Heritage Open Days

In recent years during September Heritage Open Days Festival has grown into the country's largest heritage event. It was set up to raise awareness of our rich cultural assets and their need for care and protection.  By opening the doors of historic monuments and buildings, many of which are not always accessible to the public, there's the opportunity to learn more about the diverse cultural heritage of England and its communities.  

I usually go to Sheffield Cathedral Heritage Day, but this year I was involved with a charity event in my neighbourhood so I did not get into the city.  I have written about this before, but here is a compilation of the times I've attended including some aspects I haven't shared before. There's usually a theme each year taken from a period of history, but also music, craft and historical re-enactment societies take part in the event.

 musical entertainment

hand bell ringing

lace making and spinning

There were different foods and produce from past times on display

and people in period costume were wandering around. 

A period costume was on display in the Shrewsbury Chapel.

The Shrewsbury Chapel was added to the Parish Church in 1520

 by the Lord of the Manor of Sheffield, George Talbot, 4th Earl

 of Shrewsbury and built as a private family chapel with

 a burial vault underneath. The  memorial monument to the left (north)

 is George's who died in 1538 and also as a memorial to his first and second wives.

His first wife died in 1520 and his second wife died in 1567. 

Queen Elizabeth I entrusted George, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury

with the task of acting as custodian to Mary, Queen of Scots

 Elizabeth saw her kinswoman as a threat to her position

as sovereign and Mary spent fourteen years in Sheffield

 under the earl's custodial supervision. 

The 6th Earl's memorial tomb is on the right.

The Catalan-style Giants that have been gifted to the city of Sheffield

danced on the forecourt.

falconry

the medieval tournament

The lord and the ladies of his household appeared from a tent.

Each lady presented a ribbon favour to her group of  kneeling knights.

the contests

The winner of each contest was presented with a winner's token.

The ladies danced in the interval.

There is usually an opportunity to go up into the bell tower and learn about the practice of church bell ringing.  This involves climbing up and down a narrow flight of stairs, walking across the roof of the Cathedral along a walkway to the bell tower, but worth the effort to see how bell ringing is done and look across the city from high up on the roof during the tour.

Some plaques record some visitors to the Cathedral bell tower

such as the Duke of Norfolk in 1805

the bell ringers' mascot

The group went back across the roof after the demonstration.

Although it was a wet day it was a good experience.

Sheffield Cathedral (2): The Yorkshire Festival 2014 Woolly Bikes

Commissioned by the Yorkshire Festival 2014 textile artist Cassandra Kilbride worked with groups of craft enthusiasts earlier in the year in villages, towns and cities throughout Yorkshire to create a set of decorated bikes using Yorkshire yarns and textiles.  Each bike depicted an aspect of Yorkshire with many iconic details and were on show to the general public in different venues, including Sheffield Cathedral, during July and August before being returned to the communities where they were created.  They will form the Woolly Bike Trail which can be viewed during the next 12 months.

Off t' Coast (above) represents the Yorkshire coastline and includes the fishing industry and a puffin  from the RSPB (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) Nature Reserve at Bempton Cliffs between Bridlington and Scarborough.

Yummy Yorkshire  The Wakefield area is well-known for liquorice products and rhubarb so it's not surprising that the group chose to decorate their bike with liquorice 'all sorts' (sweets) and sticks of rhubarb as well as other well-known foods such as Wensleydale cheese, Yorkshire puddings and, of course, Yorkshire tea!

Sporting Heritage This bike (below), made in Sheffield, pays tribute to Team Yorkshire who won 12 medals in the 2012 Olympics and 14 in the Paralympics with particular reference to athletics, cricket, darts, football, rugby and snooker.

Landscape and Literature  Made in the Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, this bike celebrates the work of Yorkshire writers. There are extracts from poems, plays and novels pinned to the front wheel and two books with further literary texts. Roger Hargreaves' popular Mr. Men characters decorate the handlebars and pedals.

Multicultural Yorkshire The colourful decoration of the bike from Halifax (below) celebrates the diverse cultures of those who have come from overseas to settle in Yorkshire.

Yorkshire's Industrial Heritage  The bike shows Yorkshire's industrial past; canal transport, mills and the coal mines of  'the pit towns' and was created by craft groups in Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield.

Historic Yorkshire was made by a group in York.

The White Rose The Leeds group created a variety of white roses, each one unique.  Cassandra Kilbride's design on the front wheel depicts the York Rose emblem.

Flat caps and a whippet - plus a ferret  Holmfirth and Hepworth groups created a whippet called 'Compo'.

(Compo is one of the much-loved characters in the 'Last of the Summer Wine' television series which was filmed in Holmfirth).  Freda the ferret was included, but was hard to find since it moved around from time to time! It was good to meet a lady who had been part of the group. She had travelled to Sheffield to take a look all the bikes in the exhibition. (I told her that I would be blogging about her and she was quite happy to have her photo taken).

Yorkshire landscape The group in Hebden Bridge was inspired by the colours of the landscape - green rolling hills, the brown hues of the moorland and the farmland enclosed by drystone walls where sheep graze.

This was my favourite.  I wonder which is yours?

As well as the exhibition of bikes there was a display of decorated wheels made by local school children and a kinetic sound sculpture by an artist who had formerly lived in Sheffield.

Sheffield Cathedral is a beautiful and inspiring place to spend time in as I often do.  Tomorrow is a National Heritage Open Day and the cathedral will be taking part. The theme will be '1000 years of Sheffield history' in which the building has played a part as a place of worship and I hope to go to the event.