Wednesday 20 February 2013

Old Doorway



In the middle of Colchester centre stands this Saxon tower, built around 1020 AD they say.  This is the oldest known church in the town, and as the Saxon's tended to build in wood, abundant in the area while stone is not, this may well replace a previous structure.  Actually, outside the new police station lies the traces of a building thought by some to be the first Christian church in the island, possibly built in the first 300 years of the millennium.   There is an abundance of Roman tiles in the doorway and the walls of the tower, which shows how entrenched the Romans were here.   The doorway is not encouraging fat people (oops, sorry, grammar nazi's insist on 'obese.') to enter is it?  


  
The narrow street meant I could not get a better picture from there but sufficient to show the height.  I can imagine their shaky scaffolding as the tower grew!  Amongst the graves in the plot squashed around the tower lies one William Gilberd, whom you will recognise as the physician to Queen Elizabeth I.  He also discovered 'electro-magnetism' whatever that is.  Also entombed lies one John Wilbye, whom you will recall was famous for writing madrigals. (A note to the less enlightened, madrigals were songs, not magazines)  I stuck my head through the side door into what once was a church to find a dingy hall filled with tables all askew.  The hall now serves youth and sometimes is used as a music venue.  While useful to many this appears to me to be a sad end for such a building.  


All around us lie things we never see because they have always been there.  I suspect folks walking up East Hill never glance at this one time watering place.  We take clean water for granted, except when the bill comes in, but until the middle of the 19th century it was not always so.  Water was often polluted, if available, and beer was safer to drink.  Many houses built near the end of the century still shared a common water pump.  This one was erected in 1864 'In Memorium,' but it does not say of whom!  I can imagine bare footed children crowding around each time they passed for a free drink.  Quite what the lower niche was for I know not. Did they wash their feet there perhaps.  


I noticed this in the walls of the priory but am undecided as to the purpose.  A window perhaps? Too high of the ground for anything else.  In RC tradition a light is kept burning, possibly this was connected to that, possibly not.  You can see the haphazard stonework.  Anything lying around was used.


 Yet another memorial to the war dead stands in the priory grounds.  To which members of the town I did not look to see however I was once again struck by the use of the phrase 'The Glorious Dead.'  How the people at home wanted to believe the losses had been worthwhile.   The effect of the losses remains in our character to this day.  

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8 comments:

Lee said...

So much wonderful history and reminders of that history...and as you say so much of it unseen by the passing parade of people.

A lovely, elderly lady that I had the good fortune to meet a number of years ago said to me that so soon we take beauty and what's around us...right before our eyes...for granted...we just don't see it.

Kay G. said...

I wondered if that phrase above the water well was from the Bible. It is. Isaiah 12:3 "Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation."
(You might have know this, I didn't.)
Thanks for having this as a post.

I once saw a church in a small village in England and was shocked at the long list of names who had died in World War I. It made me think how many men could have been left in that generation for that small place.

Adullamite said...

Lee, Indeed we take it for granted because it is always there.

Kay, I think that is what she meant.
Each town and village have such. About 750,000 died, half of whom have never been found.

Unknown said...

This is another excellent account. I suspect that you are still unwilling to give credit to your "ghost-writer"--right?

Helen Devries said...

I was telling a Costa Rican neighbour abut drinking beer as being safer than water.
He beamed and said he would tell his wife that....

Think I might by lying low for a while...

Adullamite said...

Jerry, I think it's more you learning to read that does it.

Helen, Lie low!

Jenny Woolf said...

I love to find anywhere that goes back to that far. Even more surprising how many churches survived the Victorian mania for rebuilding.
When you start to read the stories, or even family histories, of the war, it becomes so horrible to think about, even if you don't know the people. The sacrifice isn't glorious but the people have to be glorious, becuase to those who lost them, they probably were.

Adullamite said...

The love of old buildings goes far, especially strange doorways.