Discovered Tewkesbury

Discovered Tewkesbury at the weekend. The Abbey church is still standing, unlike Abingdon. We went to a choral evensong with some lovely singing. We were in the choir area where the monks would have sat as there was a small congregation.

Like Abingdon, Tewkesbury had severe floods in 2007. Both the River Severn and the River Avon run alongside the town, and join here.

Wetherspoons - The Royal Hop Pole - had school art work on the walls about the flood.

John Ruskin's 200th Birthday Celebration

We joined a packed church in Coniston to celebrate the 200th birthday of John Ruskin. 

There were children from Coniston C of E Primary School singing, and reading poetry. There were also children from the John Ruskin School, Coniston performing on brass instruments. They had a day of Ruskin Celebration and church was one part of it.

 
Rather than be buried in Westminster Abbey John Ruskin chose St Andrew's Church, Coniston. He lived beside Lake Coniston.

After the service, some of the congregation gathered round the wonderful Ruskin Cross for a prayer

and to lay some flowers.

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."  John Ruskin.

A lot of his ideas are still very relevant today. Speaking at the service, a lady from the Ruskin Museum in Coniston  traced back some of the twentieth centuries great achievements to Ruskin's social reforming ideas: the founding of universal education, the minimum wage, the NHS and welfare state. As an art critic and painter he taught many people how to see and appreciate nature and art.