Bank Holiday in Dorset

Lovely Weymouth was the setting for this much-needed long weekend. Thanks again to Harry and Steph for hospitality, and to Moss for entertainment. A marvellous weekend once again. We stayed away from the seaside and ventured inland... scroll down to see what we got up to.

Summer is on its way ... but the weather is still a bit nippy!

Weymouth Trawler Race

The bank holiday at the end of May is time for silly antics in Weymouth harbour... During which trawlers are adorned with various decorations, their crews and friends dress up and get drunk, and then do battle with hoses, flour bombs and other weaponry before setting out to sea for the 'race' itself.

Nervous canoe-lifeguards stay well away

General view of the melee

Plucky Weymouth boat 'Katy Clare' attacking a much larger incomer from Devon

Knights of the round table aboard 'Sally Jane'.

Another incomer (from Guernsey) is attacked by the Weymouth fleet.

Sherborne Country Fair (1)

The bank holiday weekend was rounded off by a family visit to Sherborne Castle Country Fair. This took place at Sherborne Castle, about 25 miles north of Weymouth and in the heart of the Dorset countryside.

The castle itself was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, and replaced an earlier building, now ruined. The main focus of attention was not, for once, historic buildings, but all the fun of the (country) fair...

Moss seemed to have a particularly good time

Some nice horses...

...and curley-horned sheep

Sherborne Country Fair (2)

35 year-old boy and steam engine.

Sheltering from the inevitable English summer shower.

Otters, ferrets and birds of prey all got Moss very excited...

...but were nothing compared to her enthus- iastic support of terrier racing.

Walking in Weymouth

We had a lovely long walk on Sunday with Moss, along the old railway line (the Rodwell trail) out towards Portland. Here are some views from that particular excursion...

At one of the old stations on the railway route.

The site of the old Whitehead torpedo factory. Not much to see now.

The end of the trail, the isle of Portland behind.

Boscombe

As well as the excitement of Weymouth and Sherborne, the weekend also saw a visit to the cinema and some other journeys in search of antique furniture. The cinema (X-Men 3) was rather disappointing. The furniture was also disappointing, but it meant venturing into dangerous waters...

On Saturday we went to the chav-ridden fleapit of Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth which is itself one of my least favourite scruffy south-coast towns. It was probably quite a nice place in the early twentieth century, when most of it appears to have been built. Nowadays however it is not good. We went because Kate noticed lots of antique shops in the yellow pages. Well, there were lots of shops with 'Antique' in the title, but most had modern secondhand furniture or older bits of tat. A return visit is not planned.

A nice view of Boscombe (caused by crouching behind the flower stall).

The impressive but nowadays very seedy Royal Arcade (1898).

Christchurch

Christchurch was an altogether much happier place than Boscombe, due it being characterful and more friendly. It is still located within the large urban sprawl that is Bournemouth, however.

Main attractions were New Look and Dorothy Perkins... [no this is MY blog!].

Main attractions were the Priory and Castle. Christchurch was originally called Tyneham, but became known as Christchurch because of the miraculous intervention of Christ himself in the building of the priory. At least according to this legend. Either way the church is a quite remarkable collection of early architectural forms with nice round arches and chevrons and all sorts of things that the polite church builders of the 13th century onwards frowned upon...

View of the priory church tower from the ruins of the motte and bailey castle.

Detail of arches and fish scale pattern.

Interior view (yes I did pay for a permit!)

Ruins of the 11th century Constable's House, genteel sports adjacent.

Place Mill, still with machinery intact.

Wimbourne

After leaving Christchurch we arrived at Wimbourne, but the whole town was basically closed as it was after 5 o'clock. But it looks like a pretty town and is definitely on the list for a future visit.

Wimbourne Minster

Pink party and other adventures

Some photos from Michelle's birthday celebrations in Weymouth at the weekend, with an overwhelmingly 'pink' theme. Starting with food and drinks in the Hogshead it became a pub/club crawl around the usual Weymouth haunts and we managed by and large to stay upright. Another enjoyable evening, even if the theme was not taken as seriously by some as by others!

Rob and I, in the pink.

Michelle and Matt lighting candles

A spectacular candle

Nick, Matt and Kate a bit later on










It was nice to have a break in Dorset to get away from the house for a while. On Sunday we set off early to the Weymouth Antiques and Collectors fair (not very good), and visited another one in Osmington before heading out to the woods with Moss for another long walk in the rain! On the drive back up we stopped off in Worcester of all places to go to the cinema to see The DaVinci Code. Which wasn't a bad film on the whole, I think it gets about 7 out of 10. It was nicely photographed but the plot was quite obvious really, even to those of us who haven't read the book.

Catching up!

Here are some pictures from previous adventures belatedly downloaded from Kate's camera. They relate to early May, which seems a long time ago already!

A tourist at Stokesay Castle! (aka Steph)

The dovecote at Shipton Hall.

In the morning before giving my paper at the World Heritage Site conference

Investi- gating a derelict windmill near Shifnal

More house photos

Kate pointed out last night that all of the pictures so far on here are of the grotty (or unfinished) bits of the house. So here are a couple of interior views of finished (or at least reasonably complete and pleasant) areas.

The bedroom, painted in a marathon session of evenings last week. The subtle colour scheme doesn't really show up in this photo. Carpet will be diguised with rugs. Bed unmade!

The bathroom, pretty much all ready to go when I moved in. Not a very exciting photo, but just cleaned. I will have to clean it again now that the house is full of dust and soot!

Fireplace (and floorboards)

Whilst waiting this morning for the BT engineer to sort out the phone line, I continued bashing at the mid-nineteenth century walls in the fireplace. All nearly complete, but needless to say a very hot and dusty job...

This one taken at about 11.00am. A large stone filling the void on the right hand side.

This one taken at 1.30pm before coming to work. Job almost complete!





You can see very clearly the plastered area to the right of the fireplace, which I think must be an original oven. The brickwork near the bottom has some soot on it, but mostly it is quite clean. The actual base of the fireplace is below the present floor level, but I shall stop at or just above the present floor level due to the potential arrival of floorboards. Speaking of which, here they are in situ in their present (original) location 'somewhere in Staffordshire'. Should be here in a couple of weeks...



Pitch pine, approx 20-25cm wide and two inches thick!

Some house photos

Having finally cleared the camera of some memory and downloaded the photos, I was able to take a few shots of different bits of the house. My main focus this week has been the destruction of the fireplace, so I am afraid I have only really taken a limited range of shots.

A view from the back garden of the interesting rear elevation.














Now for some interior views of 'places with potential'. First, upwards...

The window in the attic, one of many bits which show it was once a room (and can be again).

Lots of nice beams, many re-used from something ancient!














...and then down below...

Very nice curved steps downwards (a good place to store wine!)...

...leading to a lovely (well it will be once cleaned) brick-arched cellar.

Archaeology and fireplaces

Sorry folks for the long delay in adding to the blog - events have intervened. Since the last post we have both been extremely busy. Mainly I have been busy with archaeological things. Firstly there was the World Heritage Site conference which took place over most of the weekend 5th-7th May. This was in fact an excellent conference which both Kate and I enjoyed thoroughly. Kate arrived on Friday in the nick of time for dinner with Sir Neil Cossons, and on Saturday we had discussion over an evening meal at Madeley Court.

The following week I decided to paint the bedroom in my evenings (at least Monday-Wednesday), and then on Thursday night it was fencing. On Friday evening I gave a lecture to the Royal Archaeological Institute, who also had a guided tour (with the assistance of Kate) on Saturday. Sunday we went to Bridgnorth and Church Stretton to look for old furniture, but without success (although it was good fun and much tea was had along the way!)

Monday (yesterday) I took as a day off in lieu and spent much of it making structural alterations to the fireplace in the living room...

'Before'. This is after removing the breeze- block wall.







This brick infilling was very interesting. Although much knocked about, it basically seems to have been a mid-nineteenth century modification of the fireplace to incorporate a more modern range. The top row of bricks were simply resting on a row of bricks-on-edge, and were used to block up the original aperture. They appeared to have no structural significance...

...and after some tentative exploration, I knocked them out and discovered indeed that the whole chimney rests entirely on the wooden beam. The beam seems to be part of the wall-plate from an earlier timber-framed building. The chinmey breast is corbelled up from the beam internally. So in the few hours at my disposal I removed as much of the nineteenth century brickwork as possible to expose the original extent of the eighteenth century fireplace.

At the end of yesterday - about half removed. This photo does not do justice to the 'new' extra depth of the fireplace.

This was an extremely dusty and sooty job, with about 200 years of soot coming down on top of me. Also a lot of the voids behind the brick side-walls were filled with dust and rubble. The whole living room now has a nice layer of grey-brown dust all over it! However I am pleased - this will make a fantastic open fireplace!!

This is where a lot of the soot and dust went!

Moving house...

No photos at present (they are on Kate's camera), but this weekend the house move was successfully completed - which would not have been possible without the assistance of Katie and her family. Harry and Steph arrived by campervan on Saturday evening, having collected a matress on our behalf at IKEA, and we went to the Pheasant in Broseley for dinner - very nice indeed. Next day Harry kindly disconnected a gas fire and reconnected the cooker, and then we set about demolishing parts of the fireplace. Another trip to IKEA to buy more bed things, and then back to the house and caravan site. Sunday night we ate at the Mermaid in Atcham, and Monday visited Stokesay before parting with Harry and Steph at Ludlow.

Katie and I then returned via Shipton Hall where we had a delightful tour by the owner and discovered that the Georgian 'gothick' additions to this house were designed by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard (who designed the Iron Bridge).

So an interesting weekend, overshadowed slightly by the thought of the events later today, which are making me a little bit nervous at the moment. I am going to go home shortly and bash some bricks or something. Interestingly yesterday was the exact 6th anniversary of starting work at the Museum, I started as Senior Archaeologist on 2nd May 2000.