Cricket and the Romans

The origins of the game of cricket are unknown, though Wikipedia says that the general consensus is that it was 'probably created during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England that lies across Kent and Sussex'. It appears, however, that there may be a Roman connection. Below is part of a photograph I took in October last year of a statue of the Emperor Constantine that is outside York Minster.

You can see that he is holding a ball in his hand and looking a little puzzled, as if he's a bowler trying to work out the correct grip for either a leg-spin or off-spin delivery. The two illustrations below, courtesy of WikiHow, show the correct grip for these two deliveries.

Leg-spin

Off-spin

The Emperor Constantine appears to be left-handed and it's possible that because leg-and off-sides are the opposite way round when compared to a right-handed bowler he's confused as to which grip he should employ. My theory is that the Romans brought cricket to England and taught the native people the game only to give the game up themselves because Constantine couldn't resolve this conundrum. The evidence for this is that the game is now virtually unknown in Italy; and the proof is that the game is hardly played in Scotland - and as everyone knows the Romans didn't conquer that country, and even built a wall to keep them out of England.

Historians in York claim that the statue of Constantine originally had him holding a sword with his left hand, but it was vandalised by the sword being broken away leaving him holding just the pommel, but quite frankly that story just sounds ridiculous.

York Minster (2)

On 24 October 2016 I showed some photographs we'd taken in York during a holiday there earlier that month, and on 17 November 2016 some photographs of the exterior of York Minster. It's by no means a comprehensive record of the inside of the Minster, but here are some of the photographs we took went we visited.

When you enter the Minster through the west door you are facing the North Aisle.

The present Minster took almost 250 years to build, between about 1230 and 1472AD, and the Great West Window dates from 1338-39. The window is known as 'The Heart of Yorkshire' because of the shape of the upper stonework.

The Nave is some 80 metres long, 29 metres high and 30 metres wide, making it the widest Gothic Nave in England.

Behind the Nave Altar is the Kings' Screen, also known as the Quire Screen. This was designed around 1420 and was intended to have carved statues of all the Kings of England from William the Conqueror up to the then current King, Henry V, a total of 14 statues - 7 on either side of the doorway to the Quire. Unfortunately Henry V died in 1422 before the screen was finished making it necessary to add another statue, that of Henry VI, meaning that there are 8 statues to the right of the doorway.

These are the figures on the right hand side of the doorway: Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI.

There are several chapels in York Minster, and this is St John's Chapel in the North Transept.

The windows of the Chapter House, which is an octagonal building adjoining the main Minster building where the Dean and Chapter would meet to discuss the administration of the Minster. There are 44 seats set into the walls round the perimeter of the Chapter House.

This is the ornate ceiling of the Chapter House.

Looking up to the ceiling of the Central Tower.

The Quire, looking towards the King's Screen.

The Lectern in the Quire.

There are many tombs and memorials around the Minster, and this memorial in the South Aisle of the Quire is to John Dolben, Archbishop of Canterbury 1683 to 1686 and was sculpted by Grinling Gibbons,

The Crypt is the earliest part of the present Minster and the architectural style is late Norman.

Also in the crypt is the shrine of St William of York, Archbishop in the middle of the 12th Century. On the far wall is a mosaic of St William.

In the Undercroft is this Gospel book, over 1,000 years old and still in use at the Minster today - as these descriptive notices tell you.

York Minster

When I showed some photographs recently of our holiday in York in October I said that I'd show some more photographs of York Minster at a later date and here are a few more photographs that we took there.

This is the view approaching York Minster from the west, with St Wilfrid's Catholic Church on the left here.....

.....and here is the West Front of the Minster.....

.....and the Great West Door.

Dean's Park Garden is on the north side of the Minster and on the north side of the park is a series of stone archways, part of the old Archbishop's Palace which once stood here, and is now the Kohima Memorial to the Army's 2nd Division that was based in York before and after the Second World War. Behind the middle arch is a cross surrounded by a wreath and a brass plate on which is inscribed John Maxwell Edmonds' famous epitaph:

When you go home, tell them of us and say

For their tomorrow, we gave our today.

Which is also carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the War Cemetery in Kohima in north east India commemorating the Battle of Kohima in 1944.

Adjacent to the Kohima Memorial is the Minster Library, now known as the Old Palace  - previously the chapel of the Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the only part of that Palace left standing. A plaque on the wall of the building commemorates the fact that it was here in 1483 that Richard III invested his son as Prince of Wales.

Just round the corner from the Minster Library is the Treasurer's House, which takes its name from the Treasurers of York Minster as part of it in medieval times was their official residence.

A little further round, on College Street is St William's College, originally built in 1465 for York Minster's Chantry Priests.

Facing St William's College is the east side of the Minster with the Great East Window.

Continuing round to you south side of the Minster you pass the Minster School, an independent preparatory school that was founded to educate choristers at York Minster, although it does not now exclusively do so.

You are now on the South side of the Minster and can see the South Transept with, high in the gable, the huge Rose Window.

Adjacent to the South Transept sits a statue of the Emperor Constantine the Great who was proclaimed Emperor in York on the death of his father there in AD306. Photographs of the statue show him with a sword in his left hand, but apart from the pommel there's no sign of it in my photo. Apparently the statue had been vandalised about a month before we went to York.

Opposite the statue of Constantine, on the other side of Deansgate, stands a solitary Roman column which came from the interior of the Roman Basilica that stood on the present site of York Minster and dates to around the year AD300.

A plaque which is affixed gives you some information about the column.

This last photograph was taken from the city walls close to the railway station - it's a pity it wasn't a sunny day though...

I'll show some photographs soon of the inside of the Minster.

York

Earlier this month we spent a week in York in the company of our eldest son Paul and his family who came over from Guernsey, and our youngest son David, who came across from the USA. here are a few photographs of the week.We stayed in an airbnb house on Bishopthorpe Road near the racecourse and only a few minutes walk from the centre of York,

Here we're crossing Skeldergate Bridge over the River Ouse, which was a toll bridge until 1st April 1914......

......and just around the corner is Clifford's Tower which was built in the 13th century, replacing the wooden tower that had been rebuilt in 1190 after the Norman tower built by William the Conqueror had been burnt down.

On the Monday we had a look round some of the shops in the Shambles area of York before visiting York Minster. (I don't know who the young lady is - I didn't see her until I uploaded the photograph!)

York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in Europe, absolutely enormous and apparently taking some 250 years to build. A fascinating place, with an interesting exhibition in the Undercroft, and I'll show more of the photographs I took there at a later date.

The following day we visited York Castle Museum, just behind Clifford's Tower, which is housed in prison buildings that were built in the 18th century on the site of York Castle, another of William the Conqueror's buildings. The museum includes Kirkgate, this reconstruction of a Victorian street named after Dr John L Kirk who founded the museum.

That day we had bought tickets for the York City Sightseeing Red Bus Tour which is a hop-on hop-off service round the city centre with a commentary about the places the journey was taking you past. Anna has another angle on this photograph.

The Red Bus Tour tickets are valid for 24 hours so we used them following day to go into the city, and this is one of the gates, or 'bars' as they are known, that we passed. There are four of these gatehouses around York and this one is Micklegate Bar.

Our first visit that day was to the National Railway Museum adjacent to York Railway Station and here's Edward at the controls of the ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine just inside the entrance to the museum.

The main part of the museum is the former locomotive roundhouse which consists of a turntable round which are arranged a series of lengths of track so that locomotives could be kept inside the shed but easily moved individually to the mainline track by means of the turntable. The first locomotive here is the ex-LMS 6220 'Duchess of Hamilton'. The streamlined casing of this locomotive, as with the other Princess Coronation class locomotives, was removed during the Second World War in 1944 for maintenance reasons, but not re-instated after the war. It's been a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum since 1998, and in 2005 it was decided to re-instate the streamline casing, the work being completed in 2009. Next to that is an ex-GWR Diesel Railcar - Number 4 - which was powered by a 130bhp 8.85 litre 6-cylinder AEC diesel engine. At the end is the famous ex-LNER 4468 'Mallard', the holder of the world speed record for steam locomotives at 125.88 mph. Again, I'll show more of the photographs I took here soon.

The National Railway Museum runs a frequent roadtrain service to and from the museum and Duncombe Place near the Minster, and here's Edward enjoying the trip after our visit......

.....and here's the roadtrain which I photographed a couple of days later in Duncombe Place.

After getting off the roadtrain we lunched in Nandos and this is Eliza enjoying a piece of corn on the cob. I know a lot of people like Nando's, but there was only one item on the menu that I could eat, and I found that caesar salad contaminated with peri-peri isn't a very appetising combination.

The next day we went to an out of town shopping centre which included a visit to a Toys R Us store where Edward was fascinated by a Star Wars character:

Paul, Edward, Eliza and Anna just before bedtime (but not necessarily sleep-time) for the children.

Friday morning it was a bit damp, but we went with Edward and Eliza to the nearby park and playground:

Later in the afternoon we had a last walk round the streets of York, and here's Uncle David with Eliza.

This was taken on the last day just before we left for home. By Edward. Not bad for a not-yet 4 year old.