There and Back

Following Ipswich`s Artethon trail in 2011, I came across No 4 in my list, which was TAM. Honoria Surie, the artist who made Tam, was born in Hertfordshire in 1944. She trained at Watford School of Art and is now a painter and potter. The bronze of Tam, the artist's daughter, is Surie's first work in the field of sculpture and is sited on a short plinth on the grass triangle between Black Horse Lane and St Mary Elms Church. The statue is made of bronze and has a calm and serene feel to it in keeping with its location Sculpture of a teenage girl sitting cross-legged in dungarees molding a ball of clay.  Then, as if by magic, I found another piece of art nearby on the porch of the small church, St Mary Elms, popularly known by Ipswich people as simply the Elms. A return visit to the church had to the wait until 2019! The three small niches above the porch door of the Church, furnished with contemporary relief sculptures by Charles Gurrey in 2006. The...

We had read about the "Two Ladies" of Llangollen, and our interest raised. So, today we visited their house in Llangollen. To start with, we believed they were just eccentric ladies, but the story that began to fall into place was far more than that! An abridged version of their life appears HERE and its worth reading before looking at the images. However, below are the first two paragraphs to wet the appetite! This is the story of two aristocratic ladies who eloped together to Wales in 1778 and lived happily ever after in a cottage ornée,(decorated cottage) surrounded by gardens full of Gothic follies. Their names were Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, but they were better known as the Ladies of Llangollen, "the two most celebrated virgins in Europe".Although the Ladies wished to live in "delightful retirement" - reading, writing, drawing and gardening - the fashionable world soon beat a path to their cottage door. Their visitors included the...

We left the Two Ladies and drove a short distance along the A5 to Corwen for lunch, where we were confronted by this magnificent statue, as we left the carpark - apparently The last Welsh Prince of Wales. Owain Glyndŵr was probably born in the 1350s (the plinth gives 1349). The young Owain was a typical nobleman, his etiquette honed at the Inns of Court in London. He had homes in Carrog, near Corwen, and Sycharth in Powys (near Oswestry). He fought with the English against the Scots and Dutch before King Richard II was abducted in Colwyn Bay in 1399 and dethroned by supporters of Henry Bolingbroke, who then became Henry IV. It’s unclear whether the change of monarch affected the outlook of middle-aged Glyndŵr. At around this time he began to argue with a neighbour, Baron Reginald Grey of Ruthin. In September 1400 he attacked Ruthin, and followed up with raids on other local boroughs. This quickly escalated into full-scale rebellion, as Welsh people saw a chance to hit back at E...

A round trip was on the agenda for today, encompassing several sites we had `bookmarked` in our minds before we set out. Our starting point was the town of Llangollen which was about 7 miles away. Llangollen is a very `pretty` town, for want of another word! Also famous for the International Musical Eisteddfod which is a music festival taking place every year during the second week of July. It is one of several large annual Eisteddfodau in Wales. Singers and dancers from around the world are invited to take part in over 20 competitions followed each evening by concerts on the main stage. Over five thousand singers, dancers and instrumentalists from around 50 countries perform to audiences of more than 50,000 over the 6 days of the event. Llangollen takes its name from the Welsh llan meaning "a religious settlement" and Saint Collen, a 6th-century monk who founded a church beside the river. St Collen is said to have arrived in Llangollen by coracle. There are no other chu...