Today we are going to travel along the site of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, from east to west. The only problem is the weather. Contrary to the weather shown in the header photo, the day started with stair rods. We had thought that we might stop at the visitor information centre and other individual sites but the weather was so awful when we stopped briefly in a carpark beside a roadside coffee stall watching devoted walkers trudge along the muddy paths we gave the idea up!

We had had another idea for today – to visit St Martin’s Church in the Cumbrian town of Brampton, near Carlisle. In 1874 it was agreed, at the behest of George Howard, 8th Earl of Carlisle, that the old Georgian church be pulled down and a new one built. On one condition though – that it be designed by his friend, Philip Webb, of the new Pre-Raphaelite schooll of art, together with Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.

stmartins

 

George Howard, also an artist, and his family ended up paying more than half of the total cost of £7,000. He, Philip Webb and the minister, Henry Whitehead, always intended that the windows would be filled with stained glass from designs by Burne-Jones and constructed in William Morris’s workshops. Morris would choose the colours and Burne-Jones the design, which concentrated on men and women in the Bible. The east window is explosive with intense Pre-Raphaelite colour.

eastwindow

In the centre at the bottom is the Pelican tearing her breast to feed her young, a metaphor for Jesus dying on the cross.

pelican

Even if you’re not particularly religous you can’t fail to be amazed at the sheer vibrancy of the colours. A collage of the other stained glass:

Something that made me laugh – a plaque on a little stone house on the outskirts of the town:

plaque

I’m going to break the rules of my blog now. We’ve decided to have a day off tomorrow (30th) and there are already so many photos on here already, I will continue today’s photos on the next blog.