There are some rather nice skies in Norwich tonight…..
Category: UK
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London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Stargazer JD Wetherspoon Pub at the O2
I visited this pub in September 2023, but I don’t appear to have surprised and delighted my two loyal blog readers by ever writing about it. Anyway, the Stargazer is the JD Wetherspoon pub located in the O2. Back when I lived in this area, this pub wasn’t there and it would have been quite handy as my local cinema was literally opposite within the O2.
The chain explains the reason for their pub name:
“Renowned astronomer Sir Edmund Halley established his reputation studying stars. His star catalogue, published in 1678, was the world’s first such work and determined hundreds of southern stars’ locations. Halley was later appointed Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory. He is commemorated by Edmund Halley Way (in front of The O2), leading to the River Thames’ cable car crossing – with its views of the London skyline.”
All under cover and centrally located within the O2, this was at the time the only JD Wetherspoon that I hadn’t visited in London (I define London as zones 1 to 3).
I accept that I’m not going to win any photography awards here.
It’s a sizeable venue and it was all clean and organised. The venue has premium pricing for JD Wetherspoon, but it’s quite competitive compared to all the other dining options at the O2.
Perhaps not the most riveting of real ale selections at the time.
This is the Guardsman from Windsor & Eton Brewery, reasonably malty but not packed with the most decadent of flavours.
As it’s a JD Wetherspoon venue, I feel the need to have a little look at the online reviews. These aren’t very good, it’s one of the lowest rated one of their venues in the country. There seem to be a lot of of issues with slow service when it gets really busy, which is a bit sub-optimal if you’ve got something to see at the O2.
Although there’s a one star review because:
“Meals were on the table before I got back from ordering”
So you can’t please everyone all the time….
“Such a shame as the pub looks nice. However, one of mangers was grumpy when serving at the bar, then said its company policy they don’t accept Scottish notes….well the other weatherspoons in London take Scottish notes.”
The actual chain policy is they take the notes in Scotland, areas where there are a lot of Scottish people and they take £10 Scottish notes. It could probably be a bit clearer to be fair to customers.
“Having a lovely time until a wasp came along and landed on my burger I said to a member of staff oh sorry a wasp is on my burger.”
I like how that’s the fault of the pub and they get a 1 star review as they didn’t offer a new meal.
“We had a very unpleasant experience with a staff member named *******. He was rude, unprofessional, and his behavior came across as discriminatory. As someone with years in hospitality, I was shocked by his attitude, this is not how guests should be treated. Staff like Vaishnav should be given proper training on how to interact respectfully and courteously with guests. It’s disheartening to see such behavior in a customer-facing role, and I sincerely hope the management takes this feedback seriously.”
This is one of the nastiest things that I’ve seen customers do, four different one star reviews all targeting one individual staff member. It’s fairly evident where the problem is here from such actions. It would have been easier to ask for the duty manager than try and make such a personal attack like this.
“No music, slow, bad attitude from staff. The whole environment was boring.”
Always nice to be reminded that there’s no music, this suits me……
“Around midday we walked straight in, got served immediately and went to sit in what is somewhat poorly described as the “beer garden” as one person has already mentioned, it’s more of yard, sandwiched between the service road, the pub and a service tower, and the river views promised, really do fail to deliver.
But all in all its your typical Whetherspoon, and because you’re at the O2, you pay for that in drink prices. Fast forward 6hrs, we return with friends, 4 of us in total, to be refused entry. Reason from the door staff “it’s too busy” when I polity ask what the capacity is, does he have a counter to check, he has no idea what I’m talking about. Whilst this discussion continues, 8 people leave and we still can’t get in, the reason again, “too crowded”. At this point I walk off as I’m bored talking to the cretin on the door. Whilst discussions continue, 2 people walk up to an empty table, sit down and order via the app. That was the last straw.
If you’re going to employ door staff, surely they must be fit for the job, despite being licensed to do so. Customer service costs nothing, manners cost nothing, and before you ask “where you drunk and disorderly?” Far from it, as we had been having lunch and a catch up with friends. Fortunately there are many places to eat and drink in the O2, so I don’t have to go back. Sorry Whetherspoon’s, you just lost a once extremely loyal customer!”
“Cretin”? I suspect the chain will be glad to lose the customer…..
Anyway, I digress. I rather like this venue as I’ve only ever been when it’s peaceful and calm. I can imagine it’s a bit more of a nightmare during busy evening services and I feel sorry for the staff, it must be a permanent nightmare being very busy for relatively short periods.
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Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Severed Head of St. John the Baptist)
This is the severed head of John the Baptist, I mean what a lovely thing to pop in your living room. This was a popular image in the medieval period and it’s made of terracotta, dating from around 1380 to 1420.
It was probably once in a church at the top of an arch, but it ended up embedded in a cottage wall in the village of Barney, near to Thursford and was found in 1958 when the wall was demolished. I suppose that it’s quite inspirational in its own way.
Thanks to Norfolk Heritage Explorer (which is a really wonderful website) the exact location where it was found is marked accurately on the map (the little yellow triangle in the middle of the image), although they only got confirmation of the location in 1984 because a local man remembered where it was found.
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Norwich – 1781 Map
Well, this is nice, it’s a map of Norwich which I haven’t seen before. It is showing me all manner of things that I didn’t expect to be there, so that’s a bit more time I will waste (well, maybe not waste, is any finding out about history a waste?) hours on now…..
This image should show at full resolution by clicking on it and zooming in to see the details.
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Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (St Laurence’s Church by David Hodgson)
This artwork is of St. Laurence’s Church in Norwich and was painted by David Hodgson (1798-1864) in 1863. This is one of the churches that was nearly demolished in the 1960s and I made reference to that when wittering on about a defaced statue found there. This artwork would have been painted from Westwick Street, but that area has changed too much to be able to put up a before and after photo. George Plunkett does though link to a watercolour which was painted in a similar place.
As usual, I’ve had AI try and bring back some of the original colours to the painting. Quaint as the building might look, it’s not entirely clear to me that it was actually structurally sound and pleasant inside.
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Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (1400s Book – John Wycliffe)
Friends of mine know that I like books, especially when they come in their thousands at a time, but this is a rather special one published at some stage in the 1400s. I say published, but perhaps more written laboriously out might be more appropriate.
I let ChatGPT have a go at transcribing this and it didn’t cope with it. However, Google Gemini had a lovely time with it, describing it as text by John Wycliffe (c.1328-1384) that was likely published in the fifteenth century. I know this is correct as the museum stated that it is a book of tracts by John Wycliffe and was published between 1400 and 1500.
Google Gemini goes further and notes that the general thrust of this is that “it critiques those who hold great benefices and use their positions for worldly gain rather than spiritual care” and this does feel like the sort of text Wycliffe would have written. It’s yet another experiment in the incredible power of AI and I’ve established that it can read Middle English.
Wycliffe wanted a bit of modernisation in the Catholic Church, ending the abuses and bringing the message of the Bible closer to the people. Pope Gregory XI, who was broadly incompetent for various reasons, condemned that arrangement straight away. There’s a relevance to Norfolk with all of this, as Wycliffe stirred up the Peasant’s Revolt, a national uprising which gained traction in the area. And the Lollards were sort of led by Wycliffe and they had a strong presence in East Anglia.
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Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Mould for Walsingham Shrine Pilgrim Badges)
There’s something a little tacky about this fascinating item in the collections of Norwich Castle Museum. It’s a special piece, it’s the pre-cut mould for pilgrim badges that were sold at Walsingham’s shrine before the Reformation.
This is obviously how they were made, but perhaps the pilgrims who went there didn’t realise just how mass produced this whole arrangement was. Or, maybe they did, but even the museum notes that this method was designed to be “quick and cheap” rather than something produced to a high standard. And maybe there was a choice of pilgrim badges, from rather more decadent ones to cheap and cheerful. It seems though that some pilgrimage sites were selling over 100,000 badges a year, this truly was the Great Yarmouth of its day.
King Henry III made a pilgrimage to Walsingham and the shrine of the Virgin Mary in the thirteenth century and then King Edward I, King Edward II, King Henry IV, King Henry VII and King Henry VIII all went afterwards during their reigns. That’s some destination and it’s clear why it also became desirable to pilgrims. King Henry VIII couldn’t have been entirely surprised and delighted by his visit as he later approved it being pulled down during the Reformation.
I haven’t been able to find any badges in museums or for sale that look similar to this, I had hoped to see what one would have looked like.
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Cardiff – Mercure Cardiff North
I didn’t get around at the time to writing about the Mercure Cardiff North hotel where we stayed for my birthday weekend in Cardiff in November. This is an Accor branded hotel and I had booked some time in advance, with the rates being very reasonable.
Firstly, there’s something unusual about their online reviews on Google as nearly every single one mentions a staff member by name. This isn’t usual on Google and doesn’t really help people get a fair understanding of what is happening here. If I read through the verified visits on Accor’s website, the situation is more as I would expect and staff members are rarely named, so that feels more reliable.
Instead of using my normal metric of Google Reviews, I’m going to use the Accor aggregated score, which shows that this hotel has a rating of 3.9 which is towards the lower end of the scale for the chain.
In fairness, the hotel was managing perfectly well at the accommodation element that was offered here. Liam and I had a twin room which was clean, at the appropriate temperature and everything worked as expected. There were no noise issues, either from inside or outside the hotel, so that all felt positive. The interior felt generally modern and so I suspect that there has been a refurbishment here recently.
I think my main negative about this hotel is I don’t know why they’re trying to be part of Accor. The hotel was playing fast and loose with the loyalty scheme offered by Accor and didn’t offer most of the benefits.
The situation with the welcome drink was downright awkward as the member of bar staff said that it was one drink a room. This isn’t right, this has never been right and it’s really not something I want to debate as it’s hard not to sound entitled about the matter. But holding Liam’s drink hostage whilst the staff members blamed each other is entirely sub-optimal. The reception desk resolved the matter, but the concept of the welcome drink was rather lost at this point.
It was partly a shame that the bar service was borderline rude as the drinks selection wasn’t unreasonable and although they’d made no effort getting local drinks in, at least they had a couple of options such as this Singha.
We had breakfast included in our room rates and on the first day it was poor, the second day it was better. it might not be relevant to me personally, but I like that they’re trying to do a gluten free area, but it could perhaps be a little more, er, exciting.
To be fair, I suspect guests would have worked out the labelling error here.
The hot food options, although this isn’t perhaps the best way to keep the food hot. As with the drinks at the bar, there was no effort to source food locally which is a shame as numerous Accor hotels are keen to do at least something.
The first day’s breakfast options were broadly dreadful. The bacon was dripping with grease, the cold cuts were of a very low quality, the cheese was already sweating in the displays and the whole arrangement looked sub-optimal.
I do agree with Richard’s comment that it’s a shame that there isn’t any fresh bread available here. But, to be fair to the hotel, this isn’t as common in the UK as it is on the European mainland.
They actually had fried eggs on the second day and the presentation of the food was much better. That bacon isn’t cooked anywhere as much as I’d like it, but I accept that’s a personal preference. The egg was cooked to my tastes and everything tasted as expected.
Overall, I thought that the stay was fine as the room was clean, the team members were generally friendly and there were no noise issues. Certainly breakfast could have been better on the first day, but we got there just as service started and it’s easy to be critical. My main comment about the hotel is that they should perhaps either embrace (or at least accept) the rules that Accor set them, or just go independent and be free of those guardrails.
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Norwich – 1830 Tombland Painting by John Thirtle
I’m finding this interesting as it’s a view of Tombland from 1830 which I haven’t seen before. Although in very many ways nothing has really changed here in terms of the Erpingham Gateway, the road layout and the buildings on the right hand side of the road, there are some other changes.
One change is the removal of the buildings to the right hand side of the Erpingham Gateway which is where the statue commemorating the life of Edith Cavell is now located. There’s also a gateway that I hadn’t known existed on the extreme left of the painting, that’s now gone but there is a blue door there today which gives entrance to Norwich School and there is today evidence of the former gateway that surrounded it.
Back to the artist, John Thirtle (1777-1839) who became a key member of the Norwich School group of painters and he became known for his watercolour landscapes. He was also an art framer and print-seller and Norwich Castle Museum, who own this artwork, have several of his paintings in their collections. Some of his artworks have suffered from the fading of the indigo pigment he used on many paintings, something which is a little sub-optimal. He suffered from illness towards the later part of his life, from long-time health issues from tuberculosis reducing his output.
I’ve asked AI to restore the image to how the sky might have looked and I think it’s done a generally decent job here. There’s a mistake that AI thought there was a fountain, and thus water, in the background that isn’t actually there, but the image does feel like it has been brought back to life.
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Norwich – Missing Parish Boundary Marker on Princes House on Princes Street
I led a walk, which was well attended which is rather nice, yesterday about the historic parish of St. George at Tombland, so expect a few posts now following my research about that.
I noted in a post in 2021 that it was really positive that this parish boundary marker had survived a move to a new building. However, it appears that it might have disappeared and the people that I’ve asked have no idea where it has gone. Dating from 1834, the marker is no longer visible following work undertaken on Princes House Residences.
The building with the parish boundary marker now missing…..
