Thursday, May 8, 2014

Beamish Museum, England

Beamish is a world famous open-air museum telling the story of the people of North East England during the Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian periods. The museum's guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early 20th century.
Beamish has three replicated locomotives which pull recreated carriages. Today the 1815 Steam Elephant was on duty.


We also took a tour of the Mahogany Drift Mine, a coal mine original to the site. Drift mining is the working of coal seams accessed by a near-horizontal passageway in a mine, following the bed of coal. This kind of mining is done when the coal is on the side of a hill.


There were a few samplers in some of the houses (with the usual glare problems necessitating weird camera angles).


Notice the unusual hair on Adam and Eve.


There were also a few pieces of embroidered clothing.

And a neat collection of candy and cookie molds.

They also have an amazing collection of quilts. These are just a few of them.







And so another great trip comes to an end.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Durham, England

Durham today.
The highlight was the Durham Cathedral which was founded in 1093. The cathedral is regarded as one of the finest examples of Norman architecture. However, they don't allow photographs to be taken inside and they don't sell any decent photos of the interior so ...

We were able to see some examples of the cathedral's embroideries.







Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Hexham, England

Today we visited the Hexham Abbey in the town of Hexham. There has been a church on the site for over 1300 years since Etheldreda, Queen of Northumbria made a grant of lands to Wilfrid, Bishop of York, around 674. Of Wilfrid's Benedictine abbey, which was constructed almost entirely of material salvaged from nearby Roman ruins, the Saxon crypt still remains; as does a frith stool, a 7th/8th century throne.




There were some really interesting carvings in the Abbey.


And we were able to visit the crypt. These are the stairs down to it (from in the crypt).

In the afternoon we went to see Hadrian's wall but since many of the stones have been taken over the years to build other things, very little of the wall remains. The countryside in the area is very pretty however.


Monday, May 5, 2014

Slaley Hall, England

Today we made our way from Harrogate to Slaley Hall, our hotel for the next four days. But before we left we had time to stop back in at the Antiques Fair to pick up a few souvenirs. These little beauties are only about 6 inches tall.

Slaley Hall is a country house golf resort in Northumberland in North East England. It is surrounded by 1000 acres (4 km²) of Northumberland forest and moorland.



Sunday, May 4, 2014

Harrogate, England

Today was a day off. A room in the hotel was made available all day for stitching.


We also wandered around town a bit ...


... and spent an hour or so looking at all of the beautiful things for sale at an Antiques Fair.



Saturday, May 3, 2014

Whitby and Nunnington Hall, England

Whitby is a seaside town and port situated on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk. We visited the Whitby Museum today to see their sampler collection. They had some lovely samplers but the lighting was terrible so there is a lot of glare on the glass and the pictures were taken from odd angles.







After Whitby we went to Nunnington Hall, a country house in North Yorkshire. The present building is a combination of seventeenth and eighteenth century work but most of it was created during the 1680s. There were a few samplers but the lighting was even worse than Whitby.


There were also other types of needlework such as this sun lace from South America ...


... and some crewel work tapestries.



This beautiful fellow lived on the grounds.