Day 181, 010909, part 4 (the last bit!)

After visting Kirkstall Abbey I needed food, so parked up in Kirkstall Valley entertainment complex, or whatever they're calling it these days. The point is, I could get a vegeburger and walk over the river Aire to my final museum of the day, Armley Mills. There's a bridge at the back of the complex, between Frankie & Bennies and the everso amusingly named boozer, The Aire of the Dog, which has a sometimes-padlocked gate that leads into the Mill. Today, I was fortunate in that the gate wasn't padlocked, but it was jammed shut by an errant breeze, so needed to give it a bit of a shove to open. The usual route in is from Viaduct Road, but I was feeling lazy by this point and needed to get into the museum before I started thinking all I really needed was a cuppa and a slab of something sweet and fattening.

I'm glad I didn't do that, because Armley Mills is brilliant.



First of all, there's a little steam train called Henry who jocularly threatened to run me over as I was trying to find the way in. Next, it has a huge millpond and stream fed off the Aire, and it runs underneath this astonishingly huge complex; just think of the architectural chutzpah needed to get this thing off the ground (literally, in this case)! I found the thought of all that water belting underneath this building a staggering one.

Once inside it was as most industrial museums; large hunks of metal that do fairly interesting repetitive tasks and some big signs in large type, with little detail. Except... there were some serious inconguities. Walking through one gallery I saw some balls of wool with a name next to them. Odd, I thought. Did this person make the wool, perhaps? There's a gallery of printing machinery with a brief history of printing in Leeds - which is great, but nothing actually to do with the Mill. Then it got really odd; a whole section full of old TV and film cameras and cinematic projection equipment from the 1890s upwards, with a chunk dedicated to Daguerreotypes and Louis Le Prince, for example. Le Prince, by the way, is a fascinating character. He didn't die, he vanished. Then I walked round a corner and found a small cinema.

No, seriously. Tilt-up seats, a little booth, and a silver screen with curtains across. I perhaps should mention that there was just me in the museum at this point, me and all the staff waiting for 5pm to roll 'round. So I was looking at this odd arrangement of stuff, when a little man, deaf in both ears, came over and started talking to me about why I was there, and where I was from, and so on, and then said "shall I put the film on?" and there was a film; 15 minutes of clips from silent slapstick black & white comedies, from the Keystone studios. Surreal? Yes. Being by myself in this little box cinema watching 1918 policemen dropping from a laundry chute into waiting cars was very odd.

The industrial galleries were hardly less odd. There were plaques everywhere with people's names on, and I was failing to work out why until I saw this:


I was pretty sure that the mills didn't put little clay heads on their bobbins. I realised that the plaques related to pieces of installed artwork - probably from a final year show - that were scattered all over the museum. Bless 'em. I was instantly enchanted by some of the more obvious pieces - those heads in particular made me grin - and promptly went back to see if I could spot the ones I'd missed. Alas: no. But I did find this:

which is equally as enchanting, although perhaps a little more peculiar.

Finally, there was an engine shed, filled with heavy chunks of metal used for pulling or pushing things. One side was filled with locomotives, including the now cooling down Henry (he made little pops and gasps as his boiler was expelling the remnants of the steam), and I spotted a sign on the wall that should be the motto of as many public bodies as you could possibly imagine:

Or maybe a CD cover. Hm.

The Mill is a seriously peculiar place; I like its eccentricities and being there by myself gave me a peculiar sense of responsibility, and the installations are wonderful if a little difficult to spot. Again, another place I'd be happy to drag people, if they understood the innate sense of fun the place has. It could be a thoroughly dull-and-worthy place, but somehow it is anything but.

And that concludes my writeup of my day exploring Leeds Museums. I did 5, and for those of you keeping score that means I have 4 LCC museums left, plus a wodge of others that is still somewhat in flux. Thanks for reading thus far :)

Day 181, 010909, part 3

Right, where was I? Oh, yes.

After Lotherton Hall I was keen to carry on with my museum trips, and given I was quite close to the ring road thought the best place would be Kirkstall, for Abbey House and the Abbey itself. Although it was approaching lunchtime I thought I could fit in the two before needing to get some food, so made reasonable time getting there and parked up in the big car park next to Abbey House.

The last time I stopped at Abbey House was about five years ago, when we - that's Angela, Iain, Chris, Sarah and myself - went on a hard hat tour of the Abbey, and the museum was the meeting point. Didn't go in, which was probably remiss of me, as the museum is utterly, utterly barking and fun at the same time. It is a lovely building, the gatehouse to the Abbey, and now contains a somewhat peculiar pair of cobbled victorian streets, complete with skies, shops, undertakers, and cramped artisan cottages lifted brick-by-brick from Beeston back in the day. No kidding, this place would freak me the hell out if I was even remotely out of it for whatever reason.

The main street has a boozer at the end, a hatters, grocery, all sorts of shops. There's a barrow, and if you look carefully, some electric fans, all the rage in 1887.

The back alley was very different; it's designed to make you think about the juxtaposition between worlds in Victorian England.

The undertakers is here, as is the Sunday school and barbershop, with an interesting plaque about washerwomen, and how husbands would buy mangles as presents for their wives, just in case they became unable to work (or died) so their wives could take in washing to keep the wolves at bay.

Upstairs is a gallery of children's toys, the Tuke Map, and a small collection of local art influenced by Atkinson Grimshaw, which is deserving of more close study than I had time for. Also, the original artist skteches for the Town Hall; somewhat different to the reality, despite being done only three years before completion.

Popping over the road to the Abbey was a no-brainer. It has been many years since I'd had a good poke around Kirkstall Abbey, and it has changed quite a lot since then. The chapterhouse is now the entrance to the Abbey proper, and there's big fences around it to stop unauthorised access. Properly laid out routes exist, and all the really dangerous bits have signs on informing you that it is probably not a good idea to go scrambling over this loose brickwork or into these former drainage tunnels. I never tire of having a good look around ruined abbeys, and this is no exception, despite my first visit here being over 15 years ago.

There was a photoshoot going on off to one side and I had to be careful not to wander into shot. But the place is really photogenic and makes a fantastic backdrop to photograph against.


After I'd taken in enough crumbling architecture I decided to grab some food and go to my last museum, Armley Mills.

Day 181, 010909, part 2

The Discovery Centre was enormous fun, and set me up for the rest of the day. I was in need of some breakfast by this point, so tried to find the closest museum to where I was, Thwaite Mills. Unfortunately I completely missed the turning due to the road signs being a bit confusing and me being a bit of a muppet, so rather than turn back I thought I'd head off to Lotherton instead.

Lotherton is best reached by following the road signs off the A1(M); just follow the brown signs and you'll be happy. Driving through some fantastic countryside with woods and parkland and excellent driving roads, with a great sense of "estate" to one side and "farm" to the other, was very pleasant indeed, and the hall entrance was well signposted with plenty of notice (although, the sign is starting to get a bit overgrown and will need cutting back soon). Parking was £3.60, which gave access to the bird sanctuary (more on this in a bit) and the estate and grounds. A toasted teacake and a cuppa in the cafe was very welcome - the cafe is lovely, by the way, and the catering in all the LCC museums is done very well by the same contractor - so after a bit of recuperation I was able to investigate the hall.



Originally a 12th Centrury village, the only remnants of which are the chapel (a lovely building but not terribly photogenic), the hall was the family home of the Gascoines, although they rarely lived there before this century, living instead at Parlington Hall just down the road (flattened in 1950). I found this out watching a short film with bizzare editing and no captions at the start of the hall ("sorry, no photography and you'll have to leave your rucksack with us", along with a further £2.40 entry fee for Leeds Card holders), which referenced the Barnbow plot (which was something about overthrowing Charles II, but seems to have been overlooked by Wikipedia) and the Irish parliament, amongst many other things.

The hall nowadays serves as an interesting but typical stately home (cracking rooms, brilliant main hall, no kitchens) that houses a few of LM&G's pottery collections. One of the rooms is an "oriental gallery" that has Qilins, Celadons and - amusingly - an opium pipe purchased from a "Save the Children Fund" shop in 1970. There is the original The Irish House of Commons by Francis Wheatley in the dining room, and a gallery upstairs shows some photographs of interesting tunnels and cellars (and led me to the National Monuments Record, something I had no idea existed before now).

One thing to mention; unlike the National Trust -type stately home, where everything is cordoned off and woe betides anybody who Steps Over The Red Rope, there are very few cordoned off bits in Lotherton. It's almost as if you're encouraged to poke around the rooms. Don't touch anything (of course!) but there's nothing to stop you looking under the pianos or getting a closer look at the bookshelves. I heartily approve of this. People aren't as careless as many curators would have you believe, and getting up close to the objects on display gives you a better feel for the environment. About the only thing you were actively discouraged from doing was sitting in the wrong seats, and how did they do this? By putting a sprig of holly on the chair. It was a great syntax - you can sit in chairs without holly on, you can't sit in the ones that'll put spikes into your backside. I loved that, and more places should be encouraged to do similar things.

Outside is very pleasant; the formal gardens are well laid out, have some nice plants and there's a temple towards the back of the gardens.

There's a deer park, some interesting woods, walks signposted all over the place which would take in a good afternoon's strolling, and a bird sanctuary. I was in a bit of a rush, and I'm not a huge bird lover, so didn't spend that much time in there, but they had some lovely iridescent tropical birds, plenty of flamingos and cranes, parrots, owls (I do, admittedly, love owls) and vultures. I didn't photograph any because of the time thing, but I will be going back to Lotherton to spend a bit more time poking around the grounds. The whole place is a very nice way of spending an afternoon with kids, parents and friends with a picnic, and if we're ever stuck for a "what shall we do today?" -type thing, would be happy to drag people out here.

Day 181, 010909

I had a day of pottering about museums as part of task #57; this is part one of the writeup for this day. It was a seriously good - but busy - day.

Tuesday was one of those odd days off. It meant I could take S to the train station, then go my own way for a day and see where the wind took me. The plan was to see as many LCC-owned museums as I could, as detailed on their Museums and Galleries page, and I'd booked a trip around the Discovery Centre at 9:30 to start it all off. I was so anxious to get started, of course, that I was half an hour early, so I parked up (and found a bloody brilliant photographic subject that I'll have to shoot one day, while trying to find a parking space; an enormous tower, industrial complex, for what I think is industrial sand or glass) and went for a wander down to the river and around Clarence Dock. The river was looking particularly pleasant that morning, and there was a narrowboat-dweller who'd chosen to dry his socks (possibly washed in the Aire, bu-dum *tschh*) in the air.


Poking around Clarence Dock was interesting; I found out where the church that looks like Batman actually was (I can see it every morning on my bus into work, and it always reminds me of Batman), and there's some new shiny balls that just demand to be photographed from interesting angles.

There's a cookware shop there I keep meaning to visit, but forget that it exists. Hm. Anyway, the Discovery centre beckoned.

Alas, I forgot to ask about photography inside the centre - indeed, I forgot to take my camera out of my pocket, I was so startled by it. A purpose-built warehouse for the collections owned by LM&G, it's a huge room at 16°C, with three smaller rooms for document and photographic storage. They have large objects, but not many bigger than pianos; the star is a life-sized giant squid model made for an exhibition a few years back, but they have no need for it now and can't bear to throw it out. It hangs from the ceiling. Most of the collections are quite small. A selection of things confiscated by customs, like butterflies and turtles as souveniers (both of which are illegal to import). Some spears, and other arms and armour that the Royal Armouries don't really need. Clothing from house estates, porcelein (some of which is really horrible), board games, chairs, stuffed animals, victorian showers, cookers, random bits of rock, a fantastic geology collection including meteorites (I got to hold something that had come from outer space!). A previous curator had an interest in molluscs, so out of their fairly large natural history collection all the shellfish are incredibly well organised and the aim is to get everything in the store that well catalogued. They have formerly private lepidoptery and beetle and insect collections, including a case I randomly opened that was full of hymenoptera, with special emphasis on bees.

They also have photo archives that are uncatalogued. Now, I'm a huge fan of photo archives, and what they have are industrial archives, personal photo collections and a lot of stuff that isn't in WYJA or Leodis, such as the building of Headingley and LS6, social history stuff that I want to get my hands on. And all I have to do is get in touch with the curators. It's mostly uncatalogued, so I may offer myself as an intern, perhaps building a DB and front end to all this, inputting it, and plugging it into OpenLeeds. The thought of it gives me damp palms and cottonmouth.

The people there are lovely, too. Very friendly, exceptionally helpful and appreciative of thanks. If you live in Leeds and want to spend half an hour wandering about the things they don't show to the public you could do much worse than phoning them up and asking for a quick shufty.

My research has told me there are 9 LCC museums, plus the Thackray, Armouries, technically Harwood House is a museum, Horsforth Village Museum is on the list, as is the Otley Civic, although I expect the last two are a bit pokey. Still, they have LS postcodes, so count. At this point on the journey I am only 1/9th of my way through the LCC museums, but by the end of the day I hoped to be considerably further...

(to be continued)

Day 5, 100309

Whilst not really part of the walking task, I did walk to werk yesterday, and most of the way home. If I spend a week walking to/from work I hit 35 miles. So yesterday was a decent way of working out what I have to do to get 30 miles. I'm not counting wandering about at lunchtime as part of the 30 unless I go out with the tracker as a deliberate "must get my milage up" thing.

I've been good about keeping up with #3, and I've kicked off #66, as well as #26, #87 and #88, all of which are to do with food; breakfasts, lunches, fruit and not buying coffee en route to werk. Three of these are not-that trackable without making stuff as dull as dishwater, so unless something spectacular happens I'll shut up about their details. Still, I'm thoroughly enjoying porridge-and-banana breakfasts.

Growing stuff has started, after a trip to buy a propagator and seeds. I've set some tomatoes and chillies going [#41] and some herbs (basil, oregano, parsley) [#52]. I'm not expecting too much from them for a week or so as they germinate, and I'll pot them out when the weather is suitable. The tomatoes are Costoluto Fiorentino, proper ones that'll require training and pruning; should be interesting.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (5/365), #13, #26, #66 (2/250), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 0
Remaining: 101