ABC Wednesday - F is for...

Feathers!!

Fluffy and Fearsome.

It being the school holidays, and the weather being so foul we have struggled to find suitable places to take Emily. She is of an age where discovery is everything and counts a lot towards education and personal development. She seems to have an endless capacity for soaking up facts - if the weather's bad (which it seems to have been constantly) these facts will be absorbed from indoor activities or the television - I have caught her using advertising slogans in the past, she'll come out with "Every little helps!" (Tesco) or start singing "Let it shine!" (Morrisons.)

So, in order to cram her brain with as much non-TV knowledge as possible we try to take her out to places of interest. One such place is Kirkleatham Owl Centre near Redcar. Emily loved it. (I'll keep my thoughts about it to a later post.)

Snowy

The centre houses all manner of birds in addition to owls - as you can see from the first picture Vultures are there too as well as a pair of Ravens who absolutely refused to stand still long enough for me to photo them (they knew what I was up to and danced around, singing and 'laughing!!' - at me?)

Emily had a great time and came away with a fluffy feathered friend of her own (to add to the four million fluffy friends at home!!) So the day was a success for her and she learnt a lot. Afterwards we paid a visit to the Kirkleatham Hall Museum - subject of a future post.

For more fantastic 'F's' visit the ABC Wednesday Blog and sign in on Mr Linky or to view an anthology of all of the posts visit The ABC Wednesday Anthology.

Guisborough Priory

Guisborough and Priory 7th June 2008

Gisborough Priory was founded somewhere between 1119 and 1124 by Robert de Brus of Skelton. It was held by Augustinian Canons, whose role was to go out into the local area and provide Christian teaching and perform religious services. The area around Gisborough Priory had been disrupted by decades of warfare preventing regular teaching of Christianity.
In 1289, the wealth of the house was badly affected by a disastrous fire in the church. In addition, Scottish raids during the 1300s reduced the value of its lands and led it to take in refugees from monastic houses further north, who were more badly affected by raiders.Eventually Gisborough became one of the most popular and wealthy religious houses in Yorkshire and it controlled large amounts of land in the area.The house was dissolved in 1540 as part of Henry VIII’s Reformation of the Monasteries and the buildings became the property of the Chaloner family, who still hold them today.

(Excerpt from Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council Museums Site.)

Saturday 7th June 2008 - took Lesley and Emily and the Mother in Law to Guisborough for some shopping (It was market day.) Decided to pay a visit to a monument I'd not been to since I was a child - namely Guisborough Priory.

Although not much remains of the priory, it is still easy to imagine its scale based on the surrounding land. What a magnificent set of buildings they must have been, and it's still clear to see the workmanship and skill involved in its construction almost nine hundred years ago. Even Emily was impressed!! (Lesley is much harder to inspire when it comes to ancient architecture - but that doesn't stop me trying!)

I have always been fascinated by 'reconstructions' of ancient ruins - imagining how they must have looked when first built - to the right is an artist's impression of how the priory might have looked in the early fourteenth century. The trancept still standing faces the hills on this picture so it's difficult to guage a perspective though you can still see how impressive the building was - it would be nice to find an impression using the remaining ruins as a focal point though.

All in all a nice day - bit of shopping, bit of sightseeing, bit of history, what could be better?