Category A-Zchallenge
Cathedrals: the old, Canterbury, to the new, Coventry. #atozchallenge
There is a blurring of the lines between the great churches of abbeys and cathedrals. To me, as a visitor, they both offer the same experience and seem so akin as to be indistinguishable. However, it’s obviously more complicated than that. The word Cathedra is derived from the Latin word for chair. It is presence […]
Buckfast abbey – alive today #atozchallenge
I remember visiting Buckfast Abbey as a child. The stone looked clean and smooth. It isn’t a ruin. It’s very much alive and occupied. The original abbey was built in the reign of King Cnut in 1018 in Saxon times. A Benedictine monastery that continued for a few decades but by 1086 when the Doomesday […]
Abbeys – a long history. #atozchallenge
My first post is about abbeys. What is an abbey and what does it represent? Abbeys are a complex of buildings centred around a church devoted to a religious order and governed by an abbot or abbess, so they are synonymous with the establishment of monasteries and convents. An abbey is a home, a work […]
A-Z Blogging Challenge – Theme day!
This will be my third year of doing the A-Z blogging challenge. One letter of the alphabet per day, excluding three Sundays, and each letter will be about…… Abbeys and Cathedrals of the UK Since I managed with castles last year, I thought I would take my other great architectural love and expand on it. […]
#AtoZchallenge – reflections on a month of blogging
I’ve had a breather and it’s time for a little reflection on the A-Z challenge – the 26 posts on castles I wrote for April’s blogging challenge. This year was my second attempt – I participated last year on the theme of inspiration and with this in mind, I chose what I thought was a […]
Ashby-de-la-Zouch #AtoZchallenge
So to the last day of the A-Z challenge and I’m fortunate to have the perfect castle for my choice of theme – Ashby-de-la-Zouch – the name even looks AtoZ ish. Ashby is a small town in Leicestershire, the county of my birth. The manor house was given to the Zouch family in return for […]
York: a castle in a car park
The urban castle is a different breed to the rural one. It’s been assaulted not by weapons, but by its surroundings and that includes how society changes around it. Ruins have a beauty about them and with light and shadows, they transform the hard rock into architectural sculptures. However, castles were built for a less […]
The Xylo castle #AtoZchallenge
And so arrives the dread X. It so happens xylo is a Greek word related to wood and this leads me to building materials. As I’ve mentioned in a few posts, castles weren’t always made with stone. The early ones utilised wood and lots of earthworks. Even though stone was popular with the Romans, the […]
Warwick: A real attraction #AtoZchallenge
I began with Alnwick, a castle that has stayed in one family for 700 years and near the end of the alphabet I reach Warwick, which has had 36 different owners and during a period as crown property, seven monarchs oversaw its ownership. Warwick began life in William the Conqueror’s time as a wooden motte […]
Vantage point – visiting a castle – #AtoZchallenge
You might have guessed I’ve visited a few castles in my time. I’ve plenty still to go! What I have noticed over the years is visiting a castle involves two positions: looking up and looking down. When you’re a small child, castles are huge. Even as an adult, one who’s lived in big cities with […]
The Quiet Writer 