A man, a printing press, a village

Posted on by
Reply

THE PRINTER AND bookseller William Caxton (c1422 – c1491) is believed to be the person who brought the first printing press to England. I do not often think about him, but when we were driving from London to Cambridge, he sprung to mind when I saw a road sign pointing to a place (in Cambridgeshire) called Caxton. I wondered whether this place was in any way connected with the printer Caxton.

St Andrew, Caxton, Cambridgeshire

Caxton is a small village with some lovely old houses, a pub called The Chubby Frog, and a mediaeval church: St Andrews. The church is a little way out of the village. When we arrived at the place of worship, we saw that there was a sign inviting all to enter to enjoy a coffee morning. We entered, and were made to feel welcome before being served cups of coffee. We spoke with a couple of friendly church wardens, and asked them about any link between their village, Caxton, and the famous fifteenth century printer. The told us that there was no connection between them. Later, I found out that the village’s name was noted as ‘Caustone’ in the 1086 Domesday book.

As for the printer, nobody is certain where he was born, but it has been suggested that it was somewhere in Kent, possibly near (or in) Tenterden or near Hadlow. According to Wikipedia:

“One of the manors of Hadlow was Caustons, owned by the Caxton (De Causton) family.”

Now, De Causton is like the old name of Caxton village, Caustone’. I wonder whether it is remotely possible that the family in Kent might once have lived in what is now Caxton. Just wondering …

A small island in the river Thames at Twickenham where the Rolling Stones once played

Posted on by
Reply

FACING THE BARMY Arms pub on the Thames riverside at Twickenham and across the water is an islet, which is 610 yards long and 122 yards wide at its broadest point. A footbridge connects the isle with Twickenham. The island is called Eel Pie Island, and it has been used by man since the Mesolithic era (15000-5000 BC), if not earlier. More recently, it was home to the Eel Pie Island Hotel, a building constructed in the nineteenth century. In the 19320s and 1930s, the hotel hosted ballroom dancing. And from the 1950s onwards, it hosted Jazz bands, and later Rock Music groups including, for example: The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, and other now famous groups. The hotel went into decline, and in 1969 it was occupied by anarchists who established a hippie commune in it. In 1971, the hotel was destroyed by fire.

We walked across the bridge, and along the island’s single winding footpath. On our way we passed houses and gardens, many of which have been decorated in humorously picturesque ways. At the end of the path, there is a red painted metal door, through which we passed, and entered a large covered boat repair workshop. Beyond that, there is an amazing collection of wackily decorated shacks and sheds, in which artists have studios. There is also a modern block of flats, which looks too conventional for its eccentric surroundings, and a far cry from the alternative atmosphere that prevails on the rest of the island.

Eel Pie Island, apart from being residential, is home to the Twickenham Rowing Club as well as Pie Island Art Studios, which open to the public occasionally, allowing visitors to enjoy and buy the island’s artists’ works.

Although notices proclaim that Eel Pie Island is private, nobody stopped us entering, and the few people we met there greeted us amicably.

Three men who became martyrs at London’s Smithfield

Posted on by
Reply

FACING SMITHFIELD MEAT market, there are three wall plaques commemorating four men who were martyred at Smithfield, which several centuries ago was an important site for executions. The four men, whose memorials I saw today (17 March 2026), were: Wat Tyler (c1320-1381), John Ball (c1338-1381) who was executed in St Albans, William Wallace (c1280-1305), and John Bradford (1510-1555).

Sir William Wallace memorial

Tyler and Ball were significantly involved in the Peasants Revolt. William Wallace, a Scot, was one of the main military leaders in the First Scottish War of Independence (1296-1328), and was captured by the English, taken to London for trial, and executed at Smithfield. And Bradford, a Protestant, was executed for alleged crimes against the Catholic Queen Mary I.

I saw memorials to these men, but have read that they were by no means the only people martyred at Smithfield (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Smithfield for more names).

Today, Smithfield is becoming a trendy area with plenty of bars, pubs, and restaurants. It is difficult to imagine that it was once a place where these dreadful executions were carried out.

Once prisoners were locked up here in Hampstead

Posted on by
Reply

EVERY NOW AND then, when touring around England, we have spotted village lock-ups. These were small places with barred doors where prisoners could be held briefly in a cell until more suitable accommodation could be found for them. These miniature jails were:

“… used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to house criminals who were apprehended on suspicion of committing petty crime … Lock-ups were only temporary forms of imprisonment, usually for one or two people, before the local authorities of the day decided how to deal with the offender. Criminals could be released or sent to the closest large town for trial.” (www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/historic-jails-essex-you-can-3227277).

There were probably quite a few parish lock-ups in London, but now most of them have disappeared. However, if you walk along Cannon Lane in Hampstead, you will find one that has been preserved to some extent. It is within the garden wall of the grounds of Cannon Hall, which is where local magistrates held court, A plaque next to its entrance informs that the lock-up was established about 1730. Soon after the creation of the police force in 1829, the lock-house became disused, and prisoners were locked up in the Watch House that stands in Hampstead’s Holly Walk. Today, it seems as if the entrance to the former lock-house, flanked by two barred windows, is now the front door of some kind of residential accommodation.

For more information about Hampstead past and present, why not read my book:https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R2WRK92

An artist who discovered a novel type of bed linen in Denmark

Posted on by
Reply

In 1962, my parents took me and my sibling to Denmark. We travelled by car, and wherever we stayed, the beds had duvets (feather filled quilts), rather than sheets and blankets. My mother was very impressed by the duvets, which we had never seen before. Here is an excerpt abot duvets from my book about my mother “Remembering Helen: My Mother the Artist”:

“In Denmark, my mother purchased four duvets filled with Eider duck feathers, and cotton covers for them. The Danish word for duvet is ‘dyne’, which is pronounced ‘doo-ne’. Two of the duvets were folded and placed on the rear seat of the car. My sister and I sat on these all the way from Denmark back to London. The other two were stuffed in the boot. After returning from Denmark, my mother decreed that from then on, duvets would be used instead of sheets and blankets. At home, we referred to them by their Danish name. Although a few British people had known about duvets since long before the 18th century (the English traveller Tom Coryate had described them in the 17th century), and Harrods stocked them in the 1950s, they did not become commonly used until Terence Conran began selling them in his Habitat shop in 1964. Once again, my mother was ahead of the times. Not only had she installed car seatbelts and child locks long before they became common in Britain, but also her use of duvets was way ahead of the crowd.“

You can read more about my mother, a sculptor who worked and exhibited alongside Elizabeth Frink, Antony Caro, Philip King, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore in my book that is available from Amazon (click on the picture below):

A sea that is shrinking and a traditional type of weaving

Posted on by
Reply

THE ARAL SEA which is a lake on the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan was once the world’s third largest lake. From the 1960s onwards, it began to shrink because the rivers that fed it were diverted to be used for Soviet irrigation projects. Now it has shrunk to less than 10% of its original area. From the 1960s onwards, the decline of the sea’s size has been monitored by satellite imagery.

During March 2026, Vadehra art gallery has put on a temporary exhibition (at London’s Cork Street) of works by the Indian artist Himali Singh Soin and the British artist David Soin Tappeser, an artistic duo called ‘Hylozoic/Desires’. The show includes a series of images based on what can be seen of the Aral Sea in the satellite pictures that chart its decline. Their images are made of cloth woven using the traditional ikat method. Simplifying the technique, it involves weaving with threads that have been dyed in several colours in varying patterns along their length. We first saw this extremely complicated method of fabric production at Patan in Gujarat (India: see https://gujarat-travels.com/2019/02/05/weaving-in-patan/ for more about the technique). The ikat pictures at the exhibition were woven in Uzbekistan.  By using this technique to capture the essence of the satellite images, the artists have produced a beautiful artistic representation of an environmental disaster that has take place over almost seven decades.

Although the ikat fabrics chart a tragic history, there is some good news. The Kazakhstan government has been able to increase the depth of the sea significantly, and as a result its salinity has dropped.

The eyes have it near London’s Smithfield Market

Posted on by
Reply

GINNY ON FREDERICK is a tiny art gallery at 99 Charterhouse Street, next to Smithfield meat market. We had never heard of it before, and after seeing it mentioned in the Financial Times newspaper, we went there today (11 March 2026) to view a collection of portrait paintings by British-born Hanna Murray (b. 1994). She received her MFA from New York Academy of Art in 2021, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York (USA). Like the gallery, the artist was new to us.

The six paintings on display were all portraits, beautifully executed. What makes each of them special is the artist’s depictions of her subjects’ eyes. They are literally eye-catching, and especially alluring. Along with her choice of colouring, the eves give the portraits an almost dreamlike quality, slightly weird but in a positive way. The gallery’s excellently written handout mentions the eyes, suggesting (quite correctly) that the subjects depicted:

“ … appear to observe themselves being observed.”

Difficult to find because it is so small and without a noticeable sign outside it, Ginny on Frederick was well worth the visit, and seeing the works by Hannah Murray was a delightful experience.

Produced in Pakistan and sold in India

Posted on by
Reply

NOT FAR FROM the Bhadra Fort in Ahmedabad (India), on Bhadra Road, there are two shops that sell tasty, crystallised fruits (my favourites are orange slices with their rinds and pineapple) and a large selection of imported: sweets, biscuits, dates, nuts, and other mainly edible items suitable for gifts. In one of the shops, I noticed that there was a wide range of spice mixes made by a company called Shan.  As we have used this excellent brand often at home, I looked at them.

Now, Shan is a Pakistani company (founded in Karachi in 1981), and at present Pakistan and India are not on the best of terms. So, I was interested to note that a Pakistani brand was on sale in a shop in India. When I looked at the packaging, I noticed that they were not labelled ‘Product of Pakistan’, but instead ‘Product of the UAE’. After looking at several boxes, I notice that one or two of the many that were on the shelf had the words ‘Product of Pakistan’. I wondered whether the shop owners had noticed this.

PS: The company has factories in UK, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and UAE