Winter Solstice walk at Southend on Sea 22nd December 22

 I was thinking about going to Stonehenge again for the Winter Solstice but couldn't be bothered with the two and  a half hour drive either way and the risk of not being able to park. So I decided to watch the Winter Solstice sun rise over the sea at Southend in Essex.

I arrived far too early and sat in the car for a while watching the sea. I eventually decided to get out and have a walk along the seafront in the dark.

I passed the Kursaal lit up in the misty darkness.

The Kursaal is a Grade II listed building, which opened in 1901 as part of one of the world's first purpose-built amusement parks. The venue is noted for the main building with distinctive dome, designed by George Campbell Sherrin, which has featured on a Royal Mail special edition stamp.

What had been a place of gigs for rock legends, fun family days' out, and historical significance now sits entirely empty inside.

1901 - The iconic building is built by a father and son, along with acres of land used as gardens with occasional fairgrounds. The central building contains a ballroom, circus, arcade and dining room. It's named the Kursaal Palace, and opens as the first purpose built amusement park in the world.

1910 - The company running the Kursaal go out of business. The land is bought by a new company - who rename it Luna Park and heavily invest in the fairground aspect of the park. They build roller coasters, a miniture railway and a cinema. Luna Park regularly gets 100,000 visitors a week and is the star of Southend.

1915 - The new company goes out of business, and an American businessman buys the park - renaming it the Kursaal. The circus is turned into an ice rink, and the gardens begin hosting sporting events. A zoo is opened in 1916.

1919 - Southend United begin playing their home matches at a ground built in the Kursaal's gardens.

1927 - Greyhound racing begins at the Kursaal. Crowds of 5,000 turn up for the first race. The races stop in 1929.

1934 - Southend United move to the Southend Stadium.

1939 - The Kursaal closed for the length of World War Two.

1948 - The Kursaal reopens, installing new rides and attractions.

1970s - The ballroom hosts musical acts like Deep Purple, Queen and AC/DC.

1973 - Business takes a downturn and the outdoor attractions close.

1977 - The ballroom closes.

1986 - The entire building closes. The outdoor land is sold off for housing.

1998 - After more than a decade of inactivity, the building is reopened by a private company. A bowling alley, arcades, a McDonald's, a casino a multiple other businesses move in. The regeneration of the building costs millions of pounds.

2008 - The McDonald's shuts and moves into a second location on Southend high street.

2019 - MFA Bowl collapse into administation closing the bowling alley and arcade. It looks as though a nightclub company may step in to save the business but the deal falls through.

2020 - The Rendevous Casino closes down - citing COVID-19 as an factor. Only the Tesco Express remains open.

2020 - Concrete Culture form and draw up plans to turn The Kursaal into a multi-use community space, launching a public consultation in December.

I continue along the seafront in the darkness and mist, listening to a bell chime out at sea. Such an eerie feel compared to daytime when it is full of people and noise.

After walking under the pier and back on myself pass Adventure Island, I pass the pier again and take a photo of the inside and its trains through the glass. Still not open at this time of day.

Southend Pier is 2.16 kilometres (1.34 mi) long extending into the Thames Estuary, It is the longest pleasure pier in the world. The bill to build the new pier, to replace a previous timber jetty, received Royal Assent in May 1829 with construction starting in July 1829. The timber pier was replaced by an iron pier that opened to the public in August 1889. The Southend Pier Railway, opened in the early 1890s, was the first pier railway in the country.

I walk along the beach towards Thorpe Bay, hoping to see the sun rise in about half hour at 0804 hours.

It's starting to get light now and I am concerned I won't see the sun actually rise as its still so misty.

The earth rotates on a tilted axis. When this axis leans towards the sun, it’s summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the south. This is reversed as the earth continues on its orbit until the axis becomes tilted away from the sun.

During the solstice, the earth’s axis is tilted at its furthest point from the sun. This means that, for us in the northern hemisphere, the sun is at its lowest point in the sky. It’s also the shortest day of the year - and the longest night.

The longest night is over and I look forward to longer days ahead.

Since ancient times, people all over the world have recognized this important astronomical occurrence and celebrated the subsequent “return” of the Sun in a variety of different ways. Old solstice traditions have influenced holidays we celebrate now, such as Christmas and Hanukkah.

Then the magic happens, I can see the Winter Solstice sun beginning to rise up out of the sea and turning the sea a mellow orange colour.

Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel.

Today, many people in Western-based cultures refer to this holiday as "Christmas." Yet a look into its origins of Christmas reveals its Pagan roots. Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the "Invincible Sun" in the third century as part of the Roman Winter Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this Roman solar feast day was Christianized. January 6, celebrated as Epiphany in Christendom and linked with the visit of the Magi, was originally an Egyptian date for the Winter Solstice.

Happy to have seen the sun rise, I walk back to the car for the drive home.

Flatford Mill to East Bergholt circular walk 24th October 22

 GPX File here

On Monday the 24th October 2022 I drove to the National Trust car park at Flatford Mill Essex (CO7 6UL) for a walk. I had planned a walk in Kent but it was raining there so a dry walk in Essex and Suffolk it was!

 
I have walked this area many times before and never tire of it, it was however a first for Mike!

We walk down to Bridge Cottage by the Rive Stour.

A thatched cottage dating from the 16th century. Flatford Bridge Cottage houses an exhibition on the life and work of 17th century painter John Constable, who painted the house frequently. Constable's father owned the nearby Flatford Mill, and Constable often painted the mill itself as well as Bridge Cottage, and Willy Lott's Cottage. The building is timber framed, but this is not evident from the outside as it is rendered.

We walk up the road a bit pass the NT shop and tearoom closed right now as its too early and up to the site of Constables 'Boat Building' painting.

Painted entirely in the open air, this painting depicts the building of a boat at a dry dock along the River Stour.

We walk on passing a wooden building that shows a video of Constable country.

We pass Valley Farm on our left and reach the site of Constables most famous painting 'The Haywain'.

 

The Hay Wain – originally titled Landscape: Noon – is a painting by John Constable, finished in 1821, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It hangs in the National Gallery in London and is regarded as "Constable's most famous image" and one of the greatest and most popular English paintings.

Painted in oils on canvas, the work depicts as its central feature three horses pulling what in fact appears to be a wood wain or large farm wagon across the river. Willy Lott's Cottage, also the subject of an eponymous painting by Constable, is visible on the far left. The scene takes place near Flatford Mill in Suffolk, though since the Stour forms the border of two counties, the left bank is in Suffolk and the landscape on the right bank is in Essex.

The Hay Wain is one of a series of paintings by Constable called the "six-footers", large-scale canvasses which he painted for the annual summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy. As with all of the paintings in this series Constable produced a full-scale oil sketch for the work; this is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Constable originally exhibited the finished work with the title Landscape: Noon, suggesting that he envisaged it as belonging to the classical landscape tradition of representing the cycles of nature.

Flatford Mill was owned by Constable's father. The house on the left side of the painting belonged to a neighbour, Willy Lott, a tenant farmer, who was said to have been born in the house and never to have left it for more than four days in his lifetime. Willy Lott's Cottage has survived to this day practically unaltered, but none of the trees in the painting exist today.

Originally part of Gibbeon’s Gate Farm, Willy Lott's House is a Grade 1, listed building. Willy Lott (1761-1849) was a tenant farmer who worked the 39 acres around Flatford that made up Gibbeon's Gate Farm. He lived in a house attached to the farmland, which long after his death, became known as Willy Lott's House. Willy Lott's parents lived in this house, Willy and his sisters and brothers were born there.

Although he could not read or write, Willy made enough money to buy the house and farmland around Gibbeon's Gate which he did in 1825. He never married, lived with his sister Mary and he died in the house at the age of 88 leaving the farm plus approximately £450 to his sisters, their children and his brother’s children.

We walk on pass Willy Lotts Cottage and take a footpath just after on our left.

We head uphill pass a ram laying under a tree paying us no real attention.

We cross a road near Clapper Farm and continue along farmland paths.

View down to Dedham

We now follow Flatford Road towards East Bergholt.

We pass Old Hall in East Bergholt.

The earliest records date back to only the 14th Century and by which time Old Hall was established on its present site. Having been owned by Norman knights, wealthy Earls of Oxford, by London bankers and country squires, by staunch Puritans and Catholic religious orders, by soldiers in transit and now since 1974 The Old Hall Community.

We now reach East Bergholt and in front of us is the magnificent sight of St Mary The Virgin Church.

The Church of St Mary the Virgin was built in the 15th and 16th centuries, but is well known for the absence of a tower or spire to house the bells. Work began on a tower in 1525, but Cardinal Wolsey's fall from grace in 1530 brought construction to a halt and the following year a wooden bell cage was erected in the churchyard. The Bell Cage was built as a temporary structure to house the bells until the tower could be built. It still exists and now houses the set of 5 bells, although it is possible the tenor, which weighs 1 ton 6 cwt 0 qr 8 lb (1,320 kg) and has a diameter 4 ft 6 in (137 cm), was added in 1691. There are rumors the Bell Cage was moved from its original position in the 17th century because the occupant of Old Hall objected to the noise of the bells. The only evidence for this is a 1731 hand-drawn map on vellum that shows the Bell Cage situated to the East of the Church.

The bells are exceptional in that they are not rung from below by ropes attached to wheels, as is usual in change ringing, but the headstock is manipulated by hand by ringers standing beside the bells.

The bells are believed to be the heaviest five (A, G, F♯, E, and D) that are rung in England today, with a total weight of 4+1⁄4 long tons (4,300 kg).

We leave the church and turn right up The Street into East Bergholt.

During the 16th century, its inhabitants became well known for Protestant radicalism. A few of its citizens were martyred during the reign of Queen Mary I, and the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe recorded their stories in his famous work Acts and Monuments (also known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs).

East Bergholt is the birthplace of painter John Constable whose father owned Flatford Mill. 

We stop in the East Bergholt Village shop and Post Office here to grab something to eat and drink before continuing or walk along Cemetery Lane.

We pass John Constables early studio on Cemetery Lane. While living in East Bergholt he used this building as his studio to paint his early paintings. He used it until 1799 when he moved to London.

There is a memorial plate on the building.

As we continue to walk down Cemetery Lane we are met with great views across the rolling countyside here.

We walk along Donkey Lane, a fine pathway engulfed by trees and great autumn colours.

We follow the paths across more farmland.

We walk back out onto Dedham Road and walk along the road avoiding a few cars as we do.

We are now in Dedham.

We cross the River Stour by The Boathouse pub, a place to eat, have a beer, ice cream or hire a rowing boat for a great view of the river.

Dedham is at the heart of 'Constable Country' – the area of England where Constable lived and painted. Constable attended the town's Grammar School (now the 'Old Grammar School' and 'Well House'), and he would walk to school each morning alongside the River Stour from his family's home in East Bergholt. Many of Constable's paintings feature Dedham, including Dedham Mill, which his father owned, and Dedham Parish Church, whose massive Caen stone and flint tower is a focal point of the surrounding Dedham Vale.

Early documents of Dedham records the name as Diddsham, presumably for a family known as Did or Didd.

Opposite the church is Sherman House. This house, in the main street of Dedham, a village on the River Stour on the boundary between Essex and Suffolk, was the ancestral home of the Sherman family, the ancestors of the federal General of the American Civil War famous in song for 'Marching through Georgia'.

The residents of Dedham, Essex, have established close links with those of Dedham, Mass. in the USA. There is evidence of these links in the splendid parish church, opposite Sherman House.

We walk up to Dedham Parish Church.

One of the great churches of northern Essex, St Mary's dominates the High Street of Dedham. The church as we see it today is primarily a 15th century rebuilding of an earlier medieval church which existed at least as early as 1322. That early church occupied the site of the current south aisle chapel, an indication of just how much smaller it was than the grand 15th century building we see today! The door to the vestry is thought to have been the main entrance to the 14th century church.

Work on a new church was begun in 1492 and completed in 1522. The walls are rubble and flint, so common in East Anglia. The tower is knapped flint, dressed with limestone. The striking west tower, finished in 1519, is totally self-supporting and features an unusual vaulted passage. An unsubstantiated tradition is that Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, gave money for the tower to be built. Whoever paid for it, the tower is certainly striking; it stands 131 feet high and is visible for miles along the valley.

We have a mooch about inside before walking on again.

We walk on down High Street and onto Brook Street where we stop at Dedhams Art and Craft Centre for a cream tea.

We leave the Centre and walk on taking a path off Brook Street that leads us back down to The River Stour.

We follow the river along towards Fen Bridge.

We reach Fen Bridge. The Fen Bridge, linking Dedham and East Bergholt, has been successfully replaced.

The bridge was removed by Suffolk County Council in January, having been closed to pedestrian and river traffic since 2020.

Fen Bridge, in the Dedham Vale, has been used as a crossing over the Stour for centuries, as part of the public footpath network and an earlier bridge was used by painter John Constable as part of his route to school.

We cross the bridge and follow a path steeply uphill flanked by electric fences either side.

A look back downhill

We leave the Dedham Vale and walk along the Flatford Road.

We reach the car park and change our boots, dump off our bags and walk back down to Flatford Mill for another look about as things will be open now.

We visit the Constable Painting exhibition first and us the toilets here.

We cross back over the bridge for some more photos.

We pop in the now open Bridge Cottage, minding our heads on the very low ceilings.

Back along the lane to Flatford Mill and Willy Lotts cottage before walking back to the car.

A great walk of 6 miles, now for the drive home.