Wollaton Village’s Dovecote Museum is a little tricky to find though just a short walk from the village and at the end of a cul-de-sac. It’s a small building dating from the 16th century, having been built around 1565 by Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton Hall.
Recently for my birthday we spent a week in Llandudno, Wales (and there will be lots of posts coming up about the many things we did whilst based there). On our first day of wandering around the town we came across the below sculpture of the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It was here that I learned that Alice Liddell – the real life inspiration for Carroll’s heroine – spent many summers with her family in Llandudno and her adventures there served as inspiration for many aspects of the books.
The Merchant Adventurer’s Hall is a Grade I listed timber framed building built in around 1357 by a fraternity of York citizens as a charity and business that became the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York in the 16th century.
One weekend in April we headed on the train to the National Civil War Centre in Newark. We’ve meant to visit since it first opened in 2015 but a recent feature on the local news spurred us on to finalise our plans. The museum is a quick 5 to 10 minute walk from Newark Castle Railway station in a somewhat unprepossessing building next to the Palace Theatre.
St Leonard’s Church in Wollaton, Nottingham, has been around since the 1200s and it would have fallen under the care of the Mortein and then the Willoughby families, owners of the nearby Wollaton Hall.
The Shambles is a medieval street in York, though these days the description encompasses the whole general area. Mentioned in the Domesday Book the name comes from the word “shamel” meaning the stalls or benches where meat would have been displayed – the Shambles itself was a street of butcher’s shops and houses with often a slaughterhouse at the back to provide fresh meat. You can see one of those surviving shelves on the left hand side of the below picture.
Here’s another post about some of the plaques to be found around London. The first is on the site of the Westminster office of the Penny Post, on Gerrard Street, the first building to operate as a post office in Westminster in 1794. The London Penny Post itself was established in 1680 to deliver mail around London for, you guessed it, one penny. The Two Penny Post was established in 1801.
As a follow-up to part one, this post is focusing on some of Coggeshall’s religous buildings, past and present. The first of these is Christ Church (previously known as the Congregational Church). Built in 1710 by Independents, some of whom had been ejected from the Church of England, by 1989 it had combined with the Methodist and Baptist churches.
St Martin-in-the-Fields stands at the north east corner of Trafalgar Square and as such is a building I’ve passed by plenty of times but never had the time to pop in until this last visit when I deliberately added it to my places to see. There’s been a church on the site since at least 1222 but the current building dates from 1722-1726.
After visiting the Banqueting Hall and the Jewel Tower I was walking around Westminster when the impressive looking Methodist Central Hall caught my eye. Built to mark the centenary of John Wesley’s death in 1905 (the founder of Methodism) I decided to pop inside and ask if I could take some photos of the interior. Straightaway I was told that if I had about twenty minutes to spare I could have my own, free tour of the building.
