Abbey

A supplementary heritage day, as it were. Seemingly my first visit to Westminster abbey since February last year, noticed at reference 1.

Both my informants assured me that it was not going to rain, despite it being overcast and cool. They turned out to be right.

A resident special on West Hill, the regular indigent with fags and cider outside the station. Two chaps on the London platforms in lower grade space suits spraying something on the seats. No doubt plague related.

Decided it was time that I renewed my acquaintance with Grant Road, so I hopped off the train at Clapham Junction. Grant Road still there, although there was a big new development called the Grad Pad - which reference 2 tells me is exactly that: graduate student accommodation. Possibly named for the place of the same name in Cambridge, there I believe since the 1960's. Good to see all the sights between Clapham Junction and Vauxhall again. Plenty of interest between Smith Square and the Abbey too.

Europa House still present in Smith Square, even if it has not been allowed to call itself an Embassy, now that we have expelled ourselves from Europe. But it is the home of the Delegation of the European Union to the United Kingdom and of the Liaison Office in the United Kingdom of the European Parliament.

Clever bit of photography on the hoarding around something or other outside the Abbey. You have to look twice to be sure that it is fake.

Very pleasant young lady in the ticket hutch. Very pleasant that the abbey was quiet. And one could put up with being asked to wearing a mask. And all the chairs, normally in the nave, stacked up in the aisles. Since I was last in the Abbey they have caved in to the tourists and cameras are now mostly permitted. And I was reminded that there are lots Irish celebrities - or at least celebrities with an Irish connection - like a peerage - in the north aisle. 

But the big pendant lights to the nave are still wrong. The Furnishing Committee must have been having a bad day when they voted them up.

The base of one of the big pillars holding up the crossing had been lopped off, presumably so that people leaving the back row of the much later choir stalls did not trip over it. Poor bit of detailing. And I am annoyed that I forget what the green marble pillar is all about. And neither Bing nor Google turns up anything that helps me. And while the old book about the abbey noticed at reference 6 comes close, it does not have a picture of the choir from quite the right angle. So to be checked next time.

The last resting place for some of the older memorials.

Alternatively, if you overdo it a bit but fall out of fashion, the back of your memorial is likely to be recycled for some new tenants.

What is known in the trade as the achievements of an early modern knight. From a time when all this knights in armour stuff was fast becoming obsolete, except perhaps in the tilt yard (as in Hampton Court Palace). While some of Henry V's achievements are to be found in the gallery upstairs.

Slightly to my surprise, St. Faith's chapel was not locked and I was able to spend a few minutes in this oasis of peace and quiet. A place which first came to my notice a couple of years ago, and noticed here at reference 3. On the other hand, I did not get into the shrine to Edward the Confessor.

I noticed that 18th gents didn't might being lightly dressed in sheets on their monuments, but they did need their full bottomed wigs to preserve their dignity.

I wondered about walking on all the tombs in the floor. I seem to remember once about burying criminals at crossroads so that everyone would walk over them. Perhaps that was in the 'Golden Lotus', from another time and place, that is to say 13th century China. See reference 4.

Not for the first time, I wondered about all the invisible carvings, visible from the stairs to the new gallery. That is to say that they would not have been visible otherwise since the time that they were put up, I think in the sixteenth century.

I noticed that not all the beams in the gallery were pure old. Some looked as it they had had new timber strapped onto the old. And I was rather taken with 600 year old missal on display there, although I did not spend enough time there to get the hang of the script. Almost certainly the Litlyngton Missal of reference 5.

Picnic in the cloisters, which were very quiet. More or less in the place where, years ago, they used to have a cart selling pasties and such like. Perhaps that was before the present cafeteria got going, and which I did not care to use on this occasion, being a bit cramped for a time of plague.

An example of early 19th century diversity. I have not yet got around to finding out why.

Back at Waterloo Station, pole position minus one. The pole position being occupied by a reject which had been there all day, so it did not really count.

An unusually tired seat on the train to Earlsfield. Where I took a drop of Chile at the Half Way House. Quite a good choice of wine, especially if you are doing bottles rather than glasses. Plus a barman with a curious tan and sparkly ear rings. Or perhaps the proper name for them was studs.

While the platform library at Raynes Park yielded this interesting example of early 20th century book binding from the War Office, as the Ministry of Defence was then called. As was proper, as war in those days went rather beyond defence of the realm. To be noticed properly in due course.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/02/an-abbey-late.html.

Reference 2: https://gradpadlondon.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/st-faith.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei. My copy bought, in think, in a now defunct bookshop in Ashburton. I remember the attractive middle aged lady giving me an interested look when I bought it from her.

Reference 5: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/learning/christianity-in-10-objects/the-litlyngton-missal.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/better-late-than-never.html.