and we didn't intend to supply it. So with much wild waving of arms we descended below the summit and, luckily, the fly didn't follow.

I took this photograph just below the top looking homeward as we set off back. The total distance travelled out and back was 4 miles and for most of that time the only sounds were sheep bleating in the distance and the breeze rustling in the trees. Wonderful!

We returned home without incident.

Trip 2. (Herefordshire)

We weren't able to go out the following day (building work y'know) but the day after we set off in the car to Leominster which is just under 30 miles from us. We hadn't been there before so we were looking forward to exploring.

The weather forecast for today was sunny and clear skies. There was, of course, about 80% cloud cover and little sun when we arrived and it stayed like that until the afternoon when the amount of sun did increase.

Our nearest point of interest was the church so we went there first. The church was once part of Leominster Priory, which no longer exists, and it was huge. There were three naves the earliest of which was Norman but there was also an interesting object now stored in the church.



Although the church was Norman and was very large it didn't really have much of interest although the roof over the earliest of the three Naves was nicely decorated.

I didn't take any photographs of the exterior of the church because of the lack of sun and because we will go to Leominster again hopefully on a better day.

By this time it was actually getting near lunchtime so we found somewhere for lunch and after lunch, when the sun appeared, we wandered off to see Grange Court.

Built in 1633 it is the last surviving market house, built by John Abel a local master carpenter, which originally stood at the top of Broad Street and housed the weekly butter market, selling chickens, eggs, and butter. It was then known as the Butter Crosse.

By the mid nineteenth century the market hall was proving to be a traffic hazard so the building was dismantled and lay in pieces in a builder's yard until 1859 when the building was bought and then rebuilt on the park known as the Grange.

This is Broad Street.

Although it is perhaps wider than usual it's not that wide and I'm sure a building like Grange Court plonked in the middle of the road would have been a significant traffic hazard.

This view of Corn Street which is like a little square shows where we had our lunch in the Merchant's House. The Merchant's House is the black and white timber-framed house on the left-hand edge of the picture.

There is an alley running down the left-hand side of the Merchant's House which leads to Grange Court and in the centre of the picture you should be able to see a small gap in the buildings which is the entrance to a little lane called School Lane. This is School Lane:

Another nice little lane is Drapers Lane.

There were also a number of alleyways of which these are two:


We'll leave you with this view of High Street.

As I said above we will be back for further explorations.
 

Chains, Chapters and a Challenge

Chains, Chapters and a Challenge

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In the week starting Monday 18th July we were going to have the builders in only on Monday and Friday and as the weather forecast for Tuesday was sunny all day we did the obvious – a day trip out.

We thought that Hereford would be a good place to go because it's only an hours drive away and we had never been there. We duly arrived in Hereford without incident and walked towards the city centre. The temperature was forecast to go up to 88 F, which is rare for this country, but at this time of the morning it wasn't uncomfortable (yet).

You may realise that Hereford has a cathedral and has the River Wye running throught it (through the city not the cathedral). There is a modern bridge across the river which takes most of the traffic but a short way away is the old bridge, just one vehicle wide, which can be seen from the new bridge.


The 12th century Norman cathedral is obvious beyond the bridge and the bridge itself is also 12th century.

By this time it was around mid-day and it was starting to feel hot. This is now the middle of July and it's the first day this year I have felt able to wear a short sleeved shirt. Having seen the cathedral from the bridge we now made our way to see the cathedral close up.


It was much cooler inside which was a great relief. The fact that this is a Norman cathedral becomes obvious when one sees the arches on either side of the nave.

The font is also Norman and does look rather worn but the base is of a later date.

There is also a crypt under the Chancel.


Entry to the cathedral is free but this cathedral does have some unique features for which  entry is chargeable but which we couldn't afford to miss. One of those features is the Chained Library.


This is how the library looked in the 1600s. The books are attached to their bookcase by a chain, which is sufficiently long to allow the books to be taken from their shelves and read, but they cannot be removed from the library itself. This would prevent theft of the library's books The practice was usual for reference libraries from the Middle Ages to approximately the 18th century. However, since the chaining process was also expensive, it was not used on all books. Only the more valuable books in a collection were chained.

One thing you may notice is that the books are the 'wrong' way round i.e. with the spines on the inner end. It was standard for chained libraries to have the chain fitted to the corner or cover of a book. This is because if the chain were to be placed on the spine the book would suffer greater wear from the stress of moving it on and off the shelf. Because of the location of the chain attached to the book (via a ringlet) the books are housed with their spine facing away from the reader with only the pages' fore-edges visible (that is, the 'wrong' way round to people accustomed to contemporary libraries). This is so that each book can be removed and opened without needing to be turned around, hence avoiding tangling its chain. To remove the book from the chain, the librarian would use a key.

The other unique feature at Hereford Cathedral is the Mappa Mundi (Map of the World).

 

Dating from 1300 it is the largest medieval map known still to exist. It represents the known world with Jerusalem being drawn at the centre of the circle, east is on top, showing the Garden of Eden in a circle at the edge of the world. Curiously, the labels for Africa and Europe are reversed, with Europe scribed in red and gold as 'Africa', and vice versa.

Great Britain is drawn at the north-western border (bottom left) and shown below enlarged. In the enlarged version Scotland is the island on the left with England to its right. Wales is shown as a separate island below England with Ireland shown as two islands below that.

Needless to say America and Australasia are not shown at all.

This is a reproduction showing the detail with more clarity.

We eventually decided we'd have to venture out of the cathedral to see more of the city and that's where the challenge is involved. The temperature must have reached its forecast maximum of 88 F because it was HOT! It was also very humid which didn't help at all and we found that we were walking in the shade at any and every opportunity. It is interesting to note that since 2001, extremes at Hereford have ranged from 92.5 F (33.6 C) during July 2006, to as low as 3.6 F ( -15.8 C ) during December 2010.

We walked away from the cathedral along Church Street going past The Grapes, a 16th century coaching inn, and into High Town.


High Town is the old market square and is now the main main shopping area in the city. It also features the Old House; a Jacobean (early 17th century) timber framed house which I must say is rather impressive. It is open to the public, entry is free, and it is worth a look inside.


That Hereford Bull is looking at me very suspiciously and, taking into account the look on its face, I don't think I shall hang around.

We were melting by this time and decided that if we could actually make it back to the car we would go home. We did and we did.