Our next stop on our recent road trip was in the historic town of Ross-On-Wye, a place neither Claire nor I had been before. The town was full of old historic buildings, so we spent a pleasant morning doing the online town trail. It was certainly a good way to get around the town and see all the sights, it was also good for spotting numerous chimneys as the photographs attest.

Ross-on-Wye is a market town and civil parish in Herefordshire, England, near the border with Wales. It had a population estimated at 10,978 in 2021. It lies in the south-east of the county, on the River Wye and on the northern edge of the Forest of Dean.

Ross-on-Wye promotes itself as “the birthplace of British tourism“. In 1745, the rector, Dr John Egerton, started taking friends on boat trips down the valley from his rectory at Ross. The Wye Valley‘s attraction was its river scenery, its precipitous landscapes, and its castles and abbeys, which were accessible to seekers of the “picturesque“. In 1782, William Gilpin’s book Observations on the River Wye was published, the first illustrated tour guide to be published in Britain. Once it had appeared, demand grew so much that by 1808 there were eight boats making regular excursions along the Wye, most of them hired from inns in Ross and Monmouth. By 1850, more than 20 visitors had published their own accounts of the Wye Tour, and the area was established as a tourist destination.

On the way down to Ross-On-Wye from Ludlow on our recent road trip, we decided to make a stop at the little Norman church of Kilpeck near Hereford. The church at Kilpeck is famous for its rich Norman decoration and unusual carvings, which look like they were carved only yesterday. What we didn’t know was that there was the remains of a Norman mott and bailey castle directly behind the church. We climbed up the mott to look at the small remaining section of the castle wall only to find that it had a fireplace and a section of chimney remaining in it. This chimney must be of some age as the castle and indeed the medieval town of Kilpeck fell had gone into decline prior to the black death (1348) and into disuse thereafter.

I have gleaned the following from the internet:

Kilpeck Church

The Church of St Mary and St David is a Church of England parish church at Kilpeck in the English county of Herefordshire, about 5 miles from the border with Monmouthshire, Wales. Pevsner describes Kilpeck as “one of the most perfect Norman churches in England”. Famous for its stone carvings, the church is a Grade I listed building.

The church was built around 1140, and almost certainly before 1143 when it was given to the Abbey of Gloucester. It may have replaced an earlier Saxon church at the same site, and the oval raised form of the churchyard is typical of even older Celtic foundations. Around the 6th and 7th centuries the Kilpeck (Welsh: Llanddewi Cil Peddeg) area was within the British kingdom of Ergyng, which maintained Christian traditions dating back to the late Roman period. The possibility of the site holding Roman and even megalithic remains has been raised, but is unproven.

The plan of the church, with a nave, chancel, and semicircular apse, is typical for the time of its construction, the Norman period. It was originally dedicated to a St David, probably a local Celtic holy man, and later acquired an additional dedication to Mary from the chapel at Kilpeck Castle after it had fallen into disrepair. At the time the current church was built, the area around Kilpeck, known as Archenfield, was relatively prosperous and strategically important, in the heart of the Welsh Marches. The economic decline of the area after the 14th century may have helped preserve features which would have been removed elsewhere. However, it is unclear why the carvings were not defaced by Puritans in the 17th century. The church was substantially repaired in 1864, 1898 and 1962, and its unique features were protected and maintained. Pevsner describes the Victorian restorations, firstly by Lewis Nockalls Cottingham and latterly by John Pollard Seddon as “competent [and] disciplined”.

The carvings in the local red sandstone are remarkable for their number and their fine state of preservation, particularly round the south door, the west window, and along a row of corbels which run right around the exterior of the church under the eaves. The carvings are all original and in their original positions. They have been attributed to a Herefordshire School of stonemasons, probably local but who may have been instructed by master masons recruited in France by Oliver de Merlimond. He was steward to the Lord of Wigmore, Hugh Mortimer, who went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and, on his return, built a church with similar Romanesque carvings (now largely lost) at Shobdon, 30 miles north of Kilpeck. Hugh de Kilpeck, a relative of Earl Mortimer, employed the same builders at Kilpeck, and their work is also known at Leominster, Rowlestone and elsewhere. The writer Simon Jenkins notes the influences of churches found on the pilgrimage routes of Northern Europe.

The south door has double columns. The outer columns have carvings of a series of snakes, heads swallowing tails. In common with most of the other carvings, the meaning of these is unclear, but they may represent rebirth via the snake’s seasonal sloughing of its skin. The inner right column shows birds in foliage; at the top of the right columns is a green man. The inner left column has two warriors who, unusually, are in loose trousers. The outer sections of the arch above the doorway show creatures which can be interpreted as a manticore and a basilisk, and various other mythical and actual birds and beasts. The semicircular tympanum depicts a tree of life.

Kilpeck Castle

Kilpeck Castle, immediately west of the church, consists of a motte and bailey and various outworks. The motte is roughly circular with a diameter of 54 yards at the base and a maximum height of 27 ft. above the bottom of the ditch. It is surmounted by the remains of a polygonal shell-keep of masonry of which two large fragments remain towards the north and the southwest. The keep is probably of the 12th century and was polygonal both within and without; the external faces appear to have averaged about 14 ft. and the external diameter of the building was about 100 ft. In the North fragment of walling is a fireplace-recess with a segmental back of ashlar and a round flue; to the east are remains of a cross-wall, and there are two round drain-holes piercing the outer wall. The southwest fragment has remains of an ashlar-faced oven with the springing of an arch across the front; this oven was in the angle of a cross-wall and farther north is a third drain-hole. The motte is surrounded by a ditch which separates it from the kidney-shaped inner bailey on the east and from an outer bank on the west. The bailey has an outer ditch and remains of a rampart at the north and south ends; there are slight traces of a causeway leading to the motte. The bailey was entered from the southwest, where a gap in the rampart is flanked on one side by a small mound, perhaps covering the remains of part of a gatehouse. There are three outer enclosures on the northwest and south of the main earthwork, which are of irregular form and enclosed by ditches or scarps. The stream, to the west of the site was dammed at a point level with the north side of the west enclosure. To the northeast of the main earthwork is a roughly rectangular village-enclosure, about 300 yards by 200 yards; within it stand the church and other buildings, and there are scarps on the three outer sides and remains of a rampart on the northwest and southeast sides in addition. Within the enclosure are traces of foundations at right angles to the sides. Condition of earthworks, fairly good. The castle is thought to have been first built around 1090 as the administrative centre of Archenfield.

Here is an awesome set of chimneys from our visit to Ludlow. We stayed in a lovely pub called the ‘Charlton Arms’. On one side of the pub is the River Teme and the medieval bridge and on the other was this house with amazing chimneys.

Ludlow is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is located 28 miles (45 km) south of Shrewsbury and 23 miles (37 km) north of Hereford, on the A49 road which bypasses the town. The town is near the confluence of the rivers Corve and Teme.

The oldest part is the medieval walled town, founded in the late 11th century after the Norman conquest of England. It is centred on a small hill which lies on the eastern bank of a bend of the River Teme. Situated on this hill are Ludlow Castle and the parish church, St Laurence’s, the largest in the county. From there the streets slope downward to the rivers Corve and Teme, to the north and south respectively. The town is in a sheltered spot beneath Mortimer Forest and the Clee Hills, which are clearly visible from the town.

Ludlow has nearly 500 listed buildings, including examples of medieval and Tudor-style half-timbered buildings. The town was described by Sir John Betjeman as “probably the loveliest town in England”.

Over the past week we have done a bit of a road trip, visiting relatives and seeing the sights. In sequence we went to Crosby in Liverpool, Cheadle Hume in Manchester, Chester, Ludlow, Ross-on-Wye and Church Enstone in the Cotswold’s. As well as sightseeing in the towns, we took in a number of other sights including Berrington Hall near Leominster in Herefordshire, Kilpeck Norman church and mott and bailey castle, the Rollright stones (a Megalithic complex including the ‘Kings Men stone circle, the King’s Stone Menhir and the Whispering Knights’ Neolithic chambered tomb), Deddington Castle (a massive mott and bailey castle), Somerton Norman church, and Wimpole Hall Cambridgeshire on the way home.

This all said, I saw these bad boys in Foregate Street and couldn’t resist taking a photograph. Looking at them I reckoned them to be around 15 Meters tall. I was wondering whether the premises had been purpose built as a shop or whether it had been a private house at one time.

I think that I only sweep three of these old Heta stoves across the area, so they are rather rare, this one is a Blue Enamel Heta Kosi 6304 Multi-Fuel Stove. The other two I sweep are different colours, one is green, and one is red. Heta stoves have obviously become a lot more popular in recent times as I see numerous examples of the Heta Inspire 40 and many, many more examples of the Heta Inspire 45. There are also numerous examples of the Heta Ambition around the area. I also see a number of the cylindrical Heta Scan-Line stoves. I know that both Cut Maple Stoves in Sturma and Goddards Stoves in Saffron Walden now fit Heta Stoves. Indeed, Nick Buckenham from Cut Maple Stoves has been to Heta in Denmark to learn all about the qualities of their stoves.  Having said all this, the customers I have who have the Heta Kosi 6304 stoves are more than happy with their performance. I like the more modern Heta stoves not just because of their sleek appearance, but because they are so easy to work on and dismantle.

HETA is a family-owned business, located in Lemvig near the west coast of Jutland in Denmark. This is where HETAs stoves are developed and manufactured from idea to finished product. Today, HETA is selling stoves to customers in 22 countries. HETA was founded in 1972 with Erik Bach at the steering wheel for the first many years. Today, Erik’s two sons, Carsten and Martin Bach, are heading the company.

For the first couple of years, the company produced hot water containers, refrigeration plants, tanks for fishing vessels and feeders for agriculture. In 1984, HETA started a collaboration with L. Lange & Co, a Danish iron foundry in Svendborg, founded by Lars Lange, a manufacturer of old cast iron stoves since 1850. After a few years later, HETA acquired L. Lange & Co’s activities.

In 1989, HETA developed the first of a long series of modern stoves, which laid the foundation for all the stoves in HETAs current range. Today, HETA also manufactures stove inserts, pellet stoves, aqua stoves, thermal mass stoves and outdoor stoves to quality-conscious consumers, not only in Denmark but worldwide.

Heta Stoves

Jupiterej 22

DK-7620 Lemvig

Denmark

https://heta.dk/en/

We recentlt took these amazing photographs of a Jackdaw hard at work in the farmyard of Vishwell Farm on our annual chimney sweeping visit to south Wales. They truly are amazing industrious creatures and can fill a chimney full of collected material in a short space of time in order to make a nest. In the photographs we can see a Jackdaw pulling fur from the back of a cow whilst its was feeding, with now ill effects to the cow. They will then use this material to line the top of a nest which they have obviously constructed in a chimney somewhere locally. We watch this happening for a little time and saw a pair of Jackdaws going to and from the farmyard collecting cow fur!

Nest building in UK chimneys would appear to be predominantly a feature of Jackdaw nesting habits and involves them posting large quantities of varying size sticks down chimneys until the lodge somewhere in the chimney (frequently right at the bottom if there are no significant turns in the chimney). In this case the particular farmhouse chimney was 10 and a half meters tall and was filled from top to bottom with nest material. This can clearly be seen in the photo’s. The problem with these birds is that once they have found a suitable chimney for nesting, they tend to return to that chimney to nest year after year.

Jackdaws are a member of the Crow Family – Interestingly, the Crow family, or to give them their Latin taxonomic name Corvidae family include; crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, treepies, choughs, and nutcrackers. The crow family are singled out for their somewhat remarkable intelligence. Specifically, members of the family have demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests (European magpies) and tool-making ability (e.g., crows and rooks), skills which until recently were thought to be possessed only by humans and a few other higher mammals. Their total brain-to-body mass ratio is equal to that of non-human great apes and cetaceans, and only slightly lower than that of humans.

This has become an annual event, our visit to Moyns Park House close to Birdbrook. Moyns Park House could be described as a proper stately home, it dates back to the 15^th century at time when Elizabeth 1^st was on the throne, it has a moat, and 20-metre-tall chimneys. The inglenook chimney in the great hall, the one we sweep, is so large you can stand up in it. We do enjoy are appointment there, it is like visiting a National Trust or English Heritage site.

The Wikipedia entry for Moyns Park tells us the following: Moyns Park is a Grade I listed Elizabethan country house in Steeple Bumpstead, north Essex, England. The home of the Gent family, until the late 19th century, was once owned by Major-General Cecil Robert St John Ives, maternal grandfather of Ivar Bryce, the next owner. Bryce was a close friend of the author Ian Fleming, who stayed at the house in the summer of 1956. When Bryce’s wife, Josephine Hartford, an A&P heiress and sister of Huntington Hartford, died in 1992, she left the estate to Lord Ivar Mountbatten and George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven. Ivar Bryce’s first cousin Janet Mercedes Bryce had been married to David Mountbatten and was the mother of Ivar and George Mountbatten. Lord Ivar Mountbatten lived in the house with his wife, Penelope Thompson, before selling it in 1997. It is said that Fleming made final changes to his novel From Russia, with Love in the house. The house was also the location for several Hammer Horror films. The house was also used as a residential Riding School in and around 1949, with courses in dressage, show jumping and short B.H.S courses. The chief instructor was C. Coombs MBE.

The name Moyns is believed to have its origins in the name of the Le Moyne family who under Gilbert Le Moyne remained in England after the Norman invasion of 1066. The family ran through several major and minor lines of nobles and gentry such as the De Warrens, Gents, Darbys, Dalstons (of Cumberland), and many others. The family is now linked to many others by marriage, e.g. Speakmans, Boutflowers, Glasses, Chenevix-Trenchs, and more.

The area in the Le Moynes once had lands that encompassed Hedingham Castle and other villages over a swathe of Essex. The Gents held their first court at Moyns in the early 16th century and the estate grew and continued to do so under Sir Thomas Gent (Queen Elizabeth’s Baron of the Exchequer, Sergeant-at-Law and later judge).

According to an article in The Essex Countryside of May 1965 by GC Harper, the house was once moated, and takes its name from its first owner who had it built, Robert de Fitzwilliam le Moigne in the early C14, but little but the SW wing remains from C15. It remained in that family for 200 years, then passed by marriage to William Gent. His son Thomas became MP for Maldon in 1571 and a ‘trusted assistant’ to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth 1’s Secretary of State & spymaster, whence he rose to 2nd Baron of the Exchequer. He sat in judgement at the trial of the conspirators of the Babington Plot to assassinate the Queen and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. His wealth & status led him to rebuild the west front, completed by his son Henry, as he died in 1593. Thomas signed a petition to Walsingham requesting he write to the governors of the Dutch congregation in Colchester & demand that 20-30 families return to Halstead to resume the cloth trade there, but to no avail. George Gent d. 1818 was a magistrate for more than 60 years. The right to appoint the headmaster of the school in Steeple Bumpstead belonged until c.1835 to the owner of Moyns. The Moyns occupancy ceased in 1879 when it was sold to Major General Cecil Robert St John Ives, whose grandson John Bryce occupied it in the 1960s. The gardens of the 200-acre estate had yew topiary, and the paths were said to be planted to a plan by Lord Bacon, with a bowling green one of the oldest.

We have just returned from our annual chimney sweeping visit to south Wales. This involves sweeping the chimneys of Claire’s dad’s friends in the Wenvoe farming community and a couple of addresses in Mumbles Swansea, for free! Claire’s dad, David Phillips lives and farms at Vishwell Farm, he has a Clearview Vision 500 Multi-Fuel Stove on a factory-made chimney. The other sweeps were at Wristone Farm & Annex, Gilbert Farm in Barry, two addresses in Walston Road in Wenvoe,  an old miners cottage in Llanbradach, Mumbles and Bishopston Swansea. Although he is 88 he’s still farming 150 acres with around 80 head of beef cattle, runs a sizeable caravan site and has two converted stone barns to manage.

This year we swept nine chimneys in total, all of which were lined stoves, bar one standard open fire, which makes things quite easy. As usual, much tea was drunk, and cake and biscuits consumed along the way! We were fit to burst from all the kindness once we were done!

The sweeping included two Clearview Vision 500’s, a Villager Flatmate, a Villager Chelsea, A Hunter Hawk, an ACR Woodpecker, and a Double-sided Woodwarm Fireview. Truly a busman’s holiday in another country.

I swept this monster just the other day in Bardfield Saling, the stove is so big, the door opens from the top and drops down towards you, it’s the largest version of the studio that I have swept before. I do see lots of Stovax Studio’s as they are a very popular contemporary stove, but this one is something else and you require a large room to put one in! They have a very contemporary appearance, so lend themselves to very modern contemporary homes, but the also make a nice juxtaposition when installed in an older property. I often joke with those customers who have studio stoves, that if they ever get fed up using it as a stove, they could always use it as a fish tank and start keeping tropical fish! Seriously though, I actually like these stoves, they are very stylish and contemporary in appearance, and they certainly show off the fire in the firebox once they are alight. The customers report that they are also very efficient and deliver a great deal of warmth when they are in operation.

Stovax make the Studio model as a freestanding stove or as a cassette stove and it comes in four sizes of the model, The Studio1, Studio 2, Studio 3 and Studio 500. Stovax state in their sales blurb: The Studio Freestanding range has been designed to create a striking feature in your living space with their enticing widescreen wood burning flame visuals complemented by an extensive array of frames and styling options. The pure, simplistic form of the Studio stove range belies the high levels of engineering and technical innovation that keeps this range not only at the forefront of twenty first century fire design, but also exceptional performance and controllability.

Stovax are a British company established in 1981, based in Exeter, and are the largest manufacturer of stoves and fireplaces in the UK. Stovax also manufacture a number of other stove brands including Yeoman, Dovre, Nordpeis, Lotus and Varde.

https://www.stovax.com/information/about-us/

Here we are again sweeping for the Bishop of Chelmsford and we are quite some way from home, sweeping the Rectory at Lawford near Manningtree. Being a Sunday Claire decided to stay in bed for a lie-in and I took my eldest daughter Emma to assist me. Emma had not long finished reading the novel ‘The Manningtree Witches’  and was keen to see the area, she is also a qualified archaeologist and Heritage Town Planner and likes nothing better than visiting old buildings.

Lawford is a Rectory where we have swept on an number of occasions, and has a small open fire, the chimney of which is lined.  Indeed, on the first occasion I went there I removed a substantial Jackdaw nest from the chimney, which was not surprising as the rectory had stood empty for around two years prior to my visits. The rectory is located on top of a hill, right next door to the beautiful medieval church of St Mary. The rectory’s close proximity to the church yard and all its trees, explains why there was a bird’s nest in the chimney as Jackdaws like nothing more than the trees and peace of a church yard.

St Mary’s church is a grade one listed building and is well worth a visit. Its architectural features are stunning and most interesting. The oldest fabric in the church is in the south wall of the nave, dating from 1200 or earlier. The chancel, the south porch and the first tower were built in 1340. The tower was rebuilt in the 16th century, and again in the following century. In 1826 the north wall of the nave and the north aisle were added. In 1853, when the rector was Revd Charles Merivale (later the Dean of Ely), the interior of the chancel was restored by the Lancaster architect E. G. Paley. The nave was restored in 1864, followed by the chancel walls in 1887. In 1944 the east window was damaged by a bomb. In 1991 an extension was made to the north of the church to house a vestry and meeting rooms, and in 2009 the roof and tower were repaired and parts of the interior of the church were modernised.

The church is constructed in flint, septaria and brick, with limestone dressings and a tiled roof. The plan consists of a three-bay nave with a south porch, a north aisle, a chancel, a north vestry, and a west tower with a stair turret on the southeast. In the chancel are a 14th-century piscina and a triple sedilia. The octagonal pulpit dates from about 1906. In 1906 a two-manual pipe organ made by Norman and Beard was installed. This was replaced by an electronic organ made by Copeman Hart in 2005.^[3] There is a ring of three bells, dated 1667, 1714, and 1907

The churchyard contains the graves of the war poet Robert Nichols and his father John Bowyer Buchanan Nichols, also a poet. The grave of the Canadian politician John Robertson also lies in the churchyard, as do the war graves of a soldier and two airmen of the Second World War.