A Visit to Shipston-on-Stour - a Beautiful Market Town in South Warwickshire

Emily wanted to visit a market town on her day off this week. She initially suggested Leek in Staffordshire which is miles away and involves a journey along the dreaded M6 North through Birmingham and the Black Country - a stretch of motorway that always seems to be congested and I avoid it like the plague! I managed to persuade her that a trip to Shipston-on-Stour in South Warwickshire would be a lot less hassle and with a quicker journey time she'd have more time to look round the shops - argument won!!

This pretty little market town is in a lovely location situated on the banks of the River Stour. It was originally a Saxon Settlement located near a ford which was used as a sheepwash. In the eighth century the name had evolved to Scepwaeis (Old English for The Ton at the Ford called Sheepwash). In the Domesday book the settlement was mentioned as "having two hides that pay gold".

During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the town prospered due to its weaving industries. Once on the old Stagecoach route that ran from Birmingham to Oxford there are many old coaching inns and hotels.

Emily saw a Towncrier as we drove past the market square looking for a car park. Sadly, he had disappeared by the time we'd parked and walked.

Emily was in her element with around 50 small independent shops.

I bought some nice homemade chocolate biscuit crunch from this shop.

London House was just stuffed full of antique type items - everything from jewellery to baskets, china to paintings, books to walking sticks, toys to clothes - you name it they sold it.

At the back of the shop was an area selling "garden" goods and this was just stuffed full of items too.

A reminder that its not long to Hallowe'en!

This butcher seemed to sell everything - note the signboard on the far right detailing Exotic Meats!!!!! I thought at first it was a joke but to be honest am not 100% certain!!

An ammonite in building stone

Cranefly

An excellent message on this clock.

If I hadn't had Emily with me I would have been sorely tempted to go inside this shop and tell NFU exactly where to stuff its "mutual" and give them a lecture on the ongoing unscientific, inhumane badger slaughter. Some of the sights and sounds witnessed by peaceful patrols in the killing fields are just horrendous and so sad and unnecessary. By the way if you are against the badger massacres there is a link at the top of the page to a new petition (Brian May's can no longer be signed) calling for an immediate halt to the "cull".

A Bear and Staff on signs are very common in this part of Warwickshire.

The Council House

The Church of St Edmund - parts of which date back to the 11th century and the Tower is 15th century.

I managed to persuade Emily to have an exceedingly quick look round

I bought a guide book to the Church which was enclosed in an elastic band and when I got home and had time to have a look I found another rather charming book called "Local Recipes Through the Seasons - Shipston Specialities" which was a nice surprise.

We had lunch (well, a toasted sandwich and chips) at this early 17th century coaching inn

Some of the delightful house signs in the town.

Shipston-on-Stour is a transition town - a community led response to concerns about climate change and depletion of fossil fuels. The town holds harvest fairs, encourages the use of local shops (there are no national chains or supermarkets here), tree planting and the creation of outdoor play areas.




Now to finish off (just for CT!!) a photo of knitting work in progress. This is the Tom Baker Doctor Who style scarf I am currently knitting - note the autumal leaf type colours in the hope that I will blend in when I go birdwatching!!! Sadly, its taken me a year to get this far!!!

Fossils - Part 1: Ammonites

I've been fascinated with fossils and the history of life on Earth for probably as long as I have been interested in natural history. Although my son went through the usual stage of being engrossed in dinosaurs and collecting fossils, its only in the last ten years or so that I have started to build up my own collection.

I find it absolutely amazing to be able to handle the remains of an organism that is millions of years old and its even more astounding when you find your own fossil and realise that you are the first person to have set eyes on the organism since it died all that time ago. Its estimated that between several hundred million and a few thousand million species have existed on Earth during the past 540 million years and of this number only a few hundred thousand species have been discovered as fossils. By comparison the number of species living today could range from between 5 million to 10 million species. The vast majority of species that have existed are now extinct.

Here's a selection of some of the ammonites from my collection




Ammonites which belong to the Phylum Mollusca and Class Cephalopoda were confined to the Mesozoic Era which included the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods (248 to 65 million years ago).

They were entirely marine and most were pelagic (living above the sea floor) and the majority were nektonic (active swimmers). It is thought many species were predatory feeding on plankton whilst others could have been scavengers. Ammonites ranged in size from 20 millimetres in diameter to well over 2 metres.

The ribs (and in some species spines and knobs) on the shell which can be seen on the photos below may have helped to strengthen it, provide protection against predators and may also have been used in sexual display.

The shell which was made of aragonite was a coiled tube which was divided into many chambers, the animal living in the outer open end of the shell. Chambers in the shell which had formed earlier would have been filled with gas and water acting as a buoyancy aid.

Ammonites were widely distributed throughout the oceans and evolved very quickly with each species having a fairly short life span and are therefore often used as zone or guide fossils to date Jurassic and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks.










Ammonites became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago during the same mass extiction event that killed off the dinosaurs. Representatives of Cephalopods which survive today include squids, cuttlefish and octopuses. The nautilus is probably the nearest living relative to ammonites.

The following are photos of polished cross sections and in the first photo the frilled patterns are sutures which reveal where each individual chamber wall joined the inside wall of the coiled shell.








Sixteenth century natural history books mentioned similarities between the ammonite's coiled shell and snakes or serpents and ammonite fossils were once believed to be the petrified remains of snakes and were called "snakestones".Snakes heads were often carved on ammonites by fossil collectors at this time.