An old seat!

The weather in Worcester turned very wet this morning (as forecast) so we chose to while away a few hours indoors. We started at "The Commandery", a beautiful black-and-white building with an 800-year history It's had many functions over the years, but the most famous is as the Royalist HQ during the deciding battle of the English Civil War - the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The displays tell the history of the War in some detail.
 
"So what is this rather weird blip?", you may ask! Well, it's on display in the Commandery: it's an old seat formed from part of the root of the Royal Oak at Boscobel in Shropshire. The story goes that as Charles II fled following his defeat at the Battle of Worcester, he hid in this oak tree as Parliamentarian soldiers passed underneath its branches looking for him. (He ultimately escaped to France.) The inscription on the brass plate on top of the seat states that it was presented to Mr W H Osborn of Birds Cottage, Perry Bridge, Handsworth, by his friend Thomas Dickenson Esq, Mayor of Walsall, Staffordshire, in 1832.
 
After the spending time in the Commandery, we visited Greyfriars House, another old timbered building with an interesting history, now owned by the National Trust. Following that we looked round the beautiful Worcester Cathedral (see the extra).
 
Our whistle-stop tour of the UK continued in the late afternoon as we drove back to Macclesfield. I dropped off my Editor there so that she can check up on her Mum again tomorrow ("will she still have her new hearing aid from last week?" - we ask ourselves!). I then drove a little further to Haydock where I'm staying the night to attend an ophthalmic meeting near here being held at Haydock racecourse conference suite tomorrow. (In spite of having been retired for 5 years I still have some tenuous connections with the ophthalmic world and like to keep in touch from time to time: you never know, it might help to keep my brain ticking over for a little longer!)
 
So quite a busy, but fun, day.