King’s Lynn

An extra post just to say that in between all the other things – we also had a good look at King’s Lynn where we staying.  It is actually well worth a look – Ely might have the most medieval buildings still in use in Europe, but Lynn has the most green plaques – seemingly on every second building.

It has a nice sea (river) front.

Lots of great medieval buildings – including many merchants’ houses like the one we were staying in.

We went to the Minster.

For some reason there is a very fine window with a Scottish connection – it is in memory of a Seaforth Highlander who for some reason was buried down here and features Robert the Bruce.

I am somewhat reminded of the poem  “That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England”.  Only Scotland.

Then we went to one of two fine museums, which is housed in the town hall.

We saw “King John’s Cup” – apparently it would be filled with the finest sack wine, and visiting dignitaries would have to drink it all straight down.  As it is a very large cup, this probably gave the burgers of Lynn a bit of an advantage in trade negotiations afterwards.

As a bonus, we then discovered that on Tuesdays the Council Chambers are open to the public so we went for a look round.  They were a great deal more impressive than the ones in Cupar which we saw a few weeks ago.  I particularly liked the windows in the main chamber, where over 100s of years, various people from Mayors to carpenters have scratched their names into the glass.

We then went to the main museum and saw a rather good reconstruction of Seahenge.  The bit I liked the most though, was all the pilgrim badges they dredged out of the Great Ouse.  One of them is from Little Walsingham, and I can’t help thinking of the unfortunate pilgrim who had travelled from say Scotland, made it to the far off shrine and had been on his way home in triumph when he dropped his evidence in a river just 30 miles into his weary journey home.