Creature Feature No.11

So. Happy New Year Everyone!  After all the pies, Stilton and moshing over our cake to Metallica's Enter The Sandman, we go through the first gate into the first Unmitigated field of 2016. Above is a delight discovered on our Cheese Run. This entails getting lost (everytime, it's a Christmas Custom) in the quiet pastures of the Nottinghamshire / Leicestershire borders trying to find Colston Bassett. SatNav not allowed, we always seem to find ourselves facing the wrong way as Noddy Holder belts out Merry Christmas Everybody. (Noddy won't be drawn on what he makes every year, just says it's his winter fuel allowance.) But once the best Stilton in the world was stowed away we progressed to the tiny market town of Bingham. A town suffering somewhat from inappropriate out-of-scale development but still retaining good buildings around its market square. Except, as usual, for a Co-Op that pays no respect to anything around it.

But in a little side street were these gems on the frontage of J.Butler's butchers. It was, I think, still operational as a shop, but maybe not one with cows' and sheeps' heads knocking about. What I found amazing was that the two animals are on individual whole tiles, with a decorative border that's worthy of Walter Crane. (You can gauge their size by comparing them with the normal tiles surrounding them, which of course are square.) I think they're fabulous, and a reminder that there was once a time when the link between animals in the fields and the joints in our ovens wasn't so blurred.

Underfoot 2

The Victorian age is like an enormous shout, the echoes of which still rebound around us. Railway stations, waterworks, civil and commercial offices. Even if our local bank is now a wine bar called The Bank the chances are it's Victorian. And then of course there's the churches. Whether original or restored, their impact can't be exaggerated. Today I was told to poke my nose in at my local, to see (and smell) the glorious flower arrangements from last Saturday's village wedding. The church itself is also Decorated (14th century) but was restored by Goddard & Son of Leicester in 1864. After revelling in the flowers I looked more closely at the chancel floor and saw that the afternoon sun was highlighting patches of encaustic floor tiling, and whatever we may think about the Victorian mania for 'restoration', (Goddard's were more sensitive than some) I find the designs utterly compelling. The perfect visuals to go with the scent of flowers and furniture polish, all to the tick of the clock deep within the tower.