Good works and deeds

Today I find myself at the opposite end of Britain, in Bristol. I am here at the University to examine a postgraduate thesis dealing with the varying personalties of red foxes living in the city.

With a bit of time on my hands I visited the Red Lodge museum. Entering through a small red door opening onto the pavement, you find yourself a veritable Tardis of a building, a house with origins in reign of Elizabeth the first. However, my photograph refers to a much later period in the house's history.

By the 1850s the lodge had been divided into doctor's flats but in 1854 it was purchased by Lady Byron, the estranged wife of the poet Lord Byron, and it became a reform school for girls, run by Mary Carpenter. The ethos of the school is well expressed in the memorial tablet.