St. Peter's at Barton-on-Humber

Next on that tour we crossed the Humber River over a suspension bridge.  I thought it was amusing that the retirement age people on the bus were excited about that.  But then, if you don't take a childish delight in things, where is the fun in life?

St. Peter's is an honest-to-goodness Anglo-Saxon church, with sections of the tower built around 970 AD.  It was decommissioned as a church around 1970 due to lack of attendance.  On the day that we were there, it was raining (big surprise), and so the walk up to the building was damp, grey, and had the type of atmosphere you would expect for walking through an ancient graveyard.

Unfortunately for this picture, my camera automatically adjusts to dim light.  Which is great if you are photographing medieval documents without a flash, but it did lose the quality of light that existed at this place on this day.

One of the gravestones reminded me of Snow White, because of its shape, and the Poe-like romantic quality of the ivy.

As you come around the corner from this, the tower comes into view.

The bottom level has the rounded arches supporting the pointed arches.  The second section, which was built about ten years later, has the pointed windows.  The top section was built sometime in the next century.  Here's a better view:

The rest of the building dates to the 14th century.  I like the wooden door within the door seen here:

The skeleton to the right just added to the feel of the place.

A view of the oldest part of the church from inside:

And then there is this very strange door.  It does not match the rest of the already eclectic building.  The rock work is very uneven, with stones poking out at various lengths, giving a somewhat eerie feel to it - like it was bricked up by someone in a hurry.  From the outside, however, the rock has been smoothed out. 

Because it is no longer a functioning church, and is owned by English Heritage, an archaeological dig was performed on the graveyard and under the flooring.  The interior of the building is now a strangely cheerful, macabre museum set up of what they found.

There are signs and exhibits discussing burial practices and how they had changed over the centuries.  One one interactive section you could push a button, answering the question of whether you would preferred burial or cremation (cheerful topic for a day out with the kids!)  Whole skeletons were on display, as well as old coffins, bones showing particularly nasty diseases, and this gem.

This poor soul was found with his skull cut open, as is visible on the picture, but also with a wooden stake replacing the vertebrae in his neck.  Hannah, a PhD that studies vampire and werewolf literature couldn't get her hands on pencil and paper fast enough.

The building was very interesting, and the grounds were beautiful, but I honestly can't decide which was creepier - the fact that there were bodies all over (well, under really) the place, or the fact that there should have been, but they had all been dug up.  It was astounding, either direction.

Of course, leave it to English Heritage to take all the fun out of things...

In case you can't read the finer print, it says "Please take care as historic sites can be hazardous."

Conisbrough Castle

Last Saturday I went on a day bus trip arranged by MANCASS (Manchester Anglo-Saxon Society) around Yorkshire.  It would have been a shame to spend all of my time while I'm here at libraries, conference rooms, and inside my flat, after all.  So off I went.  We got to see and cross the Humber River - three times.  We spent time at Barton-on-Humber, where I tried new foods, got teased by the waitress about my accent, and bought my first Turkish Delight.  I saw lots of baby animals, especially lambs, and pheasants.  I also spent the day talking to Dr. Hannah Priest, a goth type woman who studies vampires and werewolves in 12th, 13th and 21rst century literature.  It was great!

We went to a castle and four churches.  I'm going to focus my next few blog entries on each in turn.  The day started at Conisbrough Castle, made famous by a reference in Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, of which it is very proud.  It was built about 1180 for Hamelin Plantagenet, the half brother of king Henry II.

The main tower is around 100 feet high.  It took three flights of stairs to reach the top, one of which was outside the tower because they were concerned about weak walls due to battering ram damage.  Flash photography doesn't really capture the weight of all the rock around you, the dim light, or the uneven stairs.

Modernish wood floors were put in at every level for people to walk on, but they squeaked and didn't quite match the walls, which made me quite nervous. The third floor had a small room set off from the stairs that had interesting vaulting and decoration in the ceiling that was unexpected to me because of the early date of the building.  The gentleman in the picture was part of the group, but I don't know his name.

You can still see some of the paint and plaster on the ceiling.

Once at the top, you get a really good view of the surrounding countryside.

The yellowish fields in the background of this picture are actually a beautiful, vibrant color up close.  The distance and grey day make that difficult to see.  Apparently, in this part of the country large fields are planted with this.  It's rapeseed.  I don't know either.

While I was looking around at the vistas, I passed this feature about the same time as a woman and her grandchildren.  A girl of about ten asked what it was for, and grandma said it was where they put the kids when they were misbehaving.  Some things never change I guess.

The castle walls are very interesting.  Occasionally, a red stone is incorporated, and you can still see the whitewash that was used to make the whole building white and very noticeable from a distance.

The whole thing was very interesting and great to walk around on.  But English Heritage, the organization that preserves historic sites, has no sense of adventure:

Just because some of them look like this -

We only had about an hour and a half to walk around the grounds, see the castle, and go through the small visitor's center before we had to move on.  It was a very nice first tourist place for me, though.