CHURCH LARKING - Appleby in Westmorland Parish Church

Built in local red sandstone St Lawrence's appears like many churches in this district to be excessively worn. The stone seems not sufficiently durable enough for the weather it encounters. And the finesse of the carving of its porches and window tracery is a little lumpen and solidly executed.  It's not the sort of stone you would normally make a church out of. It is rather poor in quality. But if it's the best you've got available, then here it is. It is not then unexpected that St Lawrence's has had repeated restorations and revamps over it's nine hundred years history.

It sits squat and low in the valley. It has a clerestory and tower, both heavily crenellated. The tower is the oldest part of the church, it's lower level dates back to the late 12th Century. The majority of its nave and chancel were rebuilt in the 14th and 15th Century.  With some late perpendicular window insertions. In 1655 the ubiquitous Lady Anne Clifford, very fond of splashing her wealth around this district, spent money on restoring the church. 

The Victorians had two further goes at improving it's interior. In the 1830's when the unusual, and very fine plasterwork ceiling was installed in the nave by Christopher Hodgson. Further restorations were made in the 1860's that included the insertions of some rather splendid stained glass windows by Heaton, Butler & Bayne or William Wailes, both Gothic revival specialists. There was extensive restoration work done in the 1960's and again in 2015 after severe flooding from the River Eden that snakes around the back of the land the church rests on.

The interior is largely decorated in style, It has a quiet and humble appearance with little sense of architectural loftiness to its nave. The most notable object in the nave is the beautifully carved organ with its cherub heads and dramatic three turrets for its pipes. This is sited against the west wall and seems enormous and far too dominating for a church of this size. It was originally a gift to the church from Carlisle Cathedral by its dean in the 17th century.

The chapel in the north east is dedicated to the Clifford family, and you'll find there funeral monuments to Lady Anne Clifford. A black marble plaque with an extensive display of her lineage displayed in heraldry shields. For someone whose inheritance was seriously curtailed by this lineage You can't help thinking that even in death she was not above labouring the point. Her monument is accompanied by the effigy in alabaster of her mother Lady Margaret.

Generally St Lawrence's is architecturally modest, but is nevertheless a warmly welcoming medieval church, worth a visit.

FINISHED READING - Handmade by Anna Ploszajski

Subtitled - A Scientist's Search for Meaning through Making, I don't know what I thought this book would be like when Hubby thrust it towards me in the Library, as a possible book to read on holiday. As it turned out, I chose not to take it with me, something about it made me think it wasn't a good fit for holiday reading. So I've only started reading it on my return. It is quite an easy approachable read, so I've zipped through it. It's not quite what I expected it to be. But quite what I expected I don't know, but it's probably covered by the words -  more of a philosophically deep enquiry into the creative process of making objects. Whilst it touches on this in the concluding paragraphs of a chapter, I could have done with more reflections. It seemed frequently to get caught up in the inadequacies of being a novice at a skill, and learning from one's mistakes. All of which is fair enough.  It took me a little while to adjust to this being what this book actually is. 

Anna Ploszajski is a material scientist, and during the book you do get glimpses into her own personal and family history, and how it is relates to specific materials. She sort of stumbled into material science and the Institute of Making. And literally grapples in trying to understand and actually utilise the properties of materials with her own hands, which all the information in her head cannot really help her with the actual dexterity of the doing.

"Even though the process of softening both plastic and glass with heat and shaping them by hand were similar, the lack of material personality of plastic was enough to leave me artistically stumped. Is the neutrality of plastic, though, not a characteristic of sorts? ......Perhaps all materials embody inherent characters, some more strongly than others, gifted by a combination of how they look, feel, smell. Sound and move. It might be the skill of the craftsperson is to notice and tap into these inherent material personalities, to make the best of them when they transform materials into objects.'*

Each chapter takes a particular material starting with glass, then plastic, steel, brass ,clay sugar,wool, wood, paper, and ending with stone. Some of these materials humanity has had a long and very fruitful relationship with. She explains a bit about the qualities of the material and how this is related to it's structure on a microscopic level. So we learn what makes glass transparent, so fragile, and yet so useful, for instance. But Ploszajski is also wanting to get more hands on with these materials and move her experience from the theoretical towards the practical and experiential. So she meets up with various crafts people, attends workshops and receives one on one teaching, which demonstrates to her how when you are dealing with a material on a practical level, knowing why on a theoretical level it's behaving or responding in this particular way, isn't really that useful when your working with it. There is often a hands on technique to be learnt,, a skill, that an experienced crafts person acquires and knows, that controls or gets around a weakness or turns a problematic quality in a material to creative advantage. This can really only be taught hands on, and that is what the handing down of a legacy of centuries of skilled craftsmanship and experiment is. 

' We appear to have started into philosophical questions unanswerable by material science - is an object still and object if it's not made of anything? philosophers of the materialism camp would say that even ideas are material in nature, since they cannot exist without the physical human brain. Idealists would argue the opposite, that material objects are merely collections of ideas, which require the mind in order to exist. ....I wonder whether the physical act of making with materials can be harnessed to influence or change our emotional state.'*

I read all the explanations that material science has for why glass is so pliable when heated, which I thought I'd grasped, in the moment of reading it. Though I find I've retained very little if it in my memory bank. But then I am a hands on learner primarily. I get the jist of the theory, that these qualities are often to do with the nature of the molecular gaps in a materials structure or chemical reactions, but holding the precise details tends to elude me. I enjoyed reading the book, even though, for me, it never quite set me fully alight with insightful revelations.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

* Extracts from Handmade by Anna Ploszajski, Published by Bloomsbury Sigma 2021.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Brougham Castle

Brougham Castle was one of five castles that spanned in a close series the Western Marches. One of the border areas of England which were for centuries contested land. Cumbria had been under Scottish fiefdom until 1157. But opportunistic raiding parties, mainly issuing from the direction of Scotland into England continued to be commonplace in medieval times - stealing cattle, burning villages, rape, pillage, capturing castles in order to destroy them, were just some of the things that were got up to. So the maintenance of this line of fortresses running from Penrith Castle in the North, through Appleby Castle, Brough Castle, Brougham Castle, Pendragon Castle, down to Skipton Castle in the South, was a vital line to hold. Until of course it wasn't. Once James VI of Scotland also became James 1st of England, raids no longer had royal approval, and so the whole raison d'etre for them fell away.

All but one of these six fortresses ( Penrith Castle ) were in the hands of the wealthy and well connected Clifford Family. At various points all these castles had been attacked, elements burnt or destroyed.  Five castles all in close proximity to one another could not have all been fully inhabited or adequately maintained and defended simultaneously. And by the succession of James 1st their viability as a defensive deterrent was also diminishing. In the coming age of peace, the elegant stately home and estate, rarely fitted a castle's lofty prominence, cold stone walls, floors, and draughty castle towers. One by one they'd fallen into disuse and bad repair. They faced the future as a romantic ruin.

Brougham Castle guards a strategic river crossing. Built in red sandstone,and partially broaching onto the previous site of a Roman fort. It was constructed in the early 13th century by Robert de Vieuxpont, acting on behalf of King John. The solid massive keep he built still stands and can be climbed up to near its original height. From there you can see the River Eamont beneath and for miles in any direction you look. The Clifford's, as Lords of Cumberland and Wardens of the Marches, further developed the castle's defenses. The double gatehouse that runs along the entire length of one side of the keep is one unique survival of its medieval fortifications. By the late sixteenth century these castles were already becoming militarily semi-redundant edifices, more easily captured and damaged by powerful cannons and explosives. They began not to be well maintained and were considered more of a drain on the Clifford finances.

And this was how it had remained until Lady Anne Clifford. At her father's death in 1607, though only fifteen, she should have inherited his whole estate. Instead her father passed it to his brother Francis, and he to his only son Henry. Though she continued to fight for her inheritance. It was only after Henry's death in 1643 that she was finally able to fully claim her rightful inheritance. At this point she went on a spending spree, executing philanthropic good works in the local towns. Renovating churches and more importantly repairing and redeveloping each of the castles she owned. Brougham being just one. 

Afterward, once these restorations were completed, she was on a constant circular progress, visiting each castle in turn, three months here, six months there. This proved to be the last flowering of Brougham Castle, as one of Lady Anne's favourite places to live. She seemed a very determined person, with her own particular eccentricities. A woman who appeared to prefer living outside the fashions and trends of her own era. After her death in 1676 at the age of eighty six, the previous neglect and slow decline of the castles simply resumed. Two and a half centuries later the remaining ruins were passed into the hands of the governments Ministry of Works & Monuments in 1928, the predecessor of English Heritage which now manages and maintains the site.