Rob Ralley

@robralley.bsky.social

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Historian of science and medicine. Editor for The Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier (1596-1634), now writing about Napier, slowly. And taking photos. Views my own.

An external wall of Carlisle Cathedral in red sandstone between two buttresses, with a three-light window at the top, then a similar pattern in the stone below but with no holes for glass, and below that a pair of arches, the left one wider than the right, again simply in the wall with no openings; the left archway has a former arch-topped opening underneath it that has been walled up. There is bright sun casting shadows on the wall.
Wide angle picture of a golden field not yet harvested, with faint tracks through it towards trees in the distance. It is a summer's evening and the sky is blue with a few grey clouds stretched across near the horizon.
View from below of the sweeping curve where a ramp for cyclists and pedestrians turns to meet a bridge over the river Ouse. There is brightly coloured graffiti on the concrete supports. It is on a rough grassy bank with a rough winter sky of very pale blue and thin clouds.
The corner of a water mill and the water that drives it, with an elaborate-looking arrangement of bits of railing and a quarter-circle of spikes presumably designed to stop anything or anyone falling into the mechanism. They are reflected in the water. The water is edged with brick and there is a fence and a field beyond.
Two boys in white T-shirts walking away along a street on a summer's evening. Beside them, in near darkness, is a wall and a tree, and beyond that, Ely Cathedral, and the figures, a vertical band of the wall and the cathedral's Octagon are all caught in golden sunlight shining from the left.
An elderly couple dressed for a warm day have just arrived on a flat shingle beach and are looking out across it, with a long narrow bar of sand running across the picture just a few metres into the sea, and a headland visible in the distance. The sky is blue and the sun is nearly overhead.
View from behind a park bench with wildflowers growing behind it, with a view across a bank of seaside grass to the sea, which is only barely visible above the top of the bank. It is a clear blue summer's day.
A tall building of green-blue glass on the left, and ahead, two wings of another glass building partly concealed behind a grey panel, and some scaffolding. A blue crane is in the background reaching right. There is a rather heavy cloud overhead with blue sky visible round the edges.
A view along a pedestrianised street in Ely on a sunny Saturday in midsummer, with someone central in the picture walking away down the street and modern-looking red brick shops on either side, giving way to older whitewashed shops further off.
View along a straight path through deciduous woodland in spring, with a tree on the right in front of what's effectively a hedge, and thick dark foliage on the left. It is sunny and the trees are casting shadows across the path.
Half of a gable wall of an L-shaped house, with the other wing (and a dormer window) jutting out to the right and overlooking it, and a six-foot wooden garden fence topped with trellis running off from the corner. There is a black drainpipe by the corner of the house, in the middle of the picture. In the foreground is part of a low grassy hill. The sky is pale blue with light cloud.
The top of a tree silhouetted and the sky above, with great drifts of clouds lit a pinky orange from below by the setting sun. A bright aeroplane tail runs diagonally up and behind a cloud, and there are birds silhouettes flying overhead.
The back of a sign whose front welcomes people to Ely, with a planter of pink and red flowers below it. Above it is a national speed limit sign facing towards the camera. They are under the spread of a tall hedge, and a road runs past to a roundabout whose centre is just visible in the background. The light is declining and is slightly bluish.
A view downhill across the roofs of a jumble of houses (with two white gable ends gleaming in the winter sun) out to sea on a clear day with an empty blue sky.
A view past the corner of an old brick house with a sign on it reading 'POTTERS LANE', up the lower end of Back Hill in Ely, with telegraph poles, a streetlamp and a distant tree silhouetted against an evening blue sky, and the front of a house caught in pale gold light with a long diagonal shadow across it.
A traffic cone, crumpled and torn, on some grass, with brick walls meeting at a corner behind it. There is shrubbery behind the walls.
Two anda half arches of a blind arcade in a cathedral, dark and with the stonework darkened too; in front is a black and white tiled floor. A shaft of light is running diagonally across the floor and up the base of a column on the right.
A picture on a gloomy, cloudy day of a local garage, a small brown-brick flat-roofed building with a worn red panel across its top and a sign explaining that the company has moved. In the foreground, on tarmac, are faded red and white barriers and a couple of cones peeking out from behind them, and the back end of a bright yellow JCB. In the background is a modern house with one upstairs window visible overlooking the garage.
A view across a calm grey-blue sea with thick grey-blue clouds above it and landscape visible at the horizon; there is a break in the clouds near the top left and gentle sunlight is falling across the water by the shore.
The lower ends of a series of pale stone columns, viewed from between two near the camera, with the circular bases showing.
A fragment of ruined church (kirk) wall with two window openings in it, and a few graves in long grass in front. There are buildings in the background. Overhead is heavy grey cloud.
A view across a dark riverside field with bits of fence and gate in the foreground, towards Ely Cathedral raised on the Isle of Ely itself, rising up above the tops of the trees. It is sunset and there is a rather tobacco-coloured glow in the sky fading to blue near the top of the picture, with drifts of light and dark cloud across it.
A pedestrianised street with a disused cafe on the corner, on the ground floor of an old white commercial building. On the right, away from its front, a group of people sit in the sun at a different cafe's table.
Four windows (with grids across them) over two storeys in a large expanse of brick wall, with the two on the right partly in the shade of a part of the building out of the picture. In front are two benches and the corner of a railing.
The boarded-up, graffiti'd wreck of a beautiful old red-brick house with a tall chimney, sunlight on its red roof tiles, its front deep in shadow with an overgrown hedge leaning into the front of the picture from either side.
Manuscript image of the quoted item (NOTE5972 in the online edition).
A small white pebbledash hut with boarded-up doors and windows and a short railing in front, in a flat landscape with a glimpse of sea and low hills in the background, and heavy grey cloud overhead.
A small pitched-roof building with its gable end to the street, with two wide round arches in a pebbledash front, each a faded and grubby turquoise, one with wide double doors and the other with a window, but all the glass painted over. Above is a triangle of black stripes on peeling white resembling a half-timbered roof structure. It is a wet winter's day and a yellow warning cone is slightly submerged in a deep puddle where it has been left to warn about a pothole. There are bare wintry trees behind.
A loose group of four brown and white cows, one in the foreground sitting down, others behind it standing and eating grass. A path runs across the picture behind them. A willow tree is drooping overhead, and in the far distance, beyond more trees, is a chimney and some small spires of collegiate stonework.
A small and slightly grotty-looking underpass surrounded by grass, brambles and with trees in the background. A small blue car is driving over the top. It is a bright day with clouds against a pale blue sky.
A white-rendered house facing right with a bushy climber growing across its front, and a small brick outbuilding beside it with a pitched roof, on a wide village road with clouds above and a telegraph pole right of centre, cables running to it from four directions.
The very narrow door to a former garage, in faded black paint and with a blocked-up window in it. It is in a tired looking brown-brick wall and is between the end of a steel vehicle access door on the left and a peeling red wooden sign in the top right. Two substantial red cones have been placed on the tarmac in the way of entering through the door.
A straight-on view of the front of a red brick house with a pale grey-blue door, white-framed, and a white-framed window beside it. In front of the house is a border of lavender in flower, and in front of that a largely dead hedge clipped low with a tree growing out of it that runs straight up and obscures the upper storey of the house with its branches.
A substantial tree growing up out of a hedge on the edge of a field, the sunlight catching the texture of the bark, ivy growing up it, and one branch leaning over into view to frame the pale blue sky. Beyond is a grass field and more hedge and trees in the distance.
A view from a slight angle along a street of old commercial buildings in cream-painted brick, with mottled tiles on the roof and aerials sticking out. The shop windows, whose contents are hidden behind blinds and net curtains, are colour-matched to the front doors and upstairs window surrounds of each shop: sky blue, red, and worn black. The sky is a rich blue with hazy clouds.
A view of a pale stone cathedral (with its west tower on the left and the Octagon just past its centre) rising above a town only visible as a line of trees, and overlooking a river with boats and a railway bridge, the foreground a span of fenland grasses. The sky is pale blue with a cream haze of cloud, and the light is creating sharp shadows on the cathedral.
A field of marshy grass and water, very small and low in the frame, surrounded by spring trees not yet fully into leaf. Most of the picture is taken up by the sky, pale blue with fluffy white clouds in it and one towering dark grey raincloud reaching from the right to directly overhead.
A view on a cloudy day threatening rain, through a rather jagged opening in a castle's wall (with more ivy-clad wall visible curving in on the left), down a hill clothed in ferns and trees and out across level countryside of fields bordered with hedgerows and trees.
A view of the colourful old three-storey houses that line the seafront at Aldeburgh, seen at an oblique angle from across the shingle beach. Someone is sitting on the beach. The sky is a pale grey of thick but unthreatening cloud.
A small, roughly conical island in a calm blue sea under a calm blue sky against a faint background of the mainland, with a rocky shore in the foreground tapering to an apostrophe that points towards the island.
A medieval church viewed from the churchyard beyond its west tower, with a tumble of graves in long grass near the camera and trees leaning into shot on both sides.
View across and along a river towards a cluster of yellow-brick blocks of flats with pitched slate roofs and balconies overlooking the river. There is a bridge in the distance and wintry trees. It is foggy.
Sea view on a sunny day from the other side of a bank of grasses and an expanse of wet sand. A few people are paddling on the edge of the sea and on the horizon is a line of wind turbines.
The intersection between the side wall of a church in golden stone with a two-light window in it, and the rendered wall of its porch with a narrow rectangular window in it. There are two lichen-covered gravestones standing amid grass dotted with daisies. There is sunlight on the wall.
A rather battered-looking old bench of wooden slats on iron supports, on a street corner, under a signpost for 'Cathedral', 'Car Park' and 'Toilets' and a car park sign.
The corner of a yellow-brick house and the upper storey of a more distant red-brick house with dormer windows, and an arc of rainbow between them against a dark grey sky.
A view through out-of-focus yellow and red verbascum flowers to mauve scabious and white Mexican fleabane against a dark background.
An oblique view on a sunny winter's day of a red-brick facade of an old (converted) industrial building with white-framed windows, external staircases, and wooden lucarnes jutting out at intervals from the top of the building, painted white with varying degrees of weathering. (These are small oblong pitched-roof enclosures that jut out perpendicular to the wall and presumably once had hoists inside for raising and lowering things.) The branches of a tree intrude into the picture from the top left.
A wooden (or possibly faux wooden) walkway with wire mesh over it for grip in wet weather, threading its way through long marsh grass and young trees, with bigger trees in the distance.
A side view of a sweet stall run out of a trailer in a city centre. Beside its corner is a large model of an ice cream in a cone, and beyond that, about to be served, is a woman whose hair is tied up above her head so that the shape echoes that of the ice cream.
Another entry for Mrs Easter Trollop.
A Casebooks entry whose subject is a Mrs Easter Trollop.
A view directly upwards from below the Octagon in Ely Cathedral, showing the octagonal shape and the pattern of beams within the lantern forming a star shape in red, green and gold, with God at the centre. There are stained glass windows around the outside and light is shining through them across the lantern onto painted panels immediately below the windows.
A gold-coloured stone church wall with part of a dark stained-glass window in the top left, a pink rose with a couple of clusters of blooms below, and in the bottom right a small coffin-shaped gravestone bearing the text: 'MARY TAYLOR BORN OCT: 11: 1709. DIED NOV: 17 1812'.
A small wooden boat painted white and with IH88 painted on it in black, sitting on a shingle beach with a white-painted red brick lifeboat station and another small white wooden boat behind it. Further back are more buildings, most seafront houses. The sky is pale blue with light grey clouds, and a gull is flying past. It is winter and there are long winter shadows falling to the right of the boats and buildings.
The top of a roof and a chimney of a white rendered house, with a spiky television aerial attached to it, lit by evening light from the left and against the background of a clear blue sky.
The corner of a wire fence that defines two sides of a grass field (along the back of the field runs a hedgerow much of which has grown into trees). The wire fence corners at a substantial round post that appears to have been the trunk of a young tree and has its bark still intact. The light is catching it and it looks green.
A stretch of green fenland field sandwiched between the grey-blues of a river in the foreground and heavy cloud in the background, with faint vertical bands indicating rain some way off.
An expanse of sea under a sky of wispy cloud with waves breaking near the camera.
An expanse of calm sea with the faint outline of land in the distance and light fluffy clouds in the sky, all a uniform very pale blue. In the sea is a small boat with an outboard motor and two people sitting in it and a trail behind, all silhouetted.