I’d taken photos of the exterior of St Clement Danes Church on a previous visit to London but I was finally able to spare the time to go inside in September. Right by the Royal Courts of Justice it is one of London’s two “island churches”, so-called because of the layout of the road around it. (The other is St Mary le Strand which will be the focus of a later post).
Whenever I’m in London for a few days I try and schedule an afternoon of just wandering around an area and taking photos of places I’ve not managed to visit before or where I’ve visited only briefly. Despite the intermittent rain after visiting Temple Church I decided to take a wander around Somerset House. There was some sort of event going on inside so I only took photos of the courtyard and exterior.
Mapperley Hall was built by Ichabod Wright, a banker, in 1792. The Wright’s were a prominent family in Nottingham and many of them have plaques erected in St Mary’s Church. It was their home until the end of the 19th century when it became part of University College Nottingham. As best as I can make out it has now been split into separate flats.
The International Slavery Museum opened in 2007, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain and is the only museum of its kind to look at both historical and contemporary slavery. It is housed on the first floor of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, and therefore has free entry.
On my final day in Liverpool I decided to take a walk down from my hotel towards the Albert Dock in order to visit the museums there but the first building I actually stepped inside was the Liverpool Parish Church.
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.
