[I originally posted this in May 2018, but I’ve reposted it and fixed the broken image links]
Currently a little bit of a building site, this is apparently a “stronghold” church, designed to withstand attack. The towers were used as a lookout point and it’s quite an attractive church inside, albeit a little covered up due to construction work.
Some of the photos below seem to be at a bit of an angle, I assume that the church was leaning slightly.
I’m aware I’m jumping around topics a bit at the moment, this is from when I was in Poland a week ago.
Otwock is at one end of the S1 line in Warsaw and I thought I’d go there to distract myself for the day. The town dates back to the fifteenth century, but it expanded quickly in the late nineteenth century when the railways arrived here. Located in a forested area it became a popular place for people to take the air and the wealthy Poles came here for rest and relaxation. There was a large Jewish community here (around 5,400 out of a population of 8,500) before the Second World War, but their population was decimated, with most ending up at Treblinka extermination camp. There were five synagogues in the town at the outbreak of the war, but they were all destroyed in October 1939. A ghetto was set up here by the Germans and there’s a plan of it at https://museeholocauste.ca/app/uploads/2017/03/plan-ghetto-otwock-1947.jpg.
It does have one of the most beautiful railway stations that I’ve seen in Poland.
I think this is really rather lovely and it first opened in 1877 as part of the Vistula River Railroad project, although this building is later and dates to 1910. The line was electrified in 1936 as part of the plan to improve the rail services to suburban Warsaw.
There’s a news report in August 1906, when Otwock was part of the Russian Empire, that reads:
“Last night, at Otwock near Warsaw, a band of revolutionaries, all of them Russian Jews, attacked the railway station, firing revolvers. They stole 800 roubles and shot a railway employee dead. During the night troops searched the neighbourhood and arrested eleven suspects. This morning, as the train carrying the prisoners approached Warsaw, it was stopped by fifty men, who fired revolvers at it”.
I’m not sure I entirely understand, as in 1906 there were pogroms across Russia against Jews, although they did defend themselves. There’s another reality that newspapers at the time may or may not have reported accurately anyway.
The town’s Christmas tree was still up in late January.
As noted on the sign, Warsaw is around 25 kilometres away.
I’m not sure that I’d go quite that far. However, Michael Jackson applied to lease a property here in 1997 (in Otwock, not this playing field) so it has attracted many over the years.
I was less interested in this sign than wondering where those Five Guys stickers came from, as I don’t think that they’ve reached Poland yet. Monterock have got the rights to open the brand across the country, but I’m not sure any have opened yet.
Otwock is known for its architecture and this shows some of that off. The style is quite located and took off in the late nineteenth century, primarily formed of quite complex wooden construction, rich ornamentation, verandas, balconies and an attempt to blend in with nature.
As another aside, and as more riveting content, why are the seats like that?
That swing looks like something I’ve arranged. Although something I’ve obviously got some help with as otherwise it wouldn’t be level, nor would it be attached to the trees still.
A water tower.
Just as a note about the railway line that I travelled on from Warsaw, this goes through a town called Wawer. In February 1940, the Germans killed 138 people in reprisal for someone shooting at their police officers and that included a train they stopped which was going to Otwock and they just shot dead one in five of the passengers as a reprisal punishment. This reached the news internationally, it was clear to the world just what was happening in Poland very early on.
In March 1941, the Germans killed seventeen Poles in Otwock because they were dis-satisfied with the number of volunteers who had put their names forward to work in Germany. In late July 1944, the Russian troops liberated Otwock, but it took until January 1945 for them to liberate Warsaw. This was deliberate, they wanted the Polish resistance crushed in Warsaw and were happy for the Germans to do it and this strategic inaction is part of the dislike of Russia that pervades the wider region.
I must admit, I meandered around for a while and this was all that I could find that looked interesting and exciting. The restaurants were mostly not open yet and as I had to get back to Warsaw so I didn’t miss my flight, I limited myself to a three mile walk up and down the streets of Otwock and then went back again.
Back on my little expedition around Good Beer Guide listed pubs, I have visited this one before with friends back on 2 November 2019 when I was suitably impressed by the Milky Joe milk stout from Ridgeside Brewing Co, which sadly closed last year. The pub was built as a coaching inn in the 1830s, but Punch acquired it and then managed to have it closed down before it reopened under independent owners in 2011.
The team member was writing this up when I went in, so this might not be entirely complete. There’s a mostly cask option, but numerous craft keg beers to choose from as well.
Quirky and atmospheric and my first beer was the Crimes in Riwaka from Pentrich Brewing Co (Riwaka are a hop from New Zealand) which was punchy and dank, with stonefruit and zestiness to it. It’s not the brightest of pubs in terms of the decor, but I suspect that it would have felt rather more charismatic when customers started to come in. The pub feels old fashioned, but that’s what it’s meant to do, this is a traditional pub with a well curated selection of beers.
The second half pint was the Espresso Stout from Cross Borders Brewing Co, a pleasant tasting stout with a roast coffee flavour, although it was a little thin for the 5.3% ABV.
There are hundreds of beer mats decorating the venue and it’s won numerous awards over the years, both from organisations such as CAMRA and direct from the denizens of Sheffield.
How lovely. It wasn’t very busy when I got there, but it was a wet weekday afternoon and they’d just opened for the day, but the welcome was friendly and personable. A nice pub, although I think matters could be improved with a bar billiards table. Although, I think that, I suspect it’s me thinking about my playing in the World Championships in Sudbury (I mean, where else?) in late March…..
The Church of Saint Bartholomew is in a slightly odd place (I mean within the town, I’m not suggesting that Maltby is odd), suggesting that it was built before much else and there might well have been a Saxon church on the site which would explain quite a lot.
It’s an attractive building from the exterior, quite neat and tidy.
The entrance gates.
The nave and chancel of the church are of limited interest, but this tower is quirky and much older than the rest of the structure.
And here’s the reason for the main part of the church being less interesting architecturally, it’s the 1857 plan for the new building. This wasn’t though naive expectations of permanently larger congregations, something which somewhat dominated a lot of Church of England thinking in the late nineteenth century, this was the reality that the building was “too dilipidated to be repaired”. The local landowners, the congregation and the Incorporated Society for the Promoting the Enlargement , Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels all came together to fund the repairs.
The church isn’t open to the public other than by prior appointment, although it’s still used for Sunday services.
The church came to national attention in May 1830 when body snatchers stole a body from the churchyard. An Irish newspaper reported:
“Some time during the night of Sunday last, the body of a young woman, named Mary Hall, was stolen out of its grave in Maltby Church yard. On Monday morning the clerk of Maltby observed a quantity of shavings scattered near the side of the grave, which excited his suspicion, and he immediately caused the grave to be opened, when the coffin was found broken in pieces, and the body taken away. The Magistrates of Rotherham issued search warrants on Monday last, and the Medical Hall, in Sheffield, and other surgical institutions have been searched, but without any discovery having been made. The friends of the deceased watched the grave for three nights, and on the following night the body was taken away. In consequence of the above unfortunate circumstance, the mother of the girl is in a state of mental derangement.”
The Sheffield Medical Institution had opened on 2 July 1829 and soon had a reputation for body-snatching, so there’s a high chance that’s where the body went, even though it wasn’t found.
Mary was just 25 when she died and the burial record at the church survives. The situation must have been dreadful for her mother, losing her daughter and then knowing that her body was lying likely not that far away being dissected.
It’s an attractive, and soggy, churchyard. As an aside, the congregation gave money in the 1820s to help those in Ireland struggling with famine, a reminder that this had been a long-term problem in the country and wasn’t just limited to the Great Famine.
Anyway, it’s a rather lovely site, although devoid of any signage about the church’s history and I couldn’t see any older gravestones, although the conditions has meant that a fair number of the stones are quite weathered and worn. A little further down the Maltby Dike, which the church backs onto, is Roche Abbey which was a large monastery until the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
[I originally posted this in May 2018, but have reposted it to fix the broken image links]
After arriving safely at the railway station in Luxembourg I faced the problem that was the SNCF rail strike. I decided to keep my trip to France, rather than changing to Germany, as the media had reported over recent weeks that support for the strike was falling and that more services were operating.
After checking with a staff member, they said that the trains to Thionville were running every hour, with the half hourly ones being cancelled. That was my expectation from the SNCF web-site, so I went to buy a ticket from a machine. The machine only let me buy tickets on services that were operating, so all seemed well.
Then the board never updated the platform that the train was going from and it then got “deleted”. I went to speak to the staff at the main information kiosk at the station and they confirmed I’d need to wait an hour for the one after.
There seemed something strange about this that didn’t quite ring true, as I didn’t see why so many trains would be cancelled to Thionville, especially as they had just sold me a ticket. So I went to the international departures desk and asked them.
The lady there was very helpful, and she was rather bemused at the situation as well. After a long conversation with her colleagues she said that she thought that the train was running and the information boards were wrong. She then suggested to go to platform nine and see if the train I had booked onto was running, and if not to speak to the conductor on the TGV service to Paris (which stops at Thionville) to see if they’d let me on.
As I got to the platform I could see the train that I had a ticket for was there and wasn’t looking very cancelled. I found a staff member who told me to get on as it was about to leave, which I did, although I was a still little unsure of whether this was actually the right train.
However, the right train it was and my trip to Thionville began. Luxembourg railway station is the first place that I took Dylan to, so happy memories of the place, although it was rather more stressful this time. Still lots of pigeons that looked like they might “get squished”.
The train was a double decker one and looked modern and well presented, although it was unclean and had rather a lot of litter on the floor. The prices for the train also weren’t that cheap, more expensive than the UK for the same distance. However, I got to Thionville safely and happily, so the end result was all very positive.
Thionville railway station.
I spent the morning in Maltby and this is an imposing and impressive building, now operated by JD Wetherspoon. I came out of my way to come here as it’s listed in the Good Beer Guide, such is my commitment to my challenge of visiting as many as I can. There’s an old photo of the building at https://www.old-rotherham.co.uk/QueensMaltby.php?i=1. In 1933, an application for an alcohol licence for a new venue on Muglet Lane was rejected, despite many local miners saying they couldn’t get to the Queens before it closed. It was mentioned in the article that the Queens had a “monopoly value for £9,000” which I had to look up and this means:
“Monopoly value is the difference in value between premises with a licence and premises without a licence. That, of course, may be a very considerable sum. Therefore, in those cases it is provided that where the new licence has been issued and the old licence surrendered, the amount which must be paid is the difference between the two licences. In other words, if there is a public house and the beer licence is surrendered and a hotel business is being obtained, obviously it is only right and proper that the beer licence which is surrendered should be taken into account in assessing the amount.”
The staff might have wished that this new venue had been given a licence, as it was reported in 1935:
“At Rotherham West Riding Court on Monday, Patrick Higgins (42), a miner from Maltby, was bound over for twelve months for assaulting George William Emery, barman at the Queens Hotel”.
By 1972, the hotel was advertising that they had topless go-go girls with a light show. I suspect that the more traditional had somewhat died away by this point.
Um, well I suppose that’s a claim to fame.
Some history about the building.
Another traditional breakfast and unlimited coffee, coming to a total of £4.18. Egg was a bit hard and the toast was cold, but I can’t much complain given the price. The new area manager was in the pub today, one of the customers wanted to ask her about beer mats but didn’t dare. I decided not to get involved. Service at the pub was friendly and everything seemed clean and tidy, although the temperature was quite cold (although just right for me) and they had some customers huddling around the real fires.
It’s a large building, actually perhaps a little bit too big and the furniture feels all a bit over the place.
This half pint of Kismat from Beermats Brewing Co cost just 90p and was quite a complex porter, with tastes of coffee, dark chocolate and a roasty flavour.
The on-line reviews, which I feel a compulsive need to check, are around average for a JD Wetherspoon outlet, although there are a heap of angry customers who have been charged £75 for parking in the car park without registering their details.
“Very rude customer service by the bar staff 🙄 I was served food that had a dead slug in the salad and then told I couldn’t go in for a month just because I sent the salad back and we also had to wait half an hour just for a desert”
I want to hear the other side to this one….
“When dealing with a small matter the staff came with 4 members and were very rude and completely dismissive. They were passive aggressive and what could have been dealt with easily they were very much on a power trip and totally uncalled for.”
And this one. Often “a small matter” is that a customer has smashed up a table or similar.
“After coming here since I was 13years old with just my friends for tea it has now been said we can no longer come without an adult after showing us a policy that is situated hidden behind condiments (which is not clearly visible) and apparently this policy has always been in place but isn’t clearly shown around the pub ie at the bar or on the walls , in toilets etc but we have always been served at the bar without question, never asked if we were with adults ever and so have been asked to leave which we have (bearing in mind we were served by “assistant manager “) but I’m sure the manager will have a shock when head office gets proof of the pub serving 17 year old girls with alcohol after he had been warned his staff were serving under age , he clearly likes to turn a blind eye when it suits !”
I doubt head office were much concerned…..
“The chicken was more like cat and the egg was a joke rubber egg thank God for plenty of mayonnaise and sauces”
I’m not sure that I know what cat tastes like.
“Bar staff to slow takes u half an hour to get served I no I run pubs for green king”
Greene.
“This is a basic bakery it’s supposed to be a truck stop the food and facilities on site for hgv drivers are for food very poor showers are dated and some are broken it’s a hard stand parking but security is a source of concern and it’s quite noisy as well would only stop as a last resort”
And a review for some other venue to add to the mix, but I like the idea of a Wetherspoon pub being a truck stop.
On another matter, the local CAMRA group seems obsessed with leaving comments such as this:
“The cider is no longer classed as real by CAMRA”
I know there are some CAMRA groups that would really rather comments like this weren’t listed and I don’t much like it as it seems to be making an argument when one isn’t needed. They’re referring to cider manufacturers such as Snails Bank and the like, which, to be honest, are still ciders and so most people (and many CAMRA people) consider as real. For anyone interested, CAMRA have got their purist list at https://camra.org.uk/promotional-campaigns/promoting-real-cider-and-perry/map, but it’s rare for a branch to mark this all over the Whatpub pages and I can’t see what point they’re trying to prove.
It’s an impressive building, I suspect that it would be hard for many other operators to make a venue of this size to work, so they’re fortunate to have JD Wetherspoon take over. There were six real ales on, all keenly priced and they seemed well curated. Definitely a decent addition to the Good Beer Guide.
Further to my post about the war memorial at Bramley, near to Rotherham.
The story of Roy Geoffrey Scott piqued my interest as he was a young casualty and he died very near to the end of the war. He was born on 6 July 1926, the son of Thomas Scott (1860s?-1930s?) and Mary Ann (nee Sadler) (1884-1978) who lived at 2 Bentley Road in Bramley. Roy joined the East Lancashire 1st Battalion as a Private, army number 14810893. Roy died on 12 April 1945 when crossing the River Aller and is buried at Becklingen War Cemetery (located between Hamburg and Hanover), one of 2,401 to be buried there.
One of three missing men from the battalion.
The Lancashire Infantry Museum notes that:
“From the Rhine to the Elbe At the end of March both Lancashire battalions crossed the Rhine and began the final advance across the North German Plain. 1st East Lancashires first took an active part in the battle for Bocholt, 28-29 March, then, like the South Lancashires, moved through the eastern border areas of Holland, mopping up enemy stragglers. German defences were based on water obstacles, and the East Lancashires then took part in fighting on the Ems-Weser Canal near Ibbenburen, 6th-7th April, and at the assault crossing of the River Aller on the 12th, with another heavy engagement at Kirchlinteln on the 16th, before occupying Hamburg on 4th May.”
Roy never made it to Hamburg, where he would have been one of the forces who took control of the city.
I asked Google Gemini for more information and it discovered:
“The River Aller, flowing through Lower Saxony, Germany, presented a significant obstacle to the Allied advance in the spring of 1945. Securing crossings over the Aller was crucial for maintaining momentum and preventing the Germans from establishing a defensive line along the river. The Battle of Rethem, fought from April 9th to 11th, exemplifies the strategic importance of the Aller . The small town of Rethem, with its bridge over the river, became a focal point for both sides. The British 53rd Welsh Division faced a determined defence by German forces, including the 2nd Marine Infantry, Eisenbahn-Flak units equipped with 128mm cannons, and SS troops . The initial British assaults on Rethem were repulsed, highlighting the strength of the German defences . However, the British eventually outmanoeuvred the Germans by crossing the Aller at Westen and flanking the defenders, forcing them to retreat . This victory allowed the British to establish a Bailey bridge at Rethem and continue their advance towards Hamburg.”
Roy’s gravestone in Germany. Every death is sad, but this is particularly poignant as Victory in Europe Day is 8 May 1945, less than a month after he died.
There’s something very reassuring about a war memorial which is well tended and looked after. There are 47 names on the First World War list and 17 names on the Second World War list.
A rather lovely little area, very respectful.
The full list of names:
Asbery, E
Baker, R W
Birch, J
Bizby, E
Bradbury, A
Bradley, A
Brown, A
Brown, H
Bucktrout, H
Cakebread, A
Carney, J
Cliff, S
Davison, R
Gratton, J
Guest, S
Hands, J T
Haywood, F
Holmes, A
Holmes, F
Humphries, S
Jackson, A
Limb, T
Locke, J
Locke, M
Lubbock, R
Mangham, C
Mcknight, A
Metcalfe, H
Milns, E
Mirfin, G D
Morley, E M
Mowbray, J
Palmer, W
Parker, J
Parker, S
Parry, A
Perkins, H
Purseglove, F
Rhodes, J
Robinson, P
Rodgers, J L
Ross, H
Sayles, H
Schofield, A
Scholey, T
Scott, Roy Geoffrey
Seneschall, H
Seston, E
Short, J
Short, J H
Smith, A
Smith, J
Smith, S
Taylor, A
Taylor, W
Teale, A
Thornton, G
Thorpe, P
Titley, M
Trotter, F
Walker, D
Walker, W
Waltch, S
Williams, H
I noticed this venue on Untappd and it looked like it had an intriguing variety of beers available. They’re primarily a craft beer shop with plenty of bottles and cans to choose from, but they also have three beers on keg to add to the variety. The welcome was friendly, conversational and engaging, although they didn’t have any other customers for the entire time that I was there. They’ve got the 2025 Putty in can and I was hoping that they might have it on draft, but unfortunately not. The environment was clean and comfortable, although the team member said that she was surprised by how few customers had come in. It’s a challenging time of year to be fair, but I hope that they’re doing well generally.
I went for the 2024 edition of the Fairytale of Brew York, one of my favourite breweries. I’ll just copy and paste my Untappd description of the beer as that seems easier:
“I like a bit of smokiness 🙂 sweet, lactose and smooth…. good in short doses. Like me really.”
It’s a really decent venue and they have over 220 different beers available, so there is something that nearly everyone in that mix. They haven’t picked up any negative reviews yet, so they’re obviously doing something of a grand job. There’s an external seating area as well if you can catch the 25 minutes of sun that is available over the next three months, which adds considerably to the total number of seats given how small it is inside.
I’ve been to Salt’s brewery in the sunny town of Saltaire and this is their outpost in the Kelham Island area of Sheffield. Note the rather lovely gateway, although it’s hard to miss, which the brilliant Nikolaus Pevsner said was the “most spectacular survival of factory architecture in the city”.
Some of the keg range.
And some of the cask range, with Ossett being one of the owners of Salt Brewery, hence their presence here.
The Alpacalypse from Salt, a clean tasting pale which has some fruit flavour to it, slightly lemony. There was a bit of sweetness and it’s certainly sessionable, I imagine quite agreeable to the lager drinkers as well.
The Jet from Ossett Brewery, a oaty, roasty real ale with a bit of coffee taste to it.
It’s a busy venue with a younger crowd buying lagers and it wasn’t quite clear to me why they’d pick here over anywhere else. The food option is Seoul Chicken which looked rather agreeable on the menu, although I didn’t see anyone ordering anything when I was there. Decent mix that though, craft beer and chicken.
Anyway, all rather lovely and I found it useful to charge devices as they’ve conveniently put lots of power points all over the place. The service was friendly, the venue was clean and the atmosphere was inviting. The venue was formerly known as Stew & Oyster, but then they decided not to sell oysters and so it made some sense to change the name. Always positive (well, nearly always positive) to see a mixture of cask and keg.
