Dry Run

On the 31st March 2017 as part of the re-opening celebrations of the Settle & Carlisle railway there will be a commemorative railtour from Oxenhope to Carlisle behind ‘Flying Scotsman’.
In February 2016, after a 500,000 tonne landslip north of Armathwaite the railway was closed north of Appleby. At over 240 feet above the River Eden, re-instatement of the subsided section was to be the subject of a £23 million engineering project involving the building of an enormous concrete and steel structure beneath the railway.
As part of my work on the 2009 FSA annual report I photographed the interior of the 'National Railway Museum' in York, I also photographed parts for 'Flying Scotsman' as part of the ongoing renovation.
'Scotsman' needs to be photographed on the Settle & Carlisle line later this year and as I'm not a train spotter I thought the running of the new Peppercorn class A1 Pacific steam locomotive 'Tornado'  on the Settle to Carlisle Railway was an opportunity not to be missed.
Deciding to give the circus at Ribblehead Viaduct a wide birth, I drove in to Dentdale to set up at Dent Head Viaduct. A busy week leading up to my one free day meant I had to wing it, not my normal style even though I tell myself this is just a practice for later in the year.

Tornado crossing Dent Head Viaduct

Everything is New

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York Minster Carillon from the book The Bells and Bellringers of York Minster

I recently changed my whole website to Squarespace. I'd always had people helping me out with my webdesign but finally after much research I discovered a tool where I can make my site look the way I want without having to do any coding. Works great and looks good.

Since I changed the entire website all my old blog posts have disappeared. I decided that I wanted to start off afresh, I've added a few of my older more interesting blog posts as a sort of launch pad, if that makes any sense.

Homage

I've always liked the album cover The Best of Black Sabbath.

The album cover features in the foreground five rock-cut graves, which are in fact graves dating back to the 11th century. The location is St Patrick's Chapel, Heysham in Lancashire overlooking Morecambe Bay, in the background the sun is setting, so apparently taken at dusk.

As I was visiting a client in the area I'd decided that if I had enough time and the weather was favourable, I would visit the chapel for a look around.
What a surprise the village is, I'd only visited the port before which isn't that inspiring, not only does it have the ruins of St Patrick's chapel where the rock cut graves are to be found, it also has the parish church of St Peter which is on the site of an earlier Saxon chapel.

St Peter's Church

Around St Patrick's Chapel are the remains of eight rock-cut graves hewn from the headland, several of which are body shaped and have rock-cut sockets, possibly for wooden crosses. It is thought that the graves were created around the eleventh century and were used for burying very high-status individuals.

St Patrick's Chapel south wall

The graves today complete with wind farm on the horizon!

Of course I took a shot at the grave site, my attempt at the album cover is not quite the same! Done from memory at the wrong time of day and the wrong season (the original has ice in the graves). Must revisit the site again this winter.

Hidden Treasure

On a recent visit to Liverpool Cathedral I sort of bumped into, gate crashed, another meeting. Cathedral architect Ulrike Knox was still with my client discussing the possible relocation of a reredos to a position within the Cathedral, the connection being that the reredos was designed by the architect G F Bodley.
In 1902 Bodley was an assessor for the competition to design Liverpool Cathedral which selected a design by the young Giles Gilbert Scott. When construction of the cathedral began in 1904, Bodley was appointed to oversee Gilbert Scott's work.
The reredos in question was originally installed in St Stephen the Martyr, Grove Street, Liverpool where it had a chequered history, one of the incumbents didn't like the reredos and nailed battens to it and covered it with material!
One week later I find myself back at the Cathedral operating a sort of taxi service to the current home of the reredos at St Stephen's Church, Crown Street, the reredos was moved here when St Stephen the Martyr was demolished in 1992. St Stephen's closed as a centre for parish worship in the Summer of 2014 and is now in use as a centre for community work, since that change of use the reredos has been covered again, this time with care, to protect it from damage. Getting the new cover off proves to be a bit of a challenge, I've no photographs of this stage as everyone in the building was required to lower the cover to the floor! As we stood back we were all amazed at the good condition of the reredos, apart from the colour of the wall it sits on and the large pieces of timber to mount the cover, it looked amazing.

The Bodley Reredos uncovered!

Update:

The decision to put the Bodley reredos in Liverpool Cathedral has been decided against, but the reredos is moving to another church in Southport once it has been approved by the Liverpool Diocesan Advisory Committee.

I don't know what the interior of the Southport church looks like but I just had to quickly put the reredos on what I think is a better background colour!