A pillar of Salt

This statue of Saltaire's founder, Sir Titus Salt, first stood in Bradford's Town Hall (now City Hall) Square.  Funded by public subscription and unveiled in 1874 by the Duke of Devonshire, amid lavish celebrations, the marble statue itself was sculpted by John Adams Acton.  It shows Sir Titus Salt seated, holding a scroll of the plans of Saltaire.  The canopy was designed by the architects of Saltaire, Lockwood & Mawson and features Salt's coat of arms, along with symbols representing Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Charity.   In 1896, traffic congestion in central Bradford forced its relocation to Lister Park in Bradford, where it remains today.

It's said that when Sir Titus found out about plans for the statue, he joked: "So they wish to make me into a pillar of salt."   At the unveiling, the Chairman of the committee said: "we are met to do honour to one of Bradford's worthiest citizens......whose modesty of disposition and strength of character are worthy of imitation by the rising business men of the town."

Angel face

 Make yourself familiar with the angels and behold them frequently in spirit; 

for without being seen, they are present with you.
-- St. Francis De Sales

I passed this angel headstone on one of my walks, and thought she had such a lovely face.

It's not that I spend my whole life wandering around cemeteries...  (even though it's not long since I shared photos of Undercliffe Cemetery in Bradford.)  But I do find them fascinating places, as well as havens where I can find a sense of peace and calm; a few minutes of quiet in the midst of busyness and pressure.  I don't find them at all morbid.  One of the Bradford area's main cemeteries and crematorium is just along the road out of Saltaire, in Nab Wood.  It's a pleasant walk through the cemetery and then, via a gap in the wall, up through Hirst Woods and back to Saltaire along the canal.

Carve quiet spaces in your life and in the silence you will hear the angels.

The Albert Memorial

So many delightful things to do in London.... We went to the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Museum to see the exhibition "Grace Kelly: Style Icon" (which is well worth a visit if you love clothes, Grace Kelly or fantasise about being a princess).

The V&A is situated in South Kensington, in the area known as "Albertopolis". The land was purchased with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Prince Albert was the driving force behind the Great Exhibition) and is home to many museums and wonderful Victorian buildings, including the Royal Albert Hall and this astonishing memorial to Prince Albert. Commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her beloved husband, who died of typhoid in 1861, it was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott (who also designed the wonderful St Pancras Station in London, now the Eurostar terminal). The memorial is 176 feet tall, took over ten years to complete, and cost £120,000.

Its decoration includes the Frieze of Parnassus (which shows 169 individual composers, architects, poets, painters, and sculptors) and allegorical sculptures depicting the four continents and Victorian industrial arts and sciences. The Memorial was extensively restored and regilded in the late 1990s.

St Cuthbert

There's much more to Holy Island than the castle and the sea. The village of Lindisfarne itself is very attractive and good for exploring (not to mention eating the fudge and tasting the Lindisfarne mead!) The island and surrounding bay is also a National Nature Reserve: a wintering ground for pale-bellied brent geese, eider ducks and all manner of waders and other birds.

But this tiny island was also the place where, during the Dark Ages after the Roman occupation, Celtic Christianity took root and spread throughout the north of England. In 635 AD, the Irish monk St Aidan came from the Scottish island of Iona and founded a Benedictine monastery on Lindisfarne, at the invitation of the Anglo-Saxon Christian King Oswald at the nearby castle of Bamburgh. The monks worked as missionaries, spreading the gospel throughout pagan Northumbria. It was one of the great seats of Christian learning and was where the Lindisfarne Gospels - beautifully illuminated manuscripts now in the British Library - were written. In 665, St Cuthbert became the abbey's Prior, before living as a hermit for ten years on the island called Inner Farne, and then becoming Bishop of Northumbria. He died on Inner Farne and was buried at Lindisfarne. Many healing miracles were claimed and his relics became venerated. In 875, Vikings attacked the island and some of the monks escaped with the body of St Cuthbert, which was eventually reburied in Durham. His shrine is now part of the great Norman cathedral there.

(You will note that I've been putting into practice what I learned this week on my course - 3D frames! I think it's not bad for a first attempt...)

PS I have just learned through Bob's Durham Daily Photo blog that the sculpture is "The Journey" by Fenwick Lawson. This is made in elm and there is a similar work cast in bronze in Durham's Millennium Square. Thanks Bob!

Here's looking at ewe, kid!

One last photo of the centre of Shipley, my local market town. This shows a relatively recent addition - the sculpture called "The Shipley Shopper". Designed by artist Morwena Catt, it depicts a sheep taking a rest from shopping, on a decorative bench under a parasol. It was unveiled on March 1, 2008 after 'extensive public consultation' and cost £12,000. It is apparently intended to provide a bit of light relief, and to form a focal point in an area where plants get ruined by pigeons. (Maybe I'm reaching the 'grumpy old woman' stage of life but if I'm honest I think they could have spent £12,000 more wisely!)

The image of the sheep was chosen because the name Shipley means 'sheep meadow'. The town's earliest origins were as an agricultural community, and it stayed that way until the early 1800s. After the Leeds-Liverpool canal was built in the 1770s, coal mining and stone quarrying developed in the area and later a number of woollen & worsted textile manufacturing mills were built locally. Growth was assisted by the building of new turnpike roads and by the coming of the railway. In 1853 the most famous of the mills, Salts Mill, was opened and the development of Saltaire - a mile or so up the road from Shipley town centre - began.