We have a local market town called Ashby de la Zouch and we took Ruthie to see it. Its name is a bit French because it was once owned by a Norman Frenchman back in eleven hundred and something which was a long long time ago. They built a castle there and there's some bits of it left but we thought Ruthie might prefer to go shopping and have an English afternoon tea, so we did that instead.
There are lots of old buildings and the main street looks all old and rambly and there are historic old pubs and stuff. You can see the Bull's Head in this picture. It was built in Elizabethan times and you can just see the timber stuff on the front of it.
At the end of the shopping street there's a really tall pointy monument to an old lady of the manor. She was Countess of Loudoun and so it's called the Loudoun monument and it was built by a man called Gilbert Scott who also built St Pancras Station in London.
The building in the background is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes. It was designed by F.A. Walters and built in 1908-15 at the expense of the 15th Duke of Norfolk. We didn't go round it, but it's very impressive isn't it?
After we went shopping we went and had a cream tea with scones and jam and stuff. It's typical English so we had to let Ruthie try one.
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