On my recent holiday I got a bit carried away and took around 700 photographs so it has taken me a long time to sort them out.  Now I have finished  I will continue to post about the many places that I visited whilst I was away.  For those of you who would like to see them sooner, I have also uploaded photos of the places I visited to a gallery which can be found here.  Any photo can be clicked on for a larger view or to scroll through the photos.  I haven’t put captions on all of them yet, but I am getting there.

It is part of a project to collate all my holiday diaries and photographs in one place so that it is easy for family and friends to access them. It may take some time

Info from the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas guide book:

In World War II, after the fall of Denmark and Norway in 1940, Newcastle became the home of the Danish merchant fleet. About 4,000 Danish seamen sailed from here and 1,406 gave their lives. the memorial in natural slate and stainless steel, designed in 1982 by Ronald G. Sims, the cathedral architect, is imaginative and arresting. The Westmorland slate represents the Danish islands and the remembrance book came originally from the Danish Seamen’s Church in Newcastle via the Danish Seamen’s Church in London. In October 2002 the memorial was augmented by the fine window above. Its simple but powerful images include the coats of arms of Newcastle and three Danish ports; crosses for ‘faith’ anchors for ‘hope’, and the heart for ‘charity’, all set in clear but textured glass. The designer was Mike Davis of Durham and the glass is Northumbrian with two clear roundels of Danish glass in the shaped beads of the outer lights.

The plaque underneath the memorial window, seen to the right of the second photo reads:

Dedicated on 26th October 2003 in the presence of Tom Risdahl, his excellency the Danish Ambassador.  The window displays the virtues of faith, hope and charity.  And the arms of some of the ports of the Danish Seamen; Arhus, Marstal and Copenhagen together with those of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Above the Thornton brass is a sculpture designed by Stephen Cox.  It represents a broken Communion wafer and the meniscus of a cup of Communion wine.

high up on the back of the reredos, is a curious sculpture of two discs.  The top one, in Egyptian alabaster, represents a broken Communion wafer while the second, in Roman imperial porphyry, represents the meniscus (the flat surface) of a cup of Communion wine.  Both types of stone have been quarried for thousands of years in Egypt, first by the Pharaohs and then by the Romans, and so both are directly linked to the actual time and place of Christ’s earthly life.*

*From the Cathedral of St Nicholas guidebook.

This brass once covered the altar tomb of Roger Thompson.

[This] huge Flemish brass that formerly covered the altar tomb of Roger Thornton in the ancient Newcastle parish church of All Saints, Quayside, which closed for Anglican worship in 1959. It is believed to be the largest brass in the country.

It is pre-1429 and commemorates Roger who died in that year, his wife who predeceased him in 1411, and their seven sons and seven daughters. Roger Thornton was the ‘Dick Whittington’ of Newcastle, having arrived from the Cumberland area in a penurious state. He became a successful merchant in the town and was a great benefactor to St Nicholas’s and other churches and institutions. He was three times Mayor of Newcastle and several times Member of parliament.*

*From the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas guidebook.