📍Loci: Carlisle Cats www.digest.andymarsh...

Hello new friends (courtesy of the ever magnanimous @themerl.bsky.social) We are the Merchant Adventurers' Hall - a medieval guild hall in York. What we lack in serious museum content we make up for in big roof energy. 👇

2nd poem in my Poet of the Month feature. Prompted by Norman Rockwell's 1965 painting 'Murder In Mississippi' about the killing of 3 civil rights workers. Will be in my new collection 'Exposure: war, media, democracy' @leightonandrews.bsky.social @dedalusdenaries.bsky.social

St Cuthbert’s Church, Crayke, North #Yorkshire “St Cuthbert” window (2020) #HelenWhittaker The detail shows the Tale of the Affectionate Sea Otters who were reputed to have warmed & dried Cuthbert's feet after a night of him meditating & praying whilst standing in the sea. #StainedGlassSunday

A shared heritage- Wondering if Amgueddfa Lechi #tools made #slates for the roofs of #Dublin #Ireland #Wales #slates #UNESCO #geology #landscape #envhist #architecture #landscape @amgueddfacymru.bsky.social @nmireland.bsky.social Book a tour to see Welsh tools here: museum.wales/slate/whatso...

Like fireworks caught in Medusa's gaze. The remarkably fluid late C15th vaulting at Oxford's Christ Church cathedral. Some say it might have been built earlier.

thelonelycrowd.org/2026/01/03/p... The first of 3 poems this month from my imminent collection 'Exposure: war, media, democracy' Article on writing them soon. @poetrysociety.org.uk @eatthestorms.com @newwelshreview.bsky.social

Enjoying these older articles. Tom Denny: “ a window is not an event—it can be enjoyed over a lifetime, initiating a long and slow, unfolding revelation of its meaning. A painting or a photograph refracts light, but windows, through their translucency, conjure up connections with the world outside.”

One of my favourite poems by @angelagraham.bsky.social is about this very carving and its setting within the majestic cathedral of Autun. Originally published by Grey Hen Press & also included in Angela’s delightful collection ‘STAR poems for the Christmas Season’ www.greyhenpress.com/poem-2-2020/

Whether in conversation or in the words on a page, my thought-provoking friend has a new collection of poetry out next month. ‘EXPOSURE: war, media, democracy’. Wishing her well-deserved success.

Whites Castle, Athy, Kildare, Ireland Whites Castle was built in 1417 to protect the bridge over the river Barrow #IrishArchaeology #Archaeology #Infrared #B&W #Black&White #Monochrome #PhotographersOfBluesky #Photography #Art #BlueSky #EastCoastKin #ClassicMono #Kildare

I love a Goldfinch on a cold and frosty morning. #birds #goldfinch #frosty #freezing #photography

‘…parents from the Troubles generation and children from the ceasefire generation are caught in a “dance of protective intentions”…silence from parents over the trauma experienced but leaves children with a “lack [of] clarity and understanding of what has happened to the parents…” How true…

St Melangell’s shrine, patron saint of hares. Lovely!

More on the significance of our UKRI QUADRAT DTP funded excavations at Brusselstown Ring, Co. Wicklow (Ire.) @jodarchaeology.bsky.social @lindaboutoille.bsky.social @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social @irishstudiesqub.bsky.social @quadratdtp.bsky.social @ukri.org @antiquity.ac.uk bbc.com/news/article...

Artifical wetland creation on farm. Iris field now floods in winter, main drain blocked in 5 places. In fen two ponds dug out. Wetland creation on farms is the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to improve biodiversity...

🥁✨🎉 **My Top Image of the Year · #1 of 10** The jaw-dropping early C16th angel roof at St. Wendreda's in March, Cambridgeshire. Sir John Betjeman said it was “worth cycling forty miles into a headwind to see.” 🤔 He was right.

Slime moulds look disgusting a lot of the time but are fascinating! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🥁 **Top Ten Images of the Year · #3 of 10** How lovely is this church? Another from my *Pocketable Churches* series — All Saints', Billesley, Warwickshire. Once at the heart of a medieval village, now standing solitary in a copse.

“Response isn’t always more frames or more paragraphs. Often it is soaking up the place until thinking is inflected by it… quiet walking, sitting, listening.” Explore Part 22: www.rkphotographic.com/blog/2025/12... #Ardnamurchan #SlowPhotography #CreativeResponse

**Top Ten Images of the Year · #5 of 10** ✨ One of my favourite windows — a lovely 15th-century depiction of a wren hunting a spider in the Zouche Chapel at York Minster.

**Top Ten Images of the Year · #8 of 10** Owl lovers unite! 🦉 Completely struck by this lovely depiction of an owl in the choir stalls at Wakefield Cathedral.

After Sam’s audit for 2025 here is mine, assessing what I got right and wrong over the year and noting how certain themes developed over the year. open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...?

It’s #winter. The buzzing has stopped - mostly. So what’s happened to all the #bees? Let me explain. Please #repost this thread. Don’t just like/look. It literally takes you a second. Costs you nothing. Bees are in trouble and need you good people to help. Thank you. #share #nature #education 1/14

Always an honour and blessing to write for @caughtbytheriver.bsky.social Happy reading 😊

#uist #tractor rally #ChristmasEve

"Oileán Glas, Fásach Bán" TG4 film (part 1) about the wildlife and landscape of the Burren, Co. Clare on the west coast of Ireland. Some exquisite photography. Download TG4 Player to watch & CC for English subtitles tg4.ie/en/player/pl...

‘It just stood up into this huge mountain’: Conor Maguire surfs his biggest wave yet at Mullaghmore www.irishtimes.com/sport/2025/1...

Am overwhelmed by the huge response to this story. Lots of readers and shares - and new subscribers, too! THANK YOU. I work hard to find unusual stories like this, to help expand our understanding of climate change and engineering. Subscribers help make this possible!

It's beginning to look a lot like Natolic* at Govan Old, home of the Govan Stones and the Govan Sarcophagus🎄 *Christmas, Brittonic style 📷 @hornesupremacy.bsky.social

Crisp frosty mornings reveal the magical Devil's Matchstick lichen at Killaun bog ❤️ @peatlandecr.bsky.social @tocharstories.bsky.social @claireissimo.bsky.social @irishwildlifetrust.bsky.social @communitywetlands.bsky.social

Sharing some of my favourite buildings as 🌲 Christmas tree baubles. Here's another favourite - the Romanesque door at Kilpeck.

An 'extraordinary' wind at Tarbat, Easter Ross, broke an 'obelisk' #OTD in 1674, according to local Sir George MacKenzie. Research by Sally Foster suggests this was the Hilton of Cadboll Pictish cross-slab, whose break left its lower section buried. 📸National Museums Scotland #medievalsky

Send us your Winter Solstice photos and we'll show the best ones on our front page. This one capturing the moment at Stoney Littleton long barrow is by the Strollers Tale zine, more on our page. 1/

The longest night is almost over. Newgrange Winter Solstice live stream stats in five minutes here: www.youtube.com/live/lRgumO6...

“the day’s walk sets the aperture for the camera and widens the aperture of the heart.”

At Nantclwyd y Dre in Ruthin – one of Wales’s oldest timber-framed town houses – RMB Conservation have been installing (as well as hemp plastering and traditional lime-haired plastering) a new limecrete floor. More info here 👉 rmbconservation.co.uk/news-posts/a... #buildingconservatioin #heritage

The full video of my interview with Colin Davidson & Mark Carruthers: “Art was the only thing I could do that was remotely cool... I'd a very pronounced stammer...I was incredibly shy. I didn’t want to speak...& suddenly the cool kids thought I was cool".

Subscriber only unfortunately. Fintan O’Toole is always a must read. 1839 opium lords=tech bros of 2025. Opium=algorithms. China then=the EU now. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Celebrate the Winter Solstice at the National Museum of Ireland! ✨ Discover the alignment of passage tombs like Newgrange and explore Bronze Age artifacts-lunulae and sun discs-linked to solar symbols. 📍 National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street 📅 Friday, 19th December ⏰ 13:30 youtu.be/q4S1ClJCYyg

Our Paris correspondent @sophiepedder.bsky.social alerted me to this viral French Christmas supermarket ad and now I’m choked up. youtu.be/iLERt5ZkpQ4

A delightful read!

This is cool. The three norths (True, Grid, Magnetic) met in Dorset in November 2022, worked their way northwards in tandem, and are now about to leave England and go hand in hand into the North Sea. www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/news/three-n...

Sean mooney on how his late father John and uncle Richard found Ireland's oldest wheel technology while cutting turf by sleán in the late 1960s in Roscommon @tocharstories.bsky.social

✨When the world feels loud and unsettled, I return to places that have endured. Chesham Woods, ancient trees, and the parallel intelligence of networks older than nations. 🌲New Genius Loci Digest, new ways of navigating: www.digest.andymarshall.co/andy-marshal...

The algorithms are making it a lot harder to spread the word about these online talks. Although numbers are still reasonable, it would be a great help if folk were able to give the 30 December event a quick share 🙂 Booking available here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buildings-...

Welcome to my new podcast “Meadow Matters”. The first episode is all about Yellow Rattle. rss.com/podcasts/mea...