Artist Laura Knight ❤️. Even better for me, she was born in the patch covered by Erewash Museum, so I can add her to the list of stories we don't yet tell, but will find a way!

Let's curl and slay!
We got some curlers to share! These were found at a mid-18th cent. peruke business under what is now Magdalen College, Oxford. Results are almost ready, so get ready to sashay through the centuries!
#archaeology #Artefact #wig #curler #magdalencollege #Oxford #wigslayer

A bed of tulips with a dark green, clipped yew hedges behind them. The tulips are cream and lilac.

A calm pool with three ducks on the surface and blue sky above. The pool is in a formal garden and the tree line and shrubs around the pool is reflected in the water.

View over a mirror pond with a Chinese-style, wooden bridge at the other side. The bridge is painted red and green and there are people on it. The trees and shrubs around the pool are shades of red, lime green, copper and yellow-green. They are crisply reflected in the pond.

View to the sky through a Japanese Maple tree with red and green palm-shaped leaves. The light is filtering through creating a pattern of shade, lead colour and sunlight.

Biddulph Grange Gardens @nationaltrust.org.uk. Beautiful (and busy!) in the sunshine. The plant collection is very special and it's full of secret passages and hidden grottos. Completely different to most fancy gardens.

Exterior of the museum entrance. A red brick, two-storey 19th century building on the corner. The brown central door faces the corner and the building is a triangular shape with shop windows on either side of the door.

A street with Victorian terraces on either side

One side of the Victorian terraced street.

The very atmospheric D. H. Lawrence museum in Eastwood, Notts. Like a time capsule inside and out - really worth a visit.

I think Friday evening cricket is my favourite of the kids' activities.

Whatever your political views, it's an interesting turnaround of First Past The Post systems to keep out smaller or newer parties.

First week in the new job done. A place with loads of stories and potential. And, very importantly, a wisteria about to bloom (that I'm desperate to prune properly as well!)

A carpet of yellow flowering celandine with green leaves on the ground. The background is a blurred copse of trees.

A couple of years ago, the council removed trees in a wooded area of a park. It felt slightly ruined tbh.

But now it's beautiful. There are carpets of wildflowers, the remaining trees aren't such twiggy specimens and it's full of birds and insects. Managing woodland well is part of the ecosystem.

Raking shadows thrown by low sun emphasise the terraced banks of an extensive IronAge/#RomanoBritish field system on the steep N-facing slopes of Burderop Down, Wilts. ... AND the ditches of a #medieval sheepfold that cut across them.

📷 historicengland.org.uk/education/sc...

A group of 8 tulips in flower. They are coral petals with green veins.

Tulip time in the garden.

#spring #flowers

Remains of an 18th-century flour mill, Gentleshaw.

That's fascinating, thank you!

Footprints etched into a stone slab at St Wystan's in Repton. I'd love to know why.

#apotropaic #church

Wooden ceiling. Carved into the central beam is a monstrous face with a pig's snout, two huge tongues, angry eyes and three horns coming from the forehead.

St Wystan's church in Repton is most famous for it's Anglo Saxon crypt that housed the bones of Mercia' kings.

I was quite taken with the ceiling grotesques that are so high up, you need a camera zoom to see them. Who was the audience for these creepy chaps and what was the message?

Sotheby’s offers to value cash-strapped councils’ art collections Critics warn auction house is pressuring struggling authorities into selling public assets

Vultures circle over Council art collections as austerity bites:

A wooden earth closet. The front is painted pale blue, with two latched doors. The top is unpainted, with two, circular holes to sit on.

A reminder of how much I appreciate modern sanitation. This bad boy was in use as a public loo until...1980!

It's an earth closet, so you did the business then covered it with a layer of earth (ideally good loamy soil, but anything to hand). Then it was taken outside.

#sharpspottery #history

A red brick, one-storey building with three arched windows in a central row, and a green door at either end. There is a triangular top to the facade with a clock in the apex. A small white bell house is on the centre of the roof. A lawn in front with tree-lined paths on either side

In 1750, a group of German Moravians, looking for religious freedom, built a village in Ockbrook, Derbyshire. The church is still in use today and the village is like stepping into another world.

19th century membership register for a Yorkshire union branch.

Posters and leaflets relating to the campaign against pit closures after 1985.

The MRC's seminar room, with cataloguing work in progress.

19th century emblem of the Yorkshire Miners' Association.

🚨Job Klaxon🚨

Can you help us bring the archives of the National Union of Mineworkers to a wider audience?

We're looking for a project Outreach & Education Co-ordinator to help showcase this fantastic archival collection (1 year, 0.5 FTE)

Find out more at warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/lang-en-G...

Photograph of a field with the ruin of a large archway in a stone wall. The arch is about 20m high and intact. There are hedgerow trees in line with the arch.

The ruins of the medieval St Mary's Abbey are casually in a field in Dale Abbey, Derbyshire.

Hyacinths on a glorious sunny day. This is Delft Blue and the salmon pink of Gypsy Queen four years on from being planted.

The name comes from yet another Greek who got entangled in a romance with the gods and ended up dead, but floral.

Building facade against blue sky. The facade is white with architectural swags painted dark red. There are two projecting bays with a central archway entrance in the middle.

The Scala Picture House in Ilkeston must be one of the oldest cinemas still going. It's a rather magnificent Edwardian concoction decorated with swags and scrolls, that's been running for over 110 years.

Footpath off the Old London Road towards Packington

Glorious morning for a walk around some very old trackways.

12th century carved stone grave slab from St. Peter’s Church in Northampton. It was found in 1843 being used as a door lintel in a cottage in nearby Black Lion Hill. 📸 My own. #FindsFriday #Medieval #Northampton

A red brick mill with three storeys and a cylindrical chimney. Each floor has a run of large windows. The building overlooks a canal, with trees alongside. The sky is bright blue with fluffy white clouds.

A mill overlooking a street with parked cars. The mill building is red brick and four storeys high, running the whole length of the street. There are evenly-spaced, rectangular windows on each floor.

The rear of a mill with three rounded turrets projecting from the main wall. It seems that they held the stairwells as the windows are staggered in height as if following the path of a spiral staircase.

Long Eaton mills, still in use with loads of textile businesses. Amazing architecture, especially with a blue sky.

Long Eaton was a lace making centre for many years.

It won’t be easy, but I’m really glad that you got a reprieve ♥️

It hasn’t unfortunately. I see though that there’s hope for you?

I’ll find out from social media this evening whether the museum is closing permanently. So that’s a joy in this brave new world.

I was looking for apotropaic marks on a church in Stafford 🤣