Evidence that Fran is part of Warwick's history even if this doesn't get mentioned in books about Warwickshire

In my previous post, I wrote about wide-legged trousers and I’m pleased to report that they had their first outing last Saturday afternoon. When I’m standing still, they look like a long, voluminous skirt. When I move, they flap around my legs, creating a slight breeze, and if I move quickly, such as when I run for the bus, they create a weather system of their own which gets reported in the Shetlands by bewildered meteorologists.

Fortunately, on Saturday afternoon, I was mainly standing still, helping my friend Sheila (S C Skillman) at her book launch. I’m the one in the denim jacket, in case you’ve never seen an image of me. As you can see, I’m wearing my wide-legged trousers and Sheila is wearing what looks like just one leg of my wide-legged trousers.

I’m holding a copy of Sheila’s book which is called ‘A-Z of Warwick’. I was asking her questions as part of the launch which happened in Pageant House in Warwick, a beautiful Georgian building which is home to the registry office where weddings are held and home to the Warwick Visitor Centre for tourists where Sheila held the launch. It’s also now home to the memory of a woman who brought in enough material with her to curtain Pageant House.

You can see cards and information on shelves and racks around us and the only reason none of it is flying around the room is because I’m not moving.

Sheila and I both live in Warwick - it’s my birth town - so I was pleased to help launch her book. It’s subtitled ‘Places, People, History’ and I have so many personal connections with the things about which Sheila writes. Her book is packed with great colour photos and she’s let me share some here.

This (below) is Priory Park where I went when I was bunking off school although Sheila’s failed to mention this in her chapter on the park.

She does mention other fascinating facts, though, such as that a mansion built in the grounds of what is now Priory Park was sold to some Americans who shipped several thousand tons of the demolished house to Richmond, Virginia, in the 1920s. Had I been alive then, I could have provided them with a pair of wide-legged trousers with which to bag up the rubble.

This is part of Hill Close Gardens.

As Sheila outlines in one of her uber-researched descriptions, Hill Close Gardens is a collection of restored detached Victorian gardens, each one maintained by a volunteer. One of those volunteers is my husband (although Sheila doesn’t mention this) and you may remember I wrote recently about having to learn new gardening terms such as ‘bean plant’ and ‘raspberry bush’ to help him on his allotment because he had broken his collarbone. His allotment is, in fact, one of the gardens at Hill Close. Fortunately for him, for me, and for the bean plants and raspberry bushes, he has recovered sufficiently to begin gardening again.

And this is the East Gate of the town of Warwick, very near the castle. Sheila explains how this is now a holiday home owned by English Heritage. She doesn’t tell you this in the book but it costs nine million pounds a week to stay there.

Neither does she mention that when I first moved back to Warwick after many years in South West London, this was my office. The 11th century East Gate was used by the Victorian-built school adjacent to it: King’s High School for Girls. I taught English there and the English department office was in East Gate itself. I sat at a desk, looking out of that arched window under the clock, marking books and wondering whether my feet, blocks of ice in a poorly-heated medieval tower, would ever recognise themselves as feet again.

If only, back then, I had had a pair of wide-legged trousers to wrap around my cold legs nineteen times and keep me warm.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trouser update and the information about Sheila’s book. She has written other Warwickshire books too (‘Paranormal Warwickshire’ and ‘Illustrated Tales of Warwickshire’) and is making a reputation for herself as quite the expert on the county and I’m happy to say that even though she doesn’t mention me in any of the books.