All work and no play makes Jack and dull boy.

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The Duke of York Memorial, Wakefield

 

 

The annual commemoration of the death of the Duke of York in 1460.

The Richard III Society Yorkshire Branch holds a small memorial service to remember those killed in the Battle of Wakefield each year on it’s anniversary.

It was a cold, damp and grey Saturday, the weather typical of England in the middle of winter, when I gathered with other members of the Yorkshire branch of the Richard III Society to remember those killed during Battle of Wakefield, in particularly Richard, third Duke of York (and, some would argue, King by Right) and his son Edmund Rutland.

One can only imagine what it must have been like 563 years previous when, on December 30th 1460, Richard sortied from Sandal Castle barely 500m away. He was, some say, riding to the aid of foragers in the wilds around the castle who had encountered attacks from Lancastrians forces arrayed in the area. Castles were not renowned for the degree of comfort we expect of the modern world, and heading out into what was probably an equally grey and miserable day as the one we ventured out into, the Duke and his forces must have yearned for a quick return to the comparative warmth of the castle hearth.

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Earl Grey’s Tower, Stanton Moor

 

 

Earl Grey's Tower

A view of the tower.

Earl Grey’s Tower, also known as the Reform Tower, stand on the edge of Stanton Moor in Derbyshire was built as a monument to the 1832 Reform Act. I passed it on my second history hike on Sunday, completely unexpected and somewhat awe inspiring given it’s history.

The tower was built by the Thornhill family to commemorate Early Grey, a Whig Prime Minister who supported the passing of Great Reform Bill of 1832, thus creating an “Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales”.

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Padley Hall


 

Ruins of Padley HallAmidst the rolling hills and occasional leafy glades of the Peak District I came across Padley Hall, a once great Elizabethan manor house, now nothing more than the foundations of it’s stone walls, ruined and broken.

But these stones have the history of Padley written into them – an altar stone hidden for three hundred and fifty years, the hearth stones of a great fireplace, the steps, the foundations.

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Southwell Minster and The Architecture of the Ages

 

 

Southwell Minster and churchyard

The Minster’s west front and north porch.

Southwell Minster – The heavy walls, sharp corners and definitive rounded arches peered out from the pages of a book I was reading – or was it an on-line, social media post? – late last year, drawing me in with it’s grand, austere Norman architecture and emitting an aura of the medieval times in which it was conceived.

The plain simplicity of it’s Romanesque west front reflects the piety and devotion to a Higher Power of those who built it. But in it’s simplicity the building’s architecture  serves another purpose – a projection of power and authority, a domineering fortress to protect against an oft anarchic age.

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