A day away. In the good company of Brian Guthrie, an adventure for both of us. We started at the Britannia Monument, dedicated to Nelson, with some frisby throwers under Britannia, and where at least two people lost their life falling from the top – the designer, who had a heart attack, and a clown. From the industrial South Denes, we came out to the great wall protecting the merchandise of the closed-for-winter, summer entertainments, including the great wooden roller coaster. There is something poignantly desolate in closed up fair-ground machines, with the ghosts of screams of joy imagined.
At Time and Tide (dogs outside) we could smell the herring in this old herring smokery, and marvelled at the industry of stacking the herring all the way to the high ceilings. Glimpsed one of the medieval town wall turrets near by.
Walked up the high street, over hearing voices from other lands (novel coming from Halesworth).
Lunch followed by Pevsner’s observations of the South Quay houses, ending with a cream tea in the Imperial. Mean corridors, low ceilings, delicious cream tea.
Quote from Pevsner: ‘The architecture is friendly, if in its details a little mannered’
‘Defoe calls it the finest quay in England and not inferior to Marseilles (a strange comparison)’
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