Tag: heritage

A preview of my Dark Chester tours for Halloween with the travel blog Go Eat Do

An interview with the travel blogger Stuart Forster for his blog, Go Eat Do.

The feature is about ideas for a weekend visit to Chester but, with Halloween approaching, previews my new Dark Chester tours [pictured above].

The tours run Saturdays at 6pm and delve into the dark-tourism heritage of the city, exploring 2,000 years of plague, poltergeists and religious persecution.

Talking about St John’s Church, a Saxon site of worship from 689AD, I describe how:

“Cestrians, the people of Chester, call it ‘the thin church’. It’s a reference to the fact it’s one of those places in the city where the world we know, and another we can’t explain, is at its thinest point. It’s a place to step across the supernatural threshold.”

We also discuss, amongst others, the Chester Mystery Plays and the Chester Heritage Festival (both returning in June 2023).

Plus wider ideas for things to do and see during your visit.

Read the full story at Go Eat DoHaunted places in England: Chester walking tour.

How to celebrate 125 years of Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel, Dracula, at Whitby Abbey

 A trip to Whitby to get into the Halloween spirit.

My visit was part of a wider itinerary to explore the Yorkshire Coast Route, a new route intended to showcase the off-season charms of the Yorkshire seaside.

The route spans 240 miles, taking in the North Yorks Moors National Park and walking routes off the Cleveland Way National Trail.

The highlight, however, is Whitby.

Gothic novel

The traditional Yorkshire fishing village of Whitby is bracing itself for a black-mascara influx this autumn, hosting events to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula.

Published in 1897, Dracula was inspired by the seascape and atmospheric backstreets of Whitby with several key scenes set in the town.

The spindly ruins of Whitby Abbey [pictured above] remain the main draw, the Gothic-novel literati eagerly climbing the 199 steep, stone steps to soak up the abbey’s atmospheric setting. 

By the time Bram Stoker visited Whitby in August 1890, the abbey had long since adopted its eerily tumbledown form.

He drew on local legends, such as the wreck of a sailing vessel, The Demeter in the novel, and the folklore of the barghest, a wolf-like hound that stalked the moors.

These added local colour to the story of his Transylvanian anti-hero.

Hence, when Dracula is shipwrecked off Whitby, Stoker has him transform into a fierce black dog, leaping from the ship to bound up the cliffs to the abbey.

Victorian values

“Dracula’s animalistic representation of the occult loomed large in the Victorian imagination.”

“The beastly incarnation was both shocking, yet fascinating, to Victorian society,” says Mark Williamson, Site Manager for English Heritage.

Read the full story in i Travel, A Very Gothic Grand Tour.

More from https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/whitby-abbey/things-to-do/

Dark Chester: a walk through the shadows of our dark-tourism history

We took a walk on the dark side a few days ago.

It was the inaugural outing for my new Dark Chester tour [pictured above], a walking tour through the shadows of Chester’s 2000-year-old history.

Think Horrible Histories meets Inside Number Nine with a dash of the Uncanny podcast.

In other words, an evening storytelling stroll with tales of plague, persecution and poltergeists.

For some more background, read this blog I penned for the British Guild of Tourist Guides:

Chester: take a walk on the dark side.

This first tour was an exclusive event for the Chester Heritage Festival, which runs until July 27 with lots of free activities, as well as paid-for tours.

As well as leading the tour, I also worked with the Heritage Festival team to livestream stories from two of the tour stops.

You can watch the livestream from Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre here.

The livestream from The Bear & Billet is here.

Plus I had some great initial feedback, including this comment:

 

The plan now is to take Dark Chester weekly.

So join me. Let’s take a walk on the dark side.

How to spend a Roman-heritage weekend in Hadrian’s Wall country

My latest assignment took me to the wide-open spaces of Northumberland.

I was there researching a feature for Discover Britain magazine about events to celebrate the 1900 years since the Romans started building Hadrian’s Wall [pictured above].

The Wall, built over seven years from 122AD, comprised a series of a gates or milecastles every Roman mile (0.92 miles), to control the troublesome frontier of northern England. It used some 800,000 cubic metres of hand-carved stone, gouged laboriously from local quarries.

But this trip wasn’t just about Roman heritage. I was interested in the way that two icons of British history hail from the Northeast.

As well the 1900 Festival this year along the length of Hadrian’s Wall, there’s also a major art exhibition coming to a gallery in travel-hub Newcastle.

The Lindisfarne Gospels, the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts on loan from The British Library, will return to the Northeast for the first time in many years.

Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Art Galleries, including the Laing Art Gallery, says:

“The shiver-down-spine moment for me was when I first saw The Gospels close up. I’m fascinated by the intricacy of the artwork, especially given the hard conditions under which they were produced.”

Back on the Roman-heritage trail, I later visited the Great North Museum, where the Hadrian’s Wall Gallery includes an evocative set of Roman tombstones [pictured below] amongst the exhibits.

Most of all, I learnt how, far from a remote outpost of a dwindling empire, the Northeast of England is a hotbed of historical interest.

The events that connect the Wall and the Gospels this year offer living testimony to Northeast England’s crucial part in British history.

Read my feature in the August/September issue of Discover Britain.

The Lindisfarne Gospels are at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, from September 17. 

More travel information here.