Manor Lodge, Sheffield. And food.

Once upon a time there was a castle in Sheffield. It was comprehensively razed after the English Civil War, so much so that not a trace of it remains. They found bits of it in the 1920s but for all practical purposes it remains only in the name of the area where once it was. And the Castle Market is about to be demolished so there will be almost nothing to suggest that once there stood a castle on that site.

Possibly its most famous resident was Mary Queen of Scots

Anyway. There is also a part of Sheffield called The Manor. I surmised that once there had stood a manor house in that corner of the city but further assumed that when the Parliamentarians demolished the castle they had probably also demolished the manor house. But no. The manor house fell into disrepair rather than being destroyed (although I think that some of the owners might have helped the process along a bit!)  And there are still ruins on the site, plus a complete turret house where Mary Queen of Scots lived in the summer months so she could take her annual exercise.  There is a large park, once a deer park, and they have built a heritage centre. There's also a farm attached to the park.

On Saturday they were having an open day so Tabitha, Gareth, Cally, The Builder and I went along to have a look.  I had absolutely no idea that so close to the city centre there was this large park. I had no idea that there were such beautiful ruins in Sheffield at all. And I had had no idea that the turret house was there. (And I must admit that I wasn't expecting Bess of Hardwick to greet us as we walked into the Turret House - but the lady who did greet us assured us that she was indeed the famous (and long dead!) Bess - and who am I to argue?!?!?

Manor Lodge, Sheffield.
Click on the photo to see the album

We wandered down to look at what was happening at the farm, with the intention of buying lunch at the farm shop/cafe. But the queue was so long that we gave that up as a bad idea and went for a wander around the farm area instead. The local pub doesn't do food. So we hopped back in the car and came into the city centre - which is only a couple of miles away. We ended up in the Rutland Arms, which does do food. Proper, home cooked, basic pub food. Nothing fancy. But what they do do is really rather nice. I haven't had a proper chip butty in years. The Rutland Arms does chip butties with cheese and bacon and spicy tomato sauce. It was delicious!!!!!

Cally had been having a lovely day. She was full of smiles and gurgles and happiness. Until, that is, the food arrived at the pub table.  And none of it was immediately given to her!!!  I think she thought that chips were being withheld and raised a strong protest against this appalling treatment. In fact, the chips were too hot for her and we were waiting for them to cool down. Gaz had to runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn into the loos and run a couple of chips under the cold water tap so she could have her chips immediately :-D

Barb and her brother Greg were in Nottingham over the weekend at a book convention. They came on a bus to visit us for lunch on Sunday. The bus broke! They had to come a devious way round :-S But they did arrive and we had a lovely catch up and even rather a nice lunch. You can read all about the lunch on the Food Blog (there's a tab at the top of the page that will take you to the food blog). It was a good afternoon.

The sun has come out today and it's pleasantly warm. A little burst of late summer - although we can feel winter approaching. It's dark now when I get up and the mornings are chilly.

Oh - I meant to say. I was putting a new doona cover on the bed on Saturday morning when a movement outside caught my eye. I looked out the window and there on the hedge which separates Steve and Debbie's garden from the one on the other side was a large bird of prey, about the size of a buzzard, eating a collared dove. It probably was a buzzard, although you don't see many around our place. But it had a yellowy, creamy stripe over each eye which went round the back of its head and almost joined up at the back. I didn't think buzzards had stripes over their eyes.  Anyway, it sat there for ages, peacefully eating its lunch, watched by The Builder and me, until Debbie went out to hang up her washing and it flew away. The pigeons sitting in the tree it flew into scarpered extremely quickly, I can tell you!!!!