Well that was all wonderful reading first thing this morning! Thank you. As an Old Costessey girl myself I well remember the Costessey Guild/Gyle; hearing it spoken of more than actual attendance but somehow its presence imbued the whole place and the year through with a kind of ‘otherness’. Costessey was different, and I was oddly proud of living somewhere so strange and wild, set apart from the lives of my suburban classmates from the other side of Norwich as my brother and I stayed at our Thorpe St Andrew school (interestingly called St William’s) when I moved to Costessey at the age of 7. Having Costessey Brownie, Guide and church choir friends and (obviously) wandering around the woods on my own gave me full immersion in the Costessey experience.
Oh and of course here we are on the edge of St Walstan mythos as well - his name was spoken all the time when I was growing up and I remember searching the woods on Longwater Lane during a Guide hike, after someone said that one of Walstan’s magical springs was hidden in a puddle somewhere within its bounds.
Well that was all wonderful reading first thing this morning! Thank you. As an Old Costessey girl myself I well remember the Costessey Guild/Gyle; hearing it spoken of more than actual attendance but somehow its presence imbued the whole place and the year through with a kind of ‘otherness’. Costessey was different, and I was oddly proud of living somewhere so strange and wild, set apart from the lives of my suburban classmates from the other side of Norwich as my brother and I stayed at our Thorpe St Andrew school (interestingly called St William’s) when I moved to Costessey at the age of 7. Having Costessey Brownie, Guide and church choir friends and (obviously) wandering around the woods on my own gave me full immersion in the Costessey experience.
Oh and of course here we are on the edge of St Walstan mythos as well - his name was spoken all the time when I was growing up and I remember searching the woods on Longwater Lane during a Guide hike, after someone said that one of Walstan’s magical springs was hidden in a puddle somewhere within its bounds.