A fascinating set of 7 Norman couples in the Church of St John the Baptist, Armytage (Staffordshire)

A more athletic approach to sex - capital in St Michael with St Mary, Melbourne (Derbyshire)

San Michele fights a fiery multi-headed dragon in the Norman font in the Thorpe Arnold parish church of St Mary (Leicestershire), which also has capitals illustrating a toothy lion, a green man, a mouth pulling male exhibitionist (below) and an acrobat doing something unmentionable.

More groinworks from Anthony Weir

Old Brignall Church - at the end of a long and very muddy walk down into the Greta River valley near Barnard Castle. 

There were a mill and houses here when Robert Procter was Church Warden, Overseer and Constable in the second half of the 1740s

The Procter men from Barnard Castle, York and Scarborough

Adrian's 6x grt grandparents were Robert and Ann Procter, living at "Moorside", Staindrop (possibly a tenant farm belonging to Raby Castle) .  Ann was buried in June 1733 in Staindrop after giving birth to three or four children including the next Robert Procter.  Robert then married Mary Elizabeth Calvert  in Staindrop in February 1734 and started a new family.  It seems they moved to Old Brignall (above) in the early 1740s, and Robert was Overseer, Constable and Church Warden in the 1740s.  No burial records (yet) - possibly Old Brignall though we did not find the Procter name on any of the dozen or so grave-stones left there. 

5x grt grandfather - Robert Procter was ch July 1730 in St Mary Staindrop, married Elizabeth Hall in Old Brignall in May 1758, but later seems to have been working at Rokeby as three or four of their children were christened in the 1760s.  Robert and Elizabeth were buried in St Mary Barnard Castle in April 1799 (69) (him) and December 1805 (her).  His burial record states that he was a farmer.  No tombstone located yet.  

4x grt grandfather Joseph Procter 1764 - 1847 (83) was christened at Rokeby in January 1764.  He ran a Chemyst / Druggist / Grocer shop (now an optometrist) opposite the Barnard Castle Butter Market.  The shop is listed in the Pigot & Co 1828-29 Barnard Castle Directory.  The grave of Joseph's 3 wives and some infant children is in St Mary's churchyard, and part of the sunken bit of the gravestone has revealed a memorial to Robert - son of Joseph and first wife Mary Harrison (1763 - 1797 (34)) (m March 1792).   There is more writing to uncover - quite possibly Joseph himself is here!

3x grt grandfather Robert Procter 1794 - 1842 (48), was christened in St Mary, Barnard Castle, on 11 May 1794.   He was described later as a chemyst, though more back-street than shopfront we think.  He moved to York in the first half of the 1810s, and married Elizabeth Ashton (1801 - 1873 (72)) in All Saints (a posh church in North St, York) in January 1819.  She was the daughter of Coachman John Ashton of Bubwith / York, who was christened in the beautiful old York church of St Olave in September 1801.  She is buried with second husband George Kettlewell in St Mary, Haxby (just north of York).  Robert and Elizabeth lived in the Fishergate end of George St, Walmgate, one of the poorest slums in England - one can only speculate as to what a Chemyst did - sell herbal tobacco for the women's pipes and look after abortions?  He died suddenly from an apoplectic fit on 2 August 1842 aged only 48 (his dad had lived to 83 and his Procter grandad to 69) and was buried with 9 strangers in a public grave in York Cemetery (visited and photographed by us in 2011).

2x grt grandfather Joseph Procter - 1831 - 1902 (71), Robert's only son, was christened at the "Percy family church" of St Denys in Walmgate on 14 August 1831.  He is picked up in Walmgate in the 1841 census, but has not yet been found in 1851.   By the mid 1850s he had become a Master Draper and set up shop in Scarborough, marrying a local girl - Elizabeth Dobson - in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on 8 March 1859.  Elizabeth was a Milliner and joined the business as well as having 6 sons and 2 daughters, one of whom (another Elizabeth) became Adrian's grt grandmother Fletcher.  The Procters left behind an attractive shop in the main drag Westborough (now a rare survivor in bland post WWII bebuilt redbrick central Scarborough), and a grave in Scarborough's Manor Road Cemetery.

Joseph Procter's Chemyst shop in Barnard Castle was where the opticians now is.  Charles Dickens once stayed briefly next door, but that can be said of lots of the houses in the area!!

In the St Mary Churchyard across the road, 2 hours (truly!) of trowelling and brushing revealed the Robert Procter (d1842) lines on the sunken base of Mary Procter et al's gravestone - there is probably more (including Joseph himself d1847) but the job needs a spade !

Footsore after our Durham day, back to a comfy chair and pint in front of  the fire (and 1946 J Y Gilroy painted room) in the Dickens Bar in the Morritt Hotel at Greta Bridge - Paradiso

Durham Castle

900 year old Norman faces bathed in winter sun high high up in an arcade spandrel

The ultimate English cathedral nave vista - the first nave in Europe to have a stone vaulted roof.  A day in Durham Cathedral with photographer permit - Paradiso

Seed sowing in ?May, foot warming in ?February, and a mystery jack-in-the-box man such as we have never seen before - any ideas?

The font of St Peters, Thorpe Salvin (South Yorkshire).

LINCOLN

Saturday 30 October - the Annual Lincoln Sausage Festival on the castle lawns in the bright Autumn sun, a squiz at Lincoln Magna Carta in the castle, the cathedral bells peal for two or three hours, lots of being time inside our favourite English Cathedral (including listening to an organ practice), footsore and happily ex-aw-sted   .....  then a couple of ice cold Singha Beers and an excellent green curry ..... a perfick day really.   

LINK TO A SPECIAL NEW PAGE - A DAY WITH THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL

A sympathetic red traffic light facilitated this dusk photo of the Cathedral from the South on the drive up to Lincoln on Friday evening

NORFOLK

The original wills of 7xGrt Grandfathers Robert Aldous (1709, with an amazing mark !) (below) and John Whiting (1729) (above)

NORTH NORFOLK PARISH CHURCHES

Including a mermaid, an unspeakable act and (at last) the Burnham Deepdale monthly activities font

December Feast, November Pig Killing, October Wine Decanting, September Corn Threshing.  1/3 of the Font of St Mary, Burnham Deepdale (N Norfolk).

Punishment (for concupiscence) in the porch of St Margaret's Church, Cley next the Sea (Norfolk) - devils prepare to inflict infernal & eternal rape ...

Mermaid bench end - All Saints Church, Upper Sherrington (N Norfolk)

BACK IN HARLESTON

A stopover at The Magpie on the way hopefully to some 1700s will originals in Norwich - then  a Saturday at leisure staying next to Lincoln Cathedral. 

On the left the rainbow is pointing roughly at where James Aldous and his family lived in the mid 1800s.  And the Magi?

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