It's a pleasant enough place - although I wouldn't put it in my top 10 places of Norfolk. There are a couple of interesting galleries there and we visited them. Then there's the Lincoln Tea Rooms, so called because the ancestors of Abraham Lincoln originate from Hingham which for those not from around these parts is about 13 miles from Norwich.
After the galleries, we tried the (not surprisingly called) Lincoln Tea Rooms. Now you know that I always compare cheese scones. I usually compare them against the Courtyard Cafe scones from Wymondham which are definitely nine out of ten scones. The Lincoln cheese scones were about a three. Rather mealy and certainly lacking in cheese.
We completed our short stay in Hingham with a piddle around the church. It's a very large one and has a display explaining some of the connections between Hingham in Norfolk and the USA. It's somewhere I need to re-visit to take a more leisurely look at things.
I did notice that it is impossible to exactly date the church but most of what you can see today probably comes from the 1350s.
One of the notices name-checked a Remigius de Hethersete who was one of those responsible for the building of Hingham Church as well as suggesting that Hethersett Church should be dedicated in honour of his name saint.
I looked all this up and, not for the first time, found that the authority on the matter was myself. Let me explain. Over many years I have produced numerous articles and items on the history of Hethersett. I have placed most of these on various history websites including my own sites on the village. Mostly I forget what I've written and where I put it and then when I search for the answer to a specific question I come up with my own websites which provide the answer I was looking for.
There's just a few photographs of Hingham to go with today's blog.
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Garbled and mangled. No not me but some of the books I read.
Have you ever read a nonfiction book and wondered why it is wandering all over the place? Sometimes I think an author gets an idea and then finds that there is very little solid material to turn it into a full-sized book.
Such is my latest read - "The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe" by E.M. Rose. I have been fascinated by the "blood libel" subject which began in 12th century Norfolk and spread throughout the world. It started with William of Norwich whose body was found in an area of Norwich now known as Mousehold Heath.
They were a superstitious lot in the 12th century and word got around that William had been mixing with those horrible Jews who were moneylenders and a blot on the Norwich landscape. So, when the body was found the rumour spread that William had been murdered by the Jews.
But it got much worse for the Jewish population of Norwich as they were then accused of drinking William's blood as part of a ritual that became known as the blood libel. It was never established who killed William or whether he had died as the result of an accident, but the Jews took the rap.
So began centuries of Jew bashing in Norwich and the idea of blood libel spread throughout Medieval Europe. All founded on something that almost certainly didn't happen.
Unfortunately the material that Professor Rose has is extremely thin and the book wanders all over the place, as so many do. It goes into great detail about the Crusades and the author seems to have very little new to say on the subject. I often have problems with books written by academics. They take a subject that is of interest and they squeeze the humanity out of it through their approach rather than explaining things in terms that we can all understand.
I find this time and time again where an academic fails to stay with a subject. What I wanted from this book was a little about William, how his body was found, how and why the Jews were accused and what happened afterwards and whether there are any theories about how William died so that I can make up my own mind. Perhaps these will come later in the book but for now I feel dissatisfied with what I've read and I find this happening time and time again where an author wanders aimlessly off his/her subject. When this happens I find my mind wandering somewhat.
And there are holes in some of Professor James' descriptions that suggest that he doesn't know East Anglia that well. At one point he describes the town of Loddon in Norfolk as being on the road between Bury St Edmunds and Norwich which it most decidedly isn't unless you take a very strange route.
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I am getting mightily fed-up with manufactured sports competitions. What do I mean by that term? Well we seem to have a plethora of new tournaments and competitions foisted on us. England lost to Italy 1-0 at football in something called the Nations Cup. Then we have the Rest of the World v Europe in the Laver Cup in tennis and any number of new competitions in cricket.
So we have commentators trying to big things up and pretend that they are excited by competitions that are manufactured and designed simply to extend what is already available - oh and I forgot that we have the World Mixed Pairs Snooker champions.
Who really cares that England are relegated in the Nations Cup or that Europe are back in the lead in the tennis?
Something I do care about in sport is sportsmanship. On Friday the great Roger Federer played his last competitive game. It was fitting that he partnered his friend and great adversary Rafael Nadal. Here are two men who ooze class, two men who appreciate what tennis has given them. I don't think we will ever again see the likes of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic (certainly not at the same time). We have been truly blessed to have seen the golden age of tennis and to have been around to see a great tennis player and a great human being.
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I guess I have to make a quick comment on the hugging and sickly commenting that is Strictly Come Dancing. I have many friends who love this programme. I avoid it like the plague as, for me, it is just too sickly sweet. Some would class it as pure escapism, I would class it as just too good and wholesome to be true. Promise I won't whinge about it again.