Grange Court.....

I really like this building......

Grange Court

The building is in Leominster and it is called Grange Court...
It was built in 1633 and is the last surviving market house known to be built by John Abel a local master carpenter.

It was moved to it's present location in 1859.
It is now on the edge of a park area in the town but it's original location was closer to the market square area of the town but needed to be moved because it was starting to cause an obstruction with the ever busier roads...

The timber framed building is extravagantly decorated with carvings including mermaids, angels, animals, flowers and grotesques.
The entablature above the columns includes a number of carved texts praising god.

When built this market house was open at ground level with the upper structure supported on twelve oak columns.
If you look at the photo above you can see the columns and where the building has now been filled in. 

It was used for public meetings and also meetings of the town guilds and  the Quarter session courts were held there...

Nowadays it is a civic building and used for such events as exhibitions.. weddings etc....  

As I said at the start I really like this building...
I like the shape...The black and white structure and the condition and neatness of the whole building.... A bit of a historic gem really.

Another Move and a Visitor.....

Last Monday we moved on from the Malverns and are now about thirty miles further west just north of Hereford.....

We are at one of my favourite sites close to the village of Moreton on Lugg. This is a privately owned adult only site which at this time of year at the start of the school holidays is absolute bliss..

For a few hours today between people moving on and new arrivals there were only four units in our camping field. See the picture above to check out the almost empty site....
It has filled up again now but most people on site seem to be fifty years or older....

This is the third time that we have been here since 2015 and it is an ideal site for us as it ticks all of our boxes...

The day after we arrived we had a visitor.
My cycling and walking buddy Peter had cycled up from Poole in Dorset to spend four nights with us...

He had made the journey on his touring bike and we had a few days of chat and banter as well as a look at Hereford and it's cathedral on the Wednesday and also a walk and picnic on the Thursday.

Peter headed off back home on Saturday morning and expects to be back home before Tuesday.
It's always nice to see Peter and he has managed to visit us at over eight of our camp sites since 2015.....

He slept in his Hilleberg Akto tent that he has used for both cycle touring as well as backpacking trips...
I have an Akto myself and I always remember when we were walking the Pennine way together a few years ago joking about how our tents looked like a couple of coffins pitched side by side....
The slight fading of the grass where Peter had pitched his tent seems to bear that out...

S

Peter packing for his return trip....

An Open Door...... Double Take!

Since we have been staying here near the Malverns I have cycled a number of times to Tewkesbury and Anne and I have also driven there so we could have a proper look around the town.....

The stand out place in the town for us was the Abbey which we both thought was stunning.
It was a really interesting and historic  place that gave me lots of subject matter for my monochrome photography.

I am planning to ressurect my photography blog 'Aura of Past Shadows" a little later in the year and the abbey gave me some good b/w images.

One of the other things that grabbed my attention was a front door on a terraced house in the town.....
The owner had painted the image of an open door leading to a garden on the front door...it really did need a double take...
The image of that door is shown below ......
the other image is a shot of the wonderful Abbey...

Grow Your Own Dog.....

The jazz festival that I mentioned in my last post took place at Upton on Severn.
In lots of ways the town is almost a step back to the 1950s.
The high street has lots of small independent shops with no multi nationals that we could see.

There are a number of pubs in the town and during the jazz festival they all seemed to host various bands. We went back again earlier this week to have a better look around.

One of the things that really captured our attention was the large dog near the tourist information office...
It looks like a large Old English Sheepdog but it is in fact a plant of some kind.....

It could well catch on...

No need to go to the breeding kennels for your next dog just grow your own.......

Below is a photo of the local garage...usually this style of building would have been modernised but thankfully this one is original and has been maintained like that....

 Here is the high street...... This too hasn't changed much over the years.

 View of the Severn from the pub garden where we had lunch.....

 Finally a picture of the town museum....