In 690 AD the beautiful and
ruthless Wu Zetian became the first empress of China. and the market town of
Ledbury in Herefordshire was founded. It was mentioned in the Domesday book and
has a church dated from the C12th.
St Michaels and All Angels Church
The original church has been extended
several times. For example the tower was built around 1230 and the Spire added
in 1733. If you look closely at the picture you can see that the tower –
uniquely for Herefordshire – is not connected to the main body of the church.
Wandering around. you stop at
building after building: The Feather’s Hotel, a C16 Drovers inn,
a Butchers
moved piece by piece and reassembled after complaints about the smell. It’s now
a museum. You walk down wonderful streets with equally wonderful toilets,
glimpse lanes you could write stories about.
Toilet entrance to the left
There were four battles of Ledbury,
a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War, and some notable people were
born here, William Langland the C14th poet, Elizabeth Browning, the Victorian
poet, John Masefield an inter-war Poet Laureate – notice a pattern here? I
could continue. William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet about St Catherine of
Ledbury, though the pattern is perhaps spoilt by Elizabeth Hurley alsol from
Ledbury who has yet to write a poem.
If I may end on two curiosities:
The shoe bath for the poor, wheeled
from house to house on a trolley. There was a tap on the toe of the boot, which
I’ve masterfully left out. At each house some water was let out, leaving space
for a ‘top up’. There are apparently only three examples of a shoe bath in the
entire country.
The kettle is an ironmonger’s
sign, originally hanging outside the building and a danger to both man and beast.
There was little room for Health and Safety in the C17th.
Part two next week focusing on interiors but excluding the toilet.
3 comments:
Even when the walls look ready to buckle, they stand even after centuries.
re: shoe bath
I never heard of a shoe bath. Not sure I'd like to slip into that one after so many other grungy people.
We should be so lucky with out houses, Maria. Ref Shoe bath, I'm reminded of the nursery rhyme 'There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/13/c0/03/13c0038241520965b180a646566e8c95.jpg
Interesting how evolutionary the education curriculum and teaching process were from Victorian times up to recent times. The continuity is getting stretched thin nowadays with all the computerized interactive software and whiteboards, etc. What are textbooks? Lol.
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