Random thoughts and photos of my journey through life…
In summer 2022, to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, the moat transformed from a barren, flat lawn into a haven for bees, butterflies and other pollinators in the heart of the city. The moat was filled with wildflowers, grown from 20 million seeds.
But Superbloom was not just a spectacle for 2022. It was the first year of a permanent transformation of the Tower Moat into a beautiful naturalistic landscape.
10 Comments CherryPie on Aug 9th 2024
In 1736 Mahomet Weyonomon, a Mohegan Sachem (chief), died in Alsermanbury in the City of London. He was 36 years old. Foreigners could not be buried near St Saviour’s church, now Southwark Cathedral. The exact location of the grave is inknown. The sculpture behind you is his memorial.
Mahomet’s presence in London was the result of injustice and exloitation. His tribe had helped the first settlers in New England survive bitter cold and repel Indian attacks. The Mohegans became allies of the English but settlers began to steal tribal lands. Despite support for the Mohegan cause from Queen Anne’s Commissioners in1705, the lands were not returned.
Mahomet sailed to Lond in 1735 with three supporters to petition King George II for the return of the stolen lands. While awaiting an audience, Captain John Mason and Mahomet contracted smallpox and died.
This memorial was erected at the request of the Mohegan tribe to honour a fallen chief. A stone was brought from Mohegan lands and carved with forms that reflect ancient custom by Peter Randall-Page. It was unveiled by Her Majesty The Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh, on 22nd November 2006 with the tribal chairman Bruce Two Dogs Bozsum and the U.S. Ambassador – symbolically granting the audience Mahomet never received.*
*from a sign board next to the memorial (see photo for further detail)
8 Comments CherryPie on Aug 5th 2024
Filed under Holidays, Science & Nature, Stratford-upon-Avon 2022
I seem, like everything else, to be a center, a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself. Each and every one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable.
Alan Watts
8 Comments CherryPie on Aug 4th 2024
Information from Southwark Cathedral website:
The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie stands at the oldest crossing-point of the River Thames at what was for many centuries the only entrance to the City of London situated across the river. A verbal tradition passed on to the Elizabethan historian John Stow suggests that the first Christian establishment was a community of nuns in the 7th century, but the first written reference is the mention of a ‘minster’ in the Domesday Book of 1086.
In 1106 the church was ‘re-founded’ by two Norman knights as a priory, whose members lived according to the rule of St Augustine of Hippo. The church was dedicated to St Mary and later known as St Mary Overie (‘over the river’). The Augustinian Canons created a hospital alongside the church; this was the direct predecessor of today’s St Thomas’s Hospital opposite the Houses of Parliament and originally named in honour of St Thomas Becket who was martyred at Canterbury in 1170.
At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, the last six canons were pensioned off although they continued to live in buildings north of the church. The church itself became the property of King Henry VIII who rented it to the congregation. It was re-named St Saviour’s, though the old name remained in popular usage for many years.
St Saviour’s Church became Southwark Cathedral in 1905. The diocese which it serves stretches from Kingston-upon-Thames in the west to Thamesmead in the east and Gatwick Airport in the south. It has a population of two-and-a-half million people, served by over 300 parishes.
6 Comments CherryPie on Aug 3rd 2024
Cutty Sark was built exclusively for the China tea trade. Tea had been enjoyed in Asia for centuries, but it did not reach Britain until the 1650s.
Initially hailed for its medicinal qualities, tea was mainly enjoyed by the wealthy. But thanks, in part, to an extensive smuggling network, its popularity exploded. Tea taxes were slashed to end the smuggling, and by the early 19th century working families were consuming it twice daily. It was also huge business, with over 28 million kilograms imported in 1869 alone.
A fashion developed among Victorians for consuming the first tea to be unloaded in London. This spurred the ‘great tea races’ and a spirit of intense competition: get home first and you could command huge prices. That’s why, as a clipper ship, Cutty Sark was designed to be fast.
10 Comments CherryPie on Aug 1st 2024
