For Becky’s November Shadows.
Is it Two Trees? Is it Two Shadows?
Author: margaret21
I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.
Gazing Upwards – Shadows
Gazing upwards, as you walk towards the Museu Blau in Barcelona, your eye is baffled by sky and concrete and shadow all jostling for attention.
Or do you prefer it in colour?
For Becky’s NovemberShadows.
Tick-Tock
This week, it’s my turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. I decided on Clocks and Timepieces. Easy, I thought. Well, up to a point. There are plenty of clocks in towns, in stations, on churches and on public buildings. But too often they’re bit samey-samey. So I’m starting with one that we came upon by chance on our last day in Alsace, in Munster’s Catholic Church. It’s a modern Horloge de la Création, installed at the behest of André Voegele from Strasbourg, who has made it his ambition to install unusual timepieces. This one is interesting alright. It tells the time: hour by hour, minute by minute. But it also counts the years down, month by month; the days of the week; and the phases of the moon. It’s topped by a splendid cockerel, whom I chopped off a bit in my header photo. So here he is. I’m sure he’s a reliable alarm clock. Cocks usually are.
As to the rest. I have an indifferent photo of a clock that hasn’t functioned since 2007 – the Swiss Glockenspiel Clock in London; a clock outside St. Pancras Station; one from a station waiting room in Keighley; an intriguing one spotted outside an apartment block in Barcelona; the centrepiece of Thirsk’s Market Square; and a clock which is not a clock, but helps to govern the workings of the one high up outside Masham’s Parish Church. Now. Can you tell which is which?
And finally. A clock which is a shadow of its former self. This alarm clock sat in a hedge on a country road which I often passed during Daily Exercise in Lockdown. It stayed there for months after Normal Sevice had been resumed. It was always 8 o’clock. Then one day it disappeared. Life has not been the same since. I offer it to Becky for NovemberShadows.
Footnotes in History: The Nuns of Thorn
On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you. And oops. Last Friday I quite forgot what day of the week it was. So here, a whole week late, is a Friday Footnote.
The Nuns of Thorn
Our German friends live very near the Dutch border, so on our first day with them, they proposed an outing to Thorn, in Limburg. They promised a pretty little town with an interesting abbey. We got so much more than that.
Almost every town in Thorn is painted white – in fact it’s known as ‘The White Town‘ -more about that later. And the Abbey itself dominates the town. Nobody quite knows when it was built: but sometime in the 10th century. The bishop of Utrecht and his wife had it built for their daughter who became the first abbess of the convent. You thought Catholic priests were celibate? So did I. But apparently they could get away with marrying and fathering children at the time, despite official disapproval. Things only got tightened up a century later, when religious leaders realised that wealth was being passed down to sons and daughters rather than to the church.
Put aside any thoughts you might have that a convent was a place for pious women who wanted to live a simple life of devotion to God. The abbess was assisted by a chapter of six to twelve ladies from the aristocracy who brought with them – and could keep – all their earthly possessions. They were therefore able to accrue land over a wide area, which they farmed out for huge profits. The convent turned into an elite place where one could be accepted only if both parents, and all grandparents up to the great-great-grandparents on both sides were of noble birth. Impoverished nobility need not apply. Here is an example of the kind of family tree needed to prove eligibility:
By day, the canonesses could stay in their homes in Thorn, with their servants and worldly goods, returning to the convent only at night to sleep. Even this rule was abandoned. They petitioned the pope in 1310 to be allowed to relinquish their sombre black tunic with a white wimple.
But they had to wait 180 years for this request to be granted. Though once it was, this was what a nun here might look like:
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
By the end of the 15th century the abbey was granted ‘imperial immediacy‘ which turned it into an Imperial Abbey within the Holy Roman Empire. In the 16th century the abbess already had one seat in the district council of Westphalia and in the 17th century a seat in the discussion forum of the Empire, known as the Imperial Diet, giving this (relatively) tiny abbey an important role within Europe. It was actually an independent city-state.
All this brought prosperity to Thorn. Lands were farmed out, and although the peasants paid rent, no taxes were levied: This was just as unthinkable then as now. In the 16th century, the abbey even had its own mint. Till it was shut down, when it was discovered the coins’ silver content was falsified, and was too low.
The French Revolution put a stop to all this. The Low Countries were invaded and fell under French Rule. In 1796, all religious establishments were abolished, and even though the abbess tried to argue that as the nuns didn’t live together it wasn’t a religious establishment, it was all in vain. The palace of the abbess and all abbey buildings were demolished. Only the Abbey Church survived.
Thorn became part of France – Meuse-Inférieure. The French didn’t like the fact that Thorn was a tax-haven, and started to impose taxes. One of the taxes was based on the number of windows a house had. So …inhabitants of Thorn bricked up the windows to pay fewer taxes. And to cover it all up, they whitewashed the walls of their houses, to conceal the scars.
Thorn became a white town. Here in Britain we also had a much-hated window tax, in force between 1696 and 1851. It may be the origin of the phrase ‘daylight robbery‘.
Thorn remained part of France until 1815 when at the Congress of Vienna it was given to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. But it remained, then as now, a White Town.
So there we have it: a town of powerful women (whether God-fearing or not I don’t know), of economic prosperity for all, and free of taxes. Well worth a detour for any travellers to Limburg.
For Becky’s NovemberShadows today, look for the ‘shadow’ of a window in Thorn.
Monday Self-Portrait
For Becky’s NovemberShadows.
Another Shadow from the Valley Gardens
When I showed some shadows from the Valley Gardens in Harrogate the other day, they seemed to go down well. Here’s another view of those same shadows from a different part of the arcade. With added shadow, of course.
For Debbie’s One Word Sunday: Shadow (Just like Becky, I seem to have disregarded the One Word – sorry.)
And of course for Becky’s NovemberShadows.
Flowers for Cee
Parts of the blogsphere have turned into a bouquet this week. A bouquet for Cee, blogging supremo, who loved to share her photos (often, though by no means exclusively, of flowers), her tips, her knowledge of blogging and of camera lore. She died earlier this year, and yesterday would have been her 65th birthday. So that’s why bloggers in every continent have sent flowers for her. Here’s mine.
This bouquet has been orchestrated by Dan and Marsha. Thank you – such a good idea, to bring the blogging community together in this way, to celebrate Cee’s’ life.
And you can read a message here from Chris, Cee’s wife of 35 years.
For Becky’s NovemberShadows, as Becky was a good friend to Cee and Chris, and was able to visit her during her final weeks.
Footnotes in History: Unterlinden, Colmar
On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you.
Unterlinden, Colmar
Maybe this post will be a bit History-lite, but it’s still a story worth telling. Back in 13th century Alsace, the Dominican order founded a convent, Unterlinden, in the then outskirts of Colmar. The nuns from this contemplative order were woven into the life of the city until the French Revolution, when in 1793 the convent was confiscated. First abandoned, it then became a military barracks.
In 1846, something rather extraordinary happened. Louis Hugot, the archivist-librarian of the City of Colmar set about bringing together fellow intellectuals and enthusiasts with the aim of setting up a print collection and drawing school. They called themselves Societé Schongauer afer an Alsatian engraver and painter, an important influence on Albrecht Dürer. The following year, they bought the now-abandoned convent and bequeathed it to the city.
Its earliest display is still here: a locally-discovered Roman mosaic. Here it is.
Then, the museum made do with plaster casts loaned from the Louvre. Now, it has an impressive collection of sculpture and altarpieces from a variety of churches in the area.
I was quietly impressed by these displays. Simply presented against white-painted walls, these pieces spoke of their spiritual intent, and I spent a long time in their presence, for the most part alone.
These pieces were all acquired in the early 1850s. But the star of the show, then and now, and the reason why most people visit this gallery is to spend time with Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece. As I did. But partly because I have no good images of it, and partly because it deserves a long appreciation, I won’t discuss it here. This is a good article from the Guardian –here.
Then there are the cloisters: just the place for more religious statuary.
By the early 21st century the museum was running out of space. It was making contemporary acquisitions. It needed a refreshment area. Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron thought outside the box. The 1912 Public Baths on the other side of the road were no longer in use.
Why not connect the two buldings with an underpass which could also be a display area?
This is the result.
The result is a gallery where the works on display can breathe. Where the newer parts complement the old and reflect its religious past. It’s an exciting as well as a contemplatve space, and I put this gallery down as possibly among the best viewing spaces that I have ever visited.
I’ll finish by showcasing two or three of the works which appealed to me.
Just a postscript. Malcolm didn’t come with me. He thought he was too tired to be able to spend a few hours standing before a succession of art works. If only we’d realised. He could have made use, for free, of one of these flâneuses, or leisurely strollers. What a brilliant idea!
Becky, can you find the image + shadow for NovemberShadows? I hope so.
Flaxmill Shadows
In August last year we were in Shrewsbury. One of the places we enjoyed visiting was Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings (it did exactly what it said, once upon a time). I wrote about it here. But I didn’t show you some of the very fine shadows we found. Here they are now:
For Becky’s NovemberShadows.
Shadowy London
We’re off to London today, to catch some shadows in its grittier streets, to satisfy both Becky’s NovemberShadows, and Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. But first, we could relax for a few moments in a park near Canary Wharf, as shown in the header photograph.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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