Flashback Thursdays: Tracking Family History--with a Will

   Because mine is a fairly unusual surname and because my ancestors didn't move around much (or at least not until the railway system was up and running) I know quite a bit about my father's side of the family. For instance, I know that, in 1525, in the reign of Henry V111, my multi-times great grandfather was born.
   I've been doing more and more research and, by pure fluke, found out that he made a will and that it rests in the archives of the Records Office in Bury St. Edmunds.
  Long story short but they brought it up from the depths of the building and delivered it directly into my hands. No plastic gloves, no anything, so I was, in effect, touching a document written by my direct ancestor when Elizabeth 1 was on the throne. Except that he couldn't write. That would have been done by a scribe. Instead what John Merrills left (the spelling changed over the years) was his mark and seal. The curator at the local museum says that that little rectangle was probably the mark of a weaver, which is what my ancestor was.

  I'm still trying to decipher it...

Flashback Thursdays: Back in Bury St. Edmunds

    For reasons that escape me, I haven't blogged about some of the trips we've done so far this year. So what I've decided to do is scribble away once a week until I'm caught up.  Say hello to "Flashback Thursdays." Now, if you're not interested in what we're doing outside the area, you'll know which day to skip. On the other hand, if you've had it up to here with French markets and food and our constant hunting for vintage, you know which day to check. What am I saying? Wherever we go, we still chase down markets, good things to eat and jumble sales, thrift shops and anywhere else you can find the interestingly pre-owned.
   Back in May, we flew to the UK for ten days with Ryanair. The name of this budget airline may not ring a bell for anyone outside Europe. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with it, loving its occasionally ludicrously cheap fares, but hating the hoops you have to jump through to make sure they don't charge you for extras. And hating, hating their Machiavellian web site where, in order not to buy insurance from them, you have to tick the box artfully hidden in a pull-down menu of destinations.
   Anyway, we got a good rate, booked one piece of luggage to go in the hold and very carefully weighed our hand luggage. Anything over 10 k and they come at you with sharp instruments.
   It turned out that seven of the 10 days we spent back in my homeland were some of the sunniest that the UK had all summer. There we were, in sweaters, sitting outside a pub near Cambridge, swigging shandies and chomping away at our chips, when suddenly one of us (me) said: "Bit hot, innit?" So hot in fact that I had to borrow a T-shirt that same day and, subsequently, spend a tenner on summery wear at the charity shops that now abound in Bury St. Edmunds. I mean, abound. There must be seven or eight of them.

    We had a gorgeous ten days with the family. The first Saturday we were there, we trotted off to the farmers' market held every week at Wyken Vineyards just outside Bury, returning with a fine haul of cheeses and chutneys.

   Homemade cakes straight from a kids' storybook. Don't you just love the one with the Smarties all over it? Made me all nostalgic for my Mum's coffee-and-walnut sponge.

    What my vegetarian sister ate one day when we went out to lunch. Wild mushroom stuffed tortellini with a topping of rocket/roquette/arugula. I seem to remember those brown spots are reduced balsamic.
     Some days later, we spent the day with my eldest niece Sarah who lives near, and sometimes works at, South Farm, which is among the UK's favourite places to hold wedding receptions. Here's South Farm:

 Guests can stay in the main house, or in one of these delightful caravans.

    I completely fell in love with this cozy interior. Just look at its little wood-burning stove and the Persian rug on the floor. Can you imagine how comfortable you would feel tucked up in here on a chill night?

 On another day, a local steam rally was a mix of old tractors...

 ....vintage fairground attractions...

 ... and this Punch and Judy show--hadn't seen one of these since I was little when, Neopolitan ice-cream dripping down our Aertex shirts, we used to watch them on the beach at the seaside.

   Bury St. Edmunds, where I was born is an ancient town going back to a time when dates were in three figures. Friends who live near Aldeburgh took us here, to Leiston Abbey which goes back to the 14th century.

      Having lived without them for so many years, I know I will never tire of seeing and touching old stones.

Back to my birthplace.

   Oh, I have been a very bad little bloggiste recently. Five weeks and nary a word from me. If you've hung in this long, my heartfelt thanks. A deluge of posts is about to descend on you. I could backdate them but it seems more honest to write them all at once, get up to date, and proceed from there.

   So...on April 23, appropriately since it's both St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday, we drove to Carcassonne, abandoned the Clio, and took off with just under 10 kg of hand luggage and Ryanair which deposited us, some two hours later, in the U.K.

   First stop: my home town of Bury St. Edmunds which, metre for metre, contains an astonishing amount of history. That tower at the top is the Abbey Gate, not the original one which the townspeople destroyed in the 14th century but a replacement built somewhat later. 

   The abbey itself kept going till the 16th century. Now it's only ruins (in a fine example of recycling, the good folk of Bury reused the stones in their own houses). Small sections do remain like this entrance (the lower photo) which is beside the cathedral. At some point, houses were built into it, with considerable architectural sensitivity I think. Back in my teenage years, when I belonged to a theatre group, we used to rehearse in the house on the left with the bay windows. 

    Bury has changed of course since I was last there ten years ago. At long last, the cathedral has acquired a magnificent tower. On the other hand, what used to be the cattle market has sprouted what is inarguably the nastiest shopping centre in the UK, a true abomination, a stylistic mish-mash of buildings centred on what looks like a giant cross-hatched metallic slug.