Mummers recreating the legend of St George & the Dragon on St George’s Day, Downham Market, Norfolk. The dragon is played by the town's mayor, Frank Daymond, St George by Councillor David Sharman.
Graffiti on a disused agricultural building near Lolworth, Cambridgeshire. The structure, known as the Conington Barn was originally built by the route of the Via Devana - the Roman road which skirted the undrained Fens. The road subsequently became the A14. The barn enjoyed a secret life in the latter years of the 20th Century as a resting place for hitch-hikers going North, until the A14 became dualled and traffic speeds increased to the extent that it became impractical for vehicles to stop.
The barn was demolished as part of the A14 widening project in 2018.
Palm Sunday service at St Michael's Church, Swaton, Lincolnshire, commemorating the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey a few days before his arrest and crucifixion.
Negotiating a burst water main, Great Yarmouth,Norfolk,UK
Two young men from Lithuania out shopping in Boston, Lincolnshire on Saturday afternoon. They’ve adopted the ‘gopnik’ look, popular amongst fans of 'blatnaya pesnya' - literally 'criminal’s songs’, a genre of music popularised by East European hip-hop artists but with its roots in 19th Century czarist Russia.
Established by Henry VIII in 1537 and disrupted only by the occasional outbreak of civil war, bubonic plague and covid, the King’s Lynn Mart is the UK’s oldest continuous fair and the first event in the Showmens calendar. Beginning on February 14th each year the Mart takes over the Tuesday Market Place for two weeks when its gaudy neon illuminates the town for miles around. During its heyday in the late 19th century the Mart was at the cutting edge of technology when agricultural engineer Frederick Savage converted some farm machinery into amusement rides and in 1897 it was the place where moving film was shown to a paying public. Despite its continuing popularity with the people of King’s Lynn the town council have come to regard the Mart as an inconvenience as it disrupts their their ambition to monetise every inch of pavement with parking charges. They would dearly like to see it relocated out of town, but sadly for them a 450 year old decree from a long dead king still carries more weight in law than the opinion of local government officials. The Mart stays, no longer at the cutting of technology but a place where anxious teenagers got to look and be looked at and the grumpy showmen with their lugubrious ride-hands try to scratch a living in the winter months.
Squash for sale down the Fen off the A10 near Southery during the recent cold snap. Payment via honesty box is a familiar sight in Norfolk and I suspect in many other rural areas too. Relying on honesty isn’t a great basis for a business as it depends on the buyer believing that dishonesty, directly observed or not will be at some point be punished. Until recently that belief was known as having a conscience, now all you need is a Ring Doorbell.
A room (kolhata) to rent advertisement in a newsagents window, King’s Lynn. The text is in Russian cyrillic and deliberately designed to appeal to prospective East European migrants tenants of a certain age.
Anyone who went to school behind the Iron Curtain before 1991 learned Russian as part of the curriculum, and as part of the USSR’s cultural domination of its occupied territories.
Although widely loathed and abandoned after the fall of communism, the practise of having a common language proved useful for migrants when those countries joined the EU under the A8 accession rules in 2004 and they were given the right to come to live and work in the UK. That meant Czechs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Slovakians, Slovenians, Poles, Hungarians and Estonians could communicate with each other. Quite useful if you’re trying to make yourself heard on a factory floor or field in the Fens. Even today If you go into any of the East European shops in the town the transaction will often complete with the assistant exclaiming “Spasiba”, the Russian word for thanks.
Children playing a clapping & rhyming game on a street in King's Lynn, the meaning of which is probably only known to them. It went 'Ribena, sassatina, big boy,crazy girl....STATUE!'. It stuck me how unusual it was to see children playing without the intervention of technology, just using their imagination. The location is Garden Row, just off Windsor Rd. If you're local you may recognise one of Lynn's great pubs, the Livey on the left. Garden Row also contains one of the few remaining cobbled streets in the town which survived the slum clearances in the 1930s.
The Bicafe on on Albion St, King’s Lynn, behind the bus station. One of the half-dozen or so establishments serving the Portuguese community in the town. Usually family businesses run by ladies of a certain age they serve traditional dishes like Bacalhau à Brás - salt cod and potatoes that offer a little taste of home to those that perhaps haven’t been there for a while. Portuguese cafes take their very coffee seriously and everything starts with espresso. If you go ask for a Cortado, a double shot, with a layer of honey then steamed milk.
Being a romance language Portuguese has gendered words, so it’s Obrigado to say thank you as a man and Obrigada as a woman. Naturally I got it wrong, although in recent times the language has tended towards the masculine, something that apparently doesn’t meet with the approval of the older generation.
Benefits recipients fear financial squeeze of UK chancellor’s welfare reforms - for the FT. https://lnkd.in/eD9N8Qv9
UK Businesses give their Verdict on Autumn Statement. - for the FT. https://lnkd.in/edKATrVw
Props
The Union flag umbrella, conveyor of a thousand metaphors and one of my go-to props when photographing politicians. Always good for providing a bit of colour on a dull day in November and the symbolism works as part the story. In this case, more trouble for the Tories as members flock to Reform UK.
For The Guardian. Hit the link for the story.
The Stiffkey Fairy Bridge (pronounced Stookey).
The 'David & Goliath' story is a great trope of newspapers and this story about a battle between the residents of a Norfolk village and the National Trust ticked all the boxes. There's been a bridge over Cabbage Creek on Stiffkey marsh for decades or even perhaps hundreds of years to facilitate cocklers, and latterly walkers and anglers across the tidal mud. The official bridge was removed and replacement promised, but at the time of writing had yet to appear, until one night the marsh fairies 'intervened' a built one for the villagers. I was surprised about the lack of interest when I was punting it round to my usual newspaper contacts, but fortunately James Tapper of the Observer saw the merit in it and wrote a cracking piece. At the time of writing it's the most read article on their website. Hit the link for the story as it was published.
Fading graffiti showing the remains of the lightning flash insignia of the British Union of Fascists daubed on the walls of buildings in North Norfolk, UK.
The first in Stiffkey displays the emblem of the movement, and the second in Aylsham reads Stand By The King, perhaps referring to the abdication crisis of 1936 .
Whoever made the marks, some 20 miles apart did so in bitumen, and intentionally or otherwise ensured they would survive the battering the wind coming off the North Sea gives to brick buildings in the county for the best part of a century.
The British Union of Fascists enjoyed some popularity as an insurgent political party in rural East Anglia during the 1930s as it opposed a forgotten, but despised tax known as Queen Anne’s Bounty, an 18th Century law laid upon a farmer's harvest by the Church of England, in addition to any taxes the farm might have to pay to the state. Not surprisingly, this tithe-tax was very unpopular especially in the 1930s when the effects of a long economic depression had made agriculture a difficult business and the impact of the combustion engine on commercial agriculture had reduced the requirement for labour, leading to unemployment and with it a disaffection for mainstream politics. A contemporary rhyme captured the feeling -
We’ve cheated the parson
We’ll cheat him again
For why should a blockhead
Have one in ten
For prating so long like a book-learned sot
Till pudding and pumpling burn to pot?
As times got harder and more farmers refused to pay the tithe the church commissioners began send bailiffs to enforce the debt, removing livestock or farm machinery. BUF members, the Blackshirts led by Oswald Mosley decided this offended against natural justice and formed squads that could be called up to defend, by force if necessary, the farmer’s property. These events became known as the Tithe Wars, the most famous of which was The Siege of Wortham Manor, when the Blackshirts and farm workers held off the church bailiffs for 19 days at Doreen Wallace’s farm in Suffolk.
For some years before World War 2 and the BUF's alliance with Germany, Mosley was a popular figure on the British political scene, admired by mainstream figures like Aneurin Bevan for his progressive policies towards equality and welfare which included the ending of the common practise of allowing employers to sack women in their employ when they got married.
The above images have been retouched for clarity, the ones below are as the graffiti appears today.
One of my favourite towns is Great Yarmouth. Like all port towns it’s got a bit of an edge and swagger to it, but unlike most of its neighbours along the Norfolk coast it has managed to resist commodification by the well heeled Guardian readers fleeing the the depravities of London in a search for an England they remember from their childhood. Much of the old town including the market, where once you could see the herring catch, or traders juggling plates has, of course gone, having been replaced by something ugly designed by an expensive architect. Despite that Yarmouth still retains the spirit that Dickens found in it. If you go make sure you check out the Market Tavern - a proper local pub and Klobber & Western World on Regent Rd.
The growing of pumpkins in the peat rich Cambridgeshire Fens is a profitable business thanks to the proximity of a number of US airbases and the American enthusiasm for celebrating Halloween. For almost fifty years the community of Soham has come together in the autumn to show off their husbandry skills and compete to grow the heaviest pumpkin or the longest leek.
