This watercolour on display at Cromer Museum is titled West Cliff and the Beach and was painted by an unknown artist in 1845. It shows Cromer before the cliff was properly defended, when the town’s approach to coastal erosion appears to have involved driving wooden piles into the sand and hoping the North Sea would respect local initiative so that they didn’t have the sub-optimal situation of all the buildings falling into the sea. Actually, more on that in another post about Shipden, the lost village near Cromer.
The wooden posts were intended to slow the sea and prevent the cliff from being steadily eaten away, but they were not a particularly effective long-term solution. The year after this painting was completed, Cromer’s first effective sea wall was built, together with a narrow promenade. This was a significant improvement on the previous arrangement of timber and optimism which really wasn’t very sustainable as the North Sea has never really especially good at respecting boundaries.
It’s another rather charming look at old Cromer, those buildings were later replaced by hotels and lodging houses as the town became connected to the railways and the tourists flooded in. I quite like the slightly precarious nature of this scene, with the large property above looking entirely self-assured despite the fact that the geology beneath it appears to have had reservations.
This one visit to Cromer Museum has helpfully produced enough material to sustain the blog for a couple of days. Museums are useful like that, they organise all the exhibits and history and I merely have to stand nearby taking photographs before later presenting the whole arrangement as organised cultural research. All rather lovely.
Anyway, this is a watercolour of East Beach by Caroline Gray, painted in 1829, and it shows Cromer’s shoreline with the town rising behind it. The church tower is immediately recognisable and the jetty built between 1822 and 1823 is visible. This was Cromer before all the tourists came for the day to eat their fish and chips before meandering along the pier and commenting negatively on the parking charges.
The back of the painting carries the inscription: “‘Twas here my careless Childhood stray’d, a stranger yet to pain”, although the museum notes that it’s not clear whether the artist wrote those words, but it’s a nice little addition. But it shows Cromer from another age and I rather like that.
This photograph, which I thought was one of the more evocative in the museum, shows a group of Cromer fishermen in 1900, standing beside their boats, ropes and traditional crab or lobster pots on the beach. These would have been hard times and being a fisherman was a dangerous and rather unglamorous job. There weren’t many safety arrangements, certainly no risk assessments and no-one popping around from the council to check the electrical safety certificates.
Cromer did not have the protection of a proper harbour, so fishing boats had to be launched directly from the beach and brought back through the surf. The small open boats in the photograph were practical working craft rather than anything designed for comfort and the fishermen caught crabs and lobsters, but also worked for herring, cod, plaice and other fish depending on the season.
The photograph appears to have been posed, but it still gives a strong impression of the working beach. Some of the men look directly at the camera, while others seem slightly less convinced that photography is an adequate reason to stop what they are doing, something which I have a lot of sympathy for. There are a range of expressions suggesting that nobody had been instructed to look cheerful for tourism purposes, but I imagine that it would have been an interesting distraction. The central figure has the air of a man who has spent many years dealing with both the sea and other people, and has reached no particularly flattering conclusions about either.
Going back to 10 June 2023, when my friends Ross, Liam and I went for a little Staffordshire expedition, this was our visit to the Poste of Stone that I’ve realised I didn’t write about. So as a treat, here it is, only three years late.
As usual, I’ll use the chain’s own text about the history of the pub’s name, although it’s one of the shortest that I’ve seen:
“The pub is a former post office. Stone had its own postmaster as early as 1575, when the official in question was William Nicholson, described as ‘The Poste of Stone’.”
Some decoration near the entrance and it opened as a pub in 2002.
The real ale selection and the usual slightly illogical pricing from the chain.
The keg selection.
I didn’t write any comments on Untappd about this at the time, although it looks a little under-poured to me. Anyway, it’s Ricky’s Ox Dropper from Uttoxeter Brewing Company. I can also see Ross was in his tea mode at the time, which is very Ross and possibly the most emotionally stable drink choice available in any Wetherspoon
The obligatory carpet photo, which wasn’t obligatory in my photo albums in 2023, but I like the design and the link to it being a Post Office in the past.
Anyway, as usual, I feel the need to have a little look at the venue’s reviews and they’re towards the higher end of the average for the chain. There aren’t very many negative reviews though which limits my excitement a little.
“Ordered an ice cream for my child. It arrived with no sauce. This was stated on the desert menu. I questioned the waiter however was told it was made clear at the till when I ordered. No it was not. I explained whatever is stated on the menu should be delivered. My child was upset that it was only plain ice cream. Regardless of cost, the waiter continued to explain that it’s company policy that sometimes the kitchen runs out and doesn’t need to state it. Why wasn’t this explained initially? The desert was only £1.99. Not even an apology. Obviously the customer is always wrong, so thank you for nothing.”
I’m with the customer on this one. The child should have had their chocolate sauce. Civilisation depends on small agreements, and one of them is that if sauce is promised to a child, sauce should appear. Otherwise we are just animals with laminated menus.
“Awful customer service, my friend was refused a drink because he couldn’t spell the word remember – this is not fair on the neurodiverse. I was then refused a drink for standing up against the cause. We shan’t be silenced anymore! The uprising has begun. 0 stars is a blessing as they can’t pour a pint of ale either.”
I’ve never had to do a spelling test in a JD Wetherspoon pub…. Although I wouldn’t oppose them being introduced.
“The pub classics steak pudding was as small as a chip shop suit pudding with a very poor filling of slop.”
As a side issue, I’m surprised that they continue with that steak pudding, I know I have it a lot when it’s £6 including a drink, but it’s not a very decadent meal and it seems to get more complaints than anything since the Sunday roasts.
“Cheap food with infants serving”
I’m with the pub. There was more to this rant, but what a way to write about people….
“I was waiting 10 minutes to be served, it was my turn and no one was at the bar when Duty Manager was finishing serving a customer. He decided to serve someone who just arrived at the bar. When I said I was next he said I would not be served today. Awful experience. I been to over 400 spoons and never had an experience like it.”
I’ve been to over 400 JD Wetherspoon venues but the easiest way is to use the app….. Or, alternatively, get a blog and complain about slow service there, where the staff cannot refuse you service because they have wisely remained unaware of your existence. Telling bar staff they are incompetent may not always produce the desired hospitality outcome, even if one has an extensive pub-visiting CV.
“Absolutely disgusted to find there were NO salt sachets available.”
I hope that people prayed for the customer and their well-being.
I was disappointed not to find any reviews complaining that dogs weren’t permitted.
Anyway, I recall that the pub felt welcoming, clean and organised, but that the visit to Stone was all about the Titanic pub in the town…. Unfortunately, that’s about the limit to what I can remember, although I do know that Bill Cash (who had been the MP for the town for four decades) announced that he was standing down the day that we were there. I decided that I’d take credit for that as although it might not have been connected to our visit, history is so often about interpretation…
I’ve been thinking more about the west frontage of Norwich Cathedral, although I suppose there are worse things to overthink. Some people worry about careers, pensions and the long-term future of civilisation, but I have been thinking about where the spirelets of Norwich Cathedral have gone. The problem began when I found Daniel King’s seventeenth-century print of the west front, which shows a much more elegant and symmetrical arrangement than the one visible today.
I therefore asked AI to help create a modern photographic impression of what the cathedral might look like if the frontage had retained more of the arrangement shown in King’s engraving. This took a little persuasion. AI understood “Gothic cathedral” very confidently, but was rather less enthusiastic about counting statues correctly, which is a minor drawback when the entire point is having two figures on each side of the doorway. Several attempts produced one statue either side, extra figures in odd places or something that looked like a confident cathedral that most certainly wasn’t from Norwich. It still has the main portal wrong as the door has been shrunk right down, but there’s a limit to how much time I want to spend debating the matter.
I’ve decided I definitely like it more as it was. But I feel that I’ve exhausted this line of worry now and I’ll just have to accept what’s there.
I might actually get a chance to finish off all the Bilbao posts that I wanted to make, rather than leaving matters in their usual half finished state. Anyway, I have a slight obsession with metro systems and I felt the need to use the one in Bilbao.
The network is relatively new, opening on 11 November 1995, but it has developed as a very useful rapid transport system for the city. The first line connected Bilbao with communities along the right bank of the estuary, reusing parts of older suburban railway routes, before later extensions pushed the network further through the metropolitan area. Its most famous design feature is the work of Norman Foster, whose glass station entrances became known as “Fosteritos”, or, in short, an entrance to a hole in the ground.
I rather like this photo and its perspective, it’s rare to be able to get a vantage point such as this. I suspect that I enjoy transport infrastructure a little more than is socially necessary, but it is too late to build a more normal personality now.
The station was functional and clean. My journey was from the central railway station’s metro stop at Abando to Areeta, which was on Metro Line 1.
The trains ran on a regular basis every five or six minutes, so I didn’t have long to wait for this one. There was also plenty of seating for waiting passengers, so it was all sufficiently comfortable. It did feel like a transport system that was designed on the radical assumption that people might want to use it.
The network felt relatively busy and it took me a little while to get a seat.
And safely at Areeta station which serves the Getxo area of the city, near the transporter bridge which is what I was aiming to visit. It was all efficient and organised, but perhaps the main thing to note is that the journey cost just over €1 which is a third of the price that it would be on the overpriced London Underground. There’s a wider question about why London transport pricing is now almost out of control, people should be able to afford to use public transport although this is perhaps a little political for this blog.
This is a photo of the west frontage of Norwich Cathedral that I took in May 2020, but it’s a view that I’ve seen thousands of times over the last few decades. And I’ve thought on many occasions that the design feels quite odd in places, but I’ve never given it much more thought than that because apparently even I have limits on how much time I can spend worrying about medieval masonry. Those limits have now been tested.
I’ve now found this image which is of the west frontage and although the date isn’t known, it’s between 1655 and 1725 and is from a print by Daniel King. This has surprised and delighted me, because this is in my view a much more beautiful frontage than what we have now.
I’ve pondered before, as I obviously don’t have enough sensible things to worry about in life, about why the windows in the flanking pillars aren’t symmetrical, but they originally were. And there were once two statues under the main window, but they knocked one of those out on each side when widening the pillar which means that the portal looks quite chunky. Inside the cathedral though, there are still two niches either side of the main door so they haven’t changed that.
And, both sides of the flanking towers were once similar designs, but they’ve faffed about with one of them. Not to mention where the nice little spirelets have gone. Probably the same way as Sheringham bus shelter, but that’s a different matter.
All told, I’m reassured that the designers of the original building had attention to detail and liked symmetry. I can’t work out exactly when they mauled the frontage about as there have been a few periods of change, but I’m going to blame the Victorians. This may not be entirely fair as some of the changes do predate that period, but I’ve found that it is often a productive starting point.
I rather liked this advertisement which was placed in the Norwich Mercury 200 years ago this month. It reads:
“TO THE LOVERS OF THE FINE ARTS.
THE Nobility, Gentry, and Public of Norwich and Norfolk, are respectfully informed, that a
Splendid Collection of ANCIENT PICTURES
Will be opened for Exhibition during the Assize Week and a short time succeeding, at the Assembly Rooms, Norwich.
The Paintings are selected from the Works of the most esteemed Masters of the Italian, Dutch, and Flemish Schools. — Among the former will be found a splendid Picture by Titian, in his early style, with others by Caracci, Pietro da Cortona, Canaletti, &c. &c. The latter will include fine Specimens of the most pleasing character, and of Cabinet size, of the following Masters: — Rubens, Rembrandt, Both, Pynacker, Netscher, Cuyp, Decker, Zorg, Schweikhart, B. Gael, P. Potter, Poelemburg, Stoik, Snyers, De Vlieger, &c. &c.
The Exhibition will be opened from Ten in the morning till Four in the afternoon.
ADMITTANCE — ONE SHILLING.”
The exhibition was aimed at “the Nobility, Gentry, and Public of Norwich and Norfolk” and I think it’s evident that they were expecting really only people from what they might have called at the time the educated and wealthy classes. And even within that the nobility came first, the gentry were safely in the middle and the public were graciously permitted to bring up the rear, provided they had a shilling and behaved themselves near the Titian.
This feels like an early art gallery type set-up, there are some quite impressive artists in that list and the Assembly Rooms would have been quite the cultural hotspot that week. A shilling would have been approximately the equivalent of £7 today. I also went to look into the etymology of the word ‘ancient’ and have ascertained that in the art world of the time, it just meant ‘Old Masters‘ as the paintings weren’t that old at the time.
The Assembly Rooms are still there and they have long been part of the city’s cultural centres, so in that respect not much has changed. It’s a shame I can’t find a list of what artworks were displayed though, it all sounds rather decadent.
The below article appeared in the Norwich Mercury 200 years ago.
“Doctrines of the New Jerusalem Church.
ON Sunday, July 9th, THREE DISCOURSES will be delivered at Crook’s Place Chapel, by the Rev. W. Mason, in which it will be shewn what are the views of the New Church in regard to the Quality of that Faith which justifies, and the true nature of Justification — Who the Lord’s Sheep are, and the Goats contrasted with them — and The Nature of the Christian’s Conquest, and the Rewards promised to the Conqueror.
Service to commence in the morning at half-past Ten, Afternoon at half-past Two, and Evening at half-past Six o’clock.”
The New Jerusalem Church was the Swedenborgianism religion and some of this story links to the St Mary the Less church on Queen Street which I’ve written about before. In short, that church was closed during the Reformation, then given to the religious refugees from the Netherlands to use as a cloth hall, with the building being used for services given in French until 1832. It was then leased to the New Jerusalem church of Swedenborgians who remained here until 1852 and they then moved to Park Lane to a building constructed for them. The church was already though in decline at this stage which is rarely the ideal moment to embark on a new building project and in the 1920s they transferred the building to the Mormons and although it was used by another religious group, it was then sold to become a private residential building. It was never fully converted into a home but is no longer used for religious purposes.
This article from 200 years ago tells a little of the story before the Swedenborgians moved to St Mary the Less, it appears that they were using Crook’s Place Chapel. This is in an area of the city that was changed heavily following the Second World War, but Crook’s Place Chapel appears to have been demolished in the 1880s. And back to the article, it’s an interesting look back that there would have been three services held that day for those interested in finding out more about the church. Those attending would have been no doubt fascinated by the discussions about faith, sheep, goats and conquest, but they probably got to have a nice little sit down.
There were concerns nationally about the stability of the Church of England, with the Church Building Acts of 1818 and 1824 trying to fund new Anglican churches. The Norwich Mercury article captures quite nicely this period of religious competition and general anxiety about picking the right religion.
This untitled work by Etel Adnan was painted in 2014 and I had absolutely no idea what it was meant to be. It appears to be little more than bands of colour, two orange hills, a blue line and a green foreground. That completes my art review and I think we can all agree it has been an intellectually demanding paragraph.
As an aside, this is precisely the sort of thing that actually invites slightly dangerous thoughts in my mind which are mostly relating to ideas that I could have painted this If I had attempted something similar, I suspect I would have felt a growing need to add a tree, then a little bird, then perhaps a path, then possibly a distant cottage, until the whole thing had turned into a confused countryside scene with a slightly badly drawn craft beer bar in it. Adnan, by contrast, knew when to stop.
Adnan (1925-2021) was a Lebanese-American artist and she was known for artworks in this style. It’s a rather lovely looking painting in many ways if I don’t try and understand it, using bold colours and minimising on the faffing around. But it was the artist who I found particularly interesting and there’s a limit of what I can write about this artwork anyway.
She was born in Beirut to a Syrian Muslim father and Greek Orthodox mother, grew up across languages and cultures, studied philosophy in Paris, Berkeley and Harvard, then taught philosophy in California from 1958 to 1972. She also worked as a journalist and cultural editor for Al Safa in Beirut, writing political editorials and she also wrote for The Post-Apollo Press. I’d say that’s a high achiever.
That feels like quite a mix of different talents and I rather like that she taught philosophy for many years. It’s quite an appealing artwork in many ways, simplistic as it might be, but it was created by someone who clearly had a formidable talent. And it probably didn’t need a little bird, cottage or a craft beer bar.
