Lodgings - Impromptu Days Out

Some years ago, I’d guess about forty, I was on my own in Lancaster where a work commitment had gone awry. Instead of packing up and heading home, I decided to spend time looking around, enjoying the sunshine. Lancaster is the first place I properly remember from my childhood with memories I hold close to my heart including the birth of my sister. Our family, at this point just my parents and a three year old me, moved from our Manchester pub to one in Lancaster. I went to nursery then infant school there. At some point, my maternal grandparents left their pub in Sale to move in with my aunt and uncle, also running a pub in Lancaster. Pure nostalgia, but I had hours to please myself.

Leaving the workplace, I headed towards the city centre. Aimlessly wandering, but comfortable amongst the old stone buildings that felt familiar to me, I realised I was on Church Street and started to look out for The Nag’s Head, a special place of my extended family. It remained unchanged so much that I could almost hear the sounds of the Saturday morning street market which always woke me up early when I’d stayed overnight. Someone was handing out leaflets promoting historical walks and places of interest. The Judges’ Lodgings was open to the public and close by. I went to look round.

From Lancashire County Council,

“Nestled below Lancaster Castle, the Judges' Lodgings dates back nearly 400 years on a site that has been at the centre of Lancaster's history for nearly 2000 years. The current house was built around 1625 by Thomas Covell, Keeper of the Castle and famous for locking up the Pendle Witches during the infamous Lancashire Witch Trials. From 1826 the house became a lodgings for the travelling 'Red Judges' of the Assizes Courts. Dressed in their scarlet robes, the Judges decided the fate of murderers, forgers and highwaymen at Lancaster Castle. Today the house is home to beautiful Georgian furniture by Gillows of Lancaster, elegant period rooms and the popular Museum of Childhood.”

It was more fascinating than I expected. Travelling judges were treated like royalty, the lodgings were like a mini palace.

Still nostalgic, I ate my bought lunch in Williamson Park where I used to play after school and on Sunday afternoon family gatherings. I already knew that the pub which had been my home, The County Hotel, was demolished and some soulless building had taken its place near the railway station.

My unexpected Lancaster trail concluded with a visit to Auntie Vi. Not a real Auntie but a family friend from the old days we’d always kept in touch with – she used to look after me a lot when I was little. We drank tea and reminisced in her cosy back living room, where I used to play. Time flies.

Time passed to when I was working at our local infant school. I was attached to Year One. We were having a school trip to The Judges’ Lodgings in Lancaster. I didn’t need asking twice. It was a fabulous visit. The children learnt a lot about bygone times and the ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ lifestyle of the people who used to live or stay in the building. They dressed up as staff or gentry and had lots of fun trying to spin tops and work other old-fashioned toys. I loved every minute.

Apologies for no poem, I had a few lines in my head but nothing came to fruition. Everything has been hectic since I returned from my extended travels yesterday. And tonight I had to go to a football match.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Cottage - I Belong in a Crofter's Cottage

 Isle of Barra

There’s something very appealing about escaping to a crofter’s cottage in the north of Scotland.  It is good for me to break away from the rat race and the negative trappings of modern living from time to time.  I would love to spend all winter up there with snow and freezing winds then come indoors to the warming glow of a peat fire and wholesome, home-made food.  Wishful thinking, I know, but I’m fortunate enough to have stayed in some sympathetically renovated ones with electricity and running water and nothing could be more perfect.

Years ago, driving westward along the north coast of Scotland, not too far from John O’Groats, I came to Dunnet Head and what I would call a living museum, Mary-Ann’s Cottage, which is open to the public for guided tours at limited times. The crofter’s cottage is exactly as Mary-Ann left it and is a fascinating insight into her life. If you like social history, I strongly recommend a visit if your travels take you anywhere near.

I like to be ‘off the beaten track’ and Harbour Cottage on the Isle of Barra (my photo) certainly provided everything I wished for in May this year. A wonderful, stone built cottage with ground floor walls at least three feet thick and a fireplace, not that we needed to make a log fire in the unusually warm climate.  Lovingly renovated and extended to make three first floor bedrooms and a sun lounge, Harbour Cottage was a delightful holiday home. I have the same opinion of the fabulous, tiny crofter’s cottage in Lochboisdale, South Uist last year, (my photo). I would happily return, but there are other places to see first.

 

South Uist

My favourite lodges in Dumfries and Galloway are a home from home and somewhere I go to for a break at least twice a year. This year it will be three visits and would have been four if one of my chosen times hadn’t clashed with work. They are not exactly cottages, but get unpacked and settled, and the feeling is just the same, relaxed, cosy and free.

My poem, written after a stay at a cottage near Gairloch, North West Scotland,

 

I’ll Take the High Road

 

Sun-yellow gorse meets a bright blue sky

Where mountains seem low and clouds are high.

Single track, crumbled edge, shared with sheep,

The drop is sharp, the climb is steep

Then dips to touch the shore of the loch

Where gentle waves lick tumbled rock.

Then swift ascent and a chance to pause,

Admire the view and brown-heather’d moors.

Mile after slate-grey mile and some more,

Then, at last, we reach our cottage door.

The road ends where the loch becomes sea,

Dolphins are playing and I feel free.

 

 

                                                                      Pamela Winning.  May 2014

 

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Masonry: Everything Is Illuminated (Sort Of)

We're into the weird and wonderful world of masonry this week. I was going to attempt a potted explanation of all things masonic - origins, intentions, even conspiracy theories, but initial research has revealed it to be such an extensive and esoteric subject that I'm only going to be able to scratch the surface, so to speak, rather than deliver an elegantly chiselled whole.

Masonry is self-evidently stone worked by stone masons. Stone was chosen for its durability. Life is short but stonework could provide a lasting memorial, whether as statue, temple or tomb, so great men saw it as a totem when all else turns to dust, as close an approximation to immortality as could be achieved with the materials to hand.

Of course, being a durable material, stone requires skill to fashion it. Therefore the role of mason acquired considerable prestige. In the ancient world (Middle East, Egypt, Greece, Rome) masonry became as much a science as an art and was on a par with the practices of astronomy, medicine and the priesthood.

After the Dark Ages, as Christianity gained prominence in Western Europe, there was a gradual move to legitimise the provenance of masonry, retrofitting back to Old Testament biblical times (the temple of Solomon) and the rise of Euclidean geometry. Stone masons, like many other guilds of skilled artisans, formed societies of brotherhood and mutual support.

The Regius Poem (some of which I have quoted below) is widely held to be the first extant masonic work in English, dating from the late 14th century. The manuscript is in the British Museum and sets out in 794 lines of rhymed verse the 'history' and fifteen principles of masonic life as devised allegedly some time in the late 10th century during the reign of King Athelstan.

Masonic organisations are fond of mottos and insignia, the former usually in Latin, for instance: morte ad ignoratam (death to ignorance) or lux e tenebris (light out of darkness). The intention is usually to advance the common good by education (and to benefit the masonic brotherhood in the process). Apprentice stone masons would receive a good education at a time when the majority of the population was still illiterate. Algebra, Geometry, Greek and Latin were acquired alongside the principles and skills of working stone. That is why the compass and set square are standard insignia of many masonic groups along with the all-seeing eye and the book (see the image below).

Carving above the entrance to the masonic lodge in Yeovil, Somerset

The symbolism of the all-seeing eye with its rays of enlightenment probably harks back to the worship of Ra in Egypt and gives a flavour of the quirkiness and multiple layers of this retrofitted tradition.

The Knights Templar from the period of the Crusades are so named for the link back to Solomon's Temple and the link between Templars and Freemasonry is well-documented. Increasingly diverse and divorced from a direct connection to stonemasonry, guilds or lodges became more symbolic than actual after the dissolution of the monasteries and many often assumed secret or subversive overtones as religious persecution became rife.

Those on the inside preserved the secrets of their brotherhood. Those on the outside speculated about corruption and influence in both secular and religious life and conspiracy theories about a New World Order of masons continue to this day. Maybe Putin and Trump have a special link! (only joking, folks).

There's so much more to unearth here. I consider it just a start and will continue to research as time allows.



The Regius Poem: a poem of moral duties

Excerpts from the Regius Poem
In that time, through good geometry,
This honest craft of good masonry
Was ordained and made in this manner,
Counterfeited of these clerks together;
At these lords' prayers they counterfeited geometry,
And gave it the name of masonry,
For the most honest craft of all...

He learned best, and was of honesty,
And he passed his fellows in curiosity,
If in that craft he did him pass,
He should have more worship than the less,
This great clerk's name was Euclid,
His name it spread full wonder wide.
Yet this great clerk ordained he
To him that was higher in this degree,
That he should teach the simplest of wit
In that honest craft to be perfect...

Furthermore yet ordained that he,
Master called so should he be;
So that he were most worshipped,
Then should he be so called;
But masons should never one another call,
Within the craft amongst them all,
Neither subject nor servant, my dear brother,
Though he be not so perfect as is another;
Each shall call others fellows by friendship,
Because they come of ladies' birth.
On this manner, through good wit of geometry,
Began the first craft of masonry;
The clerk Euclid on this wise it found,
This craft of geometry in Egypt land.

(This is a 'translation' from 14th century English. The full 794 lines can be read online if wished.)

Thanks for reading. Have a 'be good, do good' week, S;-)

Read More