I had been hoping to get this post done yesterday but I’m still decorating our bedroom, it’ll definitely be finished by tomorrow though, then I’ll be starting on the wee loo.
Anyway, on our recent road trip in England we ended up visiting Gloucester which hadn’t been on our original list of places to visit. That part of England, I suppose you could call it the mid-west, has lots of ancient towns and wherever you are you seem to be only about seven miles away from another place that you’ve heard of and it seemed silly not to visit them. We had to call a halt eventually and so we decided to leave Malvern, Hay and Ross-on-Wye for another road trip.
We went to Gloucester after visiting Cheltenham, which I’ll write about soon. Somehow Gloucester wasn’t at all what I was expecting it to be. I know that quite a few members of the royal family live in that county and I think that was why I thought it would be very up market and posh – but it wasn’t. Then I remembered that a certain serial murderer said that the paving stones of Gloucester had bodies under them, and that gave me a bit of a shudder.
So I was pleased to see the Tailor of Gloucester’s shop, which is now full of Beatrix Potter collectables. This is the actual building which she copied for her illustration but I should have photographed the whole alleyway because that would have been more like her drawing. My mother-in-law’s claim to fame was that she met Beatrix Potter when she was in the Brownies and was camping on B.P.’s land in the Lake District. Beatrix Potter actually gave her a signed copy of one of her books, I wonder what happened to it!
In common with just about every large historical building at the moment, Gloucester Cathedral is having work done on it as you can see.
Here it is from another angle.
I can’t say that it’s a place that I’d like to revisit but it was a wet and freezing cold day which doesn’t help things. It might be one of those places that you need to be shown around by a local, I think that’s the best way to see anywhere. I keep going to places and then realising that I missed things which I would really have liked to have seen.
Hopefully I’ll be back with some book chat tomorrow, if I don’t get engulfed with domestic mayhem.
How lovely to see the Tailor of Gloucester’s shop!! I used to have a BP ornament of the mouse tailor, sitting on his reel of cotton! I think my sister appropriated it eventually!
Evee,
I have one of those packed away as I’m decluttering, it is very cute.
Yes, Gloucester is best seen with a local. My aunt and uncle lived there and I spent a month with them one year when I was doing a librarianship course working in the County Library there, which included a week working in the Cathedral archives – fascinating! I also saw lots of the surrounding countryside – the Forest of Dean etc. I expect it’s changed though since then, it was a long time ago.
Margaret,
That would have been my dream job, poking around in ancient archives, lucky you. Did you go to the Gloucester College of Art and Technology as part of your course? It’s an art deco building which must have been really stylish at one time but it’s now awaiting demolition, very sad really.
No, Katrina, I didn’t go to the Gloucester College of Art and Technology. I was at Manchester Library School and each year we did a month’s unpaid work experience in a library. The year after I worked at Gloucester, I spent a month working in the Glasgow University Library, which was good experience too.
Margaret,
That sounds like a great course you did. I worked as a library assistant and was supposed to be doing librarianship at uni on day release but I had to move down to Essex so had to give it up. I actually had to teach supposedly trained librarians how a library worked! I asked them what they actually learned at library school and was told – fire regulations and how to work machines! I know the new Glasgow Uni library which was built about 1970 I think.
Katrina, we learnt a lot about the history of libraries, bibliography, and the theory of cataloguing and classification – which when I got a job at Manchester Public Libraries was completely different because they used their own version of Dewey, but it was interesting learning about different types of libraries etc.
The new Glasgow Uni Library was after my time there (1968!)
Margaret,
How daft – using a different version of Dewey! The new library must just about have been in construction then as it was open in 1971 when Jack went to Glasgow Uni.
You have to do a post on the serial killer now! My curiosity is “killing” me!
Peggy Ann,
I’ll e-mail you!
What a lovely little shop. I can see how BP wanted to draw it.
Oh I wonder how much a book like that signed by her be worth? Probably best not to think about it.
Jo,
I did see a signed BP book on the Antiques Roadshow but I can’t remember what value they put on it. I’ve probably blocked it out!