Erica Wheeler, Tour Guide (2024)

27/01/2024

Approaching Abbotsbury from the West, on an October morning. Very pleased with this play of light and dark. Beautiful Dorset. St. Catherine's Chapel shows up so well against the sun and Chesil beach and Portland in the background.

23/01/2024

When it’s cold and wet you can go into Wi******er cathedral for some spiritual and visual warmth.

The batik banners in the nave by Thetis Blacker in such warming equatorial colours, the nativity by Peter Eugene Ball with it’s touches of goldg, the ceiling of the guardian angels chapel and of course the raindrops and sunbeams illustrating the legend of St. Swithun on his memorial.

Gold, warmth, hope and light. What cathedrals are so good for.

The nave is free of chairs at the moment lending it an even more timeless feel.
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03/01/2024

Hope you had a good New Year. If you had a glass of bubbly at the midnight hour, spare a thought for Sir Kenelm Digby of Sherborne Castle. Inventor of the Champagne bottle.

Quite an extraordinary life story - his father was hung, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder plot of 1605 when Kenelm was 3. The life goes on to include falling in love with the daughter of an Earl, but being forced apart because she had no money, attracting the attention of Queen Marie de Medici, faking his own death to get away, making his way to Madrid where he helped Prince Charles (later to be King Charles I) and the Duke of Buckingham in their disastrous visit to the Spanish Court. He was then knighted by King James I - what a turnaround.
He married secretly his true love Venetia Stanley and had a career at court. He also financed a private expedition to the Mediterranean in 1628, defeating Ventian galleys and acquiring a fortune.

He studied chemistry, medicine, astrology and religion in Paris and was a founder member of the Royal Society. He invented the bottle now used for champagne, by experimenting with new technology - higher temperatures to make stronger, thicker glass and new designs, - a low curved bottle with a dome and a ring of solid glass to tie off the top. This would withstand higher pressure and so could be used for sparkling wine. It is still called verre anglais today in France.
He wrote books too. The best name?
The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digbie Kt. Opened.

What a guy, what a life and to top it off a rather close likeness to Mr. Tumble of Cbeebies fame!

23/12/2023

Just in case you need a few books as presents - here's a run down of the second hand bookshops (and new ones) in Wi******er. Starting with the excellently Christmassy, admiringly stocked and Dickensian atmosphere of P & G Wells in College Street. Possibly the oldest bookshop in the country. It has a bell when you enter and squeaky floorboards. But be warned if you enter to just a have a quick browse, you may not exit for over an hour - that's what happened to me earlier.

Just round the corner is Kingsgate Books and Prints. Wonderful new and old prints as well as a few books outside. All housed in a medieval, 12th century gate to the city.

Then there's the Wi******er Bookshop. Tucked down a tiny alleyway off St. George's St (just where the man in the santa hat is in the pic). Another time warp, with great local history second hand finds.

Oxfam bookshop is across the road in Parchment Street and has a good selection, as well as vinyl and sheet music and some good local books. This is where I found this beauty the other day - The Ship's Cat by Richard Adams and Alan Aldridge, a story in verse about a pirate cat, who ends up in a Spanish gaol, but escapes - brilliant.

Happy Christmas reading.

******er

15/12/2023

Two amazing trees. The Moyles Court Oak is near Ellingham in the west of the New Forest. A few hundred years old, a wonderful specimen, as soon as you come across it (very close to the Rockford Common car park) you know it's old.

Close by in Breamore churchyard is a venerable yew. Probably over 1000 years old, it was a mature tree when the Saxon church was built. Now hollowed out, it looks like a circle of wizened men conferring. Some old coffins lie at its base, moved there from the old priory.

The New Forest has the largest number of ancient trees in Western Europe, some maintained by pollarding (cutting it down to above grazing height from which it regenerates and regrows) and some by the nibbling of the New Forest animals.

If you have a Hampshire-lover or Wessex lover you haven't bought a Christmas present for, consider my book 'The Little Book of Hampshire' - it lists many of the great trees of Hampshire amongst many other nuggets.

Find a link to buy on my website (in bio). Also in good bookshops especially in Hampshire, and the big A.

15/12/2023

The Odeon cinema in Salisbury, New Canal Street is full of secrets and is not what it seems! The frontage looks 16th century but is fake Tudor from the 1880s, remarkable enough for a cinema. Walk inside and the foyer is made out of a 15th century merchant’s house, John Halle’s hall. Beams, fireplace and windows still all in place. Incredible.
Make your way to the back where the popcorn smell is coming from and you find what I think is the best bit. A 1930s Gaumont cinema. In its heydey it had live shows too on its stage. Now sadly it’s divided into 5 screens. But Screen 1, the biggest, still gives you an idea of the fabulous faux Tudor decor of the 1930s. The full Katherine Hepburn. A huge ceiling - plaster made to look like wood - with ‘medieval’ chandeliers. Fake medieval tapestries line the wall, complete with ni****ne staining which can never be removed.
I went on a tour, they run monthly, where I saw lots of hidden bits. Remnants of the original Gaumont carpet on the backs of some back stairs. The projection room, the old 1930s projectors, the old Tudor style restaurant , now a store room and even behind the screens, literally plus where the bins are kept! (It’s the only place to see the external walls of the merchant house).
The foyer which is the true medieval bit is open to the public whenever the cinema is open. You’ll have to buy a ticket for screen 1 to see the much rarer 1930s cinema and you can totally imagine Errol Flynn or Katherine Hepburn in there.

12/12/2023

Salisbury is absolutely choc-a-bloc with almshouses. Or should that be chequer-bloc? You'll only get that one if you know that Salisbury is laid out on a grid-system and the built squares are called 'chequers'. But anyway, the amount of almshouses or charitable accommodation is testament to the inequality of wealth the city has had over the centuries.

Rich merchants and other commercially successful people endowed the city with these buildings which could help alleviate the suffering of the poor, which a wealthy city always produced and attracted. Most in Salisbury still in use. For example Anne Bottenham, inn keeper and brothel owner is said to have endowed and had built the Trinity Hospital in the 1370s for 12 poor residents and 18 poor strangers who could stay 3 nights.

Here we have Frowd Almshouses, on the corner of Bedwin Street and Rollestone St., Blechynden's Almshouses on Wi******er Street, and Trinity Hospital on Trinity Street, rebuilt in 1702, hence the classical symmetry. You can also find Bricketts Hospital off Exeter Street on Carmelite Way, Hussey's Almshouses in Castle Street, Taylor's almshouses in Bedwin Street, Sarah Hayter's Almshouses on Fisherton Street, and the Matrons College in the Cathedral Close. And the oldest of all St. Nicholas Hospital just on the bridge to Harnham (deserves a post of it's own). It seems you can't walk further than a chequer without finding one.

It adds another layer to the clues of medieval and early modern life still all around Salisbury and still is use!

09/12/2023

These are the fossils and pretty things we found on the beach from a recent fossil hunt at Lyme Regis. We went on a fantastic guided fossil walk from Lyme Regis Museum. They were great guides and showed what to look for and what not to look for. Got a small vertebrae of a marine reptile, some nice ammonites, alongside pyrite.

The area, to the east of Lyme Regis town not only has fossils fallen down onto the beach from the rocks above, but also the remains of an old rubbish tip - so there are some red herrings! We went just after some rough Autumn weather, which was perfect for finding fossils washed down onto the beach, but it was noticeable how dangerous it was close to the cliffs themselves, running water, mud slicks and even large falling rocks. Stick to the beach guys! But a great activity in those winter stormy months - just as Charmouth beach was voted one of the top winter beaches to visit - it neighbours Lyme Regis, and is brilliant for fossils too.

07/12/2023

Christmas windows in Wi******er. It always feels cosy seeing light filter out of a church window when it's dark outside. Even though the reality is often a little chillier when you get in.

Here is Wi******er Cathedral East end and the complete opposite, St. Lawrence, a tiny church squeezed in just between the High Street and the Square, with a beautiful glass engraving by Tracey Sheppard. Don't miss the door as you walk through the archway by the Buttercross. There's no frontage, just sits behind Montezuma's chocolate shop.

Always a spine chilling, yet hope filling experience are the carol concerts at Wi******er Cathedral. When the choir process to the back to sing in darkness by the Christmas Tree and West window is a particularly moving moment. Worth sitting at the back just to see that.

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05/12/2023

Local history is always fascinating and by looking at the micro-detail of one place you uncover some most surprising stories. A new book covering my area - the Worthy villages (Kings Worthy, Headbourne Worthy, Martyr Worthy and Abbots Worthy) has just been published. Called the 'The Four Worthys', by Barry Shurlock and Tim Selwood it's a pictorial history of the four villages.

Who would have thought that in a small area such a variety of characters would have called it their home. Here we have:

Laurence Olivier, when stationed at Worthy Down Aerodrome in 1942 (on right, Billy Blake on left)

Billy (left) and Richard Blake of Woodhams Farm, who built their own plane in the barn in 1932 from spare parts. The Blake Blue Tit

Polly the Parrot, who greeted customers at the Cart and Horses pub (just reopened this summer after a refurbishment, sans parrot!)

Author, Raymond Hitchcock, author of Percy, and other novels and resident and restorer of Abbots Worthy Mill.

Jessie Carter, born in Park Lane, Abbots Worthy and founder of Poole Pottery.

A G Taylor, Lifelong resident of Headbourne Worthy (Taylors Corner is named after him) and first local historian, his book entitled Memories of Village Life in Headbourne Worthy 1804-1914 was a fundraiser for Royal Hampshire County Hospital.

Christopher Bland, lived at Abbotsworthy House, chairman of the board of governors of the BBC and later chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Co.

And, F. M Halford, celebrated dry-fly fisherman at Fulling Mills (the river Itchen plays a large role in the history of the villages)

Just a taster - delve deeper in the book - available from P & G Wells, College st. Wi******er or by e-mailing the chair of the Worthys Local History Group - see the website for details.

04/12/2023

More colours of the New Forest. Rockford and Ibsley Commons.

"Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress. In its venerable one coat lay a certain satire on human vanity on clothes.....To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon...where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of the heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance,and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harrassed by the irrepressible New."

Thomas Hardy talking about Egdon Heath in Return of the Native. A few miles west of here.

But since this was written, in the 1870s, there have been new additions to the Forest. Many of the unexpected or hidden things to find on a walk in the forest are actually wartime additions. It was heavily used in the run up to D-day and although the forest is resilient and has covered or recovered these things, there are a few reminders of that time. Here you can see an octagonal brick building - the remnants (actually the protective blast wall) of a Huff Duff - no not the exclamation of a Christmas-hater but the nickname of a High Frequency Direction Finding Station (HFDF or huff duff). Inside would would have been a wooden tower in which enemy aircraft were located and also signals given out for home aircraft as navigational aids. It stands lonely on the heath and isn't marked on the OS map. But the National Trust walk on Rockford Common (available online) will get you there.

30/11/2023

An arresting portrait. 6 year old Chrysogona Baker, painted in 1579 and displayed at The Vyne, the beautiful (now National Trust) house near Basingstoke, Hampshire.

She holds an unusually formal pose in incredibly ornate clothing - although her face looks pretty put out at having to wear all this and pose like this!

Next is an unusually informal pose from Chaloner Chute on his tomb/memorial. He lounges just off the chapel in the house. This 'lounger' was also 'speaker'. He was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1654 to 1659, the year of his death - as the inscription says:

'amidst the varying & complicated Interests of that Year,
to the regret of all parties
He died'

'varying and complicated' putting it mildly. It was rather a tricky year to be speaker of the House of Commons, Richard Cromwell replacing his father Oliver as Lord Protector, then being removed by the Army and replaced by the Rump Parliament and that in turn was brought down and Charles II invited back to be king soon after. However Chaloner looks remarkably calm.

The tomb was added later in the 18th century by a later Chute descendant.

29/11/2023

Our three services of “From Darkness to Light: The Advent Procession’ will take place next week.

These breathtaking services mark the beginning of Advent, when we prepare for the coming of Jesus, the Light of the World. The services involve the slow illumination of our beautiful Cathedral, from complete darkness until the Cathedral is lit by thousands of candles representing the coming of the Light.

🕯️Friday 01 December, 19:00
🕯️Saturday 02 December, 19:00
🕯️Sunday 03 December, 17:00

These services are free to attend and no booking is required, but queue numbers will be issued on each night to ensure fair access to the Cathedral. These are busy services, and seat reserving is not allowed, so be aware you must queue together if you wish to be seated together. Please ensure you are seated 20 minutes prior to the service start time.

Visitors with accessibility requirements, please see the service information on our website for further details.

📸 - Max Willcock

26/11/2023

Page & Phillips 1907 Christmas display. There were 26 butchers along the High Street in this period.

Hampshire Chronicle 23rd December 1899 "Christmas may or may not be on the decline as a national institution; no doubt in some respects there is a falling off in the enthusiasm it arouses, which offers an excuse to the admirers of the "Good old times long ago." Still, judging from the preparations made by the tradesmen of Wi******er, as displayed to the public on Wednesday evening, "show night", Christmas without its "good cheer" seems as remote an eventuality amongst English people as ever it was. High-street and Jewry ¬street were rendered scenes of considerable animation by the crowd of people who turned out to look at the shops and continued their round of inspection up to a comparatively late hour. There was plenty of brightness and colour to be seen many of the shop windows and entrances being arranged with much taste"

Wi******er Tourist Guides will running Christmas City Highlights tours from now until the end of the Christmas Market, 17th December (Upper and Lower city tours on Sats and Suns). See Eventbrite for tickets or the Visitor Information Centre, Broadway

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The quality of the beef, mutton, poultry and wild game this year is of a high order.
We will, as usual, begin at the top of the High-street, and follow the crowd on their slow parade to the bottom.

24/11/2023

The calm before the Christmas storm. Wi******er Cathedral just before the Christmas Market opened last week.

It is a beautiful market in the crook of cathedral. Wooden cabins, fairy lights and warming things.

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22/11/2023

This time coming to you from inside a beech tree. This was just a few days ago, early November is what I would call 'peak beech' (autumn), (there's also a peak beech (Spring) by the way!) and I think we've just gone past it now. Quite a few leaves down now. There's always a moment when I find a beautiful beech in 'peak beech' time and it's magical - an illuminated tree, golden.

Sometimes on a hill, sometimes on a lovely autumn walk, but this one is just in the park after school drop off.

Always uplifting to be in a beech.

21/11/2023

Sometimes the weather just does it all for you. Wi******er looking radiant in the November morning sun, the other day.

Well you know John Keats liked a good autumn and he liked Wi******er and he liked Wi******er's autumn, at least that's what he said in his poem Ode to Autumn 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom friend of the maturing sun'

We're rather past the fruitfulness part of the year, but the colours of some of the trees are still brilliant. Most of these are Abbey Gardens. The last one, is one of my favourite beeches in the Cathedral Close. Brilliant shape and a twisted trunk, as well as spectacular leaves.

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17/11/2023

Classic Capability.
Sherborne New Castle, north Dorset - the lake and landscape all done by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown for first Robert than Henry Digby in the mid-1700s. All the curves are created, the copses and clumps planted, the views selected and the ground landscaped to make them.

All you could want from a 1700s residence was here (some of them pictured):
Ice house check
Game larder check
Orangery check
creamery and buttery (complete with Roman mosaic, no doubt lifted from some antiquarian 'adventure') check
Lake check (including disgruntled Sherborne Mill owner, whose flow of water it diverted)
Boat house check
Ducks brought in for lake check
Real old ruin (Sherborne Old Castle) check
Fake old ruin (just for good picturesque effect) check
Cascade check

Plus a few nobody else had, mainly sitting opportunities:
Walter Raleighs seat (he used to own the castle), where he sat and smoked and watched the traffic along the London to Exeter road below and was apparently doused with ale when his servant thought he was on fire while he smoked. (pic 7)

And another seat called Pope's seat, near where apparently Alexander Pope, the 18th century poet sat when he visited the gardens (pic 8).

It's now closed for the winter season but was still worth a visit to the grounds in the autumn, Capability Brown's vision still doing it's dreamy thing, (if you can forget the disgruntled peasants, mill owners, and incredibly human-resource heavy maintenance, which apparently the Digbys could).

14/11/2023

Results of one of my 'history tramps' around Salisbury's north and eastern chequers (or blocks). Not so many tourists explore this area but there are some hidden secrets:

A secret fifteenth century stone porch, taken from the north side of the Cathedral in the late 1700s and placed in this garden next to Wiltshire Council, Bourne Hill. Almost totally hidden but actually only metres from the noisy ring road.

The Pheasant Inn. Beautiful 15th century timbers, it incorporates the old Shoemakers Company guildhall

Wonderful tile work at the old Salisbury Steam Laundry, Salt lane

Wattle and daub still visible in an old clothworkers cottage on Guilder street.

And an ogee-roofed bay window, hanging so low there is yellow and black warning tape to warn tall people to duck. Were people shorter then or has the street level risen?

Nugge's Corner - beautiful building on corner of Blue Boar Row and Endless Street. Lovely but also included because of it's brilliant name. Nugge was a medieval owner.

There are so many almshouses I'll deal with those later!

Always worth walking and looking.

12/11/2023

Rainbow over Stonehenge.
I'm back - I took a break from social media to do something rather important which was to pass my Blue Badge Tour Guiding exams. Which I'm pleased to say I have - all 8 of them. So I am now guiding around all of Wessex - Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Isle of Wight.
When the going gets tough - social media suffers- it's not really my modus operandi - I am a 70s child! But I have so much to share with you now - all the amazing spots I visited as part of my blue badge course, so I've got to get back on it! The storage on my computer is totally full of pictures of hidden places and my brain storage is full of accompanying facts and stories. So gotta get some out there...

To kick off how about a rainbow over Stonehenge? Couldn't get much more Wessex, definitely not secret, but a little rainbow feels like a secret moment at Stonehenge. Stonehenge is almost a cliche, it's a Neolithic Van Gogh's sunflowers. Perhaps you mainly interact with it by cursing the traffic jam it causes on the A303. But if you take some time to look at it, walk round it, contemplate it - the mystery and sublimity is still there. One thing that makes me think is the way the workers shaped the stones - by the way the stones are super-hard sarsen, no ordinary sandstone, it's harder than granite - so that they had tenon and mortise joints (note the tenon 'pimple' of top of the upright) and tongue and groove joins. How imaginative, and dedicated of them to attempt that - it's not seen anywhere else in the world. And why make lintels anyway?

08/05/2023

Classical folly one way, neo-gothic the other. Highclere Castle has lots of interesting follies, many of them built in the 1700s when classical was all the rage (this one is called the decidedly un-Classical Jackdaw's Castle). The castle was rebuilt in a sort of faux-Tudor effect, which of course many of you will know as Downton Abbey. Charles Barry was the architect, he also did the Houses of Parliament if it looks a bit familiar.

The grounds are looking lovely at the moment too, fritillaries in the wood and cowslips spreading out below the castle in a huge swathe. Capability Brown looks out over his own creation - the man-made swells and dips and tree clusters in various greens.

I visited inside for the first time a couple of weeks ago - some incredible things to see - very rare embossed leather covering the walls, Charles I painted by Anthony Van Dyck, a Joshua Reynolds on the oak staircase as well as a stunning portrait of Catherine, the 6th Countess of Carnarvon from 1929, looking every inch a Downton daughter.

Lots of wonderful things nearby to see too - Beacon Hill, Seven Barrow field, Sandham Memorial Chapel - more posts on these soon.

25/04/2023

Can you see this 1000 year old church peeping through the trees? Surrounded by clear chalk streams running through the graveyard, its Anglo-saxon architecture on show (see the pilasters, like vertical flat pillars on the wall). It's tower is 13th century and it was heavily restored in the nineteenth century - well it had to be, sitting on all that water - the driving force was energetic Rector Henry Slessor and the architect Owen Brown Carter.

It's most wonderful 'reveal' is the Saxon stone rood, now encased in the vestry, but once on show on the external west wall. I didn't get a picture of it this time but here is a drawing by Owen Browne Carter. It has been heavily vandalised, but the figure of Jesus is still visible and the hand of God is lowered from above.

Headbourne Worthy, north of Wi******er. Another fascinating place mentioned in my book 'The Little Book of Hampshire' under 'Signs of Roodness'. To order see my website link in bio.

15/04/2023

Weird Romans. This is a roundel from a mosaic showing Neptune with crab legs and claws growing from his forehead! This is on display at Dorset County Museum, Dorset and was found at Witchampton in East Dorset. Dating from the 4th century. The marine theme is apparently typical of the Dorchester or Durnovarian School of mosaics. It's sometimes easy to forget that the Wessex area had a mediterranean influence for 4 centuries.

12/04/2023

Beaulieu, New Forest. Can you imagine that this tranquil village, by the River Beaulieu was a crucial part of the defences in case of invasion by the N***s in World War 2. By May 1940, once France had fallen, the enemy was just over the English Channel and the New Forest, ancient and serene as it was, was on the front line. It was thought almost inevitable Germany would try to invade. Beaulieu (as well as Lyndhurst) was made into an 'anti-tank island', to try and slow the Blitzkrieg. Gunpoints were made in the dairy and old mill, which potentially covered all road and river access (see hand written plan in pic 6). Concrete road blocks were put in place. If you know where to look you can still see the evidence of those gunpoints and the old pillbox (with an interpretation board) at Fire Station Lane and along the main road. But do also enjoy the village itself, the shops, cafes, mill pond, river, views of Palace House and the animals wandering around (don't tread in the poo!)

Also worth discovering is Patrick's Patch, at the end of the High Street, a wonderful little kitchen garden which supplies the adjacent cafe.

04/04/2023

The spectacular Saxon church at Boarhunt (Borunt) just north of Portsmouth. And by spectacular I mean plain but quietly old. There are many Saxon features, including a window (pictured) chancel arch, pilasters and doorways. The font is also Saxon, one of the earliest examples in Hampshire - big enough for almost immersing the (probably) screaming Saxon babies, which was the custom of the time apparently.

There is a memorial to a Robert Eddowes Esq, (not pictured) died aged 1765, who was 'Storekeeper of Ordnance at Portsmouth' which means he was important at the Gunwharf of Portsmouth Dockyard, just over the hill in Portsmouth. The location of the present 'waterfront development' of retail, restaurants, flats and Spinnaker Tower, used to be the place that the Royal Navy kept all the guns, powder, shot etc which it would load on and off the Navy ships. If you wander round, have a look at Vulcan House, now the Aspex art gallery and the Old Customs House (now a pub), some of the only remnants of the old Gunwharf. Perhaps remember Robert Eddowes.

This little village, seemingly lost in time, couldn't be further from bustling, military Portsmouth.

There is an ancient yew in the graveyard - of 8.23 m circumference, it has been estimated to date from 185 AD, which makes it around 880 years old when the church was built. Ruminate on THAT!

The last picture shows its hollow centre, looking into it and out the other side.

02/04/2023

Crinke-crankle. Great name and very descriptive. AKA corrugated cardboard wall. Pretty rare now, mostly found in Hampshire and Suffolk. It literally is a curvy zig-zag wall. It takes advantage of the sun and creates pockets of shelter and warmth for growing productive plants. It also negates the need for buttresses or supports. This example is in Lymington, Church Lane. Looking lovely with the beech hedge above it.
A couple of pics of the church in Lymington too - including one memorial to Anne Blakiston, died aged 101 in 1862. Quite amazing age - apparently entailing a 'long widowhood'.

Erica Wheeler, Tour Guide

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