We walked by these and there’s no doubt a wonderful story behind this, which would be an angry walker livid that their boot has fallen apart. But there’s a metaphor, leave your troubles behind on the pilgrimage and set off anew. Whilst silently planning to make a complaint at the retailer who sold them.
How lovely 🙂
Handily the town we started walking in and the town we walked to have these large signs. Fourteen miles of walking along the route and there was lots of gossip, trauma, food, wine, beer and Bev chuckling….
So, this week I shall be spending the week walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. There are eight of us bravely walking the last 115 kilometres of the pilgrim’s way.
The biggest problem? I haven’t taken my computer, so this is a huge sacrifice I’m making as a pilgrim, which means slower blog updates….
The forged chain sculpture at the entrance to St. George’s Park in Great Yarmouth, designed by blacksmith artists Nigel Barnett and Ros Newman. It was installed in 2008 and represent chains from harbour with seagulls flying above them. It’s a pleasant addition to the area around the park, although I’m not entirely sure that the town needed any reminder of seagulls, but there we go….
This is one of the longest of the rows and is named after Sewell family who had a grocer’s shop here, which explains the alternative name of Grocer’s Row. The Sewells were Quakers and the last owner of the shop was Edward Sewell who died in 1870.
The old way of identifying row numbers and although this one seems to have been repainted recently, there are some examples on other rows which I’d guess are from the nineteenth century.
The row is also home to the entrance from the Market Place of the Back to Backs public house, which is the remaining section of the now closed Prince Regent pub.
There were a group of people I considered to be slightly frightening, and I don’t claim to be particularly tough, down this row when I visited and so I decided taking a photo on this occasion. These rows aren’t really locations that the majority of visitors to the town would take a photo of, so I didn’t feel an altercation was worth risking.
Ferrier’s Row, or Row 38, takes its name from an early bailiff of Great Yarmouth, Richard Ferrier, who lived at a property on this passageway.
Helpfully noted by a plaque in the above photo, this site is near to the location of where Boulter’s Museum operated from 1778 until 1802, although this was in a property by Row 35 which has long since gone. This was the first museum in the county and was opened by Daniel Boulter, a local Quaker and it remained open until his death. He had collected items which were initially more curiosities and put them on display, with more items relating to natural history being added later on which included items returned from Captain Cook’s voyages. And he also put the dried hand of a woman on display as well for a bit of variety.
Angel Row takes its name from the Angel Hotel which once stood looking out onto the Market Place, which was replaced by a drab and boring building which was occupied by Woolworths and, more recently, Poundland. Unfortunately this demolition took place as recently as 1957, depriving the town of an interesting old inn which had been standing since the mid-seventeenth century.
Like many of the rows, these are gloomy places and it’s not hard to imagine dark deeds which have taken place in the past. In the case of this row, many bad things have happened, including a murder which took place in February 1898. A jealous and drunk man killed Thirza Bensley, before trying to, unsuccessfully, take his own life. The killer was Samuel Frederick Steel, a railway carman, who used the defence that he suffered from epileptic fits and was insane.
Bensley’s father attended the inquest into his daughter’s death and the inquest jury decided that Steel was to blame, although this was a separate proceedings to the following court case. Steel in the actual court case was again found guilty, but his pleas of insanity were enough to save him from being hanged, instead he was given life imprisonment.
In 1903, there was a case in the row of unlawful wounding which took place in the row, perpetrated by John Fleming, a Scottish fisherman, and a witness commented Fleming and a friend had “they said something in their own language”. Justice Lawrance, who I assume considered himself something of a wit, commented “did they say hoot mon?”…… He then sentenced Fleming to 14 days hard labour though.
This grave in the churchyard of Great Yarmouth Minster is that of Robert Rising who died aged 55 on 5 February 1854. Rising was the son of Captain Tilney Rising of Exmouth, Devonshire.
Reason’s death certificate.
Further tragedy struck the family in January 1858 when Robert Rising’s son, Robert Tilney Rising, was killed at the age of just 23 following the sinking of the Catharine Adamson ship near Sydney. The ship ran aground during its voyage from Falmouth to Sydney, with 4 passengers and 17 crew killed.
Robert Tilney Rising isn’t buried in Great Yarmouth, as the bodies were placed in a mass interment and given a burial together, along with victims from the Dunbar clipper which had sank just nine weeks earlier. His name is though at the base of his father’s gravestone.
It’s possible to ascribe a lot of symbolism to this image, the tree which broke through the gravestone and which has then too died a death. I’m not sure what this all means, but it was an interesting sight which probably really says more about a previous lack of maintenance in the cemetery to be honest.
