I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountain almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and repeating its shape, as though reflected, in a wisp of grey smoke with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have seen in Art or Nature was quite so sublime.
Paul Theroux
The wanderer returns from a wonderful summer (late autumn) break in Sicily. The weather and views were perfect. I love this fascinating view from my hotel room in Taormina.
Tags: Cherie's Place Thought, Etna, Excelsior Palace, Italy, Taormina 2019, Vacation
The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.
Rumi
Tags: Arley Arboretum, Cherie's Place Thought
In 1821 Mr William Dingley arrived in Sherborne from Launceston Cornwall.
He began worshipping in the Congregational Church in Long Street, but finding it too full and difficult to obtain a seat he decided to erect his own Wesleyan Chapel.
So in 1824 he purchased land and a large outhouse in Cheap Street and converted it into a chapel which seated 200 people.
He laid the foundations of the present Methodist Church on the 23rd June 1841 and it opened in 1842 to a final cost of £3490.
The architecture is in the Gothic style, and remains much as originally built. Galleries were added inside in 1862 owing to an increase in congregation. At the West end a polygonal apse was added in 1884. Three shops on the Cheap Street frontage were demolished in 1851 and two new ones erected, leaving a pathway from the main street to the front entrance for the first time.
Near the entrance gates is a family-sized shoe scraper, complete with hand hold, now hidden by dense foliage, but if you peer behind the branches you can still find its twisted iron form as sturdy as ever.
The walls of the burial ground to the rear (Hospital Lane/Abbey Road access) have beautiful carved numbers to indicate grave spaces.
In 1986 the original Sunday School was sold to Sherborne School and is now known as the Powell Theatre. In an interesting theatrical link, the noted Victorian actor William Charles Macready and his family were among the congregation at the Methodist Church between 1850-1860, and he would no doubt approve of the theatrical endeavours of the Boys.
Tags: Cheap Street, Church, Dorset, Sherbourne, Vacation
The Conduit at the bottom of Sherborne’s South Street.
The hexagonal 16th-century structure originally stood in the north cloisters of the abbey, where it was used for washing by the monks.
It was moved to this site after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539
Tags: Dorset, Sherbourne, The Conduit, Vacation
