Caistor Heritage Centre

 

I remember the first time I went into the building which is now Caistor Heritage Centre.   I went to my aunt's wedding there around 1960 when it was Caistor Primitive Methodist Chapel.

A few years later the chapel closed and the congregation joined up with the Wesleyan congregation as Caistor Methodists.  The building then became Caistor Youth Centre but eventually it became very little used and a local group applied for (and got) lottery funding to create a wonderful centre including a cafe, an exhibition room and our local library.   

That was around 2012 (I think) and the centre is still well used today.  There is a paid manager but most of the work is done by volunteers.  There's a charity shop in Caistor which raises the necessary funding and the coffee shop does a very nice line in tea, coffee and cakes.

The centre is really important to our community.  The library is a lovely place to go and books are supplied by the county library service but the library is staffed by volunteers.  Volunteers do most of the work in the cafe too and I can vouch for the deliciousness of the cakes!

Today I went to see an exhibition and sale of artwork by a local artist.  Charles Blake is autistic and non-verbal but his artwork is stunning.  He does all sorts of crafts as well and I was delighted that he has accepted my commision to decorate a very tatty old table of mine with decopatch.  I'll show you when it's done.  

Mama Mia

The warden showed me something of the technique.  So my Mother got a very special portrait.

Not quite

I spent fifteen years as Rector of a small group of parishes and was privileged to work with some very talented people.  One of my wardens had a great talent for manipulating images.  He took an image of Leo X and two of his cardinals and created a portrait of me with two of my wardens.  I think I look a little jollier (and I hope more approachable) than did His Holiness.  

Going North

When I was a little girl all holidays involved a journey along the Great North Road.  The very name evoked feelings of excitement for this was the main road from London to the north of England.  It had been the route for mail coaches going to Edinburgh and it passed through many towns and the route became well provided with coaching inns with such wonderful names as the Ram Jam Inn.  Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman was supposed to have ridden the two hundred miles from London to York overnight.  What child would not have a sense of adventure setting out on that road even if instead of pistols I was armed with nothing more lethal than a shrimping net!  

Sadly the old Great North Road is no longer a journey of such romance.  It has been largely replaced by the much more prosaic A1 or the even more prosaic A1(M).  Instead of mail coaches there are juggernaut thundering along and coaching inns have been replaced by Little Chefs.

Today I (with two of my cousins) travelled along a great length of the A1(M), sadly to attend a funeral but we got to our destination near Newcastle rather early having allowed ourselves plenty of time so that we wouldn’t be late.  We decided to do a small detour to visit the Angel of the North which stands proud above the A1(M) guarding travellers.  It is a truly dramatic piece of art and I feel it brings a new sort of romance to that stretch of road.

Toast again

Following on from a query as to how the work of art was displayed, here's another view.

A Unique Work of art

This morning I went to church – as indeed I do on most Sunday mornings.  I go to a different church in each Sunday of the month and it never fails to amaze me how different village churches are.  They have been standing at the heart of their parishes for sometimes hundreds of years.  Each has the same purpose and each has the same basic features – a nave, a sanctuary, an altar, pulpit, font and so on, but no two churches are the same,

Each has evolved over the centuries, receiving the gifts and skills of countless parishioners and each is a work of art of which most communities are very proud.  Pews have been made by long forgotten carpenters.  Gargoyles were carved from local stone and made functional and yet amusing as they may have been modelled on local characters

And churches are also custodians of less long lasting works of art.  Some last for many years before they have to be replaced – I’m thinking here of textiles, embroidered or crocheted by village fingers.  Others last only a few days or weeks, like flower arrangements or children’s art exhibitions.

A few years ago the church I was at this morning had this crucifixion displayed.  At first glance it is fairly conventional but look again.  It is actually made up of numerous slices of burnt toast, scraped to create a picture.  It’s not an art form which I’d want to take up but someone used his/her creativity in a very imaginative way and I’m glad that the church was able to display and honour the work of art for the few weeks before sadly it had to be used for the benefit of local birds.