Category: Outside Northumberland

On Saturday 14 May Alex and I had a day on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. On the way home I had time to get off the train at Saltaire and have a quick explore. The village is a World Heritage Site – website. It is named after Sir Titus Salt who built a textile mill, known as Salts Mill, and this village on the River Aire. Designed by architects Lockwood and Mawson, Salts Mill was opened on Sir Titus Salt’s 50th birthday, 20 September 1853. The best site in the village was reserved for the church, which is at the end...

Sunday 20 February 2016. We could (should) have been good and gone to the Festival Eucharist in Bloxham church, or we could get up late, have a Holiday Inn breakfast, and drive into Stratford. We parked on the High Street, went to a shop, I walked back to the car, we went to another shop, I walked back to the car … and so it went on. Our shopping bonanza included a new suit from Debenham’s (I only wanted a pair of trousers). We wandered to the theatre and raided the shop, then went along to the Guild Chapel, at...

We stopped at St Peter’s church, in the middle of the village of Kineton – SP335511 – en route to the Bloxham Festival. It is in the Diocese of Coventry, in the county of Warwickshire. It looks a very lively church – good website, facebook and twitter – lots going on, well cared for, open and loved. The website says it was their 700th anniversary last year, but that is the only mention of the history of the church on their website. The only guidebook I can find is a 1983 one on sale on Amazon. It is not...

We are driving south to the festival at Bloxham near Banbury, so the A1 and then south past Bedford is a reasonable route. St Mary’s church, Cardington (TL086479) has a church website here. This website has lots of photos, but no mention of who the photographer is. It seems a little odd that there is a Benefice magazine and a Parish magazine. Lots of different booklets on sale inside – a good use for the coffin trolley. There has been a church on this site since Anglo-Saxon times. The porch is impressive – it dates to the late C19...

On Thursday 11 February 2016 we had a day in York with friends Jean and Adrian. We spent most of the day in the Yorkshire Museum. Am I going to start blogging every museum I visit? Yes, if my public want me to! The museum’s website is here. The museum was founded by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and they were given ten acres of land in 1828, land which included the remains of St Mary’s Abbey (the ecclesiastical link which justifies a blog). The gardens around are lovely and I must have a proper explore sometime. The original church was founded...