All Categories

A touch of the nouveau at the Great Northern

19/4/2025

The Great Northern Railway Tavern is the best of Hornsey's boozers. And it has some stunning glass - in the Art Nouveau style that is also on disp;ay at its nearby cousin. the Queen's in Crouch End.

As you can see, it;s glorious and mischievous. The pub was built at the very close of the nineteenth century, and it is now listed.

If you ever need an excuse to pip in for a pint - and during the hours of sunlight of course when the glass can be seen to best effect - here it is!

The pub is large and well situated, and has an excellent range of beers. It's altogether a gem. The Great Northern's own website has a gallery which shows the best of the building and its late Victorian /Edwardian design,

0 Comments

Sir Ian unveils fantastic new Sidney Street mural

12/4/2025

2 Comments

Down to Sidney Street in the East End today for the unveiling of a new heritage mural by the one and only ...

... yes. Sir Ian McKellen, who lives just a mile or so away in another corner of the East End, Limehouse

The mural is at 61a, just south of Sidney Square. The artist is Frank Creber, you can see him here alongside Jane Austin, one of the key local people in getting the money and buy-in necessary for this ambitious project. And yes, Frank did include himself in the mural!

The event was blessed by sunny weather and was really well supported

And some nice touches ... East End anarchist Rudolf Rocker, once the mainstay of the anarchist club on nearby Jubilee Street, appears in the mural.

And there's also a depiction of the 1911 mega shoot-out, the siege of Sidney Street, which happened just a couple of hundred yards away and brought to the East End the top-hatted Winston Churchill, then the home secretary,

And here's the whole mural to inspect at leisure - it's worth the effort.

2 Comments

Kashmir, ancient and extremely ancient

31/3/2025

0 Comments

MARTAND SUN TEMPLE

As well as its mosques and shrines, Kashmir is home to some incredible ancient monuments. The Hindu sun temple at Martand, which dates back to the eighth century, is spectacular.

The temple was dedicated to Surya, the solar deity. It is immense, and while a scheduled national monument there's no perimeter fence and so no restriction on anyone wandering around at any time of day or night.

It's on a plateau a few miles out of the city of Anantnag. Our driver was used to ferrying tourists round the Kashmir Valley but he hadn't heard of Martand and took us instead to the town of Mattan, which happily is nearby.

Its sculptures are, inevitably, very weathered but they still have charm and grace.

AVANTIPORA

Avantipora is a ninth century ruined Hindu temple, not far from the Jhelum river and a little to the south of Srinagar.

It doesn't have quite the scale and majesty of Martand, but some of the reliefs and sculptures are better preserved as you can see -

This doesn't seem to get a lot of visitors but it's easier to get to and more on the regular tourist trail than Martand.

BURZAHOM

Burzahom, to the north-west of Srinagar, was new to me. It's largely Neolitihic and was settled between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE. Pots and primitive art work have been found here and pit dwellings excavated. The megaliths are the most visible aspect of the site, which attracts pitifully few visitors.

As you can see, it's on a flat piece of land looking out on the hills looming in the middle distance.

0 Comments

Srinagar's Sheikh Bagh cemetery

26/3/2025

4 Comments

This month for the first time, I was able to have a brief stroll around the Christian cemetery at Sheikh Bagh in the heart of Srinagar. For a century until the early 1950s, Kashmir had a small but significant European community. And this is where many of them are buried.

There is a new perimeter fence around the graveyard, but as we walked past I noticed that the gate was ajar. I popped in and took a few photos before the caretaker asked me, very reasonably and courteously, what I was doing.

The older part of the cemetery, further away from the gate, has mostly European graves. The part closer to the gate seems mainly to be for the burial of Indian Christians.

The burial ground is close to the Christian-foundation Mallinson and Tyndale Biscoe schools, but there's no church nearby and I don't think there ever has been. So I am not sure how this very central spot alongside the Bund, the walkway along the bank of the Jhelum river, became a graveyard.

Much of the damage caused by the terrible floods of 2014 had been made good - thanks to renovation work supported by the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. The graveyard is a little bare, but well tended and secure.

I didn't have time to look round the graves with the attention they merit. But as I was leaving, I got a jolt. I came across the grave of someone I knew, Father Jim Borst, a missionary priest who spent most of his adult life in Kashmir.

The photograph of him below is taken from the site of his religious order, the Mill Hill Missionaries.

And this is where he is now, in Sheikh Bagh. He was a good and brave man.

4 Comments

The Sufi shrines and elegant mosques of Srinagar

25/3/2025

0 Comments

Jamia Masjid

This is the Jamia Masjid in the old city of Srinagar, the biggest mosque in Kashmir and perhaps the most elegant. It dates back to the late fourteenth century and is said to have space for 33,333 worshippers.

The architectural style is Persian-influenced, though the outstanding feature is the hundreds of deodar trunk pillars, which gives the building something of the feel of the Mezquita in Cordoba.

Khanqah-i-Mualla

Also in the old city is the beautifully ornate Khanqah-i-Mualla, the shrine of Shah Hamadan. Saiyid Ali Hamadani, a renowned Sufi scholar, visited Kashmir for the first time in 1372. There has been a shrine on this spot since those times, though the current building dates from the eighteenth century.

It is built in what has come to be the traditional Kashmiri pagoda-like mosque style. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter but can peer in reverently from the doors. You can get a sense of the stunning ornamentation.

Hazratbal

At Hazratbal on the outskirts of Srinagar is a much more modern shrine - construction started in 1968. Its milk white cupola stands on the shore of Dal Lake.

This houses a much revered relic, the Moi-e-Muqqadas, a hair of the Prophet, and is regarded by many as Kashmir's most holy place of worship. When the relic went missing in 1963, it led to acute political unrest. It was recovered after eight days.

And in 1993, Indian security forces surrounded armed Kashmiri militants who had entered the shrine and the Hazratbal siege persisted, amid great tension, for two weeks.

0 Comments

The almond blossom is out in Kashmir

23/3/2025

0 Comments

The almond trees were just coming into blossom when we were in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital, earlier in the month. It was still cold and wet, but Badam Vaer, the almond garden, was enchanting.

Our visit was enlivened by a couple of raucous yellow billed blue magpies - not rare, but a delight all the same.

And on a tree a short distance away, a group of cheel, kites, were roosting.

In the other direction - a stunning view of the Hari Parbat hilltop fort, which dates back to the late sixteenth century, though most of what survives today is early nineteenth century.

0 Comments

Back in Baramulla

21/3/2025

0 Comments

Last week, I was able to revisit a place that's very important to me: St Joseph's convent and mission hospital in the Kashmiri town of Baramulla.

The convent now has ten nuns. They run the adjoining hospital and pharmacy, and more particularly the nursing school which currently has about 150 women students, almost all Kashmiris, undertaking a three-year course.

The church has been spectacularly refurbished since I was last here seven years ago. It looks wonderful. It gets a congregation of between thirty and forty worshippers on Sundays.

This was where, almost thirty years ago, I stumbled on the story of a massacre perpetrated here in October 1947 by an invading force from Pakistan. The first-hand accounts I gathered of that attack and incursion formed the basis of my book, A Mission in Kashmir, which in turn secured me a PhD by published work.,

The graves of five of those killed in that rampage lie in the orchard at the back of the convent. They are well kept and now have a metal canopy.

In the Baby Ward of the hospital (not currently in use) there's a plaque in the floor to mark the spot where Sister Teresalina, a young Spanish nun, was shot on 27 October 1947. It's her portrait that's on the wall.

Sister Teresalina is buried in the plot reserved for women religious in the grounds of the convent. Next to her lies Sister Emilia, an Italian nun I met on my first visit here (and on two subseuqent visits) who shared her memories of surviving that attack on the hospital and seeing her friend killed.

For the first time, I also visited the old part of town on the other side of the Jhelum, crossing the bridge which links the two halves of Baramulla.

I stopped at the gurudwara which serves the local Sikh community - an impressive building with a long history.

When the invaders approached down the Jhelum Valley Road in late 1947, the cupola of the gurudwara on the other side of the river was the first building in Baramulla they saw. According to some accounts, the raiders believed that they had reached Amritsar!

We turned up unannounced at both St Joseph's and the gurudwara and we are very grateful to those who made us so welcome.

0 Comments

St Mary's, Gulmarg: the highest Anglican church

20/3/2025

1 Comment

This is, I believe, the highest altitude Anglican church anywhere in the world. St Mary's in Gulmarg, a skiing resort in the Kashmir Valley, stands at a little over 8,500 feet. That makes it a country spire higher than the church in Ethiopia which Wikipedia alleges is the highest Anglican place of worship anywhere.

So as you will understand, when we say St Mary's is high church. we're not judging it to be particularly ritualistic. Just up there, high in the clouds, and the snow, and all the rest.

St Mary's was built in 1902, mainly to serve the Brits who came here during the winter for sport of all sorts: hunting, skiing, a bit of how you fancy. It was semi-derelict for a few decades but has in recent years been brought back to life.

There's no board identifying the church, no notice of services and the main door was firmly locked. But the caretaker, who was busily clearing the compacted snow from around the church, very kindly let us in through a side door.

He explained that St Mary's only holds services in the summer. There's no local congregation. Those attending consist entirely of tourists. It's part of the Church of North India, and so of the worldwide Anglican communion.

Inside the church is charming but bare. There are no plaques or memorials, just some lovely stained glass, which has been adapted in a somewhat sinister manner..

Someone seems to have taken exception to the likenesses of the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel.

But I hope it's not sacrilege to have taken a photo of myself at St Mary's - who knows whether I'll ever get back there.

The church doesn't have vehicle access. It's a 200 yard trek from the road that loops round Shepherds' Meadow.

While we were there, the snow started to come down heavily. When we got back to the road, it was almost a white-out - you couldn't see the church at all.

While trying to find out more about St Mary's, I came across this pen-and-ink drawing of Gulmarg showing the church. It was done in around 1909 by Andrea Lucey who was, as far as I can make out, a teenager at the time.

It was for sale, and not for very much. So of course, I've bought it!

1 Comment

Snow (lots!), zebra skin and silver service in Gulmarg

18/3/2025

0 Comments

This was the view last week from the restaurant at Nedou's hotel in Gulmarg, a ski resort in Kashmir 9,000 feet above sea level. It's a colour photo and, yes, that's compacted snow reaching half way up the windows.

Snow was falling incessantly and at times there was close to a white-out, which must have made life tricky for the snowboarders, sledgers and skiiers, and all the other tourists from warmer parts of India who crowd to Gulmarg sometimes to experience snow for the first time in their lives.

Nedou's Hotel in Gulmarg dates back to 1888. It still has a touch of that old colonial=era character - a bar (not clear whether it's ever open) called the Hunters' Bar, sepia photographs on the wall, and a row of splendid silver plate teapots all engraved with the hotel name.

There was hardly anyone around when we popped in, so that gave me the opportunuity to take a peep.

The hotel was established by Michael Nedou, a Slovak from Dubrovnik (then Ragusa) who travelled to India in the 1860s. Once here, he married a British woman, Jesse. He opened Nedou's hotel in Lahore in the 1870s, followed by the Gulmarg hotel - the only one still in business as a Nedou's hotel (and still in the family) - and then Nedou's in Srinagar in 1900.

Nedou's Srinagar hotel was the grandest in Kashmir and it's still standing though there haven't been any paying guests for decades. I blogged about it a decade back. There seems to be renovation work underway so perhaps one day it will spring back to life.

This photo on display in the hotel is of Michael and Jesse's eldest son, Harry Nedou, and his family. He shocked his parents by marrying Mir Jaan, a Gujjar woman from near Gulmarg who had apparently rescued him from a bear. Harry converted to Islam and took the name Sheikh Ahmed Hussein.

Thier daughter, Akbar Jehan, married Sheikh Abdullah, the commanding Kashmiri nationalist political leader of the last century. She herself had a high public profile and was twice elected to the Indian Parliament to represent a Kashmiri constituency.

The hotel dining room - with its mounted horns and zebra skin and huge furnace-style heater - feels as if it hasn't changed in decades. Mollie Kaye wrote Death in Kashmir in the 1950s about spying and skulduggery on Gulmarg's ski slopes and this was very probably the hotel she had in mind when writing the book.

It was so nice to be able to commune with an aspect of Kashmir's past.

0 Comments

Srinagar 360, the view from Pari Mahal

17/3/2025

0 Comments

Here's a 360 degree view of the Kashmir Valley taken from Pari Mahal, the Mughal era palace and gardens overlooking Dal Lake and the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar.

Pari Mahal, the fairy palace, was built in the mid-seventeeth century and is one of the most charming and magical spots in a very attractive city. I hope you enjoy the view.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

A touch of the nouveau at the Great Northern

Sir Ian unveils fantastic new Sidney Street mural

Kashmir, ancient and extremely ancient

MARTAND SUN TEMPLE

AVANTIPORA

BURZAHOM

Srinagar's Sheikh Bagh cemetery

The Sufi shrines and elegant mosques of Srinagar

Jamia Masjid

Khanqah-i-Mualla

Hazratbal

The almond blossom is out in Kashmir

Back in Baramulla

St Mary's, Gulmarg: the highest Anglican church

Snow (lots!), zebra skin and silver service in Gulmarg

Srinagar 360, the view from Pari Mahal

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

Categories

​Andrew Whitehead'sBlog

MARTAND SUN TEMPLE​

AVANTIPORA​

BURZAHOM

Jamia Masjid​

Khanqah-i-Mualla

Hazratbal​

Andrew Whitehead's blog

Archives

Categories

Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

MARTAND SUN TEMPLE

AVANTIPORA

Jamia Masjid

Hazratbal