A relaxing day

Today was the last day we had to work manning the shop where we have our Unit, as from today we no longer have a Unit there.  Time tends to go very slowly when you are there, and in the winter it is pretty chilly, so we have no sorrows over leaving!  Anyway, today I finished one book I was reading and began another, started on some x-stitch - just a little project sent to me by my cousin (it was one belonging to her Aunt (or g. Aunt) Ethel, from Gibralta if I remember rightly).  Anyway, it was a rose and bought on a visit to Mottisfont Gardens near Romsey in Hampshire, and long-term followers of this blog will remember that I went there with my best friend Tricia in the summer before she died of Cancer.  So this little x-stitch has a special poignancy for me.

I got wet in the rain when I went for bread not long after we arrived - I should have spotted the HUGE black clouds heading our way.  I did linger in one of the charity shops, looking for a skein of embroidery floss to whip the edge of the x-stitch project and although I didn't find any, I did spot a lovely nearly-finished needlepoint cushion front with the wools, chart etc and bought that for £3 and a lovely holly-green scallop-edged damask tablecloth (brand new) for £2.  That will look lovely over an undercloth on one of my tables at a Fair.

I dried out beautifully later when I went for a walk with my camera and took lots of photos at St Dingat's Church in Llandovery.  I went out again after that as I had seen some lovely juicy blackberries hanging over a wall and they were too much of a temptation to ignore!

There is probably an entire post which could be written about this man, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson.  For the moment you will have to content yourself with THIS LINK or this one, and here is Wikipedia's take on him.  Obviously a fascinating man.

He certainly had quite the grandest tomb in the churchyard - or at any rate, the longest epitaph, as there were some rather smart angels too . . .

Nest Pryse-Rice was born in 1896 and died in 1921.  Her mother Margaret was President of Carmarthen-shire Red Cross and Nest nursed at the Auxiliary Hospital in Llandovery and then the Nannau Hospital for Officers at Dolgellau throughout the years of the First World War.  She was only 25 when she died.

Her mother's gravestone.

Quite a novel burial memorial in the form of a bird-bath (?!) set rather like a Neolithic burial chamber.  One of the Pryse-Rice family.  Then, below, even more practical, a sundial  memorial . . .

The family lived at Llywn-y-Brain and the "Rice" part of their name shows a connection between the Pryses of that estate an the Rice family of Dinefwr.

At one stage (late Victorian times) there was a fashion to have coffin-shaped slabs over the actual grave.  I remember seeing similar ones in a Llanstephan churchyard.

But the ones that pull at your heart strings are the tiny children's coffin-shaped stones . . .

And this poor little chap, only 10 months old . . .

St Dingat's Church, Llandovery.