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While the F-16A had proven a success, its lack of long-range missile and true all-weather capability hampered it, especially in projected combat against the Warsaw Pact over Central Europe. General Dynamics began work on the upgraded F-16C/D version, with the first Block 25 F-16C flying in June 1984 and entering USAF service that September.
Externally, the only ways to tell apart the F-16C from the F-16A is the slightly enlarged base of the tail and a UHF radio antenna at the base of the tail. The intake is also slightly larger, though later marks of the F-16A also have this feature. Internally, however, the F-16C is a significantly different aircraft. The earlier APG-66 radar was replaced by the APG-68 multimode radar used by the F/A-18, which gave the F-16C the same capability to switch between ground-attack and dogfight mode and vastly improved all-weather capability. Cockpit layout was also changed in response to pilots’ requests, with a larger Heads-Up Display and movement of the radar display to eye level rather than between the pilot’s legs on the F-16A. The F-16C would also have the capability to carry the AIM-120 AMRAAM, though it would not be until 1992 that the missile entered service. Other small upgrades were made throughout the design, including the engine.
The Block 25 initial production was superseded by the Block 30 F-16C in 1987, which gave it better navigation systems, and the capability to carry the either the General Electric F110 or the Pratt and Whitney F100 turbofan. The Block 40/42 “Night Falcon” followed in 1988, equipped with LANTIRN night attack pods, followed by the Block 50/52, which was a dedicated Wild Weasel variant. In USAF service, the latter are semi-officially known as F-16CG and F-16CJ variants.
The F-16C had replaced the F-16A in nearly all overseas USAF units by the First Gulf War in 1991, and as a result, the aircraft was among the first deployed to the theater in August 1990. During the war, the F-16C was used mainly in ground attack and strike sorties, due to delays in the AIM-120, but it performed superbly in this role. USAF F-16s finally scored kills in the F-16C, beginning in 1992, when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down over the southern no-fly zone; the victory was also the first with the AMRAAM. Four Serbian G-4 Super Galebs were shot down over Bosnia in 1994. F-16Cs had replaced the F-16A entirely in regular and Reserve USAF service by 1997, and further service was seen over Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya by 2012. Subsequent upgrades to USAF F-16Cs with GPS allow them to carry advanced precision weapons such as JSOW and JDAM.
Whatever the variant, the F-16 is today the most prolific combat aircraft in existence, with 28 nations operating the type (17 of which operate F-16Cs). Over 4450 have been built, with more in production; the F-16C is also license-produced by Turkey and South Korea. It also forms the basis for the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter for Japan, though the F-2 is significantly different, with a longer nose and larger wing. Though the USAF projects that the F-16C will be replaced by the F-35 beginning in 2020, it will likely remain in service for a very long time.
This picture shows off the entire Thunderbirds team, all six aircraft in the delta formation in a team pass in front of the crowd. This picture was taken at the Wings Over the Falls airshow in Great Falls, MT in July 2017.
Beautiful fallow deer photographed in Petworth Park during the rutting season.
The fallow deer (Dama dama) is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. This common species is native to western Eurasia, but has been introduced widely elsewhere. It often includes the rarer Persian fallow deer as a subspecies (D. d. mesopotamica), while others treat it as an entirely different species (D. mesopotamica).
Petworth House and Park in Petworth, West Sussex, England, has been a family home for over 800 years. The estate was a royal gift from the widow of Henry I to her brother Jocelin de Louvain, who soon after married into the renowned Percy family. As the Percy stronghold was in the north, Petworth was originally only intended for occasional use.
Petworth, formerly known as Leconfield, is a major country estate on the outskirts of Petworth, itself a town created to serve the house. Described by English Heritage as "the most important residence in the County of Sussex", there was a manorial house here from 1309, but the present buildings were built for the Dukes of Somerset from the late 17th century, the park being landscaped by "Capability" Brown. The house contains a fine collection of paintings and sculptures.
The house itself is grade I listed (List Entry Number 1225989) and the park as a historic park (1000162). Several individual features in the park are also listed.
It was in the late 1500s that Petworth became a permanent home to the Percys after Elizabeth I grew suspicious of their allegiance to Mary, Queen of Scots and confined the family to the south.
The 2nd Earl of Egremont commissioned Capability Brown to design and landscape the deer park. The park, one of Brownâs first commissions as an independent designer, consists of 700 acres of grassland and trees. It is inhabited by the largest herd of fallow deer in England. There is also a 12-hectare (30-acre) woodland garden, known as the Pleasure Ground.
Brown removed the formal garden and fishponds of the 1690âs and relocated 64,000 tons of soil, creating a serpentine lake. He bordered the lake with poplars, birches and willows to make the ânaturalâ view pleasing. A 1987 hurricane devastated the park, and 35,000 trees were planted to replace the losses. Gracing the 30 acres of gardens and pleasure grounds around the home are seasonal shrubs and bulbs that include lilies, primroses, and azaleas. A Doric temple and Ionic rotunda add interest in the grounds.
Petworth House is a late 17th-century mansion, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s by Anthony Salvin. The site was previously occupied by a fortified manor house founded by Henry de Percy, the 13th-century chapel and undercroft of which still survive.
Today's building houses an important collection of paintings and sculptures, including 19 oil paintings by J. M. W. Turner (some owned by the family, some by Tate Britain), who was a regular visitor to Petworth, paintings by Van Dyck, carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Ben Harms, classical and neoclassical sculptures (including ones by John Flaxman and John Edward Carew), and wall and ceiling paintings by Louis Laguerre. There is also a terrestrial globe by Emery Molyneux, believed to be the only one in the world in its original 1592 state.
For the past 250 years the house and the estate have been in the hands of the Wyndham family â currently Lord Egremont. He and his family live in the south wing, allowing much of the remainder to be open to the public.
The house and deer park were handed over to the nation in 1947 and are now managed by the National Trust under the name "Petworth House & Park". The Leconfield Estates continue to own much of Petworth and the surrounding area. As an insight into the lives of past estate workers the Petworth Cottage Museum has been established in High Street, Petworth, furnished as it would have been in about 1910.
This has been a turning point in the history of the Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast (HQ MNC NE). With the successful completion of the exercise „Brilliant Capability 2016”, the Corps – Custodian of Regional Security – has become operationally capable to assume command of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, also referred to as the “spearhead force”. I strongly believe that our team effort will provide tremendous value to NATO. – said Lieutenant General Manfred Hofmann, the Corps Commander, on the occasion of the Distinguished Visitors Day, which took place in Szczecin, 2nd June.
Croome Court is a mid-18th-century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire, England. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for the 6th Earl of Coventry, and were Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the mansion's rooms were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust which operates it as a tourist attraction. The National Trust owns the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
taken from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croome_Court
DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013
Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.
**From the DPAC website **
On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.
This Government has repeatedly used the language of division, trying to divide workers and claimants, public and private sectors workers, non-disabled and disabled people. Today we strike back as one, united voice.
The Cuts imposed by the ConDem Government under the cloak of ‘Austerity’ impact on disabled people in every area of life. The scrapping of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will tens of thousands of disabled workers, and will force many of them out of their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people both receive and deliver public services as workers in Public Service Departments, Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector. ILF and DLA play critical roles in maintaining people in these jobs. The 1% uplift limit on Benefits, Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax will impact on many disabled people both in and out of work.
The removal of many of our basic rights affect not just disabled people, but all of us. For example, the removal of Legal Aid for medical negligence claims comes at the same time as every single contract within the Health Service is open to tender by private companies. This has serious and significant implications for each and every one of us who make up the 99%.
But not everyone is being hit by austerity. While multi-nationals like Atos and Capita make fortunes, tax avoidance and evasion to the tune of tens of billions goes uncollected. The wealthiest 1000 UK residents increased their wealth by some 35 billion last year while disabled people and the poorest members of society were pushed into poverty and despair as the targets of brutal cuts.
Disabled activists have led the fightback against this Government since the beginning, and today disabled activists and workers lead the way again in the first joint, co-ordinated direct action by campaigners and unions on the streets of the U.K.
Shabnam O Saughnessy from DPAC said: "We are delighted to be joined on the streets today by our union comrades. This represents the first steps towards uniting resistance from communities and workplaces. It dispels the myth of disabled people as scroungers and workshy. We are not some separate group of others, we are your friends and neighbours, we work alongside you. Many millions of disabled people are being affected by cuts, and today is about getting our voices heard."
Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."
--------------------------------------------------------
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Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.
Gen. David H. Petraeus; commander of NATO and International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan; speaks at the National Defense University in Washington; D.C.; Mar. 18. ISAF; in support of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency; support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces; and facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development; in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population. (Photo by U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Joshua Treadwell) (Released)
McCain Faults NATO for Insufficient Capability on Libya Strikes;
Wants U.S. Back In Air
But Indyk Says Libya is Not a Strategic U.S. Interest as U.S.-Islamic World
Forum Continues
(WASHINGTON, April 13) – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) told the U.S. Islamic
World Forum today the United States should retake leadership of the air campaign
against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, saying “I would love to see our
assets back in the fight.”
“When you’re handing it over to NATO, you’re handing it over to countries with
limited assets,” said McCain.
“The whole world is watching but also the Arab world is watching. If we say the
American policy is that Gaddafi must go, but we don’t implement that policy and
end up in a stalemate, that’s a message I don’t think we want to send.”
Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and vice president and director
of Foreign Policy at Brookings, countered that while he too favored Gaddafi’s
removal, “I don’t believe we have a vital strategic interest in the area.”
“I’m all in favor of building the capability of the Libyan opposition,” Indyk
said. “I don’t know if it’s the U.S. needs to be doing that…This must be done by
the Libyan people.”
The exchange was a highlight of the second day of the U.S.-Islamic World Forum,
which has drawn representatives of 30 Muslim states to Washington, D.C. to meet
on issues critical to U.S.-Muslim relations.
While McCain acknowledged he was “disturbed” about Libya, he stressed he was
also “excited and exhilarated” by pro-democracy developments in North Africa and
the Middle East. “I think the ‘Arab spring’ will spread to China and Russia,”
said McCain. “I’m glad I’m alive to see it.”
In an earlier Forum panel, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
also assigned the highest importance to recent democracy movements in the Middle
East and North Africa.
“What has happened is the biggest game changer that we have seen in a very long
time,” Albright said. “In my lifetime, the big game changers have been World War
II, the end of the Cold War, and this. I think it is on that par in terms of
really changing the attitude.”
During a panel discussion on “bottom-up change” in the region, Albright spoke
alongside Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
(EIPR); Jaloul Ayed, the Tunisian Minister of Finance; and Egyptian human rights
activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who was detained by the Mubarak regime for exposing
government corruption.
All agreed the immediate future is of critical importance and the transition to
democracy would be a “trial and error” process.
“We have problems with transparency and accountability” in Egypt even now, said
Bahgat. “We need process predictability.”
“The process that leads to democracy must be strong and successful,” said
Minister Ayed, “or else we run the risk of moving from one-man dictatorship to
popular dictatorship. We must strengthen our institutions and reestablish the
authority of the state and government.”
Ibrahim said one way to encourage young peoples’ faith in a new Egyptian system
would be to reserve 40 percent of legislative seats for office holders under 40
years of age.
With the eighth annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum convening in Washington rather
than Doha, Qatar for the first time, there are more U.S.-based participants in
what is now seen as the premier international conference on U.S.-Muslim
relations.
An evening discussion on the challenges of democracy in Muslim nations featured
Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, former Afghan foreign minister; Nabil Fahmy, former
Egyptian ambassador to the U.S;. Turkish national security adviser Ibrahim
Kalin, and Iraqi parliament member Jaber Al-Jaberi.
An earlier panel on challenges facing the American Muslim community drew a sober
assessment from Ingrid Mattson, director of the MacDonald Center for the Study
of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.
“I think we’re at a low point,” said Mattson, citing “deliberate, well-funded”
attacks on Muslims and Islam itself that influence many Americans. “I didn’t
think we’d be facing this deep and existential a challenge at this time.”
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD), nationally recognized for reaching out to Muslim
interests after 9/11, was more upbeat. “We were very blessed in our state to
have a growing Muslim community,” he said. “The way it changed us was to say: we
have to look at our Muslim neighbors as assets, leaders, people that we need.”
O’Malley called for “broader, wider, deeper” efforts by U.S. leaders to
strengthen the “civic architecture” for Muslims in the United States.
The U.S.-Islamic World Forum continues through Thursday in Washington, D.C. It
is sponsored jointly by the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the
Brookings Institution and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar.
(The Brookings Institution is a non-profit public policy organization based in
Washington and dedicated in part to securing a more open, safe, prosperous and
cooperative international system. The mission of the Saban Center at Brookings
is to promote better understanding of the policy choices facing U.S. decision
makers in the Middle East.The Brookings Institution is a non-profit public policy organization based in
Washington and dedicated in part to securing a more open, safe, prosperous and
cooperative international system. The mission of the Saban Center at Brookings
is to promote better understanding of the policy choices facing U.S. decision
makers in the Middle East.). Credit "The US-Islamic World
Forum."
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
Broadway Tower is a folly on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second-highest point of the Cotswolds (after Cleeve Hill). Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 65 feet (20 metres) high.
The "Saxon" tower was the brainchild of Capability Brown and designed by James Wyatt in 1794 in the form of a castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1798–99. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered whether a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester — about 22 miles (35 km) away — and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. Indeed, the beacon could be seen clearly.
Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillipps, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s. William Morris was so inspired by Broadway Tower and other ancient buildings that he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877.
Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee, as well as a gift shop and restaurant. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village.
Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.
DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013
Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.
**From the DPAC website **
On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.
This Government has repeatedly used the language of division, trying to divide workers and claimants, public and private sectors workers, non-disabled and disabled people. Today we strike back as one, united voice.
The Cuts imposed by the ConDem Government under the cloak of ‘Austerity’ impact on disabled people in every area of life. The scrapping of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will tens of thousands of disabled workers, and will force many of them out of their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people both receive and deliver public services as workers in Public Service Departments, Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector. ILF and DLA play critical roles in maintaining people in these jobs. The 1% uplift limit on Benefits, Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax will impact on many disabled people both in and out of work.
The removal of many of our basic rights affect not just disabled people, but all of us. For example, the removal of Legal Aid for medical negligence claims comes at the same time as every single contract within the Health Service is open to tender by private companies. This has serious and significant implications for each and every one of us who make up the 99%.
But not everyone is being hit by austerity. While multi-nationals like Atos and Capita make fortunes, tax avoidance and evasion to the tune of tens of billions goes uncollected. The wealthiest 1000 UK residents increased their wealth by some 35 billion last year while disabled people and the poorest members of society were pushed into poverty and despair as the targets of brutal cuts.
Disabled activists have led the fightback against this Government since the beginning, and today disabled activists and workers lead the way again in the first joint, co-ordinated direct action by campaigners and unions on the streets of the U.K.
Shabnam O Saughnessy from DPAC said: "We are delighted to be joined on the streets today by our union comrades. This represents the first steps towards uniting resistance from communities and workplaces. It dispels the myth of disabled people as scroungers and workshy. We are not some separate group of others, we are your friends and neighbours, we work alongside you. Many millions of disabled people are being affected by cuts, and today is about getting our voices heard."
Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."
--------------------------------------------------------
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Sergeant Mark Yacono, a gunner with Battery C, 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment directs the setup of an M777 Howitzer during a live-fire exercise at Fort Stewart on June 15, 2017. The 118th FA and other units of the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team are conducting an eXportable Combat Training Capability rotation in partnership with the 3rd Infantry Division.(Photo by Capt. William Carraway)
President Cyril Ramaphosa is in Parliament to give an update on state the capability for economic recovery and the fight against crime. [GCIS]
From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
Virginia National Guard Soldiers assigned to the Bedford-based Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, 116th Infantry Brigade Combat Team conduct the blank-fire phase of a platoon-level training exercise July 17, 2019, during eXportable Combat Training Capability Rotation 19-4 at Fort Pickett, Virginia. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Lisa M. Sadler)
From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.
The 501st Military Intelligence Brigade demonstrated its capabilities during a Korean-language only capability exercise for 160 intelligence professionals from the Republic of Korea military here Dec. 10.
For the Dragon Brigade, this CAPEX was unique because it was conducted in Hangul with the help of Korean linguists from the brigade’s four battalions: 3rd MI Battalion (Aerial Exploitation), 524th MI Battalion (Counter Intelligence and Human Intelligence), 532th MI Battalion (Operations and All-Source) and the 719th MI Battalion (Signals Intelligence).
The senior representatives at the CAPEX included ROK Air Force Brig. Gen. Park, Kyung-jong, 3rd Brigade Commander, Defense Intelligence Command and ROK Army Brig. Gen. Son, Ki-hwa, the Director of Intelligence Operations for the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff J-2.
Also participating were intelligence professionals from the Korea Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Command, Defense Security Command and the ROK Intelligence School.
The Brigade Liaison Team gave the ROK intelligence professionals a welcome brief that explained the different missions the brigade executes on a daily basis in defense of the Republic of Korea.
Attendees were then broken into three groups and visited the equipment and capabilities static displays at the 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion flight line, the Ground Component Command-Combined Analysis and Control Center and the Field Station Korea.
U.S. Army photos by Sgt. Shawn Cassatt
For more information on U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys and living and working in Korea visit: USAG-Humphreys' official web site or check out our online videos.
U.S. Army National Guard Soldiers wash a UH-72A Lakota helicopter during PATRIOT South 19 at Savannah Air National Guard Base, Ga., Mar. 2, 2019. PATRIOT South 19 is an annual, accredited Joint National Training Capability exercise that provides a simulated natural disaster environment for units to test their response and capabilities to conduct domestic operations. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Wendy Kuhn)
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012
As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.
For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.
Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.
During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.
At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.
All photos © 2012 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application
Media buyers should email me directly or view this story on <a href="http://www.demotix.com/users/pete-riches/profile.
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DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012
As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.
For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.
Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.
During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.
At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.
All photos © 2012 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application
Media buyers should email me directly or view this story on <a href="http://www.demotix.com/users/pete-riches/profile.
Standard NUJ rates apply.
Col. Matthew Tedesco, Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager for Global Ballistic Missile Defense, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command Future Warfare Center, retires from the military June 5, 2019, at the Von Braun III auditorium on Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Tedesco retires with 28 years of service.
[1]
Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.
Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.
Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.
Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.
[2]
Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.
The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.
Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.
Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.
SAC 01 NATO Strategic Airlift Capability Boeing C-17A Globemaster III - cn F-207 take- off @TRD/ENVA 02.03.18
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012
As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.
For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.
Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.
During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.
At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.
All photos © 2012 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application
Media buyers should email me directly or view this story on <a href="http://www.demotix.com/users/pete-riches/profile.
Standard NUJ rates apply.
From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
Incredibly rare shots of an Atlantic puffin were taken by photographer Sam Hobson on the Sony RX10 III, which features an extended 600mm super-telephoto zoom lens and silent shutter capability, to ensure the endangered animal was not disturbed
DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012
As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.
For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.
Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.
During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.
At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.
All photos © 2012 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application
Media buyers should email me directly or view this story on <a href="http://www.demotix.com/users/pete-riches/profile.
Standard NUJ rates apply.
Leominster (pronounced 'Lemster') is an historic market town which dates back to the 7th century.
Berrington Hall
A neo-classical mansion built to a design by Henry Holland, set in superb gardens by Capability Brown.
The exterior is restrained classical design, the interiors are stunningly ornate, with painted ceilings and an exceptionally fine entry staircase.
The House
Built in 1778-81 for Thomas Harley, son of the 3rd Earl of Oxford, Berrington Hall is one of the few masterpieces of the architect Henry Holland to survive intact. The interiors are characteristic of Holland’s refined Louis XVI manner and the house is set amidst a park with an artificial 14-acre lake laid out by the landscape designer ‘Capability Brown’ who was also Holland’s business partner and father-in-law.
Thomas Harley made a fortune supplying the British army with clothing and when he decided he needed a new house to showcase his family's prestige and wealth, he called on landscape gardener Capability Brown. It was Brown who chose the location for Berrington Hall, selecting a site that gave sweeping views to the Black Mountains of Wales. While Brown busied himself with creating the parkland and semi-natural landscapes, for which he was famous, the task of building the house itself fell to Brown's son in law, the architect Henry Holland.
Holland began work in 1778 and the house was completed in 1783. He drew upon the popular neo-classical style to create a house with two very different characters. The exterior is plain, sparingly adorned and formal whilst the interior is a riot of lavish colour and ornate decoration.
The interior decoration is unrestrained, with wonderful painted ceilings, ornate plasterwork, and a high dome shedding light onto a spectacular entry staircase. The elegant Georgian theme is augmented by fine furniture most of it French.
Lord Admiral Lord George Rodney was a family friend and visited Berrington Hall frequently. The dining room is hung with huge paintings by Luny depicting Rodney's famous sea battles.
There is also a fascinating glimpse of life 'below stairs', with the Laundry, Butler's Pantry, and Dairy being the highlights.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/berrington-hall/features/the-man...
The Boudoir
Henry Holland designed this colourful and lavish room specifically for the ladies of the house.
Thomas Harley's wife Anne and their daughters would have considered the Boudoir their own private space to write, sew, gossip and entertain other female friends.
DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013
Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.
**From the DPAC website **
On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.
This Government has repeatedly used the language of division, trying to divide workers and claimants, public and private sectors workers, non-disabled and disabled people. Today we strike back as one, united voice.
The Cuts imposed by the ConDem Government under the cloak of ‘Austerity’ impact on disabled people in every area of life. The scrapping of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will tens of thousands of disabled workers, and will force many of them out of their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people both receive and deliver public services as workers in Public Service Departments, Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector. ILF and DLA play critical roles in maintaining people in these jobs. The 1% uplift limit on Benefits, Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax will impact on many disabled people both in and out of work.
The removal of many of our basic rights affect not just disabled people, but all of us. For example, the removal of Legal Aid for medical negligence claims comes at the same time as every single contract within the Health Service is open to tender by private companies. This has serious and significant implications for each and every one of us who make up the 99%.
But not everyone is being hit by austerity. While multi-nationals like Atos and Capita make fortunes, tax avoidance and evasion to the tune of tens of billions goes uncollected. The wealthiest 1000 UK residents increased their wealth by some 35 billion last year while disabled people and the poorest members of society were pushed into poverty and despair as the targets of brutal cuts.
Disabled activists have led the fightback against this Government since the beginning, and today disabled activists and workers lead the way again in the first joint, co-ordinated direct action by campaigners and unions on the streets of the U.K.
Shabnam O Saughnessy from DPAC said: "We are delighted to be joined on the streets today by our union comrades. This represents the first steps towards uniting resistance from communities and workplaces. It dispels the myth of disabled people as scroungers and workshy. We are not some separate group of others, we are your friends and neighbours, we work alongside you. Many millions of disabled people are being affected by cuts, and today is about getting our voices heard."
Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."
--------------------------------------------------------
All photos © 2013 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or blog my images without my written permission. I remain at all times the copyright owner of this image.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application solely at my discretion
If you want to use any image found in my Flickr Photostream, please Email me directly.
Media buyers and publications can access this story on Demotix
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A late April 2019 visit to Croome in Worcestershire, the estate is now run by the National Trust. Croome Park is quite big, and you can walk around the grounds and see the various landmarks there.
The Walled Garden at Croome Court. This garden is private, and it costs £5 per person to enter. You can get drinks and cakes, here, but you can donate some money when you get them.
There was outdoor sculpture trails around the walled garden to see. It changes every 3 months.
The first garden at Croome was developed in the late 17th century by Ann Somerset, the wife of Thomas Coventry, 2nd Earl of Coventry, along with William Shenstone. A kitchen garden was laid out in the early 18th century, at a time when Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry was making large changes to the house and garden, which subsequently became the walled garden.
The earliest plan for a walled garden dates from about 1750, when George William Coventry, the heir of the 5th Earl at the time, changed the shape of the walls from square to the rhomboid shape that exists today, mentored by Sanderson Miller. This created a garden of over 7 acres (2.8 ha), which may have made it the largest 18th-century walled garden in Europe. The increase in size allowed the garden to encompass a classical greenhouse on the eastern side of the garden. The walls of the garden were under construction at the time, probably replacing hedges. The date that the walls were finished is uncertain, but there is evidence that they must have been completed by 1752.
Unlike the mansion and the park, the walled garden was largely unchanged by Capability Brown, but it did receive new hot houses to house melons, pineapples, peaches, and vines, and in 1766 a stone-curbed circular pool was created, with a sundial designed by Adam.
In about 1806 a 13 feet (4.0 m)-high free-standing east-west hot wall was built, slightly off-centre, serviced by five furnaces. It is historically significant as it is one of the first such structures ever built.
Almost the entire 18th century records of the garden survive; together with the garden they are a nationally important part of garden history, and the history of Worcestershire. The garden and its glass houses were mentioned in Gardening World in 1887.
During the 20th century the garden was abandoned and fell into disrepair. They were purchased by Chris and Karen Cronin, who started restoring them in Summer 2000, including restoring many buildings and the greenhouses. They opened to the public for the first time in August 2014. They are privately operated, not being part of the National Trust.
Flowers seen in the Walled Gardens.
From the sand dunes of Essaouira to the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, the all-new Range Rover demonstrates its full breadth of capability in Morocco.
A visit to the National Trust run Stowe in Buckinghamshire.
Stowe is the creation of many 18th- century landscape designers, architects and craftsmen, and showcases some of Capability Brown's finest work. It's a towering achievement that still influences garden design today.
After early contributions from Sir John Vanbrugh and William Kent, Stowe's first garden designer, Charles Bridgeman, kickstarted the radical transformation away from formality. Lord Cobham funded huge development to create a grand canvas of idealised nature. Grassland, trees, lakes, temples and monuments: all are meticulously constructed to shape perfect views. By the mid-19th century, Richard Temple, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, ultimately aimed to impress Queen Victoria and outdo the neighbouring Claydon estate. This showmanship and rivalry ultimately contributed to bankruptcy.
New Inn and Parlour Rooms at Stowe.
The first place you pass between the car park and Visitor Centre.
Toilets and second hand bookshop are here, plus some rooms in the former pub to have a look around.
The New Inn was built by Lord Cobham in 1717 to accommodate visitors to the garden, which had already become a tourist attraction. Laid out around a central courtyard, it comprised a small brewery, a dairy and farm buildings as well as bedrooms for guests. Lord Perceval was not alone in complaining about the poor quality of the rooms, but it remained in use until the 1850s. The last innkeeper was Charles Bennet. Thereafter, it served as a farm until it was bought in 2005 by the National Trust, which has repaired the derelict fabric of the building and returned it to its original purpose as a place to welcome visitors.
Grade II* Listed Building
New Inn Farmhouse with Outbuildings Behind
Description
STOWE
1129/3/97 NEW INN FARMHOUSE WITH OUTBUILDINGS BEHIND
21-APR-1983
(Formerly listed as:
NEW INN FARMHOUSE)
GV II*
Former coaching inn, now farmhouse. 1717-19, with early-C19 alterations. Attributed to Thomas Harris of Cublington, foreman for Sir John Vanbrugh who co-ordinated the early building work at Stowe, and built for Lord Cobham. Front of chequered brick with moulded brick cornice and stringcourse. Hipped tiled roof with ridge chimneystacks to each end. 2 storeys and attic range with single storey range of outbuildings behind.
EXTERIOR: FRONT elevation of 5 bays with early-C19 sash windows, tripartite to central bays, ground floor and upper centre openings have brick cambered arches. 2 hipped dormers with 3-light leaded casements. Central carriage opening. REAR elevation to courtyard is much as it appears in an 1809 drawing, with advanced bays to each end with hipped roofs, to left a canted bay window with sashes. OUTBUILDINGS to left, the brewhouse with ridge stack and end stack, timberframing to gable end, and dairy to outside. To right, stable with outer wall of coursed ironstone. Outbuildings continue to rear with coach house, timber-framed with brick infill and brick, but dilapidated with roof collapse at time of re-inspection (November 2003).
INTERIOR: FARMHOUSE has entrance to each wing under carriage entrance through 6-panel door with overlight to a corridor. To left wing, stick baluster staircase. To right wing, rear room with bay window to courtyard has arched recess, ogee gothic arched cupboard, reeded chair rails and chimneypieces from early-C19 re-fitting. Service bell system in corridor. To right end, boxed-in stair. 4-panel and 6-panel doors with architeraves throughout. Heavy oak roof structure. OUTBUILDINGS include heavy open fireplace to stable range, fireplace to brewhouse, and low brick arches to dairy.
HISTORY: New Inn was built in 1717-19 for Viscount Cobham as part of his campaign to enlarge the mansion at Stowe and to create the extensive landscape, laid out by Charles Bridgeman with garden buildings by Sir John Vanbrugh. It is probably the first inn built for visitors to a house and garden, and is described repeatedly throughout the C18 and C19, not always favourably, in the visitors' letters and journals. In the 1860s when the garden closed to the public, New Inn became a farmhouse.
SOURCES: Bevington, Michael. Templa Quam Dilecta Number 1 The Grand Avenue, the Corinthian Arch and the Entrance Drives.
Bevington, Michael. Stowe House (2002).
Bevington, Michael. Stowe the Garden and Park (1994).
G.B. Clarke, Ed. Description of Lord Cobham's Gardens at Stowe (1700-1750). Buckingham Record Society No.26, 1990.
N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (1994) p. 674.
B. Seeley. A Dialogue: containing a description of the garden of the rt. Hon. The Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in Buckinghamshire. London, 1751.
c.1809 drawing by J.C. Nattes.
Group Value with the Grade I Registered Stowe Park, and the numerous listed buildings on the grounds, many of which are Grade I.
Listing NGR: SP6817636435
DPAC & UK Uncut hold ATOS Closing Ceremony - 31.08.2012
As the Grand Finale to a week-long national campaign of protests against French IT company ATOS Origin and its spinoff ATOS Healthcare which carries out the much-criticised Wirk Capability Assessments on behalf of the DWP, which has seen tens of thousands of severely sick and disabled people declared to be "Fit for Work" and thrown off their disability benefits, several hundred activists from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), WinVisible, Disabled Activists' Network, UK Uncut, Right to Work Campaign, Unite the Union, the GMB Union, Occupy London and the National UNion of Students descended on ATOS' London headquarters to carry out what they had billed as the "ATOS Closing Ceremony" - a reference to ATOS' hugely derided sponsorship of the Paralympic Games which is, say the activists, an act of spectatular cynicism by a corporation which is currently contracted by the Cameron government to the tune of £100 million to conduct the much-feared medical assessments without any reference whatsoever to peoples' medical notes of histories.
For two hours the crowd chanted slogans, listened to oral testimonies from people whose lives have been badly affected by ATOS decisions, heard accounts of people driven into such despair by dealing with ATOS that they have comitted suicide, and also heard many accounts of seriously ill people thrown off their benefits by ATOS who have been forced to look for work - having been declared fit for work - and who have died shortly afterwards. The list of people irreperably harmed by ATOS' computer-driven tick-box assessment which cannot possibly take into account the huge range of physical and mental disabilities seems endless.
Following some dogged Freedom of Information requests by two Daily Mirror journalists earlier this year it is now known that an average of 32 sickness or disability benefit claimnants who have been thrown off their benefits by the DWP following an ATOS zero-point rating and placed in the Work-Related Activity Group or who have been put on Jobseeker's Allowance have died shortly afterwards. In many instances relatives of the deceased have claimed that the stress of being treated in such an inhumane way by ATOS contributed to their deaths.
During the protest at Triton Square the 500-strong crowd were entertained by a street theatre performance which saw a fraudulent "ATOS Miracle Cure" booth set up. The "ATOS Reverend" would lay hands on a disabled person and tell them that "by the power of ATOS you are no longer disabled", and sent them through the ATOS Miracle Cure arch, but sadly once through the arch the disabled people realised they had been tricked and they were still, of course, disabled... but worse was to come, as each disabled person was then confronted by an "ATOS Doctor" who stated that because they were now officially no longer disabled and were fit for work they could now be assigned to do their dream jobs, to which end the phoney doctor handed each person a sheet of paper on which was written "100 meter runner", "Bar Tender", "Mountain Climber" and other completely unsuitable job titles.
At around 2:30pm a section of the crowd took off and headed for Westminster where they picketed outside the Department for Work and Pensions, during which an over-agressive action by the police resulted in a disabled man's shoulder being broken as he was knocked off his wheelchair when police shoved protesters into him.
All photos © 2012 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or reblog my images without my written permission.
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DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013
Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.
**From the DPAC website **
On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.
This Government has repeatedly used the language of division, trying to divide workers and claimants, public and private sectors workers, non-disabled and disabled people. Today we strike back as one, united voice.
The Cuts imposed by the ConDem Government under the cloak of ‘Austerity’ impact on disabled people in every area of life. The scrapping of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will tens of thousands of disabled workers, and will force many of them out of their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people both receive and deliver public services as workers in Public Service Departments, Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector. ILF and DLA play critical roles in maintaining people in these jobs. The 1% uplift limit on Benefits, Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax will impact on many disabled people both in and out of work.
The removal of many of our basic rights affect not just disabled people, but all of us. For example, the removal of Legal Aid for medical negligence claims comes at the same time as every single contract within the Health Service is open to tender by private companies. This has serious and significant implications for each and every one of us who make up the 99%.
But not everyone is being hit by austerity. While multi-nationals like Atos and Capita make fortunes, tax avoidance and evasion to the tune of tens of billions goes uncollected. The wealthiest 1000 UK residents increased their wealth by some 35 billion last year while disabled people and the poorest members of society were pushed into poverty and despair as the targets of brutal cuts.
Disabled activists have led the fightback against this Government since the beginning, and today disabled activists and workers lead the way again in the first joint, co-ordinated direct action by campaigners and unions on the streets of the U.K.
Shabnam O Saughnessy from DPAC said: "We are delighted to be joined on the streets today by our union comrades. This represents the first steps towards uniting resistance from communities and workplaces. It dispels the myth of disabled people as scroungers and workshy. We are not some separate group of others, we are your friends and neighbours, we work alongside you. Many millions of disabled people are being affected by cuts, and today is about getting our voices heard."
Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."
--------------------------------------------------------
All photos © 2013 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or blog my images without my written permission. I remain at all times the copyright owner of this image.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application solely at my discretion
If you want to use any image found in my Flickr Photostream, please Email me directly.
Media buyers and publications can access this story on Demotix
Standard industry rates apply.
Edited Aqua MODIS image of the Tokyo area in Honshu after flooding from a typhoon in November of 2019. Color/processing variant.
Image source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145736/hagibis-floods-ja...
Original caption: After forming in the Philippine Sea and rapidly intensifying into a powerful category 5 storm on October 5, 2019, super typhoon Hagibis gradually weakened as it approached Japan. Yet when the category 2 storm made landfall on the Izu Peninsula on October 12, its broad wind field and record-breaking rain devastated the island of Honshu. The storm caused widespread flooding, mudslides, power outages, and wind damage.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of Honshu on October 13, 2019, after the last of the storm’s clouds had moved to the northeast. Rivers and coastal waters that normally appear blue were instead brown with sediment knocked loose and washed away by the rush of rainfall. Large plumes of sediment-rich water rushed into several bays along Honshu’s east coast, where it mixed and swirled with seawater.
While typhoons regularly hit Japan, meteorologists say Hagibis was particularly damaging because of the angle of its attack and where it made landfall. Storms usually strike southern Japan first and weaken rapidly by the time they reach Tokyo and other population centers in central Honshu. In this case, the storm stayed offshore until making landfall just 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Tokyo. That allowed Hagibis to draw energy from the sea longer than most storms do. When it made landfall, the storm was also interacting with higher level winds in the jet stream, which spread the strongest winds over a larger area than usual.
According to press reports, Hagibis caused dozens of deaths, hundreds of injuries, flood damage to at least 10,000 homes, and power outages in many more. River embankments collapsed in at least 66 places on 47 different rivers and streams. One of the areas hardest hit by rain was Hakone, which received 922.5 millimeters (36.3 inches) of rain fall in just one day.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using data from the Level 1 and Atmospheres Active Distribution System (LAADS) and Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Story by Adam Voiland.
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
DPAC and TUC Disabled Workers block Tottenham Court Road - London 22.05.2013
Activists from DPAC and disabled workers attending the TUC Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in Central London for an hour and a half as they protested loudly against punitive government cuts to disability benefits and services which is impacting disastrously - and already fatally - on our most vulnerable citizens.
**From the DPAC website **
On the day of the success of the High Court ruling ruling against the Work Capability Assessment, activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and disabled workers attending the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Disabled Workers Conference blocked Tottenham Court Road in an unprecedented act of solidarity.
This Government has repeatedly used the language of division, trying to divide workers and claimants, public and private sectors workers, non-disabled and disabled people. Today we strike back as one, united voice.
The Cuts imposed by the ConDem Government under the cloak of ‘Austerity’ impact on disabled people in every area of life. The scrapping of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the Independent Living Fund (ILF) will tens of thousands of disabled workers, and will force many of them out of their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people both receive and deliver public services as workers in Public Service Departments, Local Authorities and the Voluntary Sector. ILF and DLA play critical roles in maintaining people in these jobs. The 1% uplift limit on Benefits, Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax will impact on many disabled people both in and out of work.
The removal of many of our basic rights affect not just disabled people, but all of us. For example, the removal of Legal Aid for medical negligence claims comes at the same time as every single contract within the Health Service is open to tender by private companies. This has serious and significant implications for each and every one of us who make up the 99%.
But not everyone is being hit by austerity. While multi-nationals like Atos and Capita make fortunes, tax avoidance and evasion to the tune of tens of billions goes uncollected. The wealthiest 1000 UK residents increased their wealth by some 35 billion last year while disabled people and the poorest members of society were pushed into poverty and despair as the targets of brutal cuts.
Disabled activists have led the fightback against this Government since the beginning, and today disabled activists and workers lead the way again in the first joint, co-ordinated direct action by campaigners and unions on the streets of the U.K.
Shabnam O Saughnessy from DPAC said: "We are delighted to be joined on the streets today by our union comrades. This represents the first steps towards uniting resistance from communities and workplaces. It dispels the myth of disabled people as scroungers and workshy. We are not some separate group of others, we are your friends and neighbours, we work alongside you. Many millions of disabled people are being affected by cuts, and today is about getting our voices heard."
Mandy Hudson, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers committee said: "Trade unionists would like to send a clear message to this government that trade unions, workers and grass roots disabled groups stand together against the onslaught of vicious cuts rained down upon us by the Condems."
--------------------------------------------------------
All photos © 2013 Pete Riches
Do not reproduce, alter, re-transmit or blog my images without my written permission. I remain at all times the copyright owner of this image.
Hi-Res, un-watermarked versions of these files are available on application solely at my discretion
If you want to use any image found in my Flickr Photostream, please Email me directly.
Media buyers and publications can access this story on Demotix
Standard industry rates apply.
While the stable block to the left of the picture has been renovated and contains apartments, the Grade 1 listed Hall has sadly drifted from decline to dereliction and is probably beyond repair. Lancelot "Capability" Brown worked on the landscaping of the park. The estate became famous in 1971 as the principal location for the film The Go-Between.
Soldiers of the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armored Regiment conduct an attack lane downrange in an M1 Abrams at Camp Ripley Training Center June 15, 2015. The battalion is taking part in the larger brigade-level eXportable Combat Training Capability exercise leading into their upcoming brigade rotation at the National Training Center. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Spc. William Boecker)
[1]
Broadway Tower was inspired by the famous Capability Brown and completed in 1799 from designs by the renowned architect James Wyatt. It was built for the Earl of Coventry as a folly to his Springhill Estate and dedicated to his wife Peggy.
Legend has it Broadway Tower was used as a signalling tower between Springhill Estate and Croome Court near Worcester, which can be seen from the roof platform.
Many famous people have had association with Broadway Tower, including Sir Thomas Phillips and the pre-Raphaelite artists William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Rosetti.
Broadway Tower is open to the public allowing you to travel into the past of this important building and visit the viewing platform constituting the highest point in the Cotswolds at 1089 feet or 331.6 metres altitude.
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Broadway Tower is a folly located on Broadway Hill, near the village of Broadway, in the English county of Worcestershire, at the second highest point of the Cotswolds after Cleeve Hill. Broadway Tower's base is 1,024 feet (312 metres) above sea level. The tower itself stands 55 feet (17 metres) high.
The "Saxon" tower was designed by James Wyatt in 1794 to resemble a mock castle, and built for Lady Coventry in 1799. The tower was built on a "beacon" hill, where beacons were lit on special occasions. Lady Coventry wondered if a beacon on this hill could be seen from her house in Worcester - approximately 22 miles (35 km) away - and sponsored the construction of the folly to find out. The beacon could be seen clearly.
Over the years, the tower was home to the printing press of Sir Thomas Phillips, and served as a country retreat for artists including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who rented it together in the 1880s.
Today, the tower is a tourist attraction and the centre of a country park with various exhibitions open to the public at a fee as well as a gift shop. The place is on the Cotswold Way and can be reached by following the Cotswold Way from the A44 road at Fish Hill, or by a steep climb out of Broadway village. Near the tower is a memorial to the crew of an A.W.38 Whitley bomber that crashed there during a training mission in June 1943.
Part of a Slideshow / Set forming a virtual tour around the lake at Lake Wood, on the outskirts of Uckfield, East Sussex, England, UK. [Map]
The artificially expanded lake and woodland is adjacent to, and to the north of, West Park Local Nature Reserve. The two areas are separated by Rocks Road (the B2012 Uckfield / Piltdown road). Both areas formed part of the Rocks Estate, owned for 200 years - and landscaped in the style of Capability Brown - by the Streatfield family. A tunnel beneath the dividing road (now bricked off) enabled carriage access to the lake from Rock House.
The area has numerous Ardlingly Sandstone outcrops. Where these obstruct the path around the lake, a tunnel - and also steps leading down to an underground boat house cave - were excavated.
Lake Wood is managed and protected by The Woodland Trust.
See also:
The Guardian, article on pressures on UK woodland from development
The Independent, Secret Britain: article including list of best-kept woodland secrets
The Weald of Kent, Surrey and Sussex - historical resource website
East Sussex County Council West Park Local Nature Reserve, Uckfield