Heritage Open Weekend

[shewhomust]

The idea behind Heritage Open Days is, it says here, to celebrate England's fantastic architecture and culture by offering free access to properties that are usually closed to the public or normally charge for admission. In practice, the participants are not necessarily those you would expect from that summary. We try to take full advantage of what's on offer. This year we:

• toured Durham Town Hall; part medieval guild hall (with a wonderful set of standard measures), part grandiose Victorian, all recently renovated


• visited the Bowburn Banner Group's exhibition of miners' lodge banners, and spent far longer than we'd intended comparing recurring motifs and falling into conversations about Durham's relationship with its mining history



• went to Middlesbough Transporter Bridge and - in my case - climbed up and walked across the Tees on its high-level walkway


• strolled around Middlesbrough admiring the extraordinary exuberance of its Victorian buildings (in 1820 it was just a hamlet; by 1860 it was a thriving industrial town; motto: Erimus, we shall be) all of which appeared either derelict or converted into bars and nightclubs (some of which had, in turn, fallen derelict). We had hoped to find a pub which would serve us lunch, but eventually despaired and went instead to mima: the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art


• ate an entirely satisfactory lunch at mima (ice cream: mirabelle & apricot, and gingerbread ice cream!), and then since it is, after all an art gallery, went upstairs to see the current exhibition, "The Naked and the Nude", works from the Tate Gallery. Inevitably, I liked very few of the works on display, in fact there was only one that I really liked, and it wasn't the Lucian Freud which was presented as the most important piece in the show. It was CRW Nevinson's A Studio in Montparnasse. In the foreground a dimly lit but comfortable room fills the lower third of the painting; above it, a huge window reveals a mass of buildings, a luminous Parisian cityscape trying to crowd in through the window. By the window seat that forms the boundary between the two, a small nude woman strokes an even smaller black cat.


• By now we were too late to join the walking tours of Hartlepool, but we visited St Hilda's church on the Headland, admired the nineteenth century glass, and paid our respects to the statue of Andy Capp - this was unveiled last summer by Jean Smythe, widow of Andy Capp's creator, who gave the work this resounding endorsement: "I would have thought that Reg would have really liked it, well I am hoping he would have done."


• This morning we went to Seaton Holme in Easington, once a medieval manor house, but subsequently serving a variety of functions, and adapted at each stage. This was the most disappointing site we visited; we could have seen more if we had arrived at the right time for a guided toure, but since the HOD web site didn't mention this, we mis-timed it.


• On the other hand, the parish church across the road was a pleasant surprise: a Saxon cross in the exterior stonework, a beautiful airy interior space, two medieval effigies (a knight in sandstone, a lady in Frosterly marble, both wearing the three popinjays of the Fitz-Marmaduke family - what sort of family decides that its character is best represented by three popinjays?) tucked away at the sides of the nave...


• A bright and breezy afternoon at Seaham Docks, and a pleasant stroll around part of the complex, though with not quite as much access as I'd expected: there were anglers on the piers, but the gates were locked to us. On the other hand, the Coble and Keelboat Society were there, and they'd brought a couple of cobles with them, which was fun.


• And we ended the weekend with another church visit, to St Mary's Seaham - a small and charming church, very simple uin design and with some remnants of its Saxon origins. The remarkable thing about it seemed to be that it had escaped being renovated in the nineteenth century, keeping not only three or four Saxon windows but also its seventeenth century box pews.

Put like that, it looks like quite a busy weekend.

Comments

[helenraven.livejournal.com]

What a broad selection of places! I don't think I could have coped with the transporter bridge - too high and exposed for me.

London Open House isn't until this coming weekend. I have my Saturday all planned out (Greenwich and Woolwich), but Sunday is still settling down.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

durham_rambler decided that the Transporter Bridge wasn't for him, either - I'm fine as long as there are railings between me and the drop!

And yes, the sheer variety is one of the things I really enjoy about the weekend.

No doubt there'a a reason why London has to be different...