Advent Calendar 24: Redmire in the snow

I was a student at York in the days when, if you opened a magazine, an envelope for you to send off your films for cheap processing fell out.

In those days I had a basic camera - it was almost certainly this one,

This photograph is of the milepost at Redmire on the Wensleydale branch, Today it is a heritage railway, but in those days it was still a freight line operated by British Rail.

Occasionally, BR would provide a Saturday passenger service allowing people from Wensleydale visits to shop in York and people from the city to visit the Dales.

This photo must have been taken on 25 April 1981. I can date it because the snow was so unseasonably late.

And it was so heavy that we were agreeably surprised that the trains were still running.

I took a lot of photographs in those days.

The bad news is that I eventually threw most of them away,

The good news is that I kept a couple of albums of the best of them and now own a scanner.

In 2017 Liberal England will be the go to blog for 35-year-old railway photos.

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this Advent calendar - click on that link to see all 24 pictures.

Advent Calendar 23: Market Harborough in the frost

Well, Little Bowden actually.

This is the end of my road during a heavy frost in February 2012.

Advent Calendar 22: Empire State Building, New York

I arrived at JFK late in the evening and took a taxi to my hotel. I could have been anywhere.

The next morning I left the hotel, turned the corner and saw this.

I was in New York,

Advent Calendar 21: Portmeirion

This statue, says its inscription, was:

Presented to Portmeirion and its Founder, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, by his friends and collagues on his 90th birthday, May 28th 1973.

Advent Calendar 20: Whitstable Harbour

Andrew Newton was told to look for Norman Scott in Barnstaple, but went to Dunstable instead.

I don't suppose he ever got to Whitstable.

Advent Calendar 19: Green Man, Southwell Minster

Niklaus Pevsner writes:

Could these leaves of the English countryside, with all their freshness, move us so deeply if they were not carved in that spirit which filled the saints and poets and thinkers of the thirteenth century, the spirit of religious respect for the loveliness of created nature? 

The inexhaustible delight in live form that can be touched with worshipping fingers and felt with all senses is ennobled ... by the conviction that so much beauty can exist only because God is an every man and beast, in every herb and stone. 

The Renaissance in the South two hundred years later was perhaps once again capable of such worship of beauty, but no firm faith was left to strengthen it. Seen in this light, the leaves of Southwell assume a significance as one of the purest symbols surviving in Britain of Western thought, our thought, in its loftiest mood.

Advent Calendar 18: Minsterley

The sudden rise of the lead mining industry in this remote part of England in the mid 19th century meant that the Stiperstones area has the feel of the Wild West. Shanty villages were thrown together with materials like corrugated iron and their hastily abandoned remnants can still be found today.

That's what I wrote in October 2010, though I am not sure that "hastily" was the right word. I have read accounts of the Shropshire lead mining area in the 1930s that say there was desperate poverty because the population was too high for the work available in such a remote area..

This building has now been replaced by something more permanent looking, but I am glad I captured it before it went.

Advent Calendar 17: Kirby Muxloe Castle

"Kirby Muxloe Castle is a wholly unexpected pleasure." I wrote in July 2010.

Advent Calendar 16: Near Chapel Brampton

My records say this was taken in Northamptonshire, but it does look very like a back way into Bonkers Hall.

Advent Calendar 15: Kindness to swallows at Leintwardine church

Well done, St Mary Magdalene.

Advent Calendar 14: Off-duty morris dancers

Taken at Rites of Spring at Leicester Guildhall in 2012.

Advent Calendar 13: A sign by the Nene at Sutton Bridge

Sutton Bridge, where England regained the Ashes in 2009.

Advent Calendar 12: The Ant Orkezdra in Market Harborough

It's Arts Fresco 2009 and The Ant Orkezdra is marching along Adam and Eve Street.

Advent Calendar 11: At the Richard Jefferies Museum, Swindon

From my post Too few people know about Richard Jefferies (February 2010):

This photograph shows the top floor of the house at Coate, which is where Jefferies wrote as a young man. I took it when I visited the museum last summer. 

The lifesize figure on the bed, reading intently with his heels kicked up, was rather sweet. But one thing puzzled me. 

"Did Victorian boys wear short trousers?" I asked the guide from the Richard Jefferies Society. 

"Well, you see," he said, "there was an exhibition in town last year about Swindon in the Second World War...."

Advent Calendar 10: Holy Trinity, Hope, Shropshire

Situated below the A488, this church is easy to miss. But it's worth stopping.

Advent Calendar 9: A window in Geddington

From this Northamptonshire village's website:

Geddington’s history reaches back to pre-history. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book and its status in medieval times is very visible in the church, the bridge and, of course, the remarkable Eleanor Cross ...

In past times the busy crossing point at the ford en route from London, the use of the Royal Hunting Lodge by former kings and the proximity of Boughton House brought noble visitors from around the country.

Advent Calendar 8: Severn Valley Railway

A train pulls into Northwood Halt.

Advent Calendar 7: The sheep of Paternoster Square

This sculpture by Elisabeth Frink can be found near St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Advent Calendar 6: Leicester

Taken a couple of hours before University of Leicester archaeologists found the skeleton of Richard III.

Advent Calendar 5: Bishop's Castle

Just a cat looking into your soul. Nothing to see here.