Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I don't know if that's true because I've never visited, but there's certainly a lot of stories about Epping Forest. So I wonder if that was just... Probably just burned into their memory as a place of real joy, but also maybe a liminal place, maybe?
And I bring quite a lot of the woods into our house on quite a regular basis.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Well, that is the end of the stories for today's episode. Some absolutely beautiful ones there. Thank you so much to everybody who shared their story with us today. They are the lifeblood of this show.
it's time for us to return to Whitby for the last time, for now at least, as we conclude our Whitby series by moving away from Bram Stoker's Dracula and exploring some of the other stories to be found in the town's ancient winding streets, which are simply bursting with ghosts, myths and legends.
And for our first stop, we're going to briefly revisit the other book I've referred to a few times in this series, The Whitby Witches by Robin Jarvis, and track down a famous and rather grisly artefact of folklore and legend that I had waited 20 years to see.
From the same car park up on West Cliff where we began our journey last episode, I walked away from the view over Whitby Harbour and East Cliff and headed away from Royal Crescent, down into the streets of West Cliff, along Crescent Avenue, up Gang Lane, crossing the road to St Hilda's Terrace to find a wrought iron gate set into a long stone wall over which the lush greenery of trees and bushes spilled forth.
The gate is painted blue, with gold accents picking out curlicues along the top, and a year, 1935, casts just above the latch. A blue plaque on one of the stone gate pillars reads Panet Park, home of Panet Art Gallery and Whitby Museum.
The park and gallery were the brainchild of Robert Elliot Panett, an alderman of Whitby, who wanted to create a place in the town where residents could enjoy fresh air, trees and flowers, whilst being sheltered from the often vicious sea winds that hold sway along the coast. He certainly succeeded.
The market garden land he purchased in 1902 was turned into a pretty oasis of calm, filled with a diverse array of plants, meandering footpaths and quaint archways. Just perfect for a mindful stroll, safe from the whipping coastal winds.
He also established a gallery within the park to house his art collection and, after Panett's death, a museum building was added to accommodate the collection of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. Ambling along through the grounds, however, it was not the most clement day for a stroll.
An icy drizzle chilled my bones and numbed my hands too much to even stop and take photographs, so I headed directly into the museum through its grand columned entrance at the top of a flight of steps and passed into the foggy warmth of the building, peeling off my sodden cagoule and imagining that I must be steaming, rather, like a hard galloped horse. I was excited for several reasons.
In all my previous trips to Whitby as a child and young adult, I had never managed to make it to this museum until now, and yet it formed such a vivid part of the story in Robin Jarvis's book, The Whitby Witches, that the desire to see it for myself had been bubbling away ferociously ever since. But also, I just love visiting museums, and I had high hopes for this one.
I don't know about you, but in recent years I've found some of the more modern museums a little... underwhelming in their ambience, to say the least. In fact, I visited a local one recently that I would be so bold as to describe as the pinnacle of soulless disappointment. A sterile, white, open space with fluorescent-lit interpretation boards squarely planted evenly along the walls.
One case containing a scant handful of number-labelled artefacts laying lifelessly on a flat grey cloth. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Maybe I'm just idealistic. Maybe I like a bit more artistic chaos. But that isn't my idea of a museum. I want a museum to look like an explosion has occurred in the study of a slightly mad 18th century antiquarian.
And I'm in luck, because that's just about what Panic Park Museum delivers. In The Whitby Witches, the author describes the museum as jam-packed with curios and wonders. It was like some magnificent jumble sale of the imagination. And that description is spot on.
The lighting is soft, the dark wood of the cabinets in the parquet florm lends the whole building a warm, cosy glow, and the crowd of cases jammed tightly into every nook and cranny creates a maze of exhibits that one could happily get lost in for hours. Of course, there are fossils. So many fossils.
A whole corner of the museum is dedicated to fossils and geology, with case after case of Whitby's famous Jurassic ammonites, giant ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, frozen in stone, forever swimming motionlessly across the museum walls. There are cases full of exquisite, intricately carved black jet jewellery, Weird and wonderful implements and instruments whose purpose I would not like to guess.
A madcap selection of souvenirs collected by bygone explorers visiting exotic lands. The walls bristling with long hunting spears, machetes, sabres and bugles. To my delight, one cabinet containing an antique chest of drawers stuffed with small objects is simply labelled Cabinet of Miscellaneous Curiosities.
A model ship sits atop the chest, and on its edge purchase a frilly bonneted porcelain doll. I tried hard not to catch its creepily vacant stare as I passed by it, half expecting it to blink and swivel its head to look at me through those glazed blue eyes.
Showing 421–440 of 737 · page 22 of 37
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