The North

Day 37

All of last week we were gone to the north of England. Like the rest of England, it was beautiful. We saw a lot of church history sites, as well as favorite haunts and homes of authors.

Our first stop was Quarry Bank Mill, which used to be one of the thousands of cotton mills in northern England. The damp environment is very useful in spinning cotton thread, apparently. I was amazed by the ingenuity behind all the advancements in the textile machines. We also went by the Lady Lever Art Gallery. It has the best collection of Wedgewood and very nice collections of Pre-Raphaelite artists and china. Mr. Lever also had a strange fascination with Napoleon.
We stopped for the night in Liverpool, a major shipping and emigration point. Our youth hostel seemed to be Beatles themed.
Liverpool docks by night.
These reminded me of the spies from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
My favorite picture of Liverpool by night.
Liverpool docks by day.
This is a statue commemorating the thousands of Mormons who emigrated from Liverpool to the United States. Many come from England, but they also came from all over Europe.
How can you go to Liverpool and not listen to the Beatles? That would be me, jammin out to the Beatles on my Ipod.
The Preston Temple! It's actually in Chorley, a small town outside of Preston. They had to go through all sorts of zoning problems to get it built here, but the prophet said this was the place, and it's beautiful.

I've never seen this pattern of star, moon, and sun with three moon phasese on any other temple.
As always, the temple has beautiful grounds.
Some lovely pools and landscaping.
The Missionary Training Center by the Temple. I'm sure Jaron will recognize this!


Like most places in England, Preston is beautiful.


Preston has played a major role in the history of the Church in England. It was the first place that Heber C. Kimball and the rest came to preach. One of the missionaries had a brother here who was a preacher, and offered to let them preach a sermon at his chapel. He stopped being so friendly after 9 of his congregation asked to be baptized after the first sermon. The missionaries were extremely successful, baptizing thousands of new members in that first nine month mission, and then returning in later years to baptize thousands more. Most of our group can trace their ancestors back to early church members from northern England who converted and then emigrated to the States to join Zion. This is Flag Square, a central market point in town where generations of English missionaries preached, from Kimball down to President Hinckley, while he was a missionary.
The first lodgings of the missionaries (upstairs on the left). It's been called the "devil house" because of the rather shocking and frightening vision the missionaries had of the legions of devils arrayed against them as they began their missionary work. Joseph Smith was overjoyed when he heard of their vision, because he knew that for such a thing to occur, they must be very close to performing some great work. Their success in the mission was that great work.
The Church has erected three plaques in Preston about church history. They planted this tree as well.
The Church set up this plaque to commemorate all the missionaries who have served in the British Isles (one of them being Professor Wimmer!).

The River Ribble. The first baptisms in the church in England took place on the far bank by the bridge. The first two to be baptized actually had a race across the bridge to see who would get to be the very first to be baptized.
This is where the Cock Pit used to stand. It was originally used (surprisingly enough) for cock fighting, which was later made illegal. However, it's vast amounts of stadium seating made it very useful for meetings, and the church rented it frequently for meetings in the early days.

I just had to put this in here, with the suggestion that perhaps, in fact, coconuts do migrate!
Welcome to the Lake District, home to many many famous writers and artists of the past, favorite summer getaway of the English. This was the view out of the front door of our youth hostel. This is Windermere, the largest lake in England.
I got some really nice shots of a storm coming in.
Sunset at Windermere.
I just thought it was so cute to see all the birds on the posts.
A beautiful view of a park from out early morning walk.
These walls are actually very intersting. They're all over the place, and none of them use any mortar. They're just enormous flat stones stacked up to make walls over hundreds of years.
Makes you wonder why you'd ever live anywhere else, doesn't it?
No wonder so many artists and writers like the Lake District.



Dove Cottage, home to William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy for about 8 years. These were Wordsworth's most productive years.

Rydall, were William Wordsworth moved after he was rich and famous. Still in the Lake District, of course.This is Beatrix Potter's home, Hilltop Farm, in Cumbria, part of the Lake District. Beatrix Potter is best known for writing the children's books about Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Tom Kitten, etc, but she was also a noted expert in mycology, as well as an avid farmer, award winning breeder of Herdwick sheep, and dedicated conservationist: She used the money from her publishing to buy 4,000 acres of land in the Lake District, which she donated to the National Trust at her death.
Cumbria countrside, next to Hilltop Farm.
We were all a little cold. And tired. Huddle!
We took a boat ride on Windermere.
A herd of sheep that we saw from the boat.

The Yorkshire countrside.
This is the parsonage that the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, lived in with their father and older brother, Branwell, for most of their lives. The whole family were talented artists and writers. The Bronte sisters, publishing under male pen names, published poems and novels. The novels have since become great classics of English literature, including Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre. Despite rumors (mostly started by Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her friend, Charlotte Bronte) the Bronte sisters did not live on a lonely, wild moor, but by the lovely little town of Haworth, in a snug little cottage with a loving family that encouraged their artistic endeavors. The sisters spent a lot of time in the drawing room in the evenings, discussing ideas about their work, and writing until late at night.

The graveyard by the parsonage.The town of Haworth in Yorkshire. It was a very quaint little place.
This is a Yorkshire Pudding that I got in Yorkshire. Also, this is the first time that the "sausage" I've had in England has actually been sausage--normally it's some wierd meat paste in a sausage skin. The Yorkshire Pudding was excellent though.
The Derbyshire countryside.
Next we went to Chatsworth in Derbyshire. This is a "house", not a palace. Could have fooled me. Jane Austen said that Chatsworth was the inspiration for Pemberly (Mr. Darcy's home) in Pride and Prejudice. I'm told that the exteriors haven't actually been used in any of the movies, but the interiors have. It looks similar to the BBC version though.Everything about Chatsworth is designed to impress and overwhelm. There's gold plating on the window frames, chandeliers and china everywhere, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of artwork (the dukes have all been collectors of sorts--they have a library of old and rare books, something on the order of 5,000 original Master sketches [that's sketches by the master artists] from all over Europe, a highly impressive sculpture gallery, etc), there's also enormous paintings on a number of the cielings and walls, and rooms covered in tapestries, as well as a very rare silver gilt dressing table set that was a gift to the duchess from the queen. At one point, one of the former duchesses was the second richest woman in the kingdom, after the queen. It's a very, very, impressive "house." This is the entrance hall.
And of course, I had to take my picture by the bust of Matthew Macfadyen, who played Mr. Darcy in the most recent Pride and Prejudice. They used the interiors of Chatsworth in the movie.
These are some of the coolest statues I think I've ever seen.
Basically, I love all of England. It was nice to get out of London, away from the busy city, and see the countrside and little English towns. Frankly, London is fun, full of life, with plenty of things to do in terms of culture, shopping, shows, music, etc. But I can think of some other places that might be nicer to live.