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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 7h

There's been work ongoing at Ludham for about ten years now, so it may well be a part of that.

Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 7h

About 20 years ago we drove through the Sologne on our way from the Atlantic to the Jura. It's a strange area, right in the middle of France but sparsely populated, and heavily wooded, mile after mile. It made the children rather quiet. A perfect setting for the novel.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 8h

I'm off to Manchester for the week tomorrow. I've not been for over two years, so I'm really looking forward to it and I'm going to try to resist too many revisits to places. The Pevsner city and county guides are only 20 years old, but Manchester's changed so much they seem to belong to the past.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 8h

How interesting. The boards are not connected to each other iirc, they slot into the beam beneath, so they may have been removed for repairs, though I've not been told anything. I'll try and find out!

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 9h

It's easy to say it I know, but it could easily have been more.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 9h

Some absolute classics there Roy, especially the Velvets and Syd, all three albums I regularly play. Before my time, or at least one of them would have been in my nine.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 11h

'Don't stand me down' is fab, definitely top 20 for me.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 12h

Fabulous. I love PP Arnold's voice, though for years I thought she was singing 'just touch my teeth before you leave me' in 'Angel of the Morning'. Still sounds like that, tbh.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 12h

Here's #My9Albums, which I understand is a thing. You can make your own: www.my9albums.com

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 17h

I wonder if that has something to do with it! I do think there's such a mismatch between the views from afar of it on its tremendous setting beside the castle high above the wooded drop to the River Wear, that the interior can't really live up to it.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 17h

Yes, like Ely there are not too many memorials to the Great and Good. At some cathedrals, Worcester for example, you can find yourself having to weave in and out of them!

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 17h

It does feel a little soulless compared with some.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 19h

Looking up into the central tower at Durham Cathedral. The nave below was fairly complete by 1133, and the end of that century saw the building of the galilee chapel and the twin west towers. The choir was rebuilt in the 13th Century, and then 200 years later this tower was the finishing touch.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

🧵4/4 If you've not come across the book, I do commend it to your attention and urge you to give it ago. End.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

🧵3/4 He spent most of his short life doing military service and then as a literary critic in Paris. 'Le Grand Meaulnes' was published in 1913, and the following year Alain-Fournier was killed in action on the Western Front. He was 27 years old.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

🧵2/4 It's a book about loss and the impossible search for one's lost youth. It usually retains its French title when translated into English, although it is sometimes retitled 'The Wanderer'. Alain-Fournier was born at La Chapelle-d'Angillon near Bourges. The house is now a shop.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

The writer Henri-Alban Fournier, better known as Alain-Fournier, was born #OTD 3 October 1886. His only novel, 'Le Grand Meaulnes' is a magical book about a romantic friendship between two boys on the verge of adulthood, set in a mysterious, remote wooded countryside. 1/4 🧵

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

St Francis reads a sermon to birds who flock to a tree to listen. A wallpainting at Wissington, Suffolk. Today's the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis in 1226. The Wissington paintings are dated c1280, so it's just possible the artist was alive in the saint's lifetime.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 20h

St George Presbyterian Church, Sunderland (today Stockton Road URC), 1890 for #SteepleSaturday. The architect, JB Wilson of Glasgow, was taken to Belfast by the elders and asked to copy Wilson's Crescent Presbyterian Church there, which he did faithfully including the remarkable tower.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm curious that you call him the Venerable Bede (usual Anglican name) rather than St Bede?

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Durham Cathedral. Despite the imposing bulk of the building on its famous perch above the River Wear it is not a huge interior. The domineering forest of great Norman columns is overpowering, and there is a sense of a worshipping community camping out in the ruins of something great, now lost to us.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The elegant Durham cathedral font. The Victorians thought it was unworthy, and in 1846 it was removed and replaced by a neo-Norman font to the design of Anthony Salvin, and taken to nearby Pittington. It was brought back here in 1935 during a major restoration programme. #FontsonFriday

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The towering font canopy and relatively tiny font in Durham Cathedral They were installed in 1663 when the building was restored to Church use after being used to house Scottish prisoners-of-war during the Civil War. 1,700 of them died in the cathedral of wounds, disease and hunger. #FontsonFriday

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I never miss an opportunity to repost it!

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The gallery and screen in the Great Hall of Durham Castle for a double #ADoorableThursday. The Cromwellian armour above the gallery came from Brancepeth Castle in the 1920s. The two trumpeters balconies either side came in the 14th Century by order of Bishop Hatfield, who liked to make an entrance.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

St Thérèse of Lisieux, one of the most popular of modern saints. Her statue can be found in many churches as here at St Pancras, Ipswich. Received into the Carmelite convent at Lisieux in 1888 at 15, she died of TB aged 24. Her spiritual memoir 'The Story of a Soul' became a posthumous best seller.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Today's the feast of St St Thérèse of Lisieux, 19th Century French nun, surrounded by roses in Tomasz Tuszko's Carmelites window, 2013 at St Mary, Inverness. Above and below are St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, with St Faustina opposite under the Holy Trinity.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It's the first day of a new month, so time for a monthly peek at the 12th Century Labours of the Months font at Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk. The October panel is second from the right and shows a man filling a barrel with wine or beer.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A unicorn trampling a snail with the head of a man, a c1520 misericord in the Tunstall Chapel of Durham Castle for #Woodensday.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The gates of the c1450 roodscreen at Salle, Norfolk, with panels of the four Latin Doctors. They appear like this on the doors of several Norfolk roodscreens. They may well have been intended to represent Catholic orthodoxy against the local enthusiasm for Lollardy in Norfolk, viewed as heretical.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

3/3 The Four Latin Doctors by Harry Stammers, 1936 at Middleton, Norfolk seem a cheerier bunch. St Jerome, whose feast is today, is with his lion. St Ambrose with a beehive, St Gregory without his papal crown on this occasion and St Augustine with the dove of the Holy Spirit complete the quartet.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Absolutely. St Gegory wears a papal crown, which he was usually depicted with in medieval church art, on Norfolk roodscreens for example.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

2/3 The Four Latin Doctors by FC Eden, 1925 at Marks Tey, Essex. St Augustine holds a flaming heart, St Gregory wears a papal crown, St Ambrose has a beehive and St Jerome wears a cardinal's hat and robes and holds a church. I'm afraid they look rather a gloomy lot!

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Four Latin Doctors St Ambrose, St Gregory, St Jerome and St Augustine at Fosdyke, Lincolnshire. Probably by Clayton & Bell in the 1870s as at neighbouring Algakirk. The church was rebuilt at the expense of Basil Beridge, Lord of the Manor and Rector of Algakirk. Today's the feast of St Jerome.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

St Jerome on the 1490s rood screen at Ludham, Norfolk. Half a century later he was dealt with by the reformers, who tried to completely excise his cardinal’s hat for being a symbol of 'popery'. The same was done to St Gregory's papal crown.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

'Collected glass' means it came as part of a donated collection sourced from various original settings.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

3/3 Two cardinals in 15th Century glass at Salle, Norfolk, presumably St Ignatius and St Jerome. Representations of the early Church Fathers, particularly the Latin Doctors, appear to have been part of a wider movement to reinforce Catholic orthodoxy in the later medieval period.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

2/3 St Jerome as a cardinal and St Gregory in a papal crown in 15th Century glass at Great Malvern Priory, Worcestershire, two of the Latin Doctors. The early church fathers were often depicted as cardinals, although in fact the hat was only introduced in the 12th Century.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

St Jerome in early 16th Century collected glass in Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. He holds his Latin translation of the Bible, popularly known as the Vulgate, still in use by the Latin Church after various revisions and versions over the centuries. The lion he tamed in the desert looks up at him.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That's right. He's often accompanied by the lion he tamed in the wilderness. 'Hierosme' at the bottom is the French form of Jerome.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

3/3 The ghost of St Jerome on one of the rood screen doors at Salle, Norfolk. Almost faded from sight now, but still easily identifiable from his cardinal's hat and his position among the three other Latin Doctors.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

2/3 St Jerome beavering away on his Latin translation of the Bible, one of the four Latin Doctors on the c1450 pulpit at Burnham Norton, Norfolk. As well as his face, his writing hand was also scratched out by the reformers, probably in the late 1540s.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today's the feast of St Jerome, 4th Century theologian, translator and one of the Four Latin Doctors. Here he is on the screen at Cawston, Norfolk wearing his cardinal's hat and carrying his works. He appears on 18 medieval rood screens or pulpits in Norfolk, often on the doors.

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Simon Knott @simonknott.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There's a lot of talk about what should happen to City with regard to points deductions, relegations and fines, but surely some of these charges are criminal offences, particularly those concerned with fraud. Perhaps a police investigation is already underway...

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