A Raft of Apples: Kirkby in Furness

Showing posts with label Kirkby in Furness. Show all posts

Sunday, 28 March 2021

St Cuthbert Church

St Cuthbert's church was carpeted with the gold of daffodils as I came through the Lynch gate. I had come here for solace as my dear Ron died suddenly on Monday 22 March and while many of the churches in the area had closed because of Covid I thought this one was open.

The church is Norman in origin

and this is the front entrance surrounded by Yew trees. Although the porch was open the door was not so in the Spring sunshine I wandered around to the right side away from the sharp wind. I have never though about why country churches have a low sloping sort of concrete attachment on the bottom of the church wall but as I sat down realised why, most comfortable. I sat and contemplated and was joined by a robin who sat nearby on a gravestone and kept me company for some time. I rose and wandered off

spotting a group of these bell like plants. They are a little like lungwort but not quite.

There is pretty gravestone for the Postlethwaite family and a more austere but attractive

grave marker for Dr James Menzies 1853-1941 and his wife Elizabeth Ellen 1863-1937. He was the Kirkby in Furness doctor and must have been admired because the stone reads - "The skill of the physician/ shall lift up his head and/in the sight of great men/he shall be in admiration".

I left by the war memorial with its white and yellow daffodils. For the history buff there are little biographies of the men by the gate but on this day of sadness it was not for me.

I admired the detail of the cross and went on my way home

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Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Dredging

The local farmer dredging the build up of weeds and mud in the roadside channels near Kirkby in Furness in anticipation of the winter rains. A series of bad winter storms and floods in recent years has meant this job is probably at the top of his 'to do' list. So far this year we have had no storms and unusually warm weather but I won't tempt fate by predicting that we have escaped as a wet week ahead has been forecast so those cleared channels may yet be filling up.

Moving from the west coast east and over the Pennine hills to Yorkshire

here is the River Aire whose banks could not contain the deluge of the 2015 winter storms, reached record levels and flooded towns, cities and villages. This is the groundwork going on near Buck Hill where they were dredging the river in 2016 and also

bank building

while clearing and building the drainage channels. You can see I had the ideal view of both drainage channels and river from the Buck Hill cast iron footbridge, built in 1889, which unlike many of the bridges in the area had weathered the storm.