Heyjude

I for Iron Bridge

frizztext hosts a weekly A – Z Challenge

Event Type: General Blogging

Start Date: Tuesdays, recurring weekly

Description: Every Tuesday I offer the “A to Z challenge”, walking step by step through the alphabet.

If you would like to join in then please click here.

Following on from my bridge last week is another iron bridge, this time from Shropshire and much closer to home. This Iron Bridge is in the Severn Gorge and has a town named after it. It was the first arch bridge in the world to be built from cast-iron and it opened on New Year’s Day 1781, the result of work by the architect Thomas Pritchard (whose work can be seen in many Shropshire towns including Ludlow) and Abraham Darby III.

It is one of the great symbols of the Industrial Revolution and visited by many. Directly across from the bridge is the Tontine Hotel.

The word Tontine is a noun “an annuity scheme by which several subscribers invest in a common fund out of which they receive an annuity that increases as subscribers die until the last survivor takes all!”.

The idea of building a hotel here started as soon as people realised the attraction of the Iron Bridge. Those involved in the venture included Abraham Darby III, Samuel Darby, William & Richard Reynolds, John Wilkinson, Joseph Rathbone and others who were involved in the construction of the bridge.

The hotel opened in 1784. Inside are Victorian fireplaces with the traditional tiles of the area, photographs showing the area in different stages, with coracle men and their coracles, people standing on the river under the bridge when it froze on the 5th February 1917, collections of old local bottles etc.

source: Ironbridge Tourist Information and Visitor Centre.

View from the bridge – Wharfside

Cast-iron railings

The Old Coracle Shed

If you ever find yourself in Shropshire, then try to make some time to visit this once heavily industrialised, now pleasantly picturesque, town, not just for the Iron Bridge, but also its many other attractions.

The Tin Shed Experience

Ed is a truck driving photographer from Tennessee who hosts a photography challenge blog called Sunday Stills here on WordPress.

This week Ed would like to see any BARNS or SHEDS pics. in black and white.

The Tin Shed Experience – is a quirky 1940s museum in Laugharne (pronounced Larn) Carmarthenshire, – known for writer Dylan Thomas who lived and is buried there although he died in New York. This year is the centenary of his birth so if you happen to be in the town then I suggest you pop along and visit this quirky not for profit museum housed in an old zinc sheeted garage.

(click an image to enlarge)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Abandoned

The weekly photo challenge from WordPress asks us to find something to illustrate Abandoned. Cheri says “You can go literal, as I have, and share a photo of ruins, a desolate place, or your idea of a wasteland. Or you can interpret it in other ways, from images of overlooked things to forgotten people.”

An arty effect – click to enlarge the image for clarity.

If you would like to see what others have come up with for this challenge then go to the Daily Post @ WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

Travel Theme: Ancient

Ailsa of “Where’s My Backpack?” wants us to show her our most decrepit, worn and torn, antediluvian shots this week. If you would like to join in with her challenge then please do. Everyone is welcome.

One of England’s oldest sites is the Avebury Stone Circle in Wiltshire. Believed to have been started around 3000 BC it was probably used as a religious and ceremonial centre, but no-one knows by whom. The nice thing about Avebury is that you are allowed to wander freely on the site and get close up to the standing stones.

The main circle covers approximately 28 acres with two smaller circles inside. The henge is also split by the village of Avebury and a road. There is an avenue of stones leading away from the circle towards Overton Hill a mile and a half away, and it has been speculated by some archaeologists that the avenue was constructed to form the body of a snake, with the circle as the snake’s head.

A steep bank and ditch surrounds the circle, together they form a 60 foot barrier.

Just a few miles away is the strange conical mound of Silbury Hill, across the road from West Kennet Long Barrow. In the other direction is Windmill Hill causeway camp, the finest hilltop camp in England.

A Word a Week Challenge: Frame

Every week Sue from ‘A Word in Your Ear’ dips into her English Oxford dictionary and picks a word on the page that it falls open at. The challenge is to post a photograph, poem, story – whatever the genre you like best to describe what that word means to you.

This week’s challenge is FRAME (click to join in with the challenge)

There are lots of ways to frame a photograph including using branches of trees or shrubs as above when I took this photo of the Helshoogte Pass between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek.

Or you can use a doorway or archway to frame a particularly nice view like this one at the Carbiere Winery in Franschhoek.

Using a tree and part of a wall on the right to frame this lovely whitewashed Drostdy Museum building in Swellandam, I included another tree and smaller sign to use as the left-hand frame.

Another way of framing a photograph is to get some of the foreground into the picture as I did here at Boulders Beach, using the boulders at the right-hand side to create a curved frame around the blue water.

You could, of course, use software to create a different frame around one of your photos – as I did here with a close-up of a cheese shop display to create the old Polaroid effect.

And finally whilst staying in South Africa, I managed to frame one of my obsessions (beach huts) using the round window in the promenade wall.

if you would like to see more of my images of South Africa and read about my travels there then please visit these posts: