Dursley Market house

Today was the day I finally caught the bus to Dursley! I've been trying to catch it for weeks, but it leaves at 1.30 pm, and I rarely get out of work in time.

Only when I got there, having been through the town of Stonehouse and round the industrial area of the Dairy Crest plant, through several villages, did I realise what I wanted from Dursley in blip terms. I thought I was looking for 'edgy' in street view, but in fact it was to complete the happy family of Market houses! I now have the market houses of Ledbury, Tetbury, Minchinhampton and Dursley in my blips or blipfolio, all gathered together since the beginning of April. Of course there are many other market houses, but this is a good beginning. Wool towns, (which traded in wool rather than being made of it), often had such handsome market houses, and the ones I've seen have been made of stone, mostly, though the Ledbury one, which is over the border in Herefordshire, is half- timbered.

For a fuller account, there's a good description of Dursley market house here. Unfortunately the wind had got up and the streets of Dursley were all but deserted. I went into three charity shops, including one dedicated to books, which had two full size sofas in it, just for comfortable browsing! The health food shop had closed down (so have most of the local industries) but Durcan's, the hardware shop, was still going, as well as a couple of upmarket shops selling Emma Bridgewater ceramics and other 'stuff' for the home.

The bank, which I had to go into for some admin, appeared to be run by a man called Tom, whom everyone seemed to know. When the female teller told me I could use Direct Banking to manage direct debits, she added:

'Tom can show you, if you need help'.

I left feeling that Tom must be like the main character from the film the Truman show; he walks along the street, and everyone smiles and waves, and says "Good morning, Tom" and he doesn't realise that he is the star of a television show, living on a gigantic film set. I love the idea of the genial Tom being able to fix most things, but sadly the word 'fix" has unpleasant undertones since the Jimmy Saville scandal.

I didn't take too many pictures, and this one was with the camera's dramatic filter on. The sky would have been white, otherwise. At the last minute I added the cross processing filter in the blipfoto app for the iPad. In a minute, I'll add some links to other market house blips and my blipfolio collection.

Market houses in blipfolio

Ledbury market house
Minchinhampton market house ( more exterior and interior shots in blipfolio)
Tetbury market house in blipfolio