Latest Blog Posts
Posted 10 hours 56 min ago
Although Upper Clyde Parish Church in Lanarkshire, Scotland, looks quiet and rural (which certainly describes most of the 180 square miles of its parish) the building itself sits right next to the busy and noisy A74(M), which is to the left of the trees, the users of which may see the spire as they zoom past.
Posted 1 day 10 hours ago
It is unusual to stand on a spot which was once occupied by a cathedral but is now entirely vacant. The old Norman cathedral at Sarum in Wiltshire was replaced by Salisbury in the 1200s and is now just a set of peculiar foundations and enigmatic shapes.
Posted 2 days 10 hours ago
In The Castles of Scotland, Martin Coventry refers to some bones which were found when a wall at Strathaven Castle collapsed in the nineteenth century.
Posted 3 days 10 hours ago
I recently enjoyed reading Andrew Thomson’s biography of John Owen (1616–1683), the great seventeenth-century puritan theologian. Despite the author being a Scottish Presbyterian minister, the old rivalry between the two expressions of church government failed to diminish Thomson’s evident admiration for the great man.
Posted 3 days 10 hours ago
St Mary’s Parish Church in the Lancashire-North-of-the-Sands town of Ulverston I saw last month. It is a pleasant building, and one which is kept open mid-week. I enjoyed looking around while a friendly church member rested from her vacuuming.
Posted 4 days 10 hours ago
‘Intermediate Avens’ is one of the dullest names given to a wildflower, the usual examples of which are colourful, vernacular and memorable. It sounds like some kind of examination award for the bored, non-academic 16-year-old. Yet the Plantiary website describes the poorly named flower in a rather charming manner:
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