A few months ago on an open day we visited the Old Kirk, Kirkcaldy, the old parish church of the town, whose tower can be seen here from Kirk Wynd.

We knew before we went that there was some stained glass by the pre-Raphaelite (in its later phase) Edward Burne Jones.

The church is no longer in use as a place of worship having been closed as such by the Church of Scotland in November 2010. The congregation merged with that of St Brycedale Church – no more than 50 yards away! – to become known as St Bryce Kirk. St Bryce is the patron saint of Kirkcaldy. (See here.) These two Burne Jones windows are towards the back of the building if you were entering from Kirk Wynd and are only two of many stained glass windows whose splendour cannot be fully experienced from the outside.

The above much more recent stained glass windows represent the flames of the fire which damaged the interior a good few years ago. These flank the main entrance from Kirk Wynd.

One slightly older window by Crear McCartney is on the immediate left wall (see left.)

None of the pews remain as the space inside has been cleared for community use.

It is possible to climb the tower. Don’t do it on a windy day (of which there are a quite a few in Kirkcaldy) as you are fairly exposed on the tower parapet.

Before the stairs/ladders which allow the climb we passed the impressive memorial – see below – to the members of the congregation who died in the World Wars. (The 1939-45 addition blends in well.)

I had to stitch three pictures to get the full panorama of the memorial as the space to step back was limited. The passageway to the stairs is on the left of this.

Who’d have thought this:-

(which I have featured before) would be on a postcard?

Two more War Memorials from our recent trip down south. It is Remembrance Sunday after all.

The first, on the left, is in Great Dunmow, Essex, a village I used to travel through on the bus twice every workday when we lived in Braintree. The memorial is triangular in cross section which you can’t quite make out from this photo.

The second is in Saffron Walden. It is located at the top of the main street, which dips down away from it. I had to stand almost in the middle of the road to get a decent angle but unfortunately must have shaken the camera as it’s a bit blurry. Both of these are elegant, restrained and prominently situated at road junctions.

In Braintree we parked as close to our old house as possible and strolled up to the town.

The route took us past the War Memorial.

Just over the road is this deco Masonic Centre.

And next door to that is an Art Deco house.

From the above angle you cannot see the curved balcony but looking in by the gate you do.

The old Woolies in the town centre was/is deco in style.

There used to be a Critall window factory in Braintree but that seems to have been demolished and replaced by modern housing.

When we lived there the traffic in the town was horrendous. The queues to get in on a Saturday from the north were enormous. So were the ones in the supermarket; they stretched from the tills all the way to the other ends of the aisles.

The town has long since been bypassed both north/south and east/west and so was relatively tranquil. Mind you we got there about five o’clock.

There is also now a retail park and an outlet centre off the bypass. Considering that, the town centre looked more thriving than you might expect.

We hadn’t intended visiting Ely but when we discovered it was only twelve miles from Cambridge we thought we might as well.

Its most striking feature is of course the Cathedral (see left.)

Almost the first house we encountered was in a highly traditional style. We had been forewarned by signs in the car park – and the streets up from it – to “Oliver Cromwell’s House.” This surprised me as I’d always thought Cromwell was a farmer from Huntingdon till the Civil Wars dragged him from hearth and home to military fame – not to mention notoriety – regicide and the Lord Protectorship. Anyway the tacky figures outside put us off entering.

I had expected the town would contain mostly traditional architecture. There was nothing extremely modern but I was pleasantly surprised to find not one, nor two, nor even three, but four buildings showing deco styling.

The first had “Coronation Building” and a crown inscribed on it. I suspect this would have been the 1937 Coronation (George VI) rather than that of 1953.

The second now hosts WH Smith’s – I had to stitch two photos as the street wasn’t wide enough to allow me to frame the whole thing in one shot.

The third looked as if it had once been a Woolworths.

The fourth was on another street (Lynn Road?) just off the main one.

The War Memorial was unostentatious, restrained and dignified, set into a niche in the wall that backs onto the cathedral.

There was also a street market which looked pretty thriving. Whether it’s there everyday or merely Wednesdays I don’t know.

After Stamford we stopped at Cambridge for two nights.

Despite seeing signs saying Lincoln City FC stadium on the way in to that city I never caught so much as a glimpse of Sincil Bank. The only football ground I did see on the trip was the Abbey Stadium, Cambridge United’s home, as we headed out of Cambridge the first morning along Newmarket Road.

I only took two photos in Newmarket. One was of the War Memorial, which has a lovely setting in a square surrounded by trees.

Newmarket itself could be described as a one horse town. I have never seen anywhere so dedicated to the one activity. Not only are there two racecourses, the National Horseracing Museum and the Jockey Club Estates Limited, but on the road out east there are training areas for horses on either side of the road and bridle paths running at the back of the pavements. There was even one road crossing dedicated to horses. Horses are Newmarket’s raison d’être. It seems to prosper with it, though.

The other photo was of this quite imposing deco style building.

From Lincoln we travelled south, first via Grantham to take a look at its most famous son, Isaac Newton. His house was actually a few miles outside the town but we’ll stretch a point. The statue is slap bang in Grantham town centre.

Right beside the statue there was an unusual War Memorial commemorating those who had lost their lives in various wars, campaigns, peace keeping operations or terrorist actions since 1945.

There must be a War Memorial to both World Wars but it wasn’t in the part of the town centre we walked through.

The town looked pretty down at heel. There was one Art Deco building.

Could this have been a Burton’s?

On the way down on our trip we stopped off at Wetherby just to have a bite to eat and stretch the legs. I didn’t spot much in the way of Deco but there was a nice bridge over the River Wharfe.

As you can see the river was quite high, in fact flooding the banks so that you couldn’t walk on the bank underneath the bridge.

Just to the right of the above photo Wetherby War Memorial stands on the bridge parapet – see photo on the left below. I’m not too keen on the ones which feature angels like this. A day later I also photographed Lincoln’s War Memorial, on the right below, a more intricate and to my mind more æsthetic design. A couple more photos of Wetherby are on my flickr.

On Saturday we ended up at Dollar, Clackmannanshire.

This is Dollar’s WW2 memorial, situated in a small memorial gardens just off the main A 91 road. The gardens side has two names for servicemen killed in Northern Ireland. There was no sign of any First World War names.

We walked up the hill beside the burn, over which there are two nice bridges.

The white building behind the second one houses Dollar Museum, which contains, among other things, a display on the Devon Valley Railway (now sadly defunct, victim of the greatest act of institutional vandalism in Britain in my lifetime, the Beeching cuts, though the part to Alloa has been reopened recently.)

We asked the attendant if there was a WW1 memorial anywhere and were told it was in the school grounds.

Of course, Dollar Academy. Lots of former pupils would have served in the wars. The memorial is unusual, showing a figure with outstretched hands.

The main school building can be seen in the first photo. The side facing it seemed to contain names from the parish rather than FPs. Other sides were reserved solely for ex-pupils, with WW2 and later conflicts also commemorated.

On a sudden impulse we went to Edinburgh on Sunday morning. (Well the good lady wanted to return an item to a shop.)

It was a pleasure not to have to fight our way through crowds on Princes Street as we would have on a Saturday.

I had the camera along and ended up taking 46 photos.

This is the war memorial that stands on North Bridge (the one above Waverley Station.) The uniforms are of the South African War/Wars.

If you read the writing (click on the picture to enlarge) it’s not just to commemorate those wars but also engagements in Afghanistan (nothing changes, eh?) Egypt, Chin Lusha, Chitral and Tirah.

This bottom picture is of the plaque below the memorial. It commemorates the laying of the foundation stone of the North Bridge by some local worthy.