Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "jd-wetherspoons"
Sandscript
The other day, in Bournemouth town centre, we had breakfast at a Wetherspoons. JD Wetherspoons are a large chain of pubs where you can eat all day and have refillable mugs of coffee. Some are in beautiful buildings with amazing toilets and we have visited them from Canary Wharf up to the top of Scotland. This particular building is a former night club and there is nothing distinctive about the architecture. It is called 'The Mary Shelley' and I wondered what a famous authoress, wife of a famous poet, would have thought had she known she would end up as a pub, mainly as a result of her final burial wishes.
The pub faces the lovely St. Peter's church. Bournemouth celebrated its bicentenary in 2010, the church was consecrated in 1845 and was rebuilt from a little rustic church to boast the towering spire it has today.
Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstoncraft, writer on women's rights, who died soon after her birth, she was brought up by her father William Godwin a writer and liberal thinker. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a friend of her father's; famously at the age of 23, he ran off to France with 16 year old Mary and her step sister, leaving behind a teenage wife. Perhaps these days he would have been accused of 'grooming' and there would have been an all ports call to find a vulnerable teenager. With Lord Byron as a friend, what parent wouldn't be worried about Percy. But he was the love of her life.
Mary is most famous for writing Frankenstein. Her personal life was hard, only one of her children survived and thirty year old Percy was drowned at sea, his body recovered and burnt on a funeral pyre on an Italian beach. Legend has it his friend seized his heart untouched from the flames and it is only these remains that are in the family tomb.
Mary's son Sir Percy Florence Shelley had moved with his wife to Boscombe, near Bournemouth, during her final illness and she requested she be buried there with her parents. This involved the building of a family tomb and the disinterment of her parents' bodies from a Paddington cemetery. Percy Florence and his wife are also buried in the tomb.
Her family are also remembered in street names, but more importantly Percy Florence built a family theatre at his home, Boscombe Manor, which is in the process of being restored.
The pub faces the lovely St. Peter's church. Bournemouth celebrated its bicentenary in 2010, the church was consecrated in 1845 and was rebuilt from a little rustic church to boast the towering spire it has today.
Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstoncraft, writer on women's rights, who died soon after her birth, she was brought up by her father William Godwin a writer and liberal thinker. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a friend of her father's; famously at the age of 23, he ran off to France with 16 year old Mary and her step sister, leaving behind a teenage wife. Perhaps these days he would have been accused of 'grooming' and there would have been an all ports call to find a vulnerable teenager. With Lord Byron as a friend, what parent wouldn't be worried about Percy. But he was the love of her life.
Mary is most famous for writing Frankenstein. Her personal life was hard, only one of her children survived and thirty year old Percy was drowned at sea, his body recovered and burnt on a funeral pyre on an Italian beach. Legend has it his friend seized his heart untouched from the flames and it is only these remains that are in the family tomb.
Mary's son Sir Percy Florence Shelley had moved with his wife to Boscombe, near Bournemouth, during her final illness and she requested she be buried there with her parents. This involved the building of a family tomb and the disinterment of her parents' bodies from a Paddington cemetery. Percy Florence and his wife are also buried in the tomb.
Her family are also remembered in street names, but more importantly Percy Florence built a family theatre at his home, Boscombe Manor, which is in the process of being restored.
Sandscript
I like to write first drafts with pen and paper; at home, in busy cafes, in the garden, at our beach hut... even sitting in a sea front car park waiting for the rain to stop I get my note book out. We
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