On the Owl Trail
Sep. 30th, 2018 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustTime for some holiday photos! I don't plan to revisit everything I posted about our trip to Norfolk, with added photos, but as I sort through the photos, some of them want to tell their own story. Starting - as we did - with Holt. Holt is an attractive eighteenth century market town, and you'd think that that would be what they'd want to tell visitors about, but no - Holt is all about the owls. The founding myth of Holt is "an ancient legend" that once upon a time some local men caught an owl, and put it in the Town Pound for 'safe-keeping'. Unsurprisingly, the owl flew away. On this basis, Holt has devised an Owl Trail, with a map, and markers set in the pavement:
This elegant fowl presides over a shop selling - well, the sort of decorative items visible in their upstairs window. Also art materials. I like that the picture just includes some of the flint walling that I liked so much. I can't explain this. I'm reasonably familiar with flint as a building material, you get it in Essex (mostly broken flints, displaying the glassy interior of the stone), and I've never been excited about it before, but in Norfolk I couldn't stop photographing it. As witness:
I don't know why this establishment had set a buddha outside their upstairs window. He can't be particularly serene, surrounded by all those spikes (to deter birds from nesting? I don't know). Still: flint, brick, buddha, it's all good.
This optician's shop appeals to another presiding spirit:
Admiral Lord Nelson was born in Norfolk, and the entire county claims him as "The Hero of Norfolk" but he has no direct connection with these premises, or with Holt. Elsewhere in the town, an owl plaque adorns "Nelson House", but can claim no more than that the name results from its once having belonged to relatives of Nelson "and he is reputed to have stayed here as a boy". So the "eye patch" is just a clever piece of branding.
We didn't have time - or energy - to follow the entire trail, but we did reach the far end, where a loop trail passes between two owl plaques at Obelisk Plain:
The "obelisk" is actually one of a pair of gateposts relocated from Melton Constable Park; the other was given to the town of East Dereham in 1757. The distances marked on each gatepost are correct for their original locations, some miles away. Despite this, according to the trail guide, at the start of World War II the townsfolk of East Dereham decided to dump their obelisk down a well so as not to assist the enemy in the event of an invasion. The people of Holt, less given to dramatic gestures, simply white washed over the four panels on their obelisk.
One more sign-that-isn't-an-owl:
The guide tells me only that "A grapevine motif can be seen above the entrance door of the mock-Tudor former Star Inn, previously called 'The Dolphin'." How old is 'mock-Tudor'? I'm guessing not very. And the grapes aren't necessarily original (though I like the reminder that grapes are a generic marker for an inn: it didn't have to be called 'The Grapes' and in this case wasn't).
And one last owl:
The Owl Tea Rooms were inviting, but we were ready for more than a cup of tea - time to go home to Blakeney for lunch:
This elegant fowl presides over a shop selling - well, the sort of decorative items visible in their upstairs window. Also art materials. I like that the picture just includes some of the flint walling that I liked so much. I can't explain this. I'm reasonably familiar with flint as a building material, you get it in Essex (mostly broken flints, displaying the glassy interior of the stone), and I've never been excited about it before, but in Norfolk I couldn't stop photographing it. As witness:
I don't know why this establishment had set a buddha outside their upstairs window. He can't be particularly serene, surrounded by all those spikes (to deter birds from nesting? I don't know). Still: flint, brick, buddha, it's all good.
This optician's shop appeals to another presiding spirit:
Admiral Lord Nelson was born in Norfolk, and the entire county claims him as "The Hero of Norfolk" but he has no direct connection with these premises, or with Holt. Elsewhere in the town, an owl plaque adorns "Nelson House", but can claim no more than that the name results from its once having belonged to relatives of Nelson "and he is reputed to have stayed here as a boy". So the "eye patch" is just a clever piece of branding.
We didn't have time - or energy - to follow the entire trail, but we did reach the far end, where a loop trail passes between two owl plaques at Obelisk Plain:
The "obelisk" is actually one of a pair of gateposts relocated from Melton Constable Park; the other was given to the town of East Dereham in 1757. The distances marked on each gatepost are correct for their original locations, some miles away. Despite this, according to the trail guide, at the start of World War II the townsfolk of East Dereham decided to dump their obelisk down a well so as not to assist the enemy in the event of an invasion. The people of Holt, less given to dramatic gestures, simply white washed over the four panels on their obelisk.
One more sign-that-isn't-an-owl:
The guide tells me only that "A grapevine motif can be seen above the entrance door of the mock-Tudor former Star Inn, previously called 'The Dolphin'." How old is 'mock-Tudor'? I'm guessing not very. And the grapes aren't necessarily original (though I like the reminder that grapes are a generic marker for an inn: it didn't have to be called 'The Grapes' and in this case wasn't).
And one last owl:
The Owl Tea Rooms were inviting, but we were ready for more than a cup of tea - time to go home to Blakeney for lunch:
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Date: 2018-09-30 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-30 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 05:01 pm (UTC)And yeah, those are pigeon-deterring spikes.
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Date: 2018-10-03 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-03 09:56 am (UTC)