Yorkshire (Day 5, part 1): Romans, Cafes and Belt Merchants

I knew the smell. Burning plastic.

My Nikon's battery has a freakishly long field life, so I left the spare in its plugged-in charging cradle at the hotel when we headed out in the morning. It was probably overkill to leave the thing charging all day, as it zaps up in two hours or less, but anyway I did. By the morning of our last full day in York, my charger was in meltdown. We couldn't figure out why - we had the requisite 220v converters on everything. But it was frying.

And Sharon had lost her spare battery somewhere Out There (a cemetery, we think, as if it matters), presumably leaping unnoticed like a startled rodent from the bottom of her camera bag, so our stay-in-York day was to kick off with a trip to a camera store. A tourist town like this, there has to be scads of camera stores.

Well, there are two, at least in the town center, and one was a Curry's, which is sort of a British Radio Shack, primary difference being native voltage and the fact that Curry's actually seems to have customers. We chatted up a nice older chap named Julian (he told us he was Catholic, although I don't recall that we asked), who apologized that he had neither a spare battery for Sharon, nor a Brit-version charger for my Nikon battery. (Conveniently enough, our batteries require different chargers.)

He sent us over to York Camera Mart, offering to at least charge my extra battery up with the store's universal charge in the meantime, to be sure that the overheated charger hadn't ruined it.

York Camera Mart

Unsurprisingly, the eager chap at the camera shop, which is smaller on the inside than it looks, also had neither item, but he did have an odd universal lithium battery charger that was fully Euro-voltage compliant (why wouldn't it be?) and should be suitable substitute for my heat-prostrated Nikon charger. It looked like an Empire Cruiser, from Star Wars. Sold. Sharon would just have to recharge each night - a modest inconvenience.

After a stop back the hotel, we ambled off church-crawling. First stop was St Martin-cum-Gregory, a dour Grade 1 structure outside the city walls, a block or two from the Lady Anne.

St Martin cum Gregory - York

St Martin cum Gregory - York

Like a number of York's medieval churches, the place had been re-purposed many years ago; it was the Stained Glass Centre now, an educational resource of some sort. Locked tight, we shot the cemetery through the fence, and left wondering what the inside was like.

St Martin cum Gregory - churchyard

St Martin cum Gregory - churchyard

St John sits quietly on the busy Mickelgate, not far from the Lady Anne, largely unchanged from its 14th and 15th century origins, but it closed as a church in 1934 and the interior is now a toney cafe. It was called The Parish when we were there, but appears now to be called Tiger 10. Someone on the internet was complaining about the bouncers there. It's a beautiful building, but it's not a church anymore, and never will be again.

Tiger 10 (formally The Parish, originally St John Mickelgate) - York

St Mary's Abbey was once the most important religious site in Yorkshire - Henry VIII's guys tore it down in 1539, or as much of it as they felt inclined to.

St Mary's Abbey - York

It's probably the heart of the city center now, at least as much as the Minster; the grounds are a gardened-lined park sloping down to the River Ouse, and the stately Yorkshire Museum sits on the site as well.

We had wanted to see the place in 2012, but they were in the process of setting up scaffolding and seating for some kind of theater presentation and most of the Abbey site was gated off.

The grounds are partially bordered by the seventeen hundred year old Roman walls, and huge Roman sarcophagi are scattered here and there. I guess I wondered why these immense tombs (yes, all empty, at least as far as we know) were just sitting outside, rather than being in a museum someplace. Turns out that these artifacts are being exhibited by the York Museums Trust, and they have some info on them here.

Roman sarcophagi  - York

Roman sarcophagi  - York

We debated briefly about going into the museum, but figured we'd be in there for much of the day, essentially foreclosing on the rest of the church tour. Too bad, since Richard III's recreated head was in there.

Picnickers and kids chasing dogs gave the place a relaxed, everyday kind of feel to it. And why not, it's a park.

Fancy a crisp? St Mary's Abbey - York

I suppose you get used to munching crisps in the shadow of Roman fortifications and an ancient Benedictine abbey.

At the back of the Abbey grounds we found St Olave, which we understand was founded pre-Conquest (meaning, prior to 1066). Cavernous and somewhat overbearing, a distant testimony of devotion to an ancient Viking Saint, I felt a little uncomfortable in there.

St Olave - York

St Olave - York

St Olave - York

We walked over to the side door leading to the churchyard. Aha! Here was something new - an open church, with a locked cemetery. What? We shot as much as we could from the gated doorway, which wasn't much, left the church and walked around the block, which was way around the block. On the way, we had to find a rest room, so we went into the University of York Archaeology college  - there was nobody there, but at least it was open - and then found our way to the Abbey grounds' north entrance, figuring we'd find a way into the cemetery.

Not really. Sharon and I took turns climbing up on the stone wall and shooting headstones from a one-handhold perch.

Things we do for dead guys - Sharon shooting St Olave churchyard

St Olave churchyard - York

St Olave churchyard - York

St Olave churchyard - York

Must have looked funny to the picnickers. Maybe it's a common site - tourists craning their necks over the Roman wall to shoot 18th century headstones in St Olave's churchyard - but I doubt it.

On the way back, we went through the oddly hidden side of the Abbey park - the Multiangular Tower (Roman and medieval)

Multiangular Tower - York

Multiangular Tower - York

and the remains of the 11th century St Leonard's Hospital, with its arched undercroft. It was the largest medieval hospital in the north of England, although little except these semi-roofed ruins remains of it. Reminded me a little of the cellarium at Fountains.

St Leonard's Hospital - York

St Leonard's Hospital - York

No picnickers here, and it wasn't locked.



We went back into town. Sharon had misplaced (actually, had left at home) her belt, so we found a little open air market and a vendor with about 3000 belts, headed back to Curry's for my battery, and went off looking for more medievalia.

And no, that's not a word.

Thrones, real and imagined

I checked into the Games of Thrones mythos a little late, somewhere around the third episode of Season 2 in 2012, and while I picked things up along the way, I was conscious of missing the full depth of Martin's story. The characters, the alliances, the history, the back stories.

The fact is, though, that the televised series is a sumptuous visual treat - elegantly recreated (albeit mythological) renderings of the late middle ages, modestly veiled references to War of the Roses history, arched and convincingly archaic dialogue, big money production values. A dragon here and ice ghoul there to remind us that the thing is rooted in fantasy. GoT is just  fun to look at, even if you don't always know what the hell is going on, and I was content to enjoy the spectacle even if the plot had to reveal itself to me in bits and pieces, with scattered subtitling from Sharon.

Sharon was so taken by the series, though, that she speed-read all of the books over this past summer and fall, and decided that I needed to go back and catch the series from the beginning. She borrowed the first two seasons on DVD from a co-worker, and we've spent much of the holiday break watching them, two episodes a night on and off over the last couple of weeks, and yeah, I mostly get it now.

Last night, we caught a couple of episodes from the beginning of Season Two, and afterwards, we found quite by accident a 2003 film called Henry VIII , a sort of Masterpiece Theater/made-for-TV thing, directed by Pete Travis and starring Ray Winstone in the title role; Winstone is a reasonably well known British actor best known for tough-bloke movie roles and TV commercials, and he was a plausible Henry, to whatever extent that can be accurately judged. Big, bearded and bullying.

Henry VIII

One presumes Britain must claim only a limited number of credible medieval-lord types in their actor sub-population, so it was no surprise that the two productions had some commonalities - Charles Dance, who plays the Lannister patriarch in GoT, appeared the doomed Duke of Buckingham in Henry VIII (we stayed at the real Duke's castle in 2012), and Sean Bean, known as Eddard Stark in GoT, plays the brave and also-doomed Robert Aske, leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Yorkist Catholic uprising against Henry's Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. (Bean also played Boromir in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy a few years ago.)

Familiar faces, interwoven between history and fantasy. We did derive a little charge from seeing a couple of the historic sites portrayed in the film, as we had actually been to a few of them; Traitor's Gate at the Tower of London (through which Anne Boleyn was escorted on her way to her beheading), Clifford's Tower in York, where Aske was strung up after being convicted of treason and sentenced to death by Henry.

After wincing through the explicit and pitiless violence of GoT, however, I thought Henry VIII came across as somewhat tame and sanitized, more of a costumed theater piece than the gritty and aggressively visceral GoT. It's also worth noting that the real Henry ruled for almost 38 years - his marital woes are the best-recalled aspect to his legacy, but the film didn't (and really couldn't) fully describe the man and his reign in its full complexity and in context of the times. Henry remains one of the English monarchy's most controversial figures; he's an easy guy to revile from a distance, but he did a lot more than behead wives.

And clearly, the two productions - one fantasy, one quasi-historic - were poised and directed to accomplish different aims. They made for awkward but curiously compelling bookends.

I think I've had enough beheading, medieval scheming and brutish sexual conquests to last a while, at least until...oh, probably tonight.

Yorkshire (Day 4) - Fountains Abbey, More Sheep and York's Most Haunted Pub

"Fountains Abbey," I replied over my shoulder when the Buzzard Sisters asked what was on for the day, and I hurried as best I could toward the car, hoping to escape an explanation of what exactly that was, since I was pretty sure they wouldn't know.

I had grown to regard their presence - every morning, every evening, right there in the garden at the same table with Buddhic resolve - as something of a blight, which I suppose is a little unfair since they were reasonably unobjectionable in demeanor and only mildly intrusive toward the people around them.

Still...I just wanted to holler at them. Put down the Harvey's Bristol Creme and do something, already.

Sharon chafed a bit at my irritation; they seemed to be doing exactly what they wanted to do, she shrugged. So what? Let 'em do nothing.

Fair enough. At least they didn't ask us for a ride anywhere.

St Cuthbert's in Crayke was up first, a dour late 15th century number on a slight hill in a village of barely 400 people.

St Cuthbert - Crayke

St Cuthbert - Crayke

St Cuthbert - Crayke

 I liked this place; while not as ancient as other churches we went out of our way to see, it exuded a sullen, plain, workingman humility, with little of the awkward Victorian re-dressing that hang on other churches like ill-fitting vestments.

St Cuthbert - Crayke

We shot the church and churchyard in short order, and took off.  

Easingwold is a pretty big town, about 4000 people. Being without my morning diet soda, we pulled into a very tight mini-mall off the main drag and Sharon hopped into the market to fetch one for me. The car-park was a knotted hive of cars entering and exiting from both ends; maybe this is the only market in town I thought, although I'm sure that isn't true, and while I had by now long accustomed myself to driving on the left, on my way out I had a sudden case of brain lock as to the presumed etiquette of which side of a parking lot  to drive on. The folks I held up doing my hurried and embarrassing 5 point turn were patient and gracious - "no problem, luv" a nice lady said through her driver's side window as I apologized to her on my way out. That made my morning.

St John and All Saints is also a pretty big place, although not as old as the town, which dates to the Domesday Book. The church is fourteenth century; as is common for churches of this particular time, there are (or there are believed to be) remnants of the earlier Norman or Saxon church in the building fabric, despite a jarringly modern glass door at the entrance.

St John and All Saints - Easingwold

The place was impressive. It was also locked, but we had a little cheap fun shooting the cemetery sheep from the meager and newer-section easement of the churchyard, the older section of which was given over to grazing.

More cemetery sheep. St John and All Saints - Easingwold

Baah - St John and All Saints - Easingwold

St John and All Saints - Easingwold

We walked back to the car. A youngish mother walking with her fussy 7 year old. 'You're embarrassing me,' we heard her say to him, 'no, you're embarrassing me ' the 7 year old replied, and I was really sorry we couldn't hear the conclusion of this debate, as the score appeared to be all tied up.


The route to Fountains took us through the ancient market town of Ripon, home to Ripon Cathedral, one of the North's great houses of worship with a history dating back to 650 AD. I had wanted to see the cathedral since we were in this area last year, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of it as we drove through town. But we decided to continue on to Fountains and hit the cathedral on the way back if we had time; neither of us thought we would.

Fountains Abbey and the grounds surrounding it are listed as a World Heritage site, in addition to being one of the jewels in the National Trust's crown.

Fountains Abbey - approaching the Abbey ruin

The entire complex is almost 700 acres, including Fountains Hall (built around 1600),

Fountains Hall - Fountains Abbey

Studley Royal Gardens (constructed around 1700) and the immense St Mary's Church, built  in honor of a wealthy Englishman named Frederick Grantham Vyner who had been kidnapped and murdered by Greek bandits in 1870; Vyner's brother-in-law, The First Marquess of Ripon, George Robinson, had this church constructed in Vyner's memory in 1871.

The site's history is a long and tangled tale of monastic rivalry, Scottish raids, Reformation politics, royal confiscation and a little rich-guy vainglory; but in the early 21st century, the place is just a huge walking park, with a massive Cistercian abbey ruin right in the middle.

Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey

It's also a fairly popular "day out" destination for the British, and in addition to camera-toting tourists (like us), the complex was buzzing with family picnickers, hand-in-hand lovers, grandpas walking with toddlers, chubby housewives pushing strollers and slurping at ice-cream cones. Fountains has a kind of historic-amusement park feel to it - not terribly unlike Sudeley Castle, one of our not-so-great destination choices from last year - but the site is immense, we never really felt cramped, and all of the commerce (the souvenir shop, the cafe, etc) is located at the entrance.

The Abbey is massive, one the most complete medieval monastic ruins in all of England, despite being plundered by Henry VIII in 1539 and again by a private owner at the beginning of the 18th century; several sections were still holding up a roof, the looming 15th century Tower and its carved heads standing guard over it all. We spent two hours picking our way around the site, shooting pictures in the vain hope of trying to capture the scale of the place. Sharon remarked that it was a good thing we had visited several other ancient monastic ruins before coming here, as it helped us appreciate Fountain's vastness without allowing it to diminish the others, all of which are smaller and far less complete.

We'd find a good angle to shoot a picture, then wait until for the other people there to drift out of the frame. It's funny thing, or maybe common at a place like this, wanting to keep the images un-besmirched by strangers. Sometimes it wasn't possible. But the net result is that we have hundreds of pictures of these remarkable places, and many of them have no one else in the frame, encouraging us to remember the place as being ours alone. Which wasn't the case at all - Fountains was busy. It's probably always busy.

Odd thing; you use photography to help you remember the place, but also use it to subtly manipulate your memory. Do you photograph the place, or photograph the experience?

Fountains Abbey

Fountains Abbey

 Kirkham Priory was easy - we were the only ones there. I read a piece not long ago on a travel site about not falling into the trap of shooting so much that you forget to actually be there. Sharon doesn't think we fell into that trap. I'm still thinking about it.

Pheasants accompanied us on the walk up to the church.

Aaaaggghh !!!

Twitchy little things, they darted between bushes where they cooed in communal security until startled and forced to find a new bush to hide in. What a way to live.

The Church stands alone at the top of a hill.

St Mary's Church - Fountains Abbey

The place is impossibly ornate on the inside, a little on the garish and artificial side we both thought. Gothic revivalism, I suppose, or something like that.

Tilework at the altar - St Mary's Church, Fountains Abbey

The famed German-born architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner thought very highly of this place, calling it "a dream of early English glory," but it left us both feeling a little cold.

St Mary's Church - Fountains Abbey

The First Marquess of Ripon, George Robinson - St Mary's Church, Fountains Abbey

There was an older German couple inside; the gentleman remarked to me, "ah, the playthings of the rich..." and that about captured it for us. It'd be presumptuous of us to cop an attitude about what an English church should and shouldn't be, but the place didn't feel particularly sacred to us.

We saw Ripon Cathedral again from the road on the way back to York. We were both pretty beat from the lengthy walk around Fountains. Ripon would have to wait until next time.

Back in York, we headed over to the Golden Fleece for dinner.

The Golden Fleece - York

One more, luv, and then I've REALLY got to be going. The Golden Fleece - York

The sixteenth century pub is thought by many to be York's most haunted establishment - we had given some thought to staying there a night or two, they have four or five lodging rooms upstairs, but the place is on one of the town center's busiest streets and there was no parking. Too bad; the building is standard-issue timber-framed Tudor, with low ceilings and creaking, narrow hallways. We may stay there if we go back. That may not be for two years. Presumably it'll still be haunted then.

We got a table in the outside patio, and got a little bonus treat when the York Terror Trail group came through to hear the last chapter of tour (something about a ne'er-do-well young man who seduced a judge's daughter, beat the hangman's noose and went on to live a respectable life), delivered by a thirty-ish Michael Palin-lookalike named Joseph. He joined us at our table for a pint after dismissing his group.

We talked a bit about English history ("No, I don't think people here appreciate it," he said, "they're surrounded by it...") and York, and making a fun but meager living from the city's tourist trade. This was a temporary gig, of course; he had his sights set on an advanced degree in mathematics at a university in Germany and was just waiting on his EU-sponsored tuition subsidy paperwork to come through, trading off a little theater experience he had in school in the meantime. He shared our genuine fondness for York and enjoyed the tour-guide gig well enough, but was ready to move on.

Then a guy dressed like Guy Fawkes showed up.

Guy Fawkes, a topped-off pint and all is well - The Golden Fleece, York. 

He didn't appear to be in costume for any particular reason...maybe he dressed like Guy Fawkes all the time. Maybe it was Guy Fawkes.

I fired off a few shots of the Fleece on our way out,

Front bar - The Golden Fleece, York

Odd hooded figure in the front doorway - The Golden Fleece, York

and we took the long back to the hotel, prowling our way through York and its dark medieval side streets lined with odd shops and tea rooms, brimmed with woozy pub crawlers and surveyed mutely by a few of York's famed cat statues.

York by night

York by night

York by night

Sharon, York by night

Cat statue - York

Cat statue - York

It was a perfect evening. Perfect.