salisbury
Nazi photo of Salisbury Cathedral
I found this on archive.org.
It gives me the chills. It’s an unusual view of the Cathedral, which sets up a certain dissonance, but more significantly it was part of a pack created for the Nazi invasion of the UK.
I wonder who took it, and when.
I think the house in the foreground is Rangers House. It’s on one of my running routes
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city - Charlie D on my hometown
An annual-ish tweet / toot / post in honour of Charles Dickens' birthday
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city; and when he had put up the horse, and given the hostler to understand that he would look in again in the course of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he set forth on a stroll about the streets with a vague and not unpleasant idea that they teemed with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To one of his quiet habits this little delusion was greatly assisted by the circumstance of its being market-day, and the thoroughfares about the market-place being filled with carts, horses, donkeys, baskets, waggons, garden-stuff, meat, tripe, pies, poultry and huckster’s wares of every opposite description and possible variety of character. Then there were young farmers and old farmers with smock-frocks, brown great-coats, drab great-coats, red worsted comforters, leather-leggings, wonderful shaped hats, hunting-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in groups, or talking noisily together on the tavern steps, or paying and receiving huge amounts of greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky pocket-books that when they were in their pockets it was apoplexy to get them out, and when they were out it was spasms to get them in again. Also there were farmers’ wives in beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding shaggy horses purged of all earthly passions, who went soberly into all manner of places without desiring to know why, and who, if required, would have stood stock still in a china shop, with a complete dinner-service at each hoof. Also a great many dogs, who were strongly interested in the state of the market and the bargains of their masters; and a great confusion of tongues, both brute and human.
Mr Pinch regarded everything exposed for sale with great delight, and was particularly struck by the itinerant cutlery, which he considered of the very keenest kind, insomuch that he purchased a pocket knife with seven blades in it, and not a cut (as he afterwards found out) among them. When he had exhausted the market-place, and watched the farmers safe into the market dinner, he went back to look after the horse. Having seen him eat unto his heart’s content he issued forth again, to wander round the town and regale himself with the shop windows; previously taking a long stare at the bank, and wondering in what direction underground the caverns might be where they kept the money; and turning to look back at one or two young men who passed him, whom he knew to be articled to solicitors in the town; and who had a sort of fearful interest in his eyes, as jolly dogs who knew a thing or two, and kept it up tremendously.
But the shops. First of all there were the jewellers’ shops, with all the treasures of the earth displayed therein, and such large silver watches hanging up in every pane of glass, that if they were anything but first-rate goers it certainly was not because the works could decently complain of want of room. In good sooth they were big enough, and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly enough, to be the most correct of all mechanical performers; in Mr Pinch’s eyes, however they were smaller than Geneva ware; and when he saw one very bloated watch announced as a repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of striking every quarter of an hour inside the pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished that he were rich enough to buy it.
But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with ‘Master Pinch, Grove House Academy,’ inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged within—what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open; tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like handposts on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond; and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name, whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any form, upon the narrow shell beside his bed at Mr Pecksniff’s. What a heart-breaking shop it was!
There was another; not quite so bad at first, but still a trying shop; where children’s books were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe stood alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat-skin cap and fowling-pieces; calmly surveying Philip Quarn and the host of imitators round him, and calling Mr Pinch to witness that he, of all the crowd, impressed one solitary footprint on the shore of boyish memory, whereof the tread of generations should not stir the lightest grain of sand. And there too were the Persian tales, with flying chests and students of enchanted books shut up for years in caverns; and there too was Abudah, the merchant, with the terrible little old woman hobbling out of the box in his bedroom; and there the mighty talisman, the rare Arabian Nights, with Cassim Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dreadful sum, hanging up, all gory, in the robbers’ cave. Which matchless wonders, coming fast on Mr Pinch’s mind, did so rub up and chafe that wonderful lamp within him, that when he turned his face towards the busy street, a crowd of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he lived again, with new delight, the happy days before the Pecksniff era.
He had less interest now in the chemists’ shops, with their great glowing bottles (with smaller repositories of brightness in their very stoppers); and in their agreeable compromises between medicine and perfumery, in the shape of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither had he the least regard (but he never had much) for the tailors’, where the newest metropolitan waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by some strange transformation always looked amazing there, and never appeared at all like the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped to read the playbill at the theatre and surveyed the doorway with a kind of awe, which was not diminished when a sallow gentleman with long dark hair came out, and told a boy to run home to his lodgings and bring down his broadsword. Mr Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing this, and might have stood there until dark, but that the old cathedral bell began to ring for vesper service, on which he tore himself away.
People in Salisbury can, finally, pick up litter again should they want to.
Mr Putin stills owes me a pair of trainers that I threw away though.
Watercolour skies in the Shire this morning
The Hogwarts Express came through Salisbury station just now
This is a lovely Christmas wreath on a lovely Salisbury building…but it looks a bit out of proportion - as if there’s been a Spinal-Tap-Black-Sabbath-Stonehenge type confusion between inches and feet
Just saw this in town.
Salisbury to Norfolk would be a decent walk
To Trowbridge by train today.
In quick succession you go past the White Horse at Westbury, as in Ravilious' painting, and Dilton Marsh, of John Betjeman’s poem
There isn’t a porter. The platform is made of sleepers.
The guard of the last train puts out the light
And high over lorries and cattle the Halt unwinking
Waits through the Wiltshire night.
It’s a sunny-but-cold day in the Shire
Very much enjoyed a folkie night out with Cara Dillon last night. It was just her and her other half, Sam Lakeman, but I really liked the intimacy of that, if that’s the right word
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2024/51e9cwguwbl.-uf8941000-ql80-fmwebp-.jpg" width=“600” height=“600” alt=“A woman stands in front of a microphone wearing a red dress, with text above her that reads “Cara Dillon Live at Cooper Hall."">
There’s a nice picture of the Salisbury ‘Spoons on the cover of their latest magazine
I feel that, if I live long enough, the stones will turn out to have come from Antarctica, or a passing asteroid or something
Seeking a Scottish source: Updating the story of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone In CA 415, we reported on new scientific analysis suggesting that the origins of the Stonehenge Altar Stone lay hundreds of miles from Salisbury Plain, in the Orcadian Basin of north-east Scotland.
The Past - Seeking a Scottish source: Updating the story of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone
Random painting of Salisbury
Merritt, H. S. - St. Ann’s Gate, Salisbury, 1943
I used to go through this gate to go to school, but not in 1943
V & A page with a bit more detail
I don’t think I’ve posted this before. A sketch note/map that i did a few years ago of the walk from Salisbury to Stonehenge
Theresa May gets it right here. It was appalling that Putin tried to assassinate someone on British soil, and it was just unbelievable that they didn’t care about who else got poisoned
“May said the men acted with “utter recklessness”. She said: “You felt they just didn’t care about anything.”
Beautiful day in The Shire…if you can avoid the rain
My favourite pub name is The Conquered Moon
By the way…everyone should have a favourite pub name - what’s yours?
The Conquered Moon was a pub on Bemerton Heath which shut down many years ago
I searched online for a picture of the pub sign. I couldn’t find one, so I got an AI to do this
More to come
People I have seen on the train between Salisbury and London
The two writers were in second class the other two were in first
Well….I like it!
‘Pile of old wood’: Salisbury residents say sculpture spoils cathedral view - www.theguardian.com/artanddes…
The work on Salisbury’s new riverside walk has been a nuisance, especially for the wonderful Elai restaurant, but its great that it’s open again now and i think its going to be great
