Today I was out east of Sheffield where Yorkshire meets Nottinghamshire. Basically, I was capturing a bunch of squares I had missed for the Geograph project. There was no opportunity to plot a circular route as per usual and though I did walk a couple of miles, mostly I relied upon Clint to taxi me around.
Arguably, at the top of this blogpost is the best picture I snapped all day. I took seven photos of St Peter's Church, Letwell but I judge this to be the most pleasing one.
After Letwell, I travelled a couple of miles to Langold . This settlement was conceived in the nineteen twenties to service Firbeck Colliery. That coal mine was productive for forty years but by the late sixties its demise became inevitable for geological reasons. More than sixty miners died in Firbeck Colliery. There were far safer mines in the region.
At two thirty in the afternoon, I noticed that the local fish and chip shop was open so I treated myself to a small portion of chips with a sausage and a can of Diet Coke. Afterwards, I had a look round the well-kept village cemetery before heading back to Tickhill and the road home to Sheffield.
Back in the city, I stopped off at the New Era Square development south of the city centre to photograph the pandas. Funded by Chinese investors, the zone includes apartment blocks, eateries and other modern businesses. Sheffield attracts a lot of Chinese students though I am not sure how the damned coronavirus has affected their enthusiasm.
I like walking though graveyard. I sometime wonder what person story is. Also a big fan of fish and chips.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on and stay safe
Hello again Dora. I also wonder about the lives that are hinted at on gravestones. Enjoy that coffee!
DeleteIt seems strange that a shop can make and sell numberplates. I am not sure about now, but ours used to be made by prisoners and to this day are only issued by state or federal governments. I can imagine the new development, similar to how many are here. I do love the panda sculpture though.
ReplyDeleteBritish number plates are very simple and clear. All registrations are housed on a big computer down in Swansea, Wales. Who is Vic Roads?
DeleteSad that in the days of the mine, miners lives were treated so flippantly. they didn't care how many people dies.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right Red. It was as if their lives were expendable - collateral damage.
DeleteI prefer the old to the modern. Fish and chips, yum. We have lots of them here, but probably not up to standard. :)
ReplyDeleteThe best place to eat fish and chips is "The Magpie" cafe in Whitby, Yorkshire. However, the way humans have pillaged the oceans means that this traditional British favourite is now under threat. Where have the cod gone? Where is the haddock?
DeleteI may treat myself to fish & chips at the Irish pub tonight; it will be the first time in a year that I meet part of my pub quiz team there. We will be sitting outdoors on Ludwigsburg's beautiful market square and there will of course be no pub quiz. Four of us getting together (and no hugging or handshakes) is something I feel safe with.
ReplyDeleteTickhill? Not the nicest of place names, is it.
The picture of the church is beautiful.
Tickhill is a lovely village with history and numerous desirable homes. Very different from Langold which seems like a beached whale. A coal mining village without a coal mine.
DeleteHave the Chinese now bought Sheffield?
ReplyDeleteWell they haven't bought our house though we sometimes order a Chinese takeaway.
DeleteI have a very dear friend in Nottinghamshire and have sometimes wondered how far she is from you.
ReplyDeleteFish and chips is delicious, I don't think I have ever had chips and sausage, I think I prefer mash.
There are still many industries in many parts of the world where death and disablement are collateral damage. So long as someone is making a buck, who cares?
Nottinghamshire is an hour east of us. Those coal miners were not slaves but they might as well have been.
DeleteI like the church picture. It's so quintessentially English.
ReplyDeleteThat is kind of you to say so Dave.
DeleteI agree with you that the photo of St Peter's Church is pretty good, especially with the blue sky as a backdrop. We only had a dull grey sky here all day so I am envious.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's nice and sunny here on Wednesday morning too. "Pretty good" is high praise indeed from you JayCee!
DeleteFish and chips at 'The Magpie' yum, missing it. Accompanied by a pot of tea, white bread and butter and of course mushy peas.
ReplyDeleteOf course the mushy peas... Glad to learn that I am not the only one with sophisticated culinary taste.
DeleteExcellent photos, as always YP, but rather sad to see the neglected churchyard in Letwell.
ReplyDeleteLove the Panda in the last photo, though it's disturbing to know that the area is paid for by Chinese investment. How much longer before the whole of the UK is owned by China!
When their troops march in with cartons of chicken chow mein to pacify the natives.
DeleteHow many of the squares on the Geograph project have you contributed to now?
ReplyDelete6221 separate squares but 15413 photographs in total. In Ordnance Survey mapping, all of Great Britain is divided into 1km x 1km squares. It has become something of an obsession.
DeleteThere's not much point in diet coke if you've had fish and chips. Drink the real thing.
ReplyDeleteI prefer the unreal thing - less attractive to wasps.
DeleteThe ancestry that I've been researching has turned up a lot of miners from Scotland, around Airdrie. I can't imagine a worse life, underground, in the dark, black lung and cave ins.
ReplyDeleteI like the middle photo better, the red pops so well but what a juxtaposition between that photo and the panda.
My mother came from a coal mining family so I feel an allegiance to those who brought the black gold up to the surface.
DeleteThanks to your post, I looked up the names of all the miners who died in that pit:
ReplyDelete*Firbeck Main Colliery (UK) Durham Miners Museum.*
Also, *Completed Firbeck Pit Colliery Memorial Garden Wall.*
A peaceful place now. There is no one left to remember the men who never returned home from their day's work.
My paternal grandfather was a miner in Uddingston; and my Uncle John, who left school at 13, and contracted double pneumonia at 16, and survived.
One day at the coalface was enough for me; and this was in the early 1980s.
My mild claustrophobia had to be restrained. Never again.
There is a 1972 David Storey novel, *Pasmore*: the hero thinks of his father at the coalface, miles out under the North Sea.
The story ends with the son leaving the North for London.
Storey's father, like D.H. Lawrence's, was a miner.
Haggerty
On my mother's side my grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather were all coal miners in South Yorkshire. I feel an allegiance with them as you also appear to share.
DeleteAs every schoolboy used to know, the General Strike (1926) ended with the miners going back to work and accepting longer hours and a wages cut.
DeleteIt is sad there is no record of your fathers in the coal seams of South Yorkshire. The working class have no history.
Ken Loach directed a television drama about the General Strike in four parts, written by Manchester-born Jim Allen, *Days of Hope* available on DVD.
I was moved by the portrayal of James Arthur Cook (1884-1931), the Welsh-born miners' leader.
As my father observed: *Cook knew the miners had been betrayed by the government, and he did not live for many years after the end of the strike.'
Look him up online, Dictionary of Welsh Biography.
I always meant to hunt down a biography of Cook.
I have a book on Jim Larkin, written by a number of historians of the labour movement, *Lion of the Fold* edited by Donal Nevin.
Big Jim appeared as a character in *Strumpet City* by James Plunkett (Plunkett worked with Larkin) and in a novel by J.G. Farrell, *Troubles*.
Farrell was drowned while fishing at night in Ireland where he had set up home. It didn't help that he had been weakened by polio.
We lost many great novels with his untimely death.
I saw Plunkett in the restaurant of Belfast Station in 1973 and wish I had spoken to him. A quiet, grave man.
Haggerty
I read "Strumpet City" long ago. Regarding coal miners, the literary and artistic legacy is relatively tiny. I was pleased to see that the memorial garden to coal mining in Langold is beautifully kept and the names of the dead are proudly displayed on the wall.
DeleteGlad you read Strumpet: start *The Farewell Companions* (sequel) one rainy Whitsun when you are trying to lay the glum ghost of the other Larkin.
DeleteLangold looks well-maintained from the photos. The mining legacy is tiny.
Barstow (miner's son from Horbury) thought Sid Chaplin (1916-1986) was the truest of the Northern writers, since Sid was a miner.
From Stan's top floor in Ossett you could see the colliery in the distance.
I remember Norman Jeffares coming to Glasgow University to lecture on Yeats.
He spoke of the broken industrial landscape on his journey here, Scotland's Black Country.
Haggerty
Good for you for getting out, Mr. P.! You are sharing your world with us and I appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how I feel about the panda.
Don't worry, it's not a real one Ms Moon.
DeleteNot a lot of walking going on here this week. One might sink into the soft pavement never to be found again.
ReplyDeleteYou mean it's hot?
DeleteI love that picture. You capture the essence of times past. I am a huge fan of graveyards.
ReplyDeleteXO
WWW
Huge fan of graveyards! You don't visit them in the middle of the night do you - with a spade and a lantern?
DeleteLooks like a nice day out, great photos. Cute Panda.
ReplyDeleteThanks Travel. It was indeed a worthwhile day. I saw many things of interest.
DeleteFor me the second picture was by far the most interesting. These days we see far too few little 'shops' like that. The sort of place where, if you took an old split windscreen Morris Minor (I reconditioned one in the '80s) and asked for a windscreen wiper they would find you one by hook or by crook.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that that photo caused you to reflect on those old independent businesses. Before long they will be resigned to history.
DeleteJust so you know that I read your comments I wonder if they might be consigned to history.
Delete