Day 14 Kendal 3

There must be a ready supply of small fish or plankton just across the river, near the bridge. It is where the swans were feeding last night and this morning a flock of gulls wheeled and dove around the same spot.

My first stop this morning was St George's Church, close by the hotel.


I had intended a longer visit but there was a meeting going on and I decided not to disturb it. Built in 1841, in local stone, it has interesting stone crosses over the side entrances.

St George does his usual thing inside the entrance and one of the bosses (in the architectural sense!) has met with an unfortunate accident.








From here I made my way back to the Quaker Tapestry. Genevieve and her husband were there and after an hour or so we met up for lunch.


This time I was paying attention to the lettering and the Barrett Counterpane but I couldn't resist photographing the young George Fox and his sheep. The chain stitch works brilliantly on these sheep.

I also wanted to photograph the britches that the embroiderer insisted her husband pose for so she could get the folds right! The footwear is pretty good too.












Mostly I wanted some photographs of the lettering. It really is excellent, executed as it is in Quaker Stitch - invented for the purpose. I hope to learn to do this soon.





In the process I noticed the lovely tree in the gardener panel.

This is one of the components for which the shop has small kits. I bought a couple of kits, including this one.

The other exhibition I wanted to record was the Barrett Friendship Quilt. This is a Victorian counterpane, initiated by Marianne Foster when she married the artist Jerry Barrett, who had painted an uncooperative Florence Nightingale. The counterpane was worked on by numerous people, many of them Quakers, in squares and assembled later. The daughters of the engraver Thomas Oldham Barlow worked squares, as did Marian Ellis, whose family friendship with William Morris is reflected in her use of his poetry on her contribution.



The counterpane alternates knitted squares with embroidered squares and each side panel is a lengthy quote.

It is a record of the concerns and interests of an artistic community.

There is frequently a stitcher working in an area towards the end of the exhibition. I did not realise until after lunch that the stitcher this morning was working on a panel for the Australian Quaker Tapestry. The Kendal Quaker stitchers have undertaken to stitch one of the panels. When I returned from lunch the stitcher was not there, and I did not want to uncover her work.




I walked around to the front of the Meeting Hall - the last station on the walk I attempted yesterday. The windows have large visuals of the tapestries  - clever.

From the front gates there is a good view of Kendal Castle ruins.



The lovely chimney line is of the building directly across the river from the Riverview Hotel.

Back at the hotel I did a bit more work on my Estense bag - the subject of a later embroidery blog -, read a bit more of Bruce Beckham and did some preliminary packing. My taxi is booked for 9.30 am tomorrow.


The Cumbrian lamb I had for dinner was nearly as good as the duck last night.










The sunset was less spectacular, probably due to the cloud cover - in itself pretty interesting.




Tomorrow will be mainly spent in travelling to Cheltenham to visit my lovely cousins.

Day 13: Kendal 2

I managed the daylight saving change this morning by checking my phone time against my watch time. The phone was an hour ahead, so I knew it had self-adjusted. Breakfast was sensibly extended by half and hour and I indulged in fruit and muesli at 9.45am.













Breakfast is in the second floor dining room, and the reflections on the river were splendid.

 My plan for the day was to attempt the Quaker discovery walk - or part thereof. The map in the booklet confused me, as not all streets, and no bridges were named. I was also pretty sure I would be  in trouble with my sciatica by the time I got to the hill climb to the Quaker burial ground.

The walk begins at the Quaker Meeting Hall gates

visits the site of the original Friends School, founded in 1698,  built on this site in 1772, adding a girls' school in the 1860s and closing in 1932.

 

Quakers were amongst the first English bankers, merging two very early banks to form the Kendal Bank which later became Barclays. I missed taking a photo of the remaining two steps of the first Quaker bank.

After a few missed turns, the walk took me down the New Shambles. Once slaughter houses and butchers, it now boasts numerous boutique shops, almost none of which open on Sundays.

One that did was a tiny general store

It was probably a good thing that the stationery shop only opens on days I am not here,












and definitely fortuitous that the craft shop, crammed full of goodies, does not reopen until Tuesday - that's if the owner is well enough.

Replica of Moot Hall

Near the War Memorial, is the  site of the Moot Hall where George Fox Preached in 1652. The original burnt down in 1969. The replica is occupied by retailers.

The yard of the Woolpack Hotel, where Quakers operated a Soup Kitchen in the 1830s Depression is largely redeveloped. The Soup kitchen operated until 1848.

Kendal is full of old Yards. The term refers to alleys or lanes.

Close to the Woolpack Hotel is Entry Lane  leading to a long cobbled passageway up the hill.

I got to the top. Instructions were to turn left and keep climbing to the Quaker Burial Ground.  A woman sitting on her doorstep assured me this was not the case, and the Burial Ground was back down the hill.

I suspect she was wrong, and confused with a smaller graveyard in the grounds of the Quaker Meeting Hall, but I was concerned about walking further on rough ground on my own with sciatica, so turned back.

I rested briefly in the Market Square with the pigeons, and returned to the hotel to read the next of my Bruce Beckham Lakes District Crime Fiction.

Late in the afternoon my friend Christine rang - correctly deducing that I would be resting and reading in my room! We had a good catch up and laugh. She is following my adventures and understands the stitching challenges. It is a joy to hear her voice and share the experiences and challenges.




Tonight I went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. It is very reminiscent of the restaurant at The Mitre, Hampton Court, set overlooking the river. It is lovely to sit over a river and eat in the evening as the sun goes down.

 First the duck disturbed the surface of the water.

 Then the swans came to feed

and two birds perched high on the roof, between the chimneys - I'm sure there's an embroidery in that one!













The castle showed up more clearly in the fading light than it had all day







and then the sun went down.

To top it off, the duck on my plate was, I think, the best I have ever had - and I've had quite a bit of duck. Never with blackberries, though.


I'm really glad I came into Kendal for these few days.