Thread 16 - TalkLair: "Well, I'm not exactly quaking in my stylish-yet-affordable boots, but there's definitely something unnatural going on here."

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 15).

Another year over, a new one just begun...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, the walls festooned with tinsel, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors, the tree is twinkling with fairy lights (and possibly being clambered on by cats). The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics.

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey Christmas roast beast over there in the corner of the cave…

Oh Sinner that's rotten. Have you been back since?

I love the surprise of seeing Stonehenge when we're heading to Cornwall, and don't mind the queue, as that way you get to see it for a long time.

We didn't get to Avebury @duc748, the weather was particularly dismal that day. We counted ourselves lucky that it started out dry(ish) when we walked from the visitor centre to the stones. Great views of the landscape and the many barrows dotting the area. The wind had picked up considerably by the time we arrived at the stones, by the time we'd walked all the way around the viewing area, we had the aforementioned horizontal driving rain and people's umbrellas were being turned inside-out and we decided not to try walking back to the visitor centre - squeezed on the shuttle bus with an unruly French school trip. The visitor centre was very good IMO and they had loads of volunteers who were very good at explaining all sorts of details.

We drove back to Bath to drop off the club car, and spent the entire afternoon indoors in the museums and tea rooms (both are plentiful and excellent).

@PoppySeedBagelRedux That was my memory of Stonehenge too, seeing it from the A303 on the way to Cornwall. And still the case these days, of course.It was pretty amusing to see the cars all slowing down to a crawl as they passed, creating an epic queue.

I remember going round the stones at Stonehenge, or at least very close to them, when I visited in 1982. I also like Avebury better because you can walk right up to the stones (and because the pub in the middle does a very nice ploughman's lunch).

I had an excellent ploughman's at that pub a few years ago.

When we went to Avebury it was mid-summer and hot, so we got there about 8.30 in the morning when all was quiet and cool and it was lovely.

The stones were interesting but I got side-tracked by the wild flowers growing in the ditch and went around documenting them for myself and taking photographs. The interesting thing is that when we visited Grime's Graves in Norfolk, a neolithic flint mine, the same mix of wild flowers were growing, all with herbal properties. Amongst others I spotted a type of wild onion, marjoram, thyme, eyebright and lady's bedstraw. I mentioned it to the staff at Grime's Graves and was told that the same plants are seen at ancient sites across northern Europe.

I drive past the turn to Grimes Graves whenever I go up to Norfolk to see my mother, but I'm ashamed to say I've never visited. There's also quite a scary bit in one of the Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway books that's set there.

The sign at the turn also mentions Stanta - an Army training ground - and so it always sets me off singing Stanta Baby or some other festive jingle.

Interesting about the species of plants at these sites! Presumably the worshippers brought these plants with them when they moved to new places?

PoppySeedBagelRedux · Today 12:38

Oh Sinner that's rotten. Have you been back since?

No, we did have a plan to go to Cornwall and look in on the way, but that would have been in 2020...

Is Grimes Graves the Neolithic flint bell pits? I've been down one, as a kid. It was great.

If you're into ancient history then it's worth a visit. There are acres of grassy craters, which show where the flint was dug out and the mines filled in, which creates a slightly eerie atmosphere. At one time the area was used by rabbit farmers and whilst that's no longer the case, there are still quite a few rabbits there and they enhance the visit by digging stuff up. We went around looking for where they'd scuffed up the ground and they'd unearthed lots of flint blades, all as sharp as the day they were struck.

There is also one excavated mine you can actually go down. This the lower chamber which is about 9m deep, though the deepest are 14m. It's amazing to think that people were digging these mines by hand so long ago. The flint from the mines is black and high quality and it was transported all over Europe.

Hm, 'image under review'.

It's up now.

That's the question, isn't it, but it does seem likely. I would love to know what they were all up to. Were they worshipping, having a party, trading or what?

SinnerBoy · Today 13:47

That's the one.

I visited it when I was 11, I think. We did a school holiday to Devon and stopped at Stonehenge either on the way there or the way back. I thought it was amazing and the thing that tickled me the most was the graffiti that dated back centuries. I wish I'd known more about it at the time so I could have searched bits out or even just filled a notebook with things that I saw to investigate, well, a few decades into the future when there was the internet. Or when a bit older gone to the British Library to see if I could find books about the graffiti. It wasn't packed when we were there so it was a lovely visit, huge stones, lovely soft grass beneath our feet. I certainly appreciate that I got to see it before it was all fenced off but I'm also grateful that it's being protected these days although they should let people like me through to wander around because I'm very special and can be trusted to do the right thing. 😉😂😉

Vegemiteandhoneyontoast · Today 13:54

That's the one.

Wow! 40 mumble mumble years ago and that's exactly it! I seem to remember going to Castle Rising and learning that Lord Someone or Other was stabbed whilst in the gaderobe and took a month to die; on the same holiday.

If any fans of ancient graffiti find themselves in the nothern reaches of Hertfordshire, this church is worth a visit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary%27s_Church,_Ashwell,_Hertfordshire

Ooh, thanks for that, Bint!

Not mentioned in the Wiki page is the oddity of the clocks.

The tower has clocks on 3 sides. The story is that the landowner of the farmland that the 4th side faces vetoed clock number 4, because he didn't want his labourers to know when it was time to finish for the day.

The remains of Thornton Abbey in north Lincolnshire has some old graffiti of ships on the wall of the entrance. I don't know enough about old ships to say when it might have been done, but it was a delight to see.

There's a church in Chester (the original cathedral) that still has some of the original painted decoration on the pillars. Including a depiction of the Romans landing in Britain that's not quite contemporaneous, but was painted before the Normans did the same.

At the risk of sounding like a complete wanker, the church of Hagia Sofia in Trabzon, up on the Black Sea coast just before the Armenian border, has loads of ship graffiti too, some of it dating back to the 1200s apparently. I went there many years ago and it's a beautiful church (and a dump of a town, where I accidentally ended up staying in a brothel and had to barricade myself in my room).

I thought of your experience when I was possibly¹ staying in a brothel in Vladivostock. The doors there opened outwards, so barricading wasn't possible. Best I could manage was a pile of trip hazards.

¹ No definitive evidence, but the floor below ours seemed to have a lot of young women hanging about.

Accidentally staying in a brother sounds like a nightmare. The outward opening doors are especially disturbing.

I'd love to know when the ship graffiti at Thornton was done, but the abbey was established in 1148 and closed in 1547, so fairly old.

1547 is very late and suggests that it survived the Reformation <goes off down a rabbit hole>

It survived for a while by becoming a Secular College, but then Henry VIII closed those too.

Some of you have had very interesting lives.

My first 'Hang on, is this a brothel?!' experience was in what was nominally a police station. That was much more confusing.