Norwich: family tourism

descendants in the ancestral courtyard

The reason Norwich was on our radar for this trip is that some of Henry's ancestors (think 13 generations back for Henry, 15 for the grandkids!) were big shots in this area. 

And what's super cool, from a tourist standpoint, is that

several of the buildings associated with this family are still standing! Thanks to the valiant efforts of conservationists in the area back in the 1920's and '30's. Their work is the reason that Elm Hill (see the bottom of my last post) has kept its original charm (as "one of the best streets in the country"). And the ancestors lived on this very street! On the right is the sign that proves it!

In the photo above you can see Pettus descendants at the shop which was part of the house their forebears lived in. It now also houses a little cafe and of course we had to come there for lunch during our visit. 

Here is one of these descendants herself, pouring a cuppa herbal tea from a very cute teapot in the cafe's garden:

The Pettus house was originally much larger, as you might expect for a leading figure of the community. It possibly extended all the way to this well (no longer functional):

Henry knew just where to take us on this family history excursion, because he'd been here before, in 2008. He wrote a detailed saga of his ramblings in Norwich itself (see it here) but although he never returned to describe his ventures further afield, he remembered enough from the earlier trip to enable us to—eventually—find a local church where scads of Pettus' were buried. 

The first church we found, on our trip into the surrounding countryside, was the wrong one. But it was still scenic and worth visiting, as are pretty much all the old churches in England. It was All Saints Saluce, said to date from the 14th century. And of course it was decorated in knapped flint!

It also had a nice war memorial that follows the common theme: originally set up to honor the dead of the War to End All Wars, they eventually had to add a codicil for the one that followed:

so touching to see that these folks are still remembered

Rambling around for a while, though, led us to the church we wanted. Although the road to it was closed and we had to walk a bit. Amazingly, though, it was open!

All Saints Rackheath (Rackheath Magna)

More knapped flint, of course, but so much more! (If you click on the images hopefully they'll get big enough for you to read the text on the memorials.)

Henry in front of the font and some memorials to ancestors

a particularly fancy memorial plaque

one of many in-floor tombstones

Some of the people buried here were probably Pettus' who stayed in the old country, going by the dates. (Henry's first ancestor came to Virginia in the 1630's!) But some were certainly forebears of the American Pettus', since they died before the adventurous one struck out for the New World.

checking up on the ancestors

A helpful sign in the church gave a lot of its history and details about the architecture. The eye-popping item is definitely that the "fabric" of the building dates from the early 1300's! The sign described various additions and restorations that have been made over the years, but gee whiz! That's old!

We still had one more site to visit connected with Henry's forebears: their estate, known as Rackheath, like the church and the town. It's now what seems to be an event center, and has certainly been refurbished considerably, but it remains a handsome place to call "home":

We were allowed to walk around the lovely grounds, a fine finale to our very interesting dip into family history.

So, back to our "home" for the last night in Norwich and a tasty Indian takeout dinner, after a stop at a fun playground. Then to bed to rest up for the next leg of our UK adventure!

Norwich: general tourism

 Welcome back, Bridges to London readers! Time to rejoin the carriageway, as it were. We leave the big city behind today and embark upon the last half of our British vacation. Various wonders await!

First stop—after retrieving our 9-passenger carriage and winding our way out of London (not a simple affair)—is Norwich, in East Anglia. Here's our chauffeur-extraordinaire Hal, who masterfully handled motorways, narrow one-laners, and excessively congested parking lots. It was so nice to just sit in the back and leave the driving to him! (and navigating to Henry)

Norwich has a charming old core that has some special significance for our family, but more about that aspect of it next time. It's also got plenty of regular old English tourist attractions, too, in particular, its impressive cathedral:

Because of the convenient location of our very nice Airbnb, we had plenty of time to walk to the church and see more of the old town before dinner. And the church rather invites visitors to spend a good bit of time there—there's lots to see.

Lovely stained glass, for instance:

run-of-the-mill [!] stained glass

Erpingham Window, with some medieval glass,
to commemorate Sir Thomas Erpingham, who was at Agincourt!

an all-too-familiar WWI memorial window

There's more to see in the main part of the cathedral, like this very handsome organ:

And some interesting tombs, like this one with the thoughtful inscription to go with its creepy appearance:

In case you can't read it in the picture, it says:

All you that do this place pass bye

Remember death for you must dye.

As you are now even so was I

And as I am you shall be.

There are also lovely cloisters outside:

But of course it's not the only impressive church in town. Any English town that's been around as long as Norwich is bound to be overflowing with them. For example, St. Michael-at-Plea:

You can see another nice one in the background here—St. Peter Mancroft. Although the main attraction for me was the beautiful knapped flint dressing on the wall in the foreground.

I fell in love with this decorative idea when I was in England in 2008. And fortunately you see it everywhere. Here's a particularly interesting spin on the technique. I wish I'd made a good mental note of which church sported this unusual arrangement:

This building (which I thought was a church but after much internet digging, I think is just part of the Guildhall, whose taller tower you can see behind it) goes crazy with the stuff:

The area around the cathedral has some nice grassy areas, perfect for kiddos to stretch their legs on, with statuary that some folks might think they identify with...

the bronze gentleman is Wellington

And bordering the old city is this handsome arch; unfortunately I neglected to note its age, but it looks like it's been there a while:

One of the coolest parts of the old town is this street, which a helpful sign notes is "probably one of the best [old streets] in the country." I think we agree!

Elm Hill

This charming byway provides a nice segue for my next post, which is about family history—a lot of which is on display on this very street!

Wordless Wednesday: best pub name ever?

 

Photo IDs

 Here are the locations of the photos I posted last time. (As far as the overall answer to the "quiz," it is of course the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Although we didn't cross the Irish Sea on this trip, we did see it!)

1. Beans advert: on the side of a building between the walls around the old city of York and our fabulous Airbnb in that city.

2. Bird protection caution: in a church in Norfolk where some of Henry's relatives are buried, found after an exhaustive search of the area.

3. Toilet humor: probably at the Vineyard Cafe in the Helmsley Walled Garden in Yorkshire, an AI-suggested stop on our tour of the moors.

4. Poppy manufacture: taken out of the bus window somewhere on our trip to or from Hampton Court Palace; the poppies referred to are those you see everywhere in the UK in the fall, as Remembrance Day approaches...this is where they make them!

5. Watch your step and your head: probably Conwy Castle, in North Wales. (We visited two castles that day, so it could be Beaumaris Castle; it had similar signs.)

6. Cheeky, and somewhat threatening, caution about alcohol purchase: in the cafe at Fulham Palace, near our main London Airbnb.

7. "Smart" paint sign: somewhere in London, taken out of a bus window as we made several journeys the day it was taken.

You can read more about all of these locations! Head to my Bridges to London blog to get a blow-by-blow of our 10 days in London. Then I'll post back here for the rest of our trip.

Super-trip 2025

I've got a wonderful trip to tell you about, chock full of great adventures and, I hope, fabulous pictures to illustrate them. But I thought I'd start you off with a [not very difficult] little quiz: we were traveling in a country that is so polite, and so witty, that even their advertising and cautionary signs are worth photographing. As you might remember from a previous visit of mine (spoiler alert: following this link will tell you where we were!).

I'll tell you where each of the following pix was taken in my next post here, but to read about the first part of our adventures, I need to spoil you again by referring you to another blog, one which hasn't seen a new post from me in ages. Curious? follow the link, after you enjoy these great, and sometimes mysterious, signs:

Wordless Wednesday: thanks for visiting!

 

Memory Lane has changed

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I think I'm finally getting through some obligations to non-blog-worthy work, and hope to be a little better about this in the rest of 2025.

Like last week, when I spent a delightful few days with some old and new friends from college. This group of women get together every year and I've joined them a few times (once we visited a cave!). This year's outing, back on our old stomping grounds, wasn't one to pass up.

One of the things I was most interested in seeing was the newly designed academic quadrangle. That's a picture of it above. The landscaping is still in the beginning stages, but eventually there will actually be shade there—imagine, wanting shade in Houston! Yes, the iconic hedges of my youth are gone, but the overall design is more flowing and natural-looking, so the hedges' strict perpendicularity would have been out of place.

Here's a shot of one section of the quad where the plantings are really taking off, and you can see the curvature of the path:

The buildings in the background have been changed substantially, too: Anderson Hall on the right, where I had a lot of English classes, is now strictly the Archies' (that's Ar-Kees, or architecture students)

domain; and Fondren Library on the left, where I worked during and after graduation, now has a nice covered area with benches all along its front.

What inspired this transformation of the quad was the question of what to do with the statue of the University's founder, which sat right in the middle of it, in somewhat hagiographic splendor. (Although, some prankster engineering students in the 1980's treated it rather disrespectfully, actually lifting the entire statue around so that it faced the library instead of the administration building. You can see a picture of it flipped here, a shot which incidentally shows you a bit of how the quad looked before the re-design.)

The problem with according William Marsh Rice such elevated status is that he was an enslaver, and therefore some of the wealth used to endow the school—which was originally set up as an institute for whites only—was the result of enslaved people's labor. The University wanted to acknowledge this troublesome past, while at the same time being grateful for the man's vision, which has resulted in this first-class institution.

Not wanting to just jump in and take the statue away somewhere, after much careful thought they came up with the re-design of the quad and a new home for "Willy," as the statue has always been called by students. Here he is in his new digs, and down at eye level, as a human being, not held up as some sort of paragon:

He's still in the quad, just off in this attractive corner between the administration building and Sewell Hall. I feel like my alma mater handled this difficult history about as well as it could be handled. They even researched and published a lengthy report on the institution's history with segregation and injustice. I read the whole thing and it's a fascinating, thoughtful analysis of these issues; you can see it here.

Willy's plinth, or at least the base of it, is still in the center of the quad, just not perpendicular to the buildings any more, but at an angle, befitting the new design aesthetic:

I've read that the designers intend for it to be able to be used as a small performance space...maybe when some of those shade trees have grown a bit. I really like the quotation attached to it. Everyone's heard of Kennedy's speech at Rice Stadium, where he talks about going to the moon, but I've never heard this part of the speech before. The guy (or someone who worked for him) really knew how to write speeches, eh?

After a couple of days of contributing a ton of oral history for the University Historian (which brought back so many memories!) we took a tour of another building that wasn't around when we went to school. Just as I was leaving, the Shepherd School of Music was being born, and their enormous, but lovely, building now takes up part of what used to be the stadium parking lot. (It was opened in 1975.) A bit more of that lot was taken to build the new opera house, which was just dedicated in 2022. The Shepherd School is on the right here, and the Brockman Music and Performing Arts Center (the opera house) is on the left. I made sure some of my friends were in the frame so you could see the scale of these behemoths!

We had an informative talk by the Brockman's director, and then got to sit in on a rehearsal, which was super cool...

the hall's impressive ceiling,
with a bit of some of the seating levels

...and what was even more amazing, was a look backstage, and a talk by the guy who almost single-handedly makes all the sets. Here's a piece left over from a previous show, that will probably get used again:

you can almost smell the fresh-cut wood, can't you?

All this grandeur tends to color my memories of the campus now, although whenever I have one of those "there's an exam and I forgot to study!" nightmares, I'm usually on the "ghost campus" as it  was in 1967-71. So walking around is both familiar and strange...a little unsettling, but still worthwhile. (You can read of previous trips to campus, and see other changes and artistic touches, by following the Rice University label on the right.)

I'll close with a shot of the fabulous opera house, looking worthy of being in London or Milan, don't you think?