We had intended to just drive through the small Essex town of Thaxted but decided to stop to take some photos when I saw this unusual building. It’s the Guildhall, it looks even stranger in this photo but the steeple belongs to the church which is situated behind it.

The place is just full of Tudor half timbered houses like this one, all very higgledy-piggledy but still standing after about 500 years and still sheltering people from those cold East Anglian winds. No doubt they cost an arm and a leg too.

Then I noticed a plaque on a house just to the left of the guild hall. Gustav Holst’s house, I hadn’t even realised that he had lived in Essex, but there he was, bang in the centre of Thaxted High Street.

Holst is most famous for his Planets Suite so in the hope that after the recent news from Libya the poor souls of that country will now have some peace in their lives, I thought this You Tube rendition of Holst’s Venus – The Bringer of Peace would be appropriate. Fingers crossed for the Libyans.