Nunnington Hall

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A photo of the outside of Nunnington Hall

On Easter Monday, we took advantage of the nice weather on Easter Monday to visit Nunnington Hall. Yes, I am aware it has taken me a month to get this published. I’ve been to Nunnington Hall before, but it was many, many years ago. Such that I don’t really remember it, and certainly didn’t have any photos of it.

History of Nunnington Hall

Nunnington Hall gets its name from the village of Nunnington, itself named after a nunnery that once stood in the village. There has been a hall in Nunnington since the 13th Century and in the 14th Century, it passed to the Grene family. In 1499, Maud Grene, the lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of York (wife to King Henry VII) married Sir Thomas Parr, and so the property passed to him. He had a daughter, Catherine Parr, who followed in her mother’s footsteps by marrying Henry VII’s son, King Henry VIII. Catherine Parr was famously the last of Henry VIII’s six wives and outlived him.

In the 16th Century, the property passed to Catherine Parr’s brother, William, Marquess of Northampton. He started a trend of choosing the wrong side in royal conflicts, by favouring the succession of Lady Jane Grey over Mary Tudor. As such, he forfeited Nunnington Hall to the crown.

About a hundred years later, Ranald Graham bought Nunnington Hall for £9500 – around £2.5million in today’s money. He made many changes to the hall, which resulted in many of the historical features still seen today. Another member of the Graham family, Sir Richard Graham, was the second to get a bit of pickle with royalty, being a supporter of Catholic King James II when the Protestant William and Mary ascended to the throne. He was arrested, imprisoned, and only avoided the death penalty for high treason by being an informant for his accomplices. He was stripped of his land and titles and quietly retired to Nunnington Hall. The Graham family sold Nunnington Hall in 1839.

The buyers were the Rutson family, with whom it remained until 1952 when it was left to the National Trust. However, whilst the National Trust took ownership, family members remained living there as tenants until 1978, after which more rooms could be opened to the public.

The hall

Whilst much of the hall dates from Tudor times, it has been renovated several times over the years. Inside, it mostly appears as renovated in the 1920s in the Arts and Crafts style. This included the addition of indoor plumbing. Most of the hall is open to the public, including the main entertaining rooms and the bedrooms. The servants would have lived in the attic, and this has been opened up as an exhibition space. At present, it’s a series of nature pieces by a collective called Diverse Threads 2; later this month, you’ll be able to see entries from the British Wildlife Photography Awards.

Nunnington Hall is also home to the Carlisle Collection of miniature rooms. These are essentially small rooms, like those in a doll house, but not part of an overall house. Some are very intricate – there’s one of a music shop, where each miniature instrument can be played.

The gardens

Nunnington Hall’s gardens are modest; you can walk around the entirety in about half an hour. The National Trust switched to organic gardening at Nunnington Hall in 2002.

They are laid out mostly as they would have been in the 17th Century, with some nods to its 20th Century heyday. This includes a kitchen garden, and a new iris garden that was added last year. There is also a children’s play area, hidden away in the trees.

The house sits next to the River Rye, which gives its name to Ryedale which was the former name of the district council until it was abolished in 2023. Apparently, wild otters have been spotted on the river, but we didn’t see any.

Accessibility

As alluded to above, Nunnington Hall has been altered significantly over the years. And whilst it’s not as higgledy-piggledy as, for example, Little Moreton Hall or Bolling Hall, there is almost no step-free access inside the hall beyond the ground floor. The grounds are largely step-free, but not always on hard surfaces. A disabled toilet is available, but the nearest Changing Places toilets as several miles away in either Pickering or Malton.

Nunnington Hall is a mid-tier National Trust property, so entry prices are currently around £13 for adults. National Trust members get in free, as do RHS members and National Art Pass Holders.

There is a car park on the other side of the River Rye from the hall, linked by a footbridge, and this includes electric vehicle charging. There are four Standard (7kW AC, Type 2) chargers, although two were out of order when we visited. A £5 donation is requested if using the chargers. Additional charging is available in Nunnington village.

Bus services run on weekends and bank holidays only, from April to September. Two bus services run in each direction, setting off from Helmsley and heading to Castle Howard. Until the 1950s, Nunnington had a railway station, but it’s long gone now.

The Darling Buds of May

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A photo of some bluebells against a moss-covered dry stone wall.

How are we a third of the way through the year already? Mind you, the recent weather has seemed rather more summery than spring, so it’s not surprising that summer is fast approaching. And May should be quite a busy month for us.

Bank holiday celebrations

Our wedding anniversary, on the 4th, and my birthday, on the 25th, both fall on the two bank holidays respectively, which is nice. Neither is a particularly notable number – we’ll have been married 13 years, and I’ll be making further progress into my mid-forties. But at least we both get days of work. I suspect some of our wedding anniversary may end up being spent in Ikea, but we’ll see.

As for my birthday, we may plan a nice meal somewhere.

Travel

Christine has an overnight stay in London coming up in the middle of the month, related to a professional development course that she is doing alongside her work. Meanwhile, I’m planning to go the Everything Electric Show in Harrogate.

We have tentative plans to go to a gig around my birthday weekend. Tickets haven’t yet been booked, but we have provisional childcare in place. We’re also considering a trip to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham at the end of the month, but we’ll see. At least it happens just after we get paid, although that could prove dangerous.

Health

It turns out I should have had another hearing test last summer. Anyhow, instead, I’m having one this month, which may mean I get new hearing aids. Last year, I took one of mine in to be replaced, as it had stopped working, and was told that my particular model was no longer issued by my local NHS trust. As such, my replacement was a refurbished model from another patient. I assume that, following this new test, I’ll be due the newer model, but we’ll see. It would be great if these new ones work with Bluetooth, so that I can stream audio directly from my phone.

We’ve also got a couple of appointments for our ten-year-old, which we’ve been waiting almost three years for. Which will be a big relief.

All in all, a busy month for us.

Unblogged April

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A photo of the ruins of Sheriff Hutton Castle in North Yorkshire by Mike Searle

As you read this, April is almost over. However, I started compiling this a full three weeks ago. Going to London last month has meant that I have had plenty to blog about this month, and there are some things that, in a quieter month, may have become full blog posts in their own right.

Sheriff Hutton Castle

On Easter Monday, we went to Nunnington Hall (the blog post for which is scheduled for Sunday), and on the way we went past Sheriff Hutton Castle to the north of York. We didn’t stop to take a photo, so I’ve the photo at the top is one that I grabbed from Geograph:

© Mike Searle (cc-by-sa/2.0) geograph.org.uk/p/4662987
Sheriff Hutton Castle (1), taken Monday, 7 September, 2015

There’s been a castle on the site since the 12th Century, with the beginnings of the current stone castle dating from the 14th Century. It had a major role during the Wars of the Roses in the 15th Century, however, it fell into ruins in the 16th Century and has remained that way since.

Alas, the castle isn’t open to the public; it remains privately owned and changed hands as recently as 2019. Which is a shame; it feels just like the sort of thing English Heritage would have taken on and opened up. At least its location next to the village of Sheriff Hutton means that you can admire it from a relatively close distance.

It’s been rather sunny, hasn’t it?

As I write this (which is last Saturday – this has been drafted in bits), we’re mid-way through a run of very sunny weather. Which is lovely, for several reasons:

  1. There’s blossom everywhere and it looks so much nicer in the sun
  2. Our solar panels have been working really hard

Indeed, they’ve saved us around £20 of electricity this week alone. I’ve been able to charge our car up without needing to use much grid energy at all. On Thursday, according to Sheffield Solar, UK national solar production peaked at 15.4 gigawatts, which I believe is a new record and accounted for about 40% of the UK’s energy mix. And we’re only in April – I’m hopeful that, come June when the days are longer, it’ll be even higher. The growth in solar in the UK is nothing short of remarkable – MCS states that over a quarter of a million domestic solar installations were brought online last year.

A better power monitoring Blueprint

I first wrote about power monitoring in Home Assistant a couple of years ago. Back then, I used a different power monitoring blueprint for my automations, but I’ve found a better one. This newer one has several benefits:

  • It’s easier to set up, as it doesn’t require you to create several helpers (although you can create a single helper if you want to be able to see the status, but it’s optional)
  • It supports a ‘Power Time Delay’ mode, that avoids the automation being triggered by short power spikes. For some reason, our washing machine occasionally has little power spikes when not in use, and these were triggering Google Assistant broadcast messages.
  • Sending notifications to multiple devices is easier.
  • You can also create additional helpers that get updated with how many cycles have run, their duration, and cumulative power consumption. These are all optional.

Firefox 150

Whilst I would argue that Firefox’s version numbers are largely meaningless nowadays, version 150 of Mozilla Firefox was released last week. Mozilla had early access to Claude Mythos, an AI tool for finding security flaws in software, resulting in 271 fixes being made in this version. I have my issues with generative AI, but this must be a good thing, right?

It’s also worth reading this interview with the new head of Firefox, Ajit Varma:

Mozilla’s PR team told me they want to be both the best browser for people who hate AI and the safest browser for people who love AI.

I’ve been using Firefox (almost) without a break as my main desktop browser, since before the 1.0 release in 2004. With every other web browser now basically the same underneath, it’s good to have another open source alternative, and one that isn’t trying to shove AI front and centre if you don’t want it.

Making Waves at York Art Gallery

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A print of 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' on display at the Making Waves exhibition at the York Art Gallery

As we were staying with my parents at Easter, we popped into York city centre on Easter Sunday to see the Making Waves exhibition at York Art Gallery. The exhibition is all about the art of Japanese block printing, where printers would carve wooden blocks that were then painted, to reproduce artworks on a massive scale.

The name Making Waves comes from the painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai, which is one of the most recognisable paintings from this method. There is one of the 111 surviving original prints of this on show in Making Waves, on loan from the Maidstone Museum.

Now I keep saying that I’m not really into art, despite visiting a Banksy exhibition and the V&A last month, and now this. I stand by this, and I found the information about how the prints are made more interesting than the prints themselves.

A modern print creating using Japanese Block Printing, with the blocks shown.

Making Waves starts with an explanation of the process; there’s a video as well as a step-by-step guide. It’s notable that the process generally results in the original painting being destroyed, and so there is usually no surviving ‘original’, just the first print run. I particularly appreciated the display of a modern print, made using the traditional method, on show with some of the wooden blocks that were used to make it.

You then proceed around the exhibition largely in chronological order. The exhibition ends in the modern day, with some newer commissions of block printed art featuring characters from Japanese video games. Also, in the final room, you can use a series of rubber stamps to create your own block print, which is a nice touch.

Japanese Zen Garden

Around the back of the art gallery is a small Zen Garden that has been created for the exhibition. This is connected to the Museum Gardens and leads around the back to the nearby Yorkshire Museum.

We visited York Art Gallery a couple of years ago, and so we didn’t go upstairs to the rest of the galleries this time. The Making Waves exhibition is open until the 30th August this year.

Accessibility

York Art Gallery offers step free access throughout the building, with lift access to the upper floors. Accessible toilets are available, and there is a Changing Places toilet around the corner at York Central Library when that is open.

Parking your car in York city centre is unwise, and many buses stop right outside the art gallery, including Park & Ride services from Rawcliffe Bar. York railway station is a short walk away.

Admission is currently £9 per adult, but there are many discounts available, including free entry for Art Pass and Max Card holders, and York residents aged 16 and under.

Playlist of the month: London songs

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Screenshot of the Songs About London playlist

Okay, so here’s one last blog post about London, following our trip there last month. This time, it’s songs about London. As usual, you can listen along on Spotify.

  • “London Calling” by The Clash. If you asked most people to name a song about London, this is probably the first one that they would name and is one of The Clash’s most popular song (third most played on Spotify).
  • “London Bridge” by Fergie. This refers more to the traditional song about London Bridge falling down, but the music video is at least set in London. Even if it focuses on Tower Bridge, rather than London Bridge, which, to be fair, is comparatively boring.
  • “Londinium” by Catatonia. Catatonia are famously very Welsh, and so this song is about everything that is wrong with London. “I come alive outside the M25” indeed.
  • “London Boy” by Taylor Swift. Considering how many songs Swift has written over the years, it’s not surprising that she has written a song about London. Ostensibly an album track, like much of Taylor’s work, it charted in some countries.
  • “LDN” by Lily Allen. This is from Allen’s first album and is about her cycling through London. It describes the shiny veneer of London, and its sometimes grimy reality.
  • “Take Me Back To London” by Ed Sheeran featuring Stormzy. Ed Sheeran has collaborated with just about everyone in recent years and so it’s no surprise that he’s collaborated with Stormzy for this song about London.
  • “Waterloo Sunset” by The Kinks. Another classic pop song about London. It’s inspired by the view from St Thomas’ Hospital, looking along the River Thames by Waterloo Bridge.
  • “Warwick Avenue” by Duffy. Another Welsh pop act, this time singing about the famous street in West London, known for its markets.
  • “Brixton Briefcase” by Chase & Status featuring CeeLo Green. This song is about the Brixton riots of 2011, although having it sung by American singer CeeLo Green is certainly a choice.
  • “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant. Finishing with another song about Brixton is this classic song by Eddy Grant, about the first market street to be lit by electric lights. I prefer the 2001 Ringbang Remix, but this isn’t on Spotify unfortunately.

Queer Britain, the national LGBTQ+ museum

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A photo inside the galleries at Queer Britain.

This is the sixth and final of my blog posts about last month’s trip to London. Following our trip to the Vagina Museum in the morning, we decided to continue the theme of ‘woke museums’ and visit Queer Britain, the national LGBTQ+ Museum.

I’ll be honest, our main reason for visiting was that it’s in King’s Cross, and was therefore close to where we needed to be for our train home that afternoon. But as someone who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I decided it would be good to visit.

Queer Britain is a small museum – we were in and out within the hour – and despite having ‘national’ in its name, it’s very London-focussed. There’s not a lot about LGBTQ+ history in other parts of the UK; there was a bit about Justin Fashanu, a footballer who played for Norwich City and was Britain’s first openly gay professional player. But there was nothing about Manchester’s Gay Village, for example. Perhaps if the museum is able to expand in future, it will have more things to show that are from outside the capital.

There is also an events space, and if we hadn’t needed to catch a train, we would have stuck around for a panel discussion platforming LGBTQ+ migrants. We did, however, manage a quick selfie with the panel moderator, Tia Kofi, who you may know from Season 2 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. They’re very tall.

Accessibility

The museum is all on one floor, with a ramp to the main door; however, extra wide wheelchairs may present an issue. An accessible gender neutral toilet is available; Changing Places toilets are available a short walk away at Pancras Leisure and King’s Cross station.

Entry is a recommended fee of £10, or pay what you feel. As it stands, I broadly agree with Ian that £10 is a big ask for a relatively small museum. The gift shop is good though.

Queer Britain is in Granary Square, on the other side of the Regents Canal from King’s Cross and St Pancras stations (which are all step-free). If it still existed, York Road tube station on the Piccadilly Line would be closest, but it closed 94 years ago.

Operation Mincemeat, the musical

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A photo of the inside of the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford showing the logo for Operation Mincemeat on the curtains whilst we were waiting for the show to start.

A couple of weeks ago, the hit musical Operation Mincemeat made its way to Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre, and so Christine and I went to see it. It’s very good.

The true story of Operation Mincemeat

Like Kinky Boots, which we saw last month, Operation Mincemeat is based on a true story. The actual Operation Mincemeat took place in 1943 and was a distraction strategy by allied forces during the Second World War. It involved planting the body of a street tramp, disguised as a high ranking military official, off the coast of Spain. The body contained important (but crucially faked) documents implying that the Allies planned to invade Sardinia. Instead, the actual plan was to invade Sicily, which, at the time, was heavily guarded by Nazi forces. Sure enough, forces were re-allocated from Sicily to Sardinia, allowing the Allies to liberate Sicily.

Two books have been written about Operation Mincemeat; a novel in 1950 called Operation Heartbreak, and a second book in 1953, The Man Who Never Was. This second book was written by Ewen Montagu, one of the intelligence officers involved, and it was adapted for a film in 1956. A later film followed in 2021, called Operation Mincemeat, and now there’s a musical adaption too.

The musical

The musical largely follows the actual events of Operation Mincemeat, with some artistic license. It’s performed with just five actors, who, through many rapid costume changes, play lots of different parts. The set is relatively simple, with lighting used to great effect throughout. The songs are all original, and number over 20 – much of the show takes place in song.

It’s a lot of fun to watch. The cast were all great singers and performers, and despite the many, many costume changes, it always felt slick and well-rehearsed. A nice touch comes towards the end, where there is a tribute to the street tramp, and a revealing of his actual identity.

Whilst not aimed at children, Operation Mincemeat is fine for families with children to watch. I don’t think our ten-year-old would have liked it, but teenagers may be interested.

The musical opened in London in 2019, and moved to the West End in 2023 where it’s still running. It’s therefore unusual for a musical to go on tour so soon afterwards, but it appears that the West End run is almost completely booked up for months. Indeed, there appears to be a ballot to get tickets now. As such, you have more chance of seeing it on tour. Whilst the Bradford Alhambra Theatre run is over now, as I write this it is coming to the end of a two week run in Sheffield, after which it is off to Stoke-on-Trent and then Chester. It makes it back to Halifax in October, and I’m highly tempted to see it again.

The Vagina Museum

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A photo of the outside of the Vagina Museum in Bethnal Green.

This is one of those blog posts where I’m glad I don’t take advertising on this blog anymore, as I imagine this post would get demonetised. This is the fifth of my blog posts about last month’s trip to London; I’m aware that we’ve been back for a month now, and there’s still a sixth and final post to go live this week. Today’s post is all about The Vagina Museum.

A Vagina Museum‽

Yes, a museum all about vaginas. Well, and the wider reproductive organs of women and others with vaginas – the museum tries very hard to be inclusive of trans and non-binary people as well.

It’s not a very big museum, and occupies two railway arches under the Weaver Line of the London Overground. It’s made up of three small named exhibitions spaces, called Betsey, Lucy and Anarcha, named after three enslaved Black American women who were all experimented on, and from whom our modern understanding of gynaecology is derived. Betsey’s gallery, upstairs, is home to the permanent exhibition, where you can see a complete preserved uterus (Christine commented that it was smaller than expected, considering how much it hurts when she’s on her period) and many photos of different types of vulvas.

Also upstairs is Anarcha’s gallery, which has written pieces from migrant women about their first period, and the challenges that their status as refugees has caused.

Downstairs, as well as the excellent gift shop, is Lucy’s gallery, and the current temporary exhibition about menopause, including its history and how our understanding of it has changed over time.

In all, we spent about an hour in the museum. It’s quite text heavy, and I don’t think our ten-year-old would have got much out of it, but we both found it enlightening. I’d definitely recommend visiting if you have a vagina, or live with someone who does.

Accessibility

Accessibility is good – there is a lift to the upstairs galleries, and no steps. There’s a single, gender-neutral, accessible toilet available. If you need a Changing Places toilet, then there is one nearby at the Young V&A (which we visited in 2024).

Entry to the museum is free, but a £5 donation is strongly encouraged. And did I mention that the gift shop is excellent? Note that museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The museum is very close to Cambridge Heath station on the London Overground, and a little further from Bethnal Green tube station on the Central Line. We got there on the 254 bus from outside Aldgate tube station, which is probably your best option for step-free transport; the nearest step-free station is Hoxton on the Windrush Line, which is a 20-25 minute walk.

I haven’t been noting about car parking or electric car charging in these London reviews, as we didn’t drive and I think you would be mad to drive in London, but there is a rapid Shell Recharge station around the corner.

Super Mario and the Magic Faraway Tree

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The film posters for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie and the Magic Faraway Tree

I’m breaking my self-imposed rule of posting every other day and bringing forward what would have gone into the ‘unblogged April’ post at the end of the month. I’ve taken our ten-year-old to see a couple of films this month, and as they’re both still showing at the cinema, here’s my reviews of the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and The Magic Faraway Tree. Besides, the last time I reviewed two films together, Wish and Wonka, it was one of my most popular blog posts for a while.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

I mentioned that we’d probably go and see this on Good Friday, and indeed we did. We went to the Everyman Cinema in Leeds (top of my highly subjective ranking) which also permitted a bit of shopping on the side.

My review is probably broadly in line with what I wrote about A Minecraft Movie: it’s basically fine. I think Peter Bradshaw’s 1* review in the Guardian was a little harsh; it’s not terrible, nor was it aiming to be a cinematic masterpiece. As someone who doesn’t really play console games, a bit more explanation of who people are may have come in useful. For example, Fox McCloud appears in the second half of the film, with barely any introduction and I had no idea who he was or why he was important. I don’t mind fan service – it’s expected in films like this – but non-fans need a way in too.

The Magic Faraway Tree

We saw this today (yes, I’m posting about something I did the same day for once), albeit at our local Vue Cinema in Halifax as we had limited time. It’s been out in the UK for the duration of the Easter holidays, however, it has only just secured a distributor in the US and so won’t be out there until August. Knowing this, it’s therefore not surprising that it’s not a big Hollywood blockbuster; I don’t know what the budget was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on the comparatively low side.

There are, of course, special effects – it would be hard to make a film about a magic tree without them – but I suspect much of the film uses good old-fashioned sets rather than lots of green screens. The screenplay is by Simon Farnaby, who also wrote the script for Wonka, and he has a cameo role in the film.

The film is based on The Enchanted Wood, the first of Enid Blyton’s four books in the series, but set in modern times. Indeed, I’m sure that Enid Blyton would probably be turning in her grave, but considering that she was a big old racist, that’s no bad thing. Like all good family films, this adaptation has some jokes for grown-ups as well as kids. The evil character Dame Snap pops up, with a cheeky reference to her being called Dame Slap in the first editions.

Which to choose

If you can only see one of these two films, pick The Magic Faraway Tree. It’s a great, relatively gentle family film. I can see it being a big hit on TV at Christmas time.

Like I said, the Super Mario Galaxy Movie isn’t bad, but it helps if you’re a player of the games.

Posts that were elsewhere and are now here

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Since I started blogging, almost everything that I have written has been posted on here. But not absolutely everything; I occasionally wrote some blog posts and longform writing elsewhere. However, I’ve decided that I want to consolidate my previous writing here, and so there are some new ‘old’ blog posts available.

Medium

Over the years, I experimented with posting long-form pieces on my Medium account. This was primarily to see if I could reach a new audience, and also to see if I could get some money from Medium’s Partner Programme. Suffice to say, the most I ever made in a month was $1.14, and I haven’t earned anything in over two years, so I’ve republished everything here. It also helps to partially fill in the gap when I wasn’t blogging regularly between 2018 and 2022:

Stupid Evil Bastard

From time to time, I contributed guest posts to a blog called Stupid Evil Bastard, run by Les Jenkins. It was mainly focussed on atheism; back then, I identified more as a ‘capital A’ Atheist, rather than the more lowercase atheist that I identify as now. As such, some of these posts are more critical of religion than I would be now, and there’s a couple of posts I chose not to re-instate as it doesn’t reflect the views I presently hold.

Les sadly passed away in 2022, after being diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. His blog is no longer online, but you can read his final blog post and a tribute from his son on the Web Archive which thankfully preserved these entries. It also preserved my guest posts, and seeing as they’re no longer online otherwise, here they are:

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