Kirkby Stephen Poetry Path, Stenkrith Park and the Viaducts

Frank’s Bridge

Sunday was the first full day of our break in Kirkby Stephen and in the morning we took it easy. But by midday I was feeling restless and the weather looked reasonably promising so it was time to get our boots on a set off for a walk.

A couple of years ago I read a book about the Eden Valley – The Stream Invites us to Follow: Exploring the Eden from Source to Sea – by Dick Capel, who was Countryside Manager for the East Cumbria Countryside Project from 1992 to 2008. In the book he follows the course of the Eden and it was reading it that inspired me to visit and explore an area I’d largely neglected, resulting in our out of season breaks in Kirkby Stephen and, last October, in Appleby. (I was also influenced by reading the descriptions of Sharon’s “adventures” in Eden on her blog).

Dick Capel had been involved in three arts projects as part of his role – The Eden Benchmarks, Andy Goldsworthy’s Cumbria sheep fold project and also the Poetry Path in Kirkby Stephen. For the latter, twelve blocks of stone were installed at intervals along a route on both sides of the river Eden a mile or so to the south of where we were staying. On each of these stones lettering artist Pip Hall has carved a poem by Meg Peacocke together with a small decorative motifs which illustrate activities associated with the months of the hill farmer’s year. There are stones at 12 locations; one for each month of the year. Although the brief was to represent the farming year, this has been interpreted loosely with some of the poems describing nature and landscape.

As we’re both avid readers and interested in both poetry and sculpture I devised a route that would take us down to the Poetry Path, which we then followed, before returning to Kirkby Stephen via the small village of Hartley, along the disused track bed of the Stainmore Railway which crosses two restored viaducts.

We cut down the ginnel opposite our accommodation, and then through the town centre and down to the river, where we crossed over Frank’s Bridge. We then took the path that followed the right bank of the Eden

on through fields, passing this old barn

After a mile or so we reached the Poetry Path which starts with the January stone at ‘Swingy Bridge’. However due to the route we’d taken the first stone we came across was the one for March. So we carried on from there. We’d bought a small booklet from the Tourist Information Centre in Kirkby Stephen when we arrived. It only cost £2.00 and was a great help in locating the stones – some of them are installed in walls and others are easy to miss. It also provided background information and photographs of some of the stones from when they were installed back in 2004. Since then they have weathered and some overgrown with lichen, moss and other vegetation making them difficult to read. Luckily there’s a blog where you can see the text of all the poems in full and I’ve used this as a source for the poems reproduced in this post. Most of the motifs were impossible to make out.

The March stone was installed in a stream and had a good covering of vegetation making it impossible to read the full text.

March
“From field and fell run cols run small. I am the rain tear in the eye blood in the vein I am the sea.”

Jim Capel, in his book has an account of the fun had when installing the stone here!

The contractor used a low loader with a telescopic arm……. As we hesitated, mesmerised by the dangling stone, one of the straps snapped, and it plunged with a mighty splash into the beck. There it wedged itself in an upright position against the sandstone outcrop at the back of the pool.

Jim Capel, The Stream invites us to follow

The next stone was incorporated into a dry stone wall and easy to walk past

April – Lambing time
“Coltsfoot, celandine, earliest daisies. Twin lambs race to the mother, baby cries, Mam! Mam! Jolt out of them and now they jostle the ragged ewe, boosting each split hoof high off the bitten turf. Pinching jaws and hard curled coats are braced against these April suns and sleets.”

The May stone was also embedded in a wall, just before the bridge over the former railway line.

May
“Penned in a huddle, the great tups are clints of panting stone. The shepherd lifts a sideways glance from the labour of dagging tails. His hands are seamed with muck and sweat runs into his eyes. Above us, a silent plane has needled the clear blue. Paling behind it a crimped double strand of wool unravels.”

The countryside here was very pleasant and, surprisingly, it wasn’t too muddy underfoot

There were good views, too, over some of the fells – including the distinctive Wild Boar Fell

When we arrived at the June stone a family with two young boys and a baby were resting near and on the stones, with the mother using one of the stones as a support while feeding the baby. So we carried on past on to the former railway track and the next stone. We returned later for a proper look as we had to retrace part of the route to join the track on the return leg of our walk.

In this case there were two stones, gritstone blocks that had previously used in an indusrtial process according to the booklet. Both carved with text

June
“Light drops like honey from branch to branch. Elders balance their dishes of cream, while fledgelings try small quivery leaps, testing the buoyancy of the air.”

The July stone was a short distance along the railway path

July
“Silage. Tractor incises the first green furrow. Skillful geometrician, the driver judges an arc of weather.”

The August stone, a naturally curved rock, was a little further along. The text was carved on both sides

August
“Crabapples tart on the tongue, Hazelnuts milky, Rosehips cool in the hand, Thistledown silky.”

The September stone was the third and final one on the old railway track and referenced the former use of the location

September
“Revetted banks, a concrete post. Rabbits tunnel the cinder waste. Angle iron, link of a broken chain. Listen, and catch the hiss of steam again.”

A little further on we crossed over the river on the Millennium footbridge below the road bridge. We looked down on the river where we had a good view of “The Devil’s Grinding Mill” also known as “The Devil’s Mustard Mill” and the “Coopkarnel” (from a Danish word mean “cup shaped cavern”).

The river here passes through a narrow gorge and  the dramatic potholes have been carved in the Brockram rock (formed of fragments of Carboniferous limestone set in red siltstone and sandstone) by the force of the water and the abrasive action of small stones and rocks carried by the current.

“The Devil’s Mustard Mill” – upstream of the bridge
Looking downstream from the bridge

We now descended into Stenkrith Park, following the path along the river. Almost immediately we came across the next Poetry stone. In fact there were a pair of stones – one of limestone and one of sandstone – the two components of the Brockram.

October
“Sandstone. A desert wind, grain by grain, laid down these rocks. How did we trace a path through ancient dunes?
Limestone. A million million blanched and compacted shells. How did we swim through the drift and not perish?
Looking back towards the bridges
Water swirling through wierdly eroded rocks on the riverbed

Carrying on along the path we reached the next pair of stones.

November
“Through hazels and alders, softly or in spate, Eden moves in the valley it has hallowed from Mallerstang to the shifting Solway sands.”

It was noticeable that these had been cleaned up, making it easier to read the text, and, for the first time, the motif was legible.

The other stones along this stretch of the trail seemed to have been cleaned up too – probably because this is the most frequented section of the trail being in the Stenkrith Park, which is a popular tourist attraction.

On the hillside, a short distance before the “Swingy Bridge” we found the December Stone. The poem here is a Haiku, carved across the three rocks

December
“There sails the heron drawing behind him a long wake of solitude”

There’s the Swingy Bridge ahead. The river here was very placid and calm compared to the turbulent waters upstream.

The “Swingy Bridge”. An unusual name that suggests there was once a swing bridge here

The January stone was located at the bottom of the lane, just before the bridge. The lane was designated a bridleway and the bridge was far too narrow to be crossed by horses but it looked like there was a ford below the bridge.

January
The sky’s harsh crystal, wind a blade, trees stripped, grass dull with cold. Life is a kernel hidden in the stone of winter.”

Again it looked like the stone had been cleaned up fairly recently.

For most people following the trail this would probably be the start of their walk following the Poetry path, but we still had another stone to see so we crossed the bridge and carried on along the path until me reached the large February Stone comprised of four rectanular blocks piled on top of each other across from a derelict barn.

February
“Snowlight peers at the byre door. Neither day nor night. Four months ago we fetched the cattle in, safe from reiving wind and rain, months of standing and shifting, burdened with patience. When will winter end?
Thin strakes of run on the byre door. Fork a load of silage out, straighten your back to watch them shove their muzzles in, and wonder if they crave the hazy nights when they can roam among tall summer grasses, sleek and sound and warm.”

The motif showing a farmer feeding his cattle with hay during the winter was just about legible.

Carving on the February stone depicting Cattle brought indoors for the winter being fed

We carried on along the track – it had once been the main route from Kirkby Stephen to Mallerstang apparently – passing the March, April and May stones and then the June stone which we were now able to look at properly. We then rejoined the railway track, turning right this time to head towards Hartley. It was easy walking now on the disused track of the Stainmore Railway, a single line between Barnard Castle and Tebay, opened in 1861, built to transport Durham coke to furnaces in Cumberland and iron ore back to Cleveland. It was also used to transport limestone from the quarry at Hartley.

Two of the platelayers huts on the line have been restored and contain information panels about the history of the line.

Like most tracks on former railways lines, sections passed through cuttings but there were a number of places where there were good views over to the north Pennines. 

The path passes over two viaducts. The first we crossed was the Podgill Viaduct,

The views from the viaduct were impressive.

The viaduct is a listed Grade II structure built of local limestone with 11 arches, each of 30 feet span, and a maximum height of 84 feet above the valley floor (information from here). We descended down some steps to a viewing point to get a proper look. It was a good time of year to do this as the view wasn’t obscured by the leaves on the plentiful trees.

Carrying on we crossed over the Merrygill viaduct which spans the narrow Hartley Beck valley

The viaducts are owned and maintained by the Northern Viaduct Trust, a small charity, established in 1989. The trust also look after the Smardale Gill Viaducts and Drygill Bridge on a branch line passing through the disused Kirkby Stephen East statio.n as well as the Millennium Bridge we crossed earlier during our walk, and the track bed between Stenkrith and Merrygill Viaduct.

The path ended just after the Merrygill viaduct and we descended down the steep road to the small village of Hartley where we took the path leading back down to Frank’s Bridge

The village cricket field is near to the bridge and on the other side of the field is a small hill – Kirkby Hill. We decided to climb it and take in the views of the fells

The Northern Pennines
Over towards Hartley Fell
Wild Boar Fell in the distance
Kirkby Stephen

Walking back to our accommodation we noticed that the La’l Nook was opened, so we popped in for a drink – a good way to end the walk.

A birthday visit to the YSP

A few weeks ago it was (yet another!) significant birthday. To celebrate we’d decided on a family trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park followed by a meal in Wakefield.

It had been some time since we’d last been to the YSP – we’d visited back in March 2020, the week before everything locked down and not been since. It was time to put that right. There had been some changes in the way they operate. Previously entry was free, but there was a fairly hefty car parking fee. Now they charge per person but parking is included. I reckon for a couple visiting that probably makes little if any difference, but with four of us it was more expensive than it would have been in the past. But given the amount here is to see, it’s still more than worth the trip.

The exhibition in the Underground Gallery, and the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the building, featured the work of the American artist, Robert Indiana.

There were a couple of smaller exhibitions in the main visitor centre and one in the Weston Gallery, but there was nothing showing in the Old Chapel or the Longside Gallery. Just as well as we spent the whole afternoon looking around the exhibitions and wandering round the grounds where we spotted several new works along the Lakeside – and we didn’t explore all the extensive grounds.

Here’s a few photos from the Robert Indiana exhibition.

Relics in the Landscape was a small exhibition of six works by Daniel Arsham diplayed out doors in the 18th-century Formal Garden.

Unearthed Bronze Eroded Melpomene (2021) by Daniel Arsham
Bronze Eroded Astronaut (2022) by Daniel Arsham
Bronze Crystallized Seated Pikachu (2022) by Daniel Arsham

On the way across the grounds heading to the Weston Centre we stopped for a while to contemplate the sky in the Deer Shelter

Click here to see video

The Weston Gallery opened in 2019 and leading up to the entrance from the car park is the Walk of Art 2, which incudes J’s name. Our daughter was living in the Netherlands when it was installed, so this was both a chance for her to see it for the first time and for us to see how it had weathered and changed

The small gallery was showing A green and pleasant land (HA-HA), an exhibition of very bright and colourful paintings and textile works by Lakwena Maciver

The artist was inspired by the landscape at the YSP which used to be part of a private estate owned by landed gentry and coal owners, which restricted access to the hoi poloi. In the past we wouldn’t have been able to wander around here. She also references the “right to roam” which , in England and Wales, is under threat, particularly given the recent legal case which has outlawed wild camping on Dartmoor, so now it’s illegal throughout England and Wales

Thinking historically and politically, themes of power, ownership, access, control, boundaries, and division all come to mind, and this is the impetus for the work. 

Lakwena Maciver – quoted on the YSP web page for the exhibition

But we are now able to wander at will through the grounds (providing we’ve paid the entry fee, of course!) and that’s what we did, checking out some favourite works of art on the north side of the lake,

and discovering some new ones

Hazmat Love (2017) by Tom Friedman
Mind walk (2022) by Peter Randall Page
Gazing Ball (2018) by Lucy and Jorge Orta
Gazing Ball (2018) by Lucy and Jorge Orta

There were some other new works that we passed as we made our way back to the main Visitor Centre

Usagi Kannon II (2013-18) by Leiko Ikemura
Muamba Grove No. 3 and Muamba Grove No. 4 by Vanessa da Silva
Bag of Aspirations (2018) by Kalliopi Lemos

And of course we had to make sure we visited Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man

A day in Liverpool

Until 2020 we had regular days out in Liverpool but we lost the habit. Over the past 2 years I’ve only been twice – once on a solo visit to the Tate last year and then, just before Christmas for the Kate Rusby Christmas concert at the Phil. But we’re determined to get back into getting out and about in our local cities and a couple of weeks ago we caught the train into Liverpool for a day out.

Leaving Lime Street station we made our way to the Pierhead and the Tate Gallery/ I was keen to see the Turner exhibition and the show devoted to the four artists who were candidates for the Tate Prize last year. Bowland Climber had been there and reading his post about his visit had whetted my appetite so I’d been keen to find an opportunity to get over to the Gallery

First of all the Turner exhibition.

Waves breaking against the wind (c 1840)

Dark Waters was a relatively small scale exhibition in just two rooms with only a limited number of seascapes – some unfinished works – together with sketchbooks and works on paper. One of his most famous works, The Fighting Temeraire, depicts a ghostly battleship being towed by a steam tug over a placid sea during a blazing sunset. He clearly was fascinated by the sea and painted many seascapes, in many cases depicted savage, stormy seas, some of which were included in the exhibition.

Turner is a favourite artist of mine, but there are two sides to his work. Some of his masterpieces reflect the conventions of the day – Elysian landscapes and mythological and historical subjects. The other side is the one I like and admire. As he got older his paintings became much wilder and impressionistic – almost abstract in some cases, particularly his later works. In many ways he could be considered to be the first Impressionist, although the French would probably disagree. However, the Impressionists must surely have been influenced by him.

On entering the gallery and having our membership cards “zapped”, the first works we saw were sketches and drawings, ideas for possible larger scale works. Turner certainly knew how to draw and a few lines and squiggles portrayed boats, ships, people and the sea.

The stars of the show, though, were the paintings. The exhibition emphasises the influence of Dutch marine art.

Van Tromp Returning after the Battle off the Dogger Bank exhibited 1833 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00537

But Turner developed his own approach with dramatic, swirling, stormy seas

Stormy Sea with Dolphins c.1835-40 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N04664

Some of the paintings were unfinished I’d still love to have one on the wall above the fireplace at home.

Two electronic audio installations, Resounding Water 2022, and Life and Death by Water 2021 by Lamin Fofana, an electronic music producer, DJ, and artist. He grew up in Sierra Leone and Guinea before moving to the US when he was a teenager. He currently lives in Berlin. The music was, rather like Turner’s paintings, abstract, rather than melodic, but created an ambient atmosphere that complemented the works. Both pieces included “field recordings” taken in Liverpool, Freetown, Sierra Leone; New York, and Berlin, reflecting the “triangular route” of the Atlantic slave trade. Life and Death by Water also included a hummed melody from Rivers of Babylon – the most well known versions by the Melodonians (a Reggae group) and Boney M – but originally a biblical hymn expressing the lamentations of the Israelis taken captive by the Babylonians.It represents the suffering of Africans taken into slavery and other displaced peoples over the ages.

The exhibition closes at the beginning of June but I hope to visit again before then.

After a brew and a snack in the cafe we went up to the top floor to visit the exhibition of works by the finalists of the 2022 Turner Prize.

Each of the four finalists had a room to show their work. The prize wasn’t specifically judged on these displays but took into account their body of work. Nevertheless, they gave a good insight into the artists’ work, style and approach.

The first room was allocated to a multi-media artist, Heather Phillipson. We entered through a short, narrow corner and was immediately dazzled by the video images of the eyes of various animals, clipped from nature documentaries, shown on screens lining both walls.

We passed into the larger room, lit with a bright electric blue light where there were more moving images of storms and swans projected onto the walls and on video screens. Earphones hung from the ceiling where visitors could listen to an audio commentary.

A not so subtle message about the environment, the use of whizz bang technology certainly made an impression.

The next room showed the work of the winner of the 2022, prize Veronica Ryan. It couldn’t have been more different than the previous room. It was much more low key with small scale works representing natural forms including fruit, beans and seeds as well as fabricated containers and lightbulbs.

My first reaction was surprise that this was the winner’s exhibition as it was so low key with the room only sparsely filled with the sculptures and with a number of then hanging from the ceiling in string bags. However, checking on my phone I realised that she had been awarded the prize for her work in general, including her Windrush memorial of giant sculptures of Caribbean fruits displayed on a street in Hackney, east London.

Sin Wai Kin’s work in the next room was a return to flash-bang multimedia with video images, mannequins and cardboard cutouts. The focus was the artist himself playing different characters. The Tate website tells us that these

exist across the spectrum of femininity and masculinity and reappear in different contexts, creating new constellations in the artists’ expanding universe

I wasn’t keen. It was my least favourite and I found it rather pretentious. But that’s only my opinion, of course. I moved on to the final room devoted to the work of the photographer Ingrid Pollard.

The first of two rooms showed a selection of photographs, pub signs, prints and objects, created and collected over 25 years, from her 2018 exhibition Seventeen of Sixty Eight that focused on the representation of the black figure in British life. I was particularly drawn to a large pub sign. In the town where I grew up there was a pub called the Black Boy (it was near the Black Horse, a pub that had once been run by my great grandparents). As I grew up and developed more of a social conscience I had started to feel uncomfortable with the name of the pub and the plaster model of a young black boy’s head above the entrance. The title of the original exhibition The title, Seventeen of Sixty Eight, relates to the 68 pubs in the UK that have “Black Boy” in their name. No doubt many people would see this as harmless, but to me there’s a clear underlying racism that is far from harmless but reinforces a harmful stereotype. Other exhibits echo this message.

In the next room ‘Bow Down and Very Low’ was inspired by a film from 1944, ‘Springtime in an English Village’, which included a young black girl who had been installed as a village May Queen. It centred on an image of the girl curtseying, copies of which were displayed.

The image was interpreted as a representation of how black people were subjugated – forced to bow, curtsey or otherwise show deference. I felt that the same analysis could be applied to other groups, including the working class in general.

The display included three kinetic sculptures made from found objects, developed in conjunction with with artist Oliver Smart. The central sculpture bowing as if subjugated by the one of the right which wielded a baton. The one on the left, which included a saw and wasn’t operating due to safety concerns.

This video shows the sculptures in operation. The one on the left making a rather loud grating sound as the saw scrapes against the metal strip as it flexes.

Initially I’d been seduced by the dynamic display of flashy visual images by Heather Phillipson, but having spent time looking closely and talking to room custodian about the work I left feeling that Ingrid Pollard’s lower key work was my favourite section of the exhibition.

We made our way down the rest of the building, we visited the other rooms. There had been some changes in the displays since our last visit.

We’d spent a few hours in the gallery and had enjoyed it, but the day wasn’t over. We made our way along the waterfront, first of all to visit the Open Eye Gallery on Mann Island – always a good bet – and then had a look around the Museum of Liverpool Life.

No, it’s not Elvis, but local lad Billy Fury

Feeling hungry now we went for an early meal at the Elif Turkish restaurant on Bold Street.

It’s good value and the food is good so it’s very popular. It was busy when we arrived but we were early enough to get a table. People were queuing outside as we left to catch our train back to Wigan.

Manchester Galleries

Since “you know what” we’ve lost the habit of going out to galleries and exhibitions. It’s something we need to correct. As a start one Thursday a couple of weeks ago I had to go into Manchester to pick something up from my office (I’m hardly in there, mainly working from home for my part time job), so we decided to drive in and make a day of it. The Whitworth Gallery, a short distance from the office, is open late on Thursdays so we used the opportunity to visit the Manchester City Art Gallery and then head over to the Whitworth.

There were a couple of exhibitions on at the City Art Gallery

Dandy Style, focuses on men’s fashion and image from the 18th century to the present day” with items from the Gallery’s own collection together with loans from other art institutions and private lenders. I wasn’t sure that I’d be that interested in looking at men’s fashion, but I was pleasantly surprised. It traced the evolution of men’s outfits from Georgian times up to the modern day – a history of fashionable clothes.

The outfits were not exactly the type of clothes worn by working men but nevertheless it was interesting to see how typical upper class apparel evolved over the centuries.

Out of the Crate showcased a large selection of the Gallery’s sculpture collection, and is described as “part exhibition, part research space”

Room 1: What’s in Store? – the first room had around 60 sculptures, but they weren’t displayed in the conventional way. Instead they were “displayed on racks, in cupboards, on pallets and in open crates and grouped as they would be in a store, according to size and/or material and weight, rather than guided by themes or chronology as in a conventional gallery display.” Most of them weren’t labelled and it felt as if we were rummaging through a storeroom. It was an interesting way of displaying the sculptures as we saw them in a different way and discovered works by both familiar and unfamiliar artists.

I thought I’d more photos, but looking on the photo library on my phone I discovered I only had a few snaps. A pity as I discovered some artists I hadn’t previously encountered and now, three weeks later, I can’t remember who they were! Luckily the exhibition is on until the end of this year, so I think another visit will have to be on the cards.

An alabaster nude by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
A statue by Eric Gill – is it permissible to still enjoy looking at his work now we know more about his personal life? A VERY dodgy character.
Rocking Chair No. 4 – A small sculpture from 1950 by Henry Moore. Simple but very effective

Room 2: Cold Cases

This room showcases a changing selection of 10-15 sculptures under investigation. These are artworks about which we have little information, are in poor condition or have been off display for a long time and would benefit from new research.

The Gallery keeps comprehensive notes about the provenance of all the works they own, and they were included with the specific works on display, together with an explanation on what was being investigated and notes on what additional information the Gallery would like to find. There is, perhaps, a small chance that a visitor might be able to help to fill the gaps!

Room 3: It’s Good to Talk

This section of the exhibition was curated by the Making Conversation group – a group of people from all walks of life who take part in monthly workshops with artists and gallery staff.

Here are a couple of the works that took my eye

Ridged Vessel (2014) by Claire Malet
Folks! (2009) by Ayako Tani

We had a mooch around the permanent collection and then left the Gallery and set off down Oxford Road to head over to the Whitworth.

The main exhibition was a major retrospective of the work of Althea McNish (1924 – 2020), “the first Caribbean designer to achieve international recognition and one of the most influential and innovative textile designers in the UK.”  It’s a touring exhibition curated by the William Morris in London/ I’ll let them describe the background about the artist

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, McNish (1924-2020) moved to the UK in 1950, completing a postgraduate textiles degree at the Royal College of Art before rising to prominence as a Black female designer. On graduating, McNish began designing bestselling furnishing and fashion fabrics for iconic firms including Liberty, Dior, Heal’s and Hull Traders, for whom she created one of her most famous patterns, Golden Harvest, in 1959. As her career progressed, McNish took on major interior design projects and mural commissions around the world, as well as creating wallpapers for leading companies.

McNish’s painterly designs incorporated natural botanical forms from Britain and the Caribbean, using a riotous colour palette that overturned the staid rules of mid-century British textile design. Her technical mastery gave her the freedom to create ever more complex prints. “Whenever printers told me it couldn’t be done, I would show them how to do it,” she said. “Before long, the impossible became possible.”

William Morris Gallery Website

Her designs were used for wallpapers, furnishings and architectural features as well as fabrics. She even designed restaurant murals for the liner SS Oriana – built in Barrow on Furness for the Orient Steam Navigation Company‘. They’re incredibly bright and colourful and were influenced by the plant life and landscape of her native Trinidad – she is quoted as saying that “everything I did, I saw through a tropical eye“. I’d certainly agree with the Victoria and Albert Museum’s view that they

injected much-needed colour and life into the post-war fashion and textiles industry from the 1950s onwards.

V&A website

It was fascinating to see how the designs evolved from the original drawings by the artist.

This is the design for Golden Harvest her most famous design

and here’s the textile, together with the trial print

In 1966, she designed a ‘Bachelor Girl’s Room’ for the Ideal Home Exhibition in London, and a modern interpretation was included in the Whitworth exhibition.

We hadn’t specifically planned to see the exhibition but were pleased to have had the opportunity to see it and discover the colourful work of Althea McNish.

Compton Verney Part 2 – the Chinese Collection

Entering the gallery we were “greeted” by these two fearsome Gilt bronze warriors

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the Chinese collection on the first floor of the Gallery. It turned out to be absolutely fascinating. Our appreciation of the exhibits was certainly enhanced as just after we’d started to look at the exhibits the guided tour arrived. We latched on to it and benefited greatly by the knowledge and expertise of the guide who was an excellent communicator, explaining the history and context of the works she highlighted.

There’s also a very good online guide to the collection. This tells us that

Sir Peter Moores, founder of Compton Verney, began collecting a small number of Chinese bronzes in the 1990s; and in the years since, Compton Verney has amassed one of the largest and most important groups outside China.

The core of the collection are bronze ritual vessels from the golden age of Chinese bronze production between 1200 and 221 BC. However, there were some pieces on display even older than this. I don’t know how they date the vessels, but assuming that the dating is correct, the quality of the castings, and the intricacy of the design of the vessels and the details of the ornamentation is incredible demonstrating highly developed casting and metalworking technology, the skill of the craftsmen and the sophistication of the Chinese civilisation.

Here’s some more background information from the downloadable guide

Vessels made from bronze for use in rituals were among the most highly prized and technically sophisticated objects manufactured in early China. As important to the Chinese as stone temples and sculpture were to their contemporaries in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, these vessels have had a
profound and continuing influence on Chinese art.

The spirits of ancestors were seen as a powerful force by the ancient Chinese. Their help was sought by offering food and wine served from bronze vessels at elaborate ritual feasts. When members of the elite died, sets of bronze vessels were also put into tombs, further strengthening the bond between life and afterlife.

The vessels on display were not everyday objects and their ritual use no doubt meant they were carefully looked after and, hence, were preserved in excellent condition,

Here’s a few photos of some of the pieces from the extensive collection that particularly took my eye

Ritual wine vessel c1200-1050 BC

I loved the colouring of this vessel – a rich textured marbled green patina

Ritual wine vessel 1200 BC – 950 BC

This was the oldest item in the collection – it’s thousands of years old – Neolithic or early
Bronze Age

Tripod cooking vessel c 4000 – 1000 BC
Ritual water vessel 770-221 BC

The next two pieces are ‘cocoon’ or ‘duck’s egg’ vessels. Their shape is based on traditional leather vessels.

Pottery cocoon shaped vessel 220BC – 9 AD
Bronze cocoon shaped vessel $75-221 BC

Besides the large number of wine vessels, the collection included other items.

This bronze representation of a horse made for the tomb of a nobleman. It was probably part of a team of two or four pulling a chariot for the deceased to use in the afterlife.
It was made in nine close-fitting sections which were then riveted together. (Information from the collection guide booklet)

Heavenly Horse 202BC – 220AD

This tiny bronze bird is a finial that would have been “perched” on top of a pole during the funeral procession of a respected elderly man.

Bird shaped finial 202 BC – 202 AD

There were also several bells and mirrors – this cabinet contained some examples of the former

A collection of bells

These warriors on horseback were from the tomb of a nobleman. Smaller examples of the funeral goods used in such tombs, the most famous being the “Terracotta Warriors” (examples of which I saw in Liverpool a few years ago)

Another look at the two warriors from the entrance to the gallery. From the Ming dynasty, 1400-1500 AD, they represent two of the Four Heavenly Kings (si tianwang) who watch over the earth from the four directions.

The Guardian of the West with his sword
the Guardian of the East holding a stupa, used to contain holy relics

Clitheroe and Downham

Now I’ve more free time I’ve been thinking about getting myself an e-bike. I used to do a lot of cycling at one time – more than 15 years ago to be honest, but my bike, a decent hybrid, has hardly been out of the shed since then. I’m not sure that the old legs could cope with the hulls around here these days so an e-bike does sound appealing. But they’re not cheap, especially some of the ones I’ve been looking at. The Ribble Hybrid AL e Trail has particularly caught my eye, but it’s expensive, costing £2000 more than the non-electric equivalent. Can I justify the cost? Well I thought I should go and take a look. The company have a showroom on the outskirts of Clitheroe, an hour’s drive away, so it seemed sensible to go and have a look. And given a decent weather forecast we decided to make a day of it. No, not a day in the bike showroom but after sussing out the bike we spent the rest of the day in and around Clitheroe.

First stop was Holmes Mill, aformer textile mill close to the centre of town that’s been convered into a food hall, beer hall, brewery, hotel and cinema.

We parrked up and had a look round the food hall. Lot’s of tasty stuff on display, much of it local produce from Bowland and the Ribble Valley.

The food also serve light meals and drinks so as it was midday and we aere starting to feel hungry so grabbed a table outdoors – it was already starting to get busy – and ordered a couple of “planks” from the menu. They arrived promptly.

Well fed, we drove the short distance into town centre and parked up. The next destination was Clitheroe Castle which stands on a prominent hill surrounded by 16 acres of park land in the centre of town. Clitheroe is a pleasant market town with mainly independent shops and is the home of a certain WordPress blogger! We had visited the Castle before, but that was a long time ago when our offspring were very small and we took them to see the castle. I think the last time I was in the town properly (not counting driving through it or visiting a client on the outskirts) was when I was conducting some research in the Library for a project which investigated the impact of the local cement work’s plan to burn waste solvents to fire the kiln during my studies for my Masters.

On our way up to the castle we passed one of the markers for the Lancashire Witches’ Walk, a 51-mile (82 km) long-distance footpath between Barrowford and Lancaster, opened in 2012 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the trials of the Pendle witches.

The poet laureate,  Carol Ann Duffy, was commissioned to write a poem for the trail and Ten cast iron tercet waymarkers, designed by Stephen Raw, each inscribed with the name of one of those executed (in this case Isabel Robey – who was actually from St Helens but was hanged with the women from Pendle) a verse of the poem the have been installed at sites along the route. This was the fourth marker on the trail,

A short steep climb and we reached the castle

The Norman keep – the second smallest in England – was built in the late 12th century and was garrisoned by a small company of troops to keep an eye ont he strategic route along the Ribble Valley.

On a fine day there were good views all around from the battlements surrounding the kep

Looking towards Pendle Hill
The view towards the Bowland Fells
The hills of the Yorkshire Dales in the distance

There are several other buildings in the Castle grounds that house the town museum It isn’t free entry but decided to visit. As with many local museums it’s exhibits are mainly aimed at children (I bet they have a lot of school visits during the year) but we found plenty of interest, particularly about the history of the castle, town and local industry.

A recreated Victorian kitchen in the museum
A textile work in the museum rembering the Pendle Witches

There was an exhibition of paintings and other exhibits on the theme of cycling (quite relevant given the original reason for our trip over here) in the Steward’s House – this is the building where the landlord’s representative lived.

The castle site remained in private ownership until 1920, when it was sold to the people of Clitheroe for a consirable sum to create a war memorial. We though that the landlord was rather mean spirited, and could have donated the castle and the land to the town, but that’s the landlord class for you. The town raised more than they needed to pay off the landlord so the surplus was used to create the pleasant park.

A very poignant memorial

We returned to the car and decided to drive over to the small village of Downham, a few miles away. It’s a very picturesque, small village at the bottom of Pendle Hill. The properties are all owned by the Assheton family who rent or lease them out and they don’t allow residents to install overhead electricity lines, aerials or satellite dishes. This has made the village a popular location for filming period TV programmes and films, including the BBC One series Born and Bred. More notably it was the main location for the 1961 Bryan Forbes film, Whistle Down the Wind.

Downham
Downham

I’ve been there several times, last time a couple of years ago with the offspring, but this was a first for J. We’re both fans of the film and so after stopping for an ice cream at the small cafe / shop, we went for a short walk where I was able to point out the main locations used in the film.

The farmhouse where Hayley Mills and her film sister and brother lived with Worsall Hill behind. The hill features at the beginning of the film when the children are seen running across and down it.
The barn where Alan bates playing the runaway murderer hides.
Pendle Hill seen across the fields during our walk

After returning to the village set off back to Clitheroe where we’d decided to eat out, but as it was a little too early, we decided to drive over to the riverside Brungerley Park where ther’e a sculpture trail. There isn’t a car park but given the time of the day (early evening) we had no trouble finding a place to park on the road close to the entrance to the park.

Here’s a selection of the sculptures, including some by Halima Cassell, who’s work, complex geometric scultpures, I rather like.

Common Comfrey by Halima Cassell
As The Crow Flies by David Halford
Fir Cone by Halima Cassell
Otter by Fiona Bowley
The Ribble King by Matthew Roby
Sika Deer by Clare Bigger

We spet a good hour or so meandering through the park on a mild evening but it was time to go and get something to eat! We’d decided to return to Holmes Mill and eat in the Beer Hall, where it looked like they had a decent “pub grub” menu. They also have a very extensive beer menu, including a range of Bowland beers that are brewed on the premises.

The beer hall – I took the photo during our earlier visit – it was surprisingly busy in the evening when we returnedgiven that it was a Wednesday. I bet it’s heaving at the weekend.
The mill engine that used to power the textile machinery.

The food was pretty good – and very filling. These is the lamb kebabs I ordered

Feeling stuffed after our meal it was time to set off for home. We’d had a very enjoyable and busy day. I think I really out to get out into the Ribble Valley more often.

A visit to Windermere Jetty Museum

Leaving Blackwell we decided to drive over to, another Lakeland Arts site, the Windermere Jetty Museum, a short drive away on the other side of Bowness. We’d visited before, just before the first lockdown, but though we could spend a little time there revisiting the exhibits and enjoying a brew on the lakeside.

As it turned out we spent longer there than we expected as there were a couple of art exhibitions – normally they would probably have been shown at Abbot Hall but with that still be shut for refurbishment I guess Lakeland Arts were taking advantage of the facilities here.

First, though, we had a look around the main displays

One of the exhibitions, shown in the main building in a room with a view over the lake, featured large scale abstract watercolours by Barbara Nicholls, an artist from Cheshire.

Her technique used to create these works involved laying out large sheets of heavy weight
paper on the studio floor, which were then wetted before applying the pigments which would then begin to spread out by capillary action – just like ink dropped onto wet blotting paper. The skill of the artist is then to manipulate and control the pigment. The finished works being made up of sections from several of these sheets cut and then collated to form a whole.

These monumental watercolours emerge from a process of manipulating coloured pigment in large quantities of water. The pigments behave in a variety of ways; some gather in dark, opaque pools, others are translucent, lapping at the paper to form gentle tidal marks.

Lakeland Arts Website

It was quite appropriate for paintings created by the movement of water to be displayed in a room with a view over the Lake.

The second exhibition was in the old fire station that had been relocated from Bowness village to the grounds of the museum

Dovetailing is an immersive installation by Sculptor Juliet Gutch in collaboration with composer and viola player Sally Beamish and filmmaker Clare Dearnaley inspired by luthiery (the making of stringed musical instruments). 

Entering the small building we encountered a darkened room with wooden mobiles suspended from the ceiling with a film being projected onto a screen.

The mobiles were made up of wooden shapes resembling shavings produced during the planing of the wood used in the construction of a violin or viola. The film, with the soundtrack by Sally Beamish, included natural sounds, the workshop process during the manufacture of a violin and the movement of the mobile forms.

Then it was time for a brew. It was a pleasant day so we sat outside looking over the water (there are good views from inside the cafe too)

I liked the wooden shelters that had been built by the museum staff using boat building techniques

Leaving the museum we weren’t ready to set off for home so we drove into the village centre, parked up and went for a walk along the lake.

There is very little of the east side of Windermere where it’s possible to walk along the lakeside. Most of the land is privately owned and access isn’t possible for the hoi poloi – reflecting the theme of the exhibition we’d visited at Blackwell that morning. The main exceptions are Fell Foot, at the south end of the lake, and Cockshott Point, a stretch of parkland where we were walking at Bowness. Both of these are owned by the National Trust. Cockshott Point was bought by the Trust with the help of a certain Mrs Heelis (better known as Beatrix Potter) who sold some paintings to raise funds for the purchase. Without this intervention it would have been likely that the land would be sold to a private buyer who would have prevented access.

There’s more of a “right to roam” on the west side of the Lake (formerly in Lancashire!), but, again this is due to the intervention of the National Trust. I think a lot of people think the NT is all about preserving manor houses, but their original vision was about opening up the countryside and without them large area of the lake District and other parts of the country wouldn’t be readily accessible.

So our say in the Lakes ended as it started, with us reflecting on how access to the countryside and the lake shores is still limited and how we need to continue to campaign for the “Right to Roam”.

Art and Shadows

Mesh sculpture (1961) – Katsuhiro Yamaguchi

It’s a while since I’ve been to see an art exhibition. Covid resulted in galleries being closed and since they reopened a reluctance to be in an enclosed space with a large number of people meant that I lost the habit. But during May I’ve started to make more of an effort to get back into the habit and I’ve visited both the Manchester City and Tate Liverpool galleries.

Something I’ve always found interesting is how some sculptural works cast shadows which add another aspect to the experience. While I was visiting the Tate there were a number of works where the interplay of light and shadows were part of the artist’s intention. The sculptures were suspended from above, creating effects that changed as they turned and moved due to the air movement. In some cases, the materials used were translucent, allowing some light to pass through projecting an image made of light and shadow light on nearby surfaces.

Linear Construction No. 2 (1970-71) – Naum Gabo
Spatial Relief (red) REL 036 (1959) – Hélio Oiticica 
Lekythos (1962) – Lenore Tawney 
I didn’t note the details of this work – doh!

The Wigan Mining Monument

WordPress blogger Wednesday’s Child has been very quiet in recent months. Not suprising given that she’s a doctor working in a hospital in Manchester. I hope she’s keeping safe and healthy.

I enjoy reading her posts and particularly like one of her themes – statues and monuments in Manchester, Glasgow and other locations. Wigan, being a bit of a cultural backwater, has rather a dearth of public art works, but in recent years the local council and other organisations have made some effort to install some sculpture and monuments in and around the town centre. The most recent, installed last year celebrates the mining heritage of Wiagn.

Despite Wigan once being the “capital” of the Lancashire coalfield, there was nothing to mark that and celebrate the heritage of an industry that used to dominate the town. It took a group of volunteers -the Wigan Heritage and Mining Monument group, WHAMM – a registered charity formed by two local women Anne Catterall and Sheila Ramsdale, which raised the funds to provide a statue in a prominent location in Wigan town centre.

The project came to fruition last year but, unfortunately, the planned unveiling ceremony couldn’t go ahead due to you know what.

The statue, created by sculptor Steve Winterburn, depicts a man, woman and child, probably a family, all of who worked in the pits. They’re wearing the traditional footwear – wooden clogs with clog irons and as the sculpture doesn’t have base or plinth so that they appear to be walking on the cobbled street.

The woman, carrying a sieve or screen, would have been a “Pit Brow Lass“, one of the women who worked on the surface (women being forbidden to work underground by the Mines and Collieries Act 1842) at the coal screens on the pit bank (or brow) picking stones from the coal after it was hauled to the surface or loading wagons.

Coal has been mined in Wigan from at least the 16th century, and the industry grew to dominate the town, peaking around the end of the nineteenth century. According to local history records, in the 1840’s there were over 1000 pit shafts within a 5 mile radius of Wigan town centre. 

Source: Wigan World

The Northern Mining Research Society has compiled a list of colleries in the area that were opened in the 19 Century. There aren’t any left now – the last pits in the Borough and Lancashire coalfield closed after the big strike of 1984.

Over three centuries, more than 750 million tons of coal were mined from the vast Wigan coalfields, which over time had over 1000 pits, large and small. It would be difficult to overestimate the contribution of the town to the industrial revolution and the wealth it brought to Britain. However, this was achieved at great cost to local people. Hundreds of people died in accidents, and countless thousands were maimed or left with diseases caused by the working conditions. Two huge mining disasters are still remembered and commemorated more than a century after they occurred. In 1908, 75 men lost their lives in the Maypole pit near Abram.

WHAMM Crowdfunder website
Unemployed Wigan miner in the 1930’s Source: Wigan World

There are few traces of the industry around the town these days. So the monument is a very welcome addition to the town to remind us of a proud heritage and tradition, and, more importantly as a tribute to the thousands of local people – men women and children – who laboured in awful conditions in the pits

Cemaes

After our walk around Parys Mountain we decided we’d drive a little further along the north coast of the island to the small resort of Cemaes – the most northerly village in Wales. Originally a fishing village, particularly for herring, and a port for the export of bricks, today it very much relies on tourism with it’s sandy beaches and pretty little harbour.

We drove into the village, missing the turn for the car park down by the beach but managed to find a large car park up the behind the main shopping street. I was amazed to find that parking there was free. Makes a change!

It’s quite a small place and it didn’t take long to look round. We walked along the main street, which had a only a few shops (some of them shut down, sadly), and then down towards the picturesque harbour. the tide was out so the fishing and pleasure boats were all stranded in the mud.

There was still some evidence of fishing and we saw a couple of men loading up crates of lobsters into their van. None for sale locally, though.

P9294325

Then on to the beach

P9294337

There were signs up making it clear that dogs were only allowed on a resticted section of the beach during the main season (which hadn’t finished). But what did we see. Yes, several dog walkers ignoring the instruction. It illustrates the problem that if you implement meaures people are required to follow the message must be clear (it was in this case), reinforced and enforced. Just the same with masks and social distancing at the moment. (Rant over!) Having said that, there were very few people on the beach and the promenade. It was very quiet and peaceful.

We were intrigued by this structure standing on the beach

A little research revealled it to be “St Patricks bell“. It’s one of several bells located at coastal locations around the UK by the Time and Tide project to celebrate the connection of local communities between themselves, the land, the sea and the environment. In Cemaes the bell celebrates the local legend that St Patrick was shipwrecked on the nearby island,Ynys Badrig, where he founded a church in 440 AD, introducing Christianity to Britain.

The bell is rung by the high tide, and is meant as a reminder of rising sea levels caused by global warming. Gillian Clark, a favourite poet of mine, composed a poem for the dedication of the bell and read it at the installation ceremony

Mewn gwynt a glaw,
gwyll neu oleuni,
heulwen, lloergan,
pan fo’r tonnau’n taro
ar y traeth dan dynfa’r lleuad,
bob dydd, adeg y penllanw,
swn y tonnau,
sain y gloch yn canu.

And in English:

At the turn of the earth,
heartbeat of the deep
under the wind’s breath,
as the sea stirs in sleep
under the moon’s gravitational pull,
when the tide’s at the full,
at the twelfth hour
the bell will toll.

Cast in bronze, the colour of the metal changes due to the action of the environment – air, water and salt.

I notice that one of the bells was installed last year on the Stone Jetty in Morecambe. I’ll have to go and have a look some time.

We didn’t stay very long but after strolling along the beach set back off to our accommodation, stopping at the sizeable Co-op in Amlych to pick up a few supplies. We then finished off the afternoon by walking down to Lligwy beach. Unfortunately the little cafe was closed 😦