This watercolour is Views Along Cromer Cliffs and Beach by Catherine Buxton, painted in around 1860, and the artist was the daughter of Catherine Gurney (1814-1911) and Sir Edward North Buxton (1812-1858). This meant that she was brought up in the wealthy and very well-connected Quaker family, so she would have had access to education, travel and money.
The painting shows the coastline looking down towards Cromer, with the church tower rising above the town and the jetty built in 1845 stretching out into the sea. It also shows a Cromer that has expanded slightly, but the rapid growth wasn’t until after 1877 when the railways reached the town. This was from a time when the town wasn’t burdened by hotels and people trying to eat fish and chips in a strong wind. It was also before Greggs reached Cromer, which makes the whole scene look calm, elegant and faintly deprived.
But what I found the most interesting is that in the foreground is the ruined tower of the old lighthouse, built in the early eighteenth century and already looking as though the cliff had begun making firm plans for its removal. The lighthouse finally disappeared over the cliff in 1866, only a few years after this painting was completed, with Trinity House having more information about the structure.
This bottle of Kola Champagne was one of the smaller exhibits at Cromer Museum, but it immediately caught my attention because “Kola Champagne” sounds like the sort of drink invented by someone who had access to both sugar and optimism. It’s a bit like Greene King saying that they’ve made a craft beer, the words are all technically present but I’d suggest a degree of caution.
The label describes it as “a tonic and restorative drink”, as well as “refreshing and pleasing”, which is quite a lot of responsibility to place on one bottle and I have a sense that it might have been a disappointment. Despite the name, it was not champagne and almost certainly had no meaningful connection with France and it would fall foul of labelling laws today.
The “kola” element would have referred to kola nut flavouring or extract, an ingredient associated with stimulant and tonic drinks long before cola became dominated by international brands and advertisements involving improbably happy people near swimming pools. It’s one of those bottles which has an internal closure arrangement at the neck, possibly with a little glass ball.
The local link is that this was sold by W. Everett of Bond Street in Cromer and they produced a range of soft drinks for supply locally. What I didn’t realise before writing this is that there is a drink still produced in the UK which has the same taste, namely KA Karibbean Kola, with Champagne Cola still being a thing in parts of Latin America. I wonder if I’d be restored after drinking one…..
I had a little time to spare in Cromer and so I went to the museum, which I’m not sure that I’ve visited before. There’s usually an admission charge of £5.30 for adults and £4.80 for children, but I had my national Art Pass card so I got in free. There was a friendly welcome from the staff member at the entrance who explained what there was to see at the site and didn’t seem alarmed by the prospect of me photographing most of it.
Cromer Museum is housed in a group of former fishermen’s cottages beside the parish church, so behind the modern frontage there’s an authentic yard. Inside, the rooms have been used to recreate aspects of life in a Victorian fisherman’s home, while the wider displays explore the history of the town, its fishing industry, its development as a seaside resort, the constant local difficulty of preventing parts of Cromer from entering the North Sea without permission and a mammoth. It is important not to forget the mammoth, as museums rarely improve by having fewer mammoths.
There’s a new room that has opened up this year and I feel that this might need some rethinking. It did though at least have the only cooling that I found in the entire museum, that fan in the corner which was struggling to be effective and more of a symbolic struggle against the reality that it was too hot in Cromer.
And it certainly is in the shadow of the town’s church.
There will now be a flurry of posts about the museum until I either run out of photographs or become distracted by another old building or a cheap Wizz Air flight. The museum is a rather lovely little place with a genuine sense of authenticity, although the displays felt slightly erratic in places, but there is a great deal of local history to cover and not much space in which to cover it, so some compression is inevitable. The welcome was friendly and the staff seemed genuinely keen to engage with visitors and explain the history, which always makes a small museum feel more alive.
I can’t help thinking that the admission charges are at the top of what is reasonable though, as it would cost a family over £20 to get in here. As someone who tends to spend far longer in a museum reading everything than is necessary (although not as much as my friend Susanna who it’s hard to prise out of the museum and staff normally end up turning off the lights around her) I would have been hard pushed to spend more than forty minutes here. But, it was a handy use of my Art Pass and, as I mentioned in my last post, it will allow me to surprise and delight my two loyal blog readers for a little while yet.
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.
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.
