a journey through time
Sunday, July 5th, 2009by Rachael
Telford, England
We start in the year MDCCLXXIX. How long does it take you to work it out? We know our Roman numerals, but they don’t slip off the tongue quite so readily as 1779!
We are at Telford and England’s first iron bridge has just been opened.
The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution should call for more than a two minute speech from the Mama, but all the museums (there are nearly a dozen of them in this one gorge) are frightfully expensive and so the speech suffices….until such a time as we study this time period from the comfort of the other side of the world. Hopefully someone will make the connection back to this day! In the meantime, we zip around a corner and back to the 1100s and Buildwas Abbey. Walking around what remains of the magnificent stone structure reminds us these were cold places to live – inside the fairly complete rooms, it was decidedly chilly even on this very warm day.
Up the road and back another few hundred years. About the time Paul was writing his letter to the Romans (58AD), a legion of approximately 6,000 men was dispatched off to the miserable far reaches of the empire – to modern day Wroxeter. They built themselves a fort, and over the next 500 years it was enlarged to become a complete city covering 160 or so acres – the fourth largest city in Britain at the time. And then, for no apparent reason, it was abandoned. There is no evidence of fire or plague or attack – it just seems the people up and left. The only remaining part today is a small exclusive market and the baths. Possibly sounds not so interesting – and to just look at from the road, doesn’t appear spectacular, but with the help of illustrated boards and an audio tour with a wealth of information and dramatisations, the pile of bricks was brought to life. It’s quite something to stand beside a fairly deserted English country lane knowing that a thousand years ago it was teeming with life. It’s quite something to look across that street and imagine the Forum in the field. It’s quite something to walk down the steps into the baths, look up and imagine the collonades, the tiles, the paintwork.
Advertorial:
English Heritage looks after hundreds of old buildings and historic sites in England – everything from Stonehenge, Chysauster Village and Tintagel castle, which we visited earlier to Wroxeter Roman City and Buildwas Abbey where we went today…….and there are many more, which we will be investigating over the next few weeks. Some of the sites are little more than stones in the ground. Others, have excellently-produced audio tours, small museums (there was a very professional one at the Roman city today) or worksheets for children. We are a bit picky about using worksheets, generally preferring the kids to have their own experience at a place rather than hearing them say, “What are we supposed to do next?” So in the case of Tintagel, we stuck the worksheets in a back pocket until we had finished our visit. At Buildwas Abbey, however, they had sheets of photos that had been taken and it was the children’s mission to try to find each photo. This proved to be a winner, and even the smallest could take part. On the sheets were a couple of monks talking in speech balloons about their lives too. It was simple, but very effective. And allowed time for Dadda to take photos of Mama making the lunch….what a place for a picnic!
Each site we have been to so far has had a guidebook – smallish reasonably-priced informative books, which we would love to be purchasing, but we are aware we will be backpacking again before this trip is over and so we are restrained.
Some of the sites have no entry fee, but most do. Unfortunately for us, a family pass includes only three children and so we would have to buy two passes for each site. BUT English Heritage obviously understands the importance of getting children interested in their work and so they allow six children to accompany each adult who has an annual membership. We only needed to visit three sites to make this an economically viable proposition for us, even though we will be here less than two months. Looks like we will certainly be getting our money’s worth from these passes – with the handbook they provide, we have mapped out our route to take in many of their sites.
If we were in New Zealand, we would most probably have only visited one of these sites on any one day. But we are in England and there’s so much to see. So we didn’t stop there. Not far up the road was Shrewsbury, a little town we were assured was well worth making the effort to visit, and one where we hoped to find the famous biscuits. Our informants were right; it was a gorgeous place (my new favourite English village), but we couldn’t find a bakery, let alone any bikkies.
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 60km
rayres