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Day trip from Tostock: Flatford and Suffolk Villages, England, continued
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| Suffolk Villages | |
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| On the way home from Flatford, Lionel drove us through several villages of interest. This huge old house dominated the little village of Brent Eligh. | The architecture, alone, makes this house a treasure. Note the elaborate timber design and the tops of the chimnies. |
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| Old fashioned single hollyhocks frame the historic weathered door. | We stopped at the village church of Preston St. Mary. It had rood-screen steps hidden behind the pulpit and six bells in the tower. |
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| A stream runs across the road in Kersey permanently. There's no bridge, you just slosh through. | As I turned back from photographing the stream, I saw this half-timber Suffolk pink thatched roof terrace house. It had to date from Tudor times, maybe before. |
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Day Trip from Tostock: Grimes Graves and Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk, England
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| Grimes Graves | |
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Grimes Graves is a British Heritage site. This is the Visitor Center. Neathandral man dug mines here for flint stone, which is found in chalkstone. Depressions marking filled-in mines cover 96 acres of the meadowland.
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One of the mines has been excavated and is open to the public. You are issued a hard hat here, then sent down into the mine. |
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| Going down into the mine means climbing thirty-odd feet down this ladder. These mines were dug with red deer antlers and wooden shovels between 3000 and 2000 B.C. | Once they reached flint, the miners dug low horizontal shafts, and I do mean low. |
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| The tunnels were long and had side tunnels branching off. (The props are modern.) | I did enjoy it down there and would have loved to crawl around in those tunnels. Probably not safe, though. |
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| When we got back above ground, we took a long walk on the meadow paths through the other mines. There are over 400 mines out there. | It's a long way back to the visitor center, but the walk is pleasant and time is ours to spend. |
