Posts Tagged ‘whatson’
Following the success of the UK’s first City of Ale event in 2011, Norwich City of Ale returns jubilantly in 2012 with more pubs, more beers, and more events than before. It’s a ten-day celebration of real ale, craft brewing and friendly, welcoming pubs taking place all over the fine city.
More than 40 city pubs will be serving hundreds of beers from 35 local breweries. From the Official Launch Party on 31 May to the Closing Party on 10 June a huge range of events will be taking place giving the City a fantastic festival atmosphere.
These include the popular Brewers’ Market, which returns on Saturday 2 June to Millennium Plain outside the iconic Forum in central Norwich, showcasing a brewers’ dozen or so stalls with a wide variety of ales to try and buy.
This year, along with all the usual (and highly enjoyable) suspects – live bands, pub quizzes, barbecues, Morris dancing and traditional pub games – there are some additional showcase events. A political debate on Friday 1 features three MPs influential in the brewing and licensed trade plus the CEO of the Campaign for Real Ale responding to pressing issues focused around the beer and pub industries. There’s a fund-raising auction on Saturday 9 with oddments and collectable items of breweriana. Throughout the festival there’ll be pub and brewery-oriented heritage walks conducted by Blue Badge Guides; a multimedia extravaganza of Norwich’s pub and brewing heritage airs daily on the big screen at Fusion and the iconic City of Ale Bus (a 1954 Bristol Lodekka) will be plying a number of routes around the more outlying pubs (though, wonderfully, all the pubs are within easy walking distance; Norwich is a city on a human scale with the most complete medieval street plan in Europe).
In these austere times when alcohol is increasingly seen as a social evil, with convivial drinkers being demonised by the press, and the beer escalator duty hitting them where it hurts most (in the wallet), this is an occasion to celebrate all that is truly good, wholesome and enjoyable about our national tipple; salubrious, honest, natural, unpretentious real ale. Surely we can all drink to that!
Norwich City of Ale 31st May – 10th June 2012. View the schedule of events and the pubs and breweries that are taking part.
The first ever Victorian Nights Festival to take place in North Norfolk in May 2012
From 18 – 20 May 2012, the North Norfolk towns of Cromer, Sheringham and Wells-next-the-Sea will be transported back to the Victorian Britain thanks to a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The first ever Victorian Nights festival will celebrate the lavish Victorian Age, a significant period in North Norfolk’s history, as it heralded the coming of the railways and marked North Norfolk as the popular holiday destination for tourists it remains today.
Participating venues in the three towns will be opening their doors after-hours for a packed programme of FREE events to entertain and amaze. The programme features Victorian fire eaters, escapologists, an old fashioned photo parlour, fairground attractions, circus acts, a steam train ride, cottage craft workshops, film, guided walks and the chance to meet lots of costumed characters. All the events are aimed at families, the local community and visitors to the area. Most events are drop-in, but some must be pre-booked. See the Victorian Nights leaflet for more details or see the full Victorian Nights Events List.
The festival is part of the national Museums at Night campaign, the annual after-hours celebration of arts, history and heritage. The campaign is co-ordinated by Culture 24, a not-for-profit online publisher, working across the arts, heritage, education and tourism sectors.
The initiative is the work of eight cultural organisations across the three towns: Cromer Museum, RNLI Henry Blogg Museum, Cromer Preservation Society, North Norfolk Railway, The Mo Museum, Sheringham Little Theatre, Sheringham Preservation Society and Wells Maltings. The project is being co-ordinated by Laura Crossley, a freelance museums and heritage consultant.
As well as going along to the exciting events, there are lots of opportunities for local people to get involved with Victorian Nights. The festival’s volunteer programme features a range of interesting roles, from marketing, to photography, to driving a minibus! A special volunteer scheme, in co-operation with the Norfolk Library Service, will see 20 local people attend a certificated literacy and blogging training course, before promoting the festival via fortnightly blogs. A dedicated schools programme will also give local children the opportunity to get involved via a competition and education pack which can be used in schools. The organisers would also like to invite local businesses to take part in the fun by opening late during the festival.
To find out more about this exciting new project, or to get involved, please visit: www.victoriannightsnorthnorfolk.com. Victorian Nights can also be found on Facebook (Victorian Nights North Norfolk) and Twitter (@victoriannights).
“Oh George, take me home! Take me to Blickling, not to Hever, for at Hever I should see the rose garden and think of him. But take me to Blickling where we were together when we were very young….and where I never dreamed of being Queen of England.”
So wrote Jean Plaidy in her 1949 novel Murder Most Royal. Plaidy believed that Anne Boleyn was born at Blickling in the Tudor house that was there before the Jacobean mansion that we see today was built.
No one knows for certain where Anne Boleyn was born. Hever Castle in Kent and Blickling both have grounds for claiming her. But as research continues into the Tudor house that still lurks within Blickling Hall it is becoming easier to imagine that Blickling was a grand Tudor home, well-suited to the needs of the wealthy and ambitious Boleyn family.
If ‘The Tudors’ tickled your historical fancy, or if you have an interest in historical literature, then do we have a treat for you. Over the 17th – 20th may 2012, The Boleyn Festival – a four day feast of all things Anne Boleyn, will be held at Blickling Hall near Aylsham.
Historians, novelists, costumiers and musicians will gather in the glorious surroundings of Blickling Hall to remember the Norfolk-born woman whose marriage to Henry VIII caused uproar throughout Christendom. Confirmed speakers include Eric Ives, Alison Weir, Suzannah Dunn, Sarah Gristwood, David Loades, George Bernard, Neil Storey, Susannah Lipscomb and Harriet Castor. Wonderfully, they don’t all see eye to eye when discussing Anne’s religious fervour, her ambition, her intelligence or her fidelity. However, they do all agree that Anne was more likely to have been born at Blickling than anywhere else.
View the Festival Programme.
Aspects of the Festival that we’re most excited about include the public display of the Wycliffite Bible. This hugely important illuminated manuscript, never before shown to the general public, is inscribed “liber Iacobi Boolene manens in Blickling”, or “James Boleyn’s book dwelling in Blickling”. James was Anne’s Uncle and her Chancellor while she was Queen. Anne was known to have displayed an English bible in her rooms so that her ladies-in-waiting could read the gospel in their own language. It is possible that it was this very Bible.
In support of the Boleyn Festival at Blickling, Norfolk County Council Library & Information Service is delighted to announce that the Wycliffite Bible once owned by Anne’s Uncle James Boleyn of Blickling will be available to view in the Norfolk Heritage Centre on these dates and times: Wed 2 May 2-4, Fri 4 May 10-12, Sat 5 May 2-4, Tue 8 May 2-4, Wed 9 May 10-12, Thur 10 May 2-4, Tue 15 May 10-12, Wed 16 May 2-4, Mon 21 May 2-4, Wed 23 May 10-12.
Come along to find out more about this amazing manuscript volume, its history and connection with Anne Boleyn.
There will also be a complementary display of items relating to Anne and the Boleyn family from the Norfolk Heritage Centre’s collection, in the Heritage Centre at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library in The Forum during May.
Another noteworthy event taking place during the Festival is the traditional midnight vigil on Saturday 19th May (the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution). The evening starts with prayers being said for Anne in St Andrew, the church on the Blickling Estate in a service led by Revd Marion Harrison. Costume historian Molly Housego will attend the prayers dressed as Anne Boleyn and afterwards will explain just how Anne would have dressed for a day at court. Later, historian and story-teller Neil Storey will tell spine-chilling tales of other Norfolk ghosts before leading the audience out to see if Anne’s headless ghost makes its way back to her place of birth. Not for the faint hearted…
For further details about The Boleyn Festival visit www.boleynfestival.co.uk.
To buy tickets email blickling@nationaltrust.org.uk or ring 01263 738030 or 0844 8004308. Buy a four-day pass to the Boleyn Festival for £90 – that’s 10% off the full ticket price.
- 18/05/2012 - Victorian Shell Artistry May 18, 2012
- 18/05/2012 - Shipwrecked! Back to 1897 May 18, 2012
- 18/05/2012 - A Walk Through Time: The Victorians May 18, 2012
- 18/05/2012 - Norwich 20 Group – Looking into 20 – paintings and sculpture at The Forum May 18, 2012
- 18/05/2012 - Tony Foster Paintings/Angela Harding Prints May 18, 2012