The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell Danny Lawson/PA Wire

UK: “Israeli Militias Intimidated Us During Holy Land Visit” – States Archbishop of York! (26.12.2025)

“It was sobering to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by local Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank.

“But this Christmas morning, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps, most alarming of all, the ones we build around ourselves and construct in our hearts, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers.

“The strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people robbed of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future, means that we are in danger of even failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”

St Nicholas Church and the ‘Holy’ Spike Situation! (9.9.2023)

I think a Saxon Church was built on a Pagan site – and then eventually replaced with a Norman construction which still stands today. After photographing these constructions and enquiring as to their function – a number of experts stated that they look like ‘Homeless Spikes’ (or earlier prototypes) designed to keep people from entering and loitering in certain areas deemed ‘sensitive’ by landlords, business owners and caretakers of State property! These constructs, however, seem to pre-date the ‘modern’ incarnations of ‘Homeless Spikes’ – but almost certainly serve the same function – despite not appearing on any other corner of the outer Church construct!

Down House: A Curious Stone Wall… (9.7.2022)

The middle-classes possessed an idyllic physical space within which their bodies existed – a situation (and set of material conditions) that often generated a corresponding sense of a ‘spacious’ interior (or expansive mind-set) that could, providing the right education and motivation was present, lead to ground-breaking theorising and progressive scientific endeavour!