Fiennes

CELIA FIENNES (1662 - 1741)

The travels of Celia Fiennes are a delight to read, as much for her wayward spelling as for her racy and vivid descriptions of 17th century England. To journey round the country side-saddle was in itself something of a feat, and her book is deservedly a classic. She considered that Newcastle 'most resembles London of any place in England...' She remarks that 'there is another pyasoe (piazza) with brickwork pillars at the Holy Jesus Hospital.' Next door, in the Barber surgeons Hall (the Barber Surgeons were incorporated in Newcastle in 1442), she admired the pretty garden and also the anatomised bodies:

One, the bones were fastened with wires the other had the flesh boyled off and some of the ligeaments remained and dryed with it..; over this was another roome in which the skin of a man that was taken off after he was dead and dressed and so was stuff'd the body and limbs, it look'd and felt like a sort of parchment.

She then coolly comments on the fine view to be had from this room. Like Defoe (q.v.) some years later, she admired the Newcastle Quayside, and thought the shops good and the markets cheap. She describes in her inimitable style, 'little things look black on the outside and soft sower things'. What she means by these curious items of local cuisine, we may only conjecture.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
CELIA FIENNES (1662 - 1741) The travels of Celia Fiennes are a delight to read, as much for her wayward spelling as for her racy and vivid descriptions of 17th century England. To journey round the country side-saddle was in itself something of a feat, and her book is deservedly a classic. She considered that Newcastle 'most resembles London of any place in England...' She remarks that 'there is another pyasoe (piazza) with brickwork pillars at the Holy Jesus Hospital.' Next door, in the Barber surgeons Hall (the Barber Surgeons were incorporated in Newcastle in 1442), she admired the pretty garden and also the anatomised bodies: One, the bones were fastened with wires the other had the flesh boyled off and some of the ligeaments remained and dryed with it..; over this was another roome in which the skin of a man that was taken off after he was dead and dressed and so was stuff'd the body and limbs, it look'd and felt like a sort of parchment. She then coolly comments on the fine view to be had from this room. Like Defoe (q.v.) some years later, she admired the Newcastle Quayside, and thought the shops good and the markets cheap. She describes in her inimitable style, 'little things look black on the outside and soft sower things'. What she means by these curious items of local cuisine, we may only conjecture.
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