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J500 MML : Scania S500 6x2 Tractor Unit of MML Contracts Ltd. from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, with a low loader trailer carrying new farm trailers built by JPM Trailers, also from Dungannon.
The 'J500 MML' registration has previously been carried on Scania R560 and S650 6x2 Tractor Units also operated by MML Contracts Ltd.
M4 - Leigh Delamere, eastbound.
01-02-2023
Off to San Francisco to continue the Celebration!
Keith: I need to give Lauren a call to give her the good news! She'll be estactic!
Jason: Why don't you fly to New York & tell her in person? I can wind things up here, & meet up with you guys back home for the Holidays!
Keith: Excellent! I think I will!
Yesterday William Floyd decided to cut ties with East End Bus Lines, Inc and signed a new contract with Acme Bus Corp
The contract between ESA and Arianespace to launch the ADM-Aeolus satellite was signed on 22 July 2016 by ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Josef Aschbacher, (left) and CEO of Arianespace, Stéphane Israël, (right) in the presence of Jan Woerner, ESA Director General, (centre), at ESA headquarters in Paris, France. Aeolus will be launched on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana at the end of 2017. Using novel laser technology, this new mission will provide profiles of wind, aerosols and clouds to advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and to improve weather forecasts.
Read more: Vega to launch ESA’s wind mission
Credit: ESA–Nadia Imbert-Vier, 2016
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I was originally enrolled into the GETTY IMAGES collection as a contributor on April 9th 2012, and when links with FLICKR were terminated in March 2014, I was retained and fortunate enough to be signed up via a second contract, both of which have proved to be successful with sales of my photographs all over the world now handled exclusively by them.
On November 12th 2015 GETTY IMAGES unveiled plans for a new stills upload platform called ESP (Enterprise Submission Platform), to replace the existing 'Moment portal', and on November 13th I was invited to Beta test the new system prior to it being officially rolled out in December. (ESP went live on Tuesday December 15th 2015 and has smoothed out the upload process considerably).
With visits now in excess of 18.772 Million to my FLICKR site, used primarily these days as a fun platform to reach friends and family as I have now sold my professional gear and now take a more leisurely approach to my photographic exploits, I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to FLICKR, GETTY IMAGES and everyone who drops by.
***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on May 8th 2017
CREATIVE RF gty.im/676101500 MOMENT OPEN COLLECTION**
This photograph became my 2,531st frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.
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Photograph taken at an altitude of Eighteen metres at 11:58am on Friday April 14th 2017 off Viale G Ceccarelli Ceccarius Castel Sant'Angelo (Castle of the Holy angel) in Rome, Italy.
Castel Sant'Angelo is located in the Parco Adriano, originally commissioned by Emperor Hadrian, it began as a mausoleum and later as a fortres and castle, and was built between 123-139 AD. Michael the Archangel is the statue atop the castle.
Nikon D7200 10mm 1/160s f/13.0 iso100 RAW (14Bit)Size L (6000x4000), Hand held with Nikkor VR Vibration Reduction enabled. Auto focus AF-C with 3D-tracking enabled. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.Auto Active D-lighting.
Nikkor AF-S 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED. Phot-R 77mm UV filter.Nikon MB-D15 Battery grip pack. Nikon EN-EL battery (2). Hoodman H-EYEN22S soft rubber eyecup. Matin quick release neckstrap. My Memory 32GB Class 10 SDHC. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS module.
LATITUDE: N 41d 54m 12.20s
LONGITUDE: E 12d 27m 55.60s
ALTITUDE: 18.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 69.00MB
PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 29.89MB
PROCESSING POWER:
Nikon D7200 Firmware versions A 1.10 C 1.02 (9/3/17) L 2.015 (Lens distortion control version 2)
HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit (Version 1.2.4 24/11/2016). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.
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Operational Contract Support Joint Exercise 2016 provides training across the spectrum of OCS readiness from requirements and development of warfighter staff integration and synchronization through contract execution supporting the Joint Force Commander. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder/Released)
Muscle wire contracts when it gets hot, and it gets hot when you put electricity through it, so the more volts, the higher the pitch.
With bonus Tom Fox-style whirly strummer!
Story by David W. Temple
Over the years, American automobile manufacturers have often contracted foreign body builders to construct limited-production and concept cars. Among these body builders, aka coachbuilders, was Pinin Farina (now Pininfarina) of Turin, Italy. The company, now formally known as Carozzeria Pininfarina, was founded in 1930 by Battista “Pinin” Farina, who had his surname legally changed to Pininfarina in 1961. It was established for the purpose of building special car bodies and detailing of limited-production automobiles. His goal was to become an independent industry and over time, he put together a production line capable of producing seven or eight cars per day.
Among the first bodies he produced were for the now-coveted Hispano-Suiza and later the Fiat 518 Ardita. He introduced aerodynamics to automotive body design in the 1930s and created the sleek Alfa Romeo 6C and Lancia Aprillia Aerodinamica. In 1947, he unveiled the influential Cisitalia 202 which became the first car to be permanently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Prior to World War II, Pinin Farina had established contacts with foreign car companies such as General Motors, but the war soon interrupted anything further. However, not long after the war ended, U.S. auto manufacturers once again contacted Pinin Farina regarding the construction of various automobiles for them. Among the cars Pinin Farina was contracted to build was the Nash-Healey built between 1951 and 1954.
As the 1950s were coming to a close, GM embarked upon designing an unusual Buick two-passenger car based upon the styling of what became the 1959 Buick. Labeled initially as XP-75, the two cars that were ultimately built for GM by Pinin Farina were formally named “Skylark III.”
Harley Earl, who founded the styling department of GM after being hired by company president Alfred P. Sloan in 1927, appointed Ned Nickles to lead the styling team assigned to the XP-75 program. GM was totally responsible for the design of the cars and Pinin Farina was hired to construct the two bodies.
The earliest photographs available through GM Media Archive related to the XP-75 project are dated June 10, 1957, and show mock-ups of the interior. Photos dated June 21 show a completed full-size clay model of the car that was referenced as the Skylark II. By mid August, a running car had been assembled, but was labeled as the Skylark III.
Pinin Farina assembled the XP-75 body on top of a mock chassis and when it was completed, it was sent via ship to Buick in Flint, Mich., where the body was placed upon a modified Buick chassis with a 110-inch wheelbase. Overall length of the Skylark III measured 204 inches, overall width spanned 80 inches, and overall height was a low 49.6 inches. It was painted silver and featured a sculptured metal side treatment similar to what appeared on the 1960 Buick line.
The only available information on the XP-75’s engine comes from a GM news release that stated it had “a 348-cubic-inch engine with a dual exhaust system” and was “teamed with a Buick automatic transmission and a 3.36 rear axle ratio.” Coincidentally, Chevrolet offered a 348 at that time. However, the engine for the XP-75 must have been a modified “Nailhead” with a bore and stroke working out to the same displacement as the Chevrolet engine.
The interior of the Skylark III was Corvette-like though with distinct Buick features. Inside were leather-covered bucket seats with a console containing the gear selector for the automatic transmission and an armrest. The gullwing-shaped dash had a vertically designed radio in the center, a feature that would later appear on the second-generation Corvette. Ahead of the driver was an instrument cluster similar to the one used for the production version of the 1959 Buicks. On the passenger side was a recessed upper panel upon which appeared a “Skylark III” script and beneath it was a padded panel with vertical pleats. Bright moldings surrounded these areas. Other features included a special steering wheel, paddle-type inner door handles, power windows and air conditioning. One of the two Skylark IIIs — probably the first one — had a white interior, at least for a while.
A second car was ordered not long after the first. It was built for use by Fisher Body President James Goodman. His car was painted ivory.
At least one of the Skylark IIIs was exhibited at various auto shows. The only documentation available regarding this matter is through GM Media Archive. One of their surviving documents, which is undated, begins, “Buick’s newest dream car, the XP-75, is making its initial swing around the national auto show circuit…. Its wing-like rear fins became a 1959 Buick styling feature, its sculptured metal side treatment a hallmark of the 1960 Buick line.” Judging by the commentary, the release was written no earlier than the 1960 model year. Most likely, the silver car is the one shown on the auto show circuit assuming both were not exhibited. (Though it was on a nationwide show circuit, the car was not included in either the 1959 or 1961 GM Motorama.) Its first public appearance, though, was at the General Motors Golden Milestone Parade in August 1958.
The limited documents from GM Media Archive also reveal the cars underwent various changes even as late as 1963. The ivory car was scrapped on or near July 28, 1964. As for the silver Skylark III, it was placed in storage in 1964 and then transferred to the Buick Division on June 13, 1967. What became of it afterwards is not known, though it could have been scrapped at any time after that date. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the Skylark III is in a garage somewhere in the vicinity of Flint, waiting to be revealed again.
www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-of-the-week/car-of-the-week-195...
I am often asked if there is a car I cannot build, or I just can't get it to look good. This may be one of those times. It was very difficult to get the proportions to sit right, with all this wild styling over the car. And white certainly didn't help either.
What do you think?
When Qube bought out the South Spur contracts, it obtained the ARTC infrastructure contract over the Nullarbor. This brought locos to WA which had never previously visited.
I photographed some of my lawn contracts the last couple of days. I'm pretty happy with how nice my lawns are looking. I am also still learning the settings on my camera so not all the photos took as well as I would have liked but all things in time. :D
Arriva London North is taking over the contract for route 106 from Stagecoach from Saturday 27th April, using brand-new VDL DB300/Wright Gemini2 allocated to Ash Grove Garage. On the Tuesday before conversion, Scania OmniCity 15018 crosses the junction at Bethnal Green Underground on the last leg of its journey to Whitechapel.
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Route 106 is a long-established route, although until 1989 it ventured further into East London; it branched off at Bethnal Green and ran to Poplar via Mile End and Limehouse (the section now covered by the D6), and at one time it reached all the way to Becontree Heath. Stagecoach acquired the route when it bought out Docklands Transit, who had taken over the route on 27th April 1996 and had converted it to midibus operation using Plaxton Pointer-bodied Dennis Darts. The operation had not been reliable and when Stagecoach bought it out in October 1997 they discovered why - the schedules were impossible to keep to, especially with single-door vehicles. Initially dual-door Darts were drafted in from Stagecoach-owned Thames Transit in Oxford, but in 2000 the route regained double-deckers in the shape of AXLX400-bodied Tridents.
When the contract was re-awarded in April 2008, the Stagecoach operation in London had been sold to the MacQuarie Group as the East London Bus Group, and allegiance was switched to the Scania Omnidekka. These were several months late in arriving (not unusual for new buses in London at the time) and the 248, a gain from Blue Triangle, was prioritised, so the first examples did not appear until the end of the year. Stagecoach reacquired ELBG in 2010, paying considerably less than they had sold it for.
The immediate future for the redundant Scanias is unclear, however they will be needed later in the year at Rainham Garage for routes 252 and 365, which Stagecoach takes over from First on 28th September. The original plan was to allocate them to Leyton for route 179 (another Stagecoach gain from First, to take effect from 19th October) but this will now have new Enviro400s instead - apparently this is to concentrate all the early Euro4-engined OmniCitys at one depot.
With the Cando contract for rail services into town finishing in the near future yesterday was spent documenting as many crossings as possible, this one in the mist and rain coming back into town, though not a crossing is my favourite from the day.
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I was originally enrolled into the GETTY IMAGES collection as a contributor on April 9th 2012, and when links with FLICKR were terminated in March 2014, I was retained and fortunate enough to be signed up via a second contract, both of which have proved to be successful with sales of my photographs all over the world now handled exclusively by them.
On November 12th 2015 GETTY IMAGES unveiled plans for a new stills upload platform called ESP (Enterprise Submission Platform), to replace the existing 'Moment portal', and on November 13th I was invited to Beta test the new system prior to it being officially rolled out in December. ESP went live on Tuesday December 15th 2015 and has smoothed out the upload process considerably.
These days I take a far more leisurely approach to my photographic exploits, a Nikon D850 FX Pro body as companion to my D7200 DX, I travel light with less constraints and more emphasis on the pure capture of the beauty that I see, more akin to my original persuits and goals some five decades previously when starting out. I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 23.284+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.
***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on April 2nd 2018
CREATIVE RF gty.im/937463166 MOMENT OPEN COLLECTION**
This photograph became my 3,070th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.
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This photograph was taken at an altitude of Seven hundred and sixty six metres, at 13:16pm on Monday 9th May 2016 off the Alaska Highway 97 in the Pine Pass off John Hart Highway 97, beside Bijoux Falls in the Bijoux Falls Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada.
The park is free to use and found on the Southern approach to the summit from the town of Mackenzie.
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Nikon D800 14mm 1/500s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14Bit) Hand held. Nikon back focus button enabled. AF-C Continuous point focus with 3-D tracking. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.
Nikkor AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED IF. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Nikon DK-17M 1.2x Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC card. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW Photo/ 15.4" Notebook Backpack camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.
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LATITUDE: N 55d 18m 31.60s
LONGITUDE: W 122d 40m 19.40s
ALTITUDE: 766.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB
PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 42.80MB
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PROCESSING POWER:
Nikon D800 Firmware versions A 1.10 B 1.10 L 2.009 (Lens distortion control version 2)
HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX2 Version 2.10.3 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.
Manildra Group/ Progress Rail MAN005, CF4401 & MAN001 ‘Len’ lead SSR empty Box grain/ hoppers Train no. 9375 into Cootamundra bound for Stockinbingal
Manildra Group are seemingly ramping up their operations utilising Southern Shorthaul Railroad assets and crew to run their trains
18/12/24
Information supplied by the York Civic Trust. yorkcivictrust.co.uk/heritage/civic-trust-plaques/george-...
In 1911 the city of York belatedly recognised Etty. A statue of Etty by G. W. Milburn was unveiled on 1 February outside the York Art Gallery in Exhibition Square, and a retrospective of 164 Etty paintings was held at the gallery despite opposition from some of Etty's descendants who refused to lend works for it. William Wallace Hargrove, proprietor of the York Herald, gave a speech recalling his memories of knowing Etty. Outside York, Etty generally remained little-known, with the majority of those galleries holding his works, other than the Lady Lever Art Gallery, the Russell-Cotes Museum and Anglesey Abbey, tending to keep them in storage. Minor Etty exhibitions in London in 1936 and 1938 had little impact, and likewise an exhibition of 30 Etty paintings in 1948 to mark the reopening of the York Art Gallery and another York exhibition of 108 paintings the following year to mark the centenary of his death. In 2001–02 five Etty paintings were included in Tate Britain's landmark Exposed: The Victorian Nude exhibition, which did much to raise Etty's profile, and established Etty as "the first British artist to paint the nude with both seriousness and consistency". The restoration of The Sirens and Ulysses, completed in 2010, led to increased interest in Etty, and in 2011–12 a major exhibition of Etty's works was held at the York Art Gallery. The York Art Gallery continues to hold the largest collection of Etty's works.
George Walker Milburn (1844-1941)
Woodcarver, Stonemason and Sculptor
Plaque erected in St Leonard’s Place, YO1 7HD
George Walker Milburn, master woodcarver, stonemason and sculptor, was born in Goodramgate, York on 17 June 1844. He was the eighth of ten children of Lionel Altimont Milburn, a York tailor, and his wife, Elizabeth Clapham, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. Little is certain about George’s childhood years but, in his early teens, he was apprenticed as a woodcarver to William Alfred Waddington, “Pianoforte Manufacturer”, who was based at 44 Stonegate, York. He attended York School of Art where he won several medals and awards. A head modelled by Milburn so impressed the sculptor Thomas Woolner RA that he offered the young student the opportunity to study with him, but Milburn felt obliged to decline as he had already commenced his apprenticeship. In 1865, having completed his woodcarving studies, George went to London to study stone-carving with Samuel J. Ruddock. While there he exhibited a medallion of the stained-glass artist Charles Hardgraves at the Royal Academy of Art.
George returned to York around 1872 and set up his own stone yard at 53 Gillygate. One of his first commissions was for the architect George Edmund Street on the massive project to restore the South Transept of York Minster. Street employed the young carver to execute a large portion of the decorative stonework on the interior and exterior during the eight years of restoration (1872-80). Street was sufficiently impressed by George’s artistry that he took him to Corfe Castle in Dorset to work on St James’ Church at Kingston, the church described as “The Jewel of the Purbecks”. In addition to Street, George worked with many other leading architects of the Victorian and Edwardian era including Sir George Gilbert Scott, Charles Clement Hodges, Charles Hodgson Fowler, and Walter H. Brierley.
York’s first public statue
In 1885 George Milburn won the competition to execute a statue to commemorate George Leeman MP, three times Lord Mayor of York and a dominant figure in 19th-century York politics. Some felt that George had insufficient experience to execute the work and the controversy rumbled on in the York newspapers for many months. He took an enormous financial gamble, signing a potentially punitive contract with York City Council which would have ruined him had he failed. But the gamble paid off and York’s first public statue established him as a sculptor in addition to his already established reputation as a stone- and woodcarver.
George Milburn’s stoneyard in St Leonard’s Place between Bootham Bar and the De Grey Rooms
About this time, George moved his stone yard to St Leonard’s Place at Bootham where it would remain for more than 50 years. He would go on to be awarded commissions for a statue of Queen Victoria for the Guildhall and a statue of William Etty which stands in Exhibition Square. While the Victoria statue also caused rumblings of discontent in the press, it was less to do with the choice of sculptor than with political squabbling over whether a statue was the correct form of memorial with which to honour the late Queen. On its completion, the statue received widespread praise. When unveiled by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Henry of Battenberg, she broke with protocol and shook the sculptor’s hand.
Ecclesiastical and secular work
George left a large body of work, ecclesiastical and secular. He carved almost 50 memorial crosses and executed works for more than 150 churches. A small sample of his stone-carving includes the impressive Boer War Memorial Cross at Durham Cathedral; the Bede Cross at Roker, Sunderland; the statues for the elaborate Reredos at St Aidan’s Church, Bamburgh; the Reredos at St Peter-at-Gowts, Lincoln; and multiple pulpits and fonts including St Barnabas’ Church in York, St Aidan’s in Hartlepool, and All Saints in Lincoln. His woodwork, equal to though less recognised than that of Robert Thompson, can be seen in the tracery panels for the magnificent double organ at Howden Minster, the organ screen for St Helen’s Church at Escrick, the chancel screen at Melton Mowbray and the beautiful reredos in St Benet’s Chapel at Ampleforth Abbey.
His mastery of both stone- and woodcarving can be seen at St Thomas’ Parish Church at Stockton-on-Tees where he sculpted the large stone cartouche over the east window and the elaborate oak bench ends in the choir, and at St Andrew’s Church at Bournemouth in Dorset where he carved the delightful oak figures for the choir, six stone statues and a beautiful alabaster reredos of the Annunciation. His works for private houses included Hawkstone Hall, Shropshire; the chapel at Hatfield College, Durham; Dunollie Hall, Scarborough; Carlton Towers, East Yorkshire; Gray’s Court, York; the renowned Arts and Crafts-style house, Goddards, York; and the chapel at Castle Howard.
National reputation
While his works were predominantly in Yorkshire and the North-East of England, his work can be found throughout the country, from Bournemouth in Dorset to Edinburgh where he carved the statue of John Hunter on the façade of the National Portrait Gallery. Although the Scottish sculptor James MacGillivray Pittendrigh has been credited with the latter, it was George Milburn who sculpted the statue from a miniature by Pittendrigh. Works can be found in almost 20 counties throughout the UK including Lincolnshire, Kent, Shropshire, Durham, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and Norfolk.
In York alone the list of his works includes the William Etty, Queen Victoria and George Leeman statues and works for York Minster, York Art Gallery, York Explore Library, St Barnabas’ Church, St Chad’s at Knavesmire; St Olave’s Church, St Wilfrid’s Church, Holy Trinity Church, All Saints Pavement, Barclays Bank, Beckett’s Bank (now Starbucks), Jacob’s Well in Micklegate, St Sampson’s Church, St Andrew’s Church at Bishopthorpe, Fulford Church and many others. He found time in his busy career to make a positive contribution to some of York’s many societies; he was a member of the York Philosophical Society, an active supporter of the York School of Art and a frequent lecturer.
Family life
In his private life, he was a practising Catholic – although he seems to have had a relaxed attitude about the strict adherence to church rules; his first marriage, to Ellen Ward, was at St Wilfrid’s Church; his second, to Isabella Fletcher, took place at St Olave’s Church in Marygate. Like many Victorians, he suffered a series of family tragedies; his first child, Lionel, died at the age of one; his first wife, Ellen, died of TB in 1885 at the age of 28, shortly after giving birth to their fourth child, Norah; Norah herself died one year later. In all, of five children in his two marriages, only two survived into adulthood. His second marriage, to Isabella Fletcher, in 1888, lasted until her death in 1924. With his son, Wilfrid Joseph Milburn, the two worked as G.W. Milburn & Son from the stone yard at St Leonard’s Plac
George had an exceptionally long career, working well into his eighties and living through enormous changes in his native city. Born in the seventh year of Victoria’s reign, when Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minster and York a city with a population of barely 40,000, his work straddled two centuries and honoured the dead of two wars: the Boer War and the First World War. During his lifetime the population of York expanded to more than 123,000 inhabitants. Few others can claim to have lived and worked continuously in one city through a period of such enormous change. He died in York City Hospital, Huntington Road on 3 September 1941.
His importance to York can be gauged by the judgement of his fellow artists and peers. John Ward Knowles, the renowned York stained-glass artist, was of the opinion that for many years stone-carving in York had been ‘confined to the works of ornamental sculpture’ until ‘the higher branch of the art was again resuscitated by George Milburn’. Street reportedly called him ‘the best Gothic sculptor in the country’ and Knowles felt that, in stone-carving, George ‘stood pre-eminently in front of his confrères’.
More than 270 of George Milburn’s works survive but this master craftsman has not received the recognition that he deserves, and most of his extant works remain uncredited, overshadowed by others, such as Robert Beall of Newcastle or Thompson of Kilburn, or even incorrectly ascribed to others.
William Etty RA (10 March 1787 – 13 November 1849) was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes. Born in York, he left school at the age of 12 to become an apprentice printer in Hull. He completed his apprenticeship seven years later and moved to London, where in 1807 he joined the Royal Academy Schools. There he studied under Thomas Lawrence and trained by copying works by other artists. Etty earned respect at the Royal Academy of Arts for his ability to paint realistic flesh tones, but had little commercial or critical success in his first few years in London.
Etty's Cleopatra's Arrival in Cilicia, painted in 1821, featured numerous nudes and was exhibited to great acclaim. Its success prompted several further depictions of historical scenes with nudes. All but one of the works he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1820s contained at least one nude figure, and he acquired a reputation for indecency. Despite this, he was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, and in 1828 was elected a Royal Academician, at the time the highest honour available to an artist. Although he was one of the most respected artists in the country he continued to study at life classes throughout his life, a practice considered inappropriate by his fellow artists. In the 1830s Etty began to branch out into the more lucrative but less respected field of portraiture, and later became the first English painter to paint significant still lifes. He continued to paint both male and female nudes, which caused severe criticism and condemnation from some elements of the press.
An extremely shy man, Etty rarely socialised and never married. From 1824 until his death he lived with his niece Betsy (Elizabeth Etty). Even in London he retained a keen interest in his native York, and was instrumental in the establishment of the town's first art school and the campaign to preserve York city walls. While he never formally converted from his Methodist faith, he was deeply attached to the Roman Catholic Church and was one of the few non-Catholics to attend the 1838 opening of Augustus Pugin's chapel for St Mary's College, Oscott, at that time England's most important Roman Catholic building.
Etty was prolific and commercially successful throughout the 1840s, but the quality of his work deteriorated throughout this period. As his health progressively worsened he retired to York in 1848. He died in 1849, shortly after a major retrospective exhibition. In the immediate aftermath of his death his works became highly collectable and sold for large sums. Changing tastes meant his work later fell out of fashion, and imitators soon abandoned his style. By the end of the 19th century the value of all of his works had fallen below their original prices, and outside his native York he remained little known throughout the 20th century. Etty's inclusion in Tate Britain's landmark Exposed: The Victorian Nude exhibition in 2001–02, the high-profile restoration of his The Sirens and Ulysses in 2010 and a major retrospective of his work at the York Art Gallery in 2011–12 led to renewed interest in his work.
York Art Gallery is a public art gallery in York, England, with a collection of paintings from 14th-century to contemporary, prints, watercolours, drawings, and ceramics. It closed for major redevelopment in 2013, reopening in summer of 2015. The building is a Grade II listed building and is managed by York Museums Trust.
The gallery was created to provide a permanent building as the core space for the second Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1879, the first in 1866 having occupied a temporary chalet in the grounds of Bootham Asylum. The 1866 exhibition, which ran from 24 July to 31 October 1866 was attended by over 400,000 people and yielded a net profit for the organising committee of £1,866. A meeting of this committee in April 1867 committed to "applying this surplus in providing some permanent building to be devoted to the encouragement of Art and Industry".
The result was the development of a second exhibition, housed in a newly constructed building designed by a York architect named Edward Taylor; a series of 189 drawings, watercolours and sketches for the proposed gallery were produced by Taylor in the period 1874–1878. The architectural plan for the building changed considerably during this time, from an 'Elizabethan' style to an 'Italian' style – neither were fully realised in the final design. The building first opened on 7 May 1879.
The site for the 1879 exhibition was an area in the grounds of the medieval St Mary's Abbey known as 'Bearparks Garden'. It is fronted by what became Exhibition Square, which was cleared by the demolition of a house and the former Bird in Hand Hotel. The art gallery consisted of an entrance hall, central hall, north and south galleries and on the upper floor a Grand Picture Saloon. Its intended grand classical façade decorated with 18 stone figures, a carved tympanum and 14 mosaics was not done for financial reasons and it was decorated instead with two tiled panels representing 'Leonardo expiring in the arms of Francis I', and 'Michaelangelo showing his Moses', together with four ceramic roundels depicting York artists William Etty (painter), John Carr (architect), John Camidge (musician), and John Flaxman (sculptor). To the rear of the building was a large temporary exhibition hall with machinery annex. The exhibition hall itself measured 200 ft (61 m) by 90 ft (27 m) and had aisles on each side with galleries above. A large organ was placed in the building, originally built in 1862 by William Telford of Dublin. The roof of the building was over 60 ft (18 m) above. Each side of the covered way between the hall and the stone building was used for refreshments with a cafe on one side and a first-class lounge on the other. A large cellar was excavated below in order to store liquor for these rooms.
The exhibition hall was intended to be used only for three years, but remained in use for meetings, concerts and other functions until 1909 and was not demolished until the Second World War.
Following the 1879 exhibition the renamed Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Institution aimed to create a permanent art exhibition. It was given a major boost by the bequest of York collector John Burton (1799–1882) of more than one hundred 19th-century paintings, supplemented by gifts and in the early years two major temporary loan collections. In 1888 the north galleries were leased to York School of Art, which moved there in 1890 from Minster Yard.
York City Council purchased the buildings and collection in 1892. Temporary summer exhibitions ceased in 1903 but a major exhibition of the work of York artist William Etty was held in 1911 when his statue by local sculptor George Walker Milburn was erected outside.
In 1888 the north wing was leased to York Art School which added a further storey in 1905, and after that the wing was vacated by the school. It housed the city archives from 1977 to 2012.
The period up to the commencement of the Second World War was one of modest growth, the major event being purchase of the Dr William Arthur Evelyn collection of prints, drawings and watercolours of York in 1931. The building was requisitioned for military purposes at the outbreak of the Second World War and closed, suffering bomb damage during the Baedeker Blitz on 29 April 1942.
The gallery reopened in 1948 with a small temporary exhibition before a major restoration in 1951–52 after which began a major revival of fortune under the direction of Hans Hess. He made important acquisitions with the assistance of the York Art Collection Society founded in 1948 (later Friends of York Art Gallery) and the National Art Collections Fund, and then in 1955 the donation of FD Lycett Green's collection of more than one hundred continental Old Master paintings. As a result of the systematic build up under Hess and his successors, the gallery has a British collection especially of late-19th-century and early-20th-century works with some French works representative of influential styles.
In 1963 the gallery was given Eric Milner-White's collection of studio pottery.
In 1979 a 15th-century painting of the Angel Gabriel and five saints by an artist of the Nuremberg School was stolen from the gallery. It was recovered and returned to the gallery in 2023 after an auction house in Dorchester linked it to a listing on the Art Loss Register.
In the 1990s and 2000s the collection was supplemented by other major donations and loans, most notably those of WA Ismay and Henry Rothschild (1913–2009).
In January 1999 the gallery was victim of an armed robbery, during which staff were tied up and threatened, and over £700,000 of paintings were stolen. At closing time, four members of staff were threatened by two men bearing pistols and wearing ski masks. They took a watercolour by J. M. W. Turner from a display case and 19 other paintings from the walls, cutting some of those from their frames.
The main perpetrator, Craig Townsend, was arrested by armed police when he, and another man, arrived at an arranged meeting with an art dealer to sell the stolen paintings. He was sentenced to 14 years in jail at York Crown Court in February 2000 for the robbery.
The gallery underwent a £445,000 refurbishment in 2005, reopening on 19 March. This development was supported by a £272,700 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £85,000 from the City of York Council.
A restoration in 2013–15 cost £8 million, and was undertaken to increase display space by some 60%, including reincorporation of the north wing, an upper-floor extension to the south wing, and reorganisation of the internal space for exhibition and storage. The development enabled the area to the rear of the building to be restored to public use as part of the Museum Gardens. The reopened gallery houses the British Studio Ceramics on the upper floor. The gallery reopened on 1 August 2015, charging an admission fee for the first time since 2002. The first year after the gallery reopened with a new charging structure saw visitor numbers fall by over 120,000 to 91,896 compared to the year 2011–2012 when there was no admission charge.
During the 2020 exhibition of paintings by Harland Miller ("Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named it Once") it was reported that commemorative posters sold in the Art Gallery gift shop were being resold online for up to £1,000. The posters depicted a reworked version of Miller's 2009 work 'York – So Good They Named It Once'; part of his 'Pelican Bad Weather' series of humorous book covers.
In November 2020 the gallery announced that it had acquired works following a successful application to the Derbyshire School Library Service, which had owned the works but closed in 2018. The works acquired are by four British artists: Prunella Clough, Margaret Mellis, Marion Grace Hocken, and Daphne Fedarb.
The gallery has more than 1,000 paintings. Western European paintings include 14th-century Italian altarpieces, Annibale Carracci's early 17th-century Portrait of monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi, 17th-century Dutch morality works, and 19th-century works by French artists who were predecessors and contemporaries of the Impressionists. British paintings date from the 16th century onward, with 17th and 18th-century portraits and paintings by Giambattista Pittoni and vedutas by Bernardo Bellotto, Victorian morality works and early 20th-century work by the Camden Town Group associated with Walter Sickert being particularly strong. Among the contemporaries, Paul Nash, L. S. Lowry and Ben Nicholson and the Swiss-born Luigi Pericle. Amongst York born artists the gallery has the largest collection of works by William Etty and good paintings by Albert Moore. Henry Keyworth Raine, the great nephew of William Powell Frith, gifted various works, including a portrait of George Kirby (1845–1937), the First Curator of York Art gallery.
The gallery holds a collection of British studio ceramics with more than 5,000 pieces. They include works by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, William Staite Murray, Michael Cardew, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Jim Malone and Michael Casson.
The collection of more than 17,000 drawings, watercolours and prints is particularly strong in views of York, with more than 4,000 examples, largely watercolours and drawings, some by local artists such as Henry Cave, John Harper, John Browne and Patrick Hall. Watercolour artists represented include Thomas Rowlandson, John Varley, Thomas Girtin, J. M. W. Turner, and 20th-century painters Edward Burra, John Piper and Julian Trevelyan. The gallery holds the William Etty archive.
There are more than 3,000 decorative objects particularly from Yorkshire potteries from the 16th century to the early 20th century, Chinese and Korean pottery from the 18th and 19th century, and glassware.
Curators and directors
George KirbyCurator1879–1931
Hans HessCurator1947–1967
Peter TomoryAssistant Curator1950–1956
John IngamellsCurator1967–1977
Richard GreenCurator1977–2003
Caroline WorthingtonCurator of Art2003–2008
Laura TurnerCurator of Art2008–2017
Vera PavlovaSenior Curator of York Art Gallery 2017–2018
Beatrice BertramSenior Curator of York Art Gallery2018 – current
Many exhibitions have taken place in the gallery, of varying sizes and length. The exhibition schedule from 2020 onwards has included a mix of touring exhibitions and internal exhibitions, often linked to wider events in the city and internationally.
Awards
Visit York Tourism Awards: Visitor Attraction of the Year 2016 (Over 50,000 Visitors category) (winner).
Art Fund: Museum of the Year 2016 (finalist).
Kids in Museums: Family Friendly Museum Award 2016 (winner).
European Museum Forum: European Museum of the Year 2017 (nominated). Special commendation received.
York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss. It is the county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a minster, castle, and city walls. It is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of the wider City of York district. Through the title of Duke of York, it is the namesake of New York City.
The city was founded under the name of Eboracum in 71 AD. It then became the capital of the Roman province of Britannia Inferior, and later of the kingdoms of Deira, Northumbria, and Scandinavian York. In the Middle Ages, it became the northern England ecclesiastical province's centre, and grew as a wool-trading centre. In the 19th century, it became a major railway network hub and confectionery manufacturing centre. In the Second World War, part of the Baedeker Blitz bombed the city. Although less targeted during the war than other, more industrialised northern cities, several historic buildings were gutted and restoration took place up until the 1960s.
The city is one of 15 in England to have a lord mayor, and one of three to have "The Right Honourable" title affixed, the others being London's and Bristol's. Historic governance of the city was as a county corporate, not included in the county's riding system. The city has since been covered by a municipal borough, county borough, and since 1996 a non-metropolitan district (the City of York), which also includes surrounding villages and rural areas, and the town of Haxby. The current district's local council is responsible for providing all local services and facilities throughout this area. York's built-up area had a population of 141,685 at the 2021 UK census, and the wider city (the local government district) had a population of 202,800, a 2.4% increase compared to the 2011 census.
The history of York, England, as a city dates to the beginning of the first millennium AD but archaeological evidence for the presence of people in the region of York dates back much further to between 8000 and 7000 BC. As York was a town in Roman times, its Celtic name is recorded in Roman sources (as Eboracum and Eburacum); after 400, Angles took over the area and adapted the name by folk etymology to Old English Eoforwīc or Eoforīc, which means "wild-boar town" or "rich in wild-boar". The Vikings, who took over the area later, in turn adapted the name by folk etymology to Norse Jórvík meaning "wild-boar bay", 'jór' being a contraction of the Old Norse word for wild boar, 'jǫfurr'. The modern Welsh name is Efrog.
After the Anglian settlement of the North of England, Anglian York was first capital of Deira and later Northumbria, and by the early 7th century, York was an important royal centre for the Northumbrian kings. Following the Norman Conquest of 1066 York was substantially damaged, but in time became an important urban centre as the administrative centre of the county of Yorkshire. York prospered during much of the later medieval era; the later years of the 14th and the earlier years of the 15th centuries were characterised by particular prosperity. During the English Civil War, the city was regarded as a Royalist stronghold and was besieged and eventually captured by Parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax in 1644. After the war, York retained its pre-eminence in the North, and, by 1660, was the third-largest city in England after London and Norwich.
Modern York has 34 Conservation Areas, 2,084 Listed buildings and 22 Scheduled Ancient Monuments in its care. Every year, thousands of tourists come to see the surviving medieval buildings, interspersed with Roman and Viking remains and Georgian architecture.
Archaeological evidence suggests that people were settled in the region of York between 8000 and 7000 BC, although it is not known if these were permanent or temporary settlements. Polished stone axes indicate the presence of people during the Neolithic period in the area where the city of York is now, especially on the south-west bank of the River Ouse, just outside the city centre near where Scarborough Bridge is now. Evidence for people continues into the Bronze Age with a hoard of flint tools and weapons found by Holgate Beck between the railway and the River Ouse, burials and bronzes found on both sides of the River Ouse and a beaker vessel found in Bootham. Iron Age burials have been found near the area on the south-west bank of the Ouse where the concentration of Neolithic axes was found. Few other finds from this period have been found in York itself, but evidence of a late Iron Age farmstead has been uncovered at Lingcroft Farm 3 miles (4.8 km) away at Naburn.
The Romans called the tribes in the region around York the Brigantes and the Parisii. York may have been on the border between these two tribes. During the Roman conquest of Britain the Brigantes became a Roman client state, but, when their leadership changed becoming more hostile to Rome, Roman General Quintus Petillius Cerialis led the Ninth Legion north of the Humber.
York was founded in 71 AD when Cerialis and the Ninth Legion constructed a military fortress (castra) on flat ground above the River Ouse near its junction with the River Foss. The fortress was later rebuilt in stone, covered an area of 50 acres, and was inhabited by 6,000 soldiers. The earliest known mention of Eburacum by name is from a wooden stylus tablet from the Roman fortress of Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall, dated to c. 95–104 AD, where it is called Eburaci. Much of the Roman fortress lies under the foundations of York Minster, and excavations in the Minster's undercroft have revealed some of the original walls.
At some time between 109 AD and 122 AD the garrison of the Ninth Legion was replaced by the Sixth Legion. There is no documented trace of the Ninth Legion after 117 AD, and various theories have been proposed as to what happened to it. The Sixth Legion remained in York until the end of Roman occupation about 400 AD. The Emperors Hadrian, Septimius Severus and Constantius I all held court in York during their various campaigns. During his stay, the Emperor Severus proclaimed York capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, and it is likely that it was he who granted York the privileges of a colonia or city. Constantius I died during his stay in York, and his son Constantine the Great was proclaimed Emperor by the troops based in the fortress.
Economically the military presence was important with workshops growing up to supply the needs of the 5,000 troops garrisoned there and in its early stages York operated a command economy. Production included military pottery until the mid-third century; military tile kilns have been found in the Aldwark-Peasholme Green area, glassworking at Coppergate, metalworks and leatherworks producing military equipment in Tanner Row. New trading opportunities led local people to create a permanent civilian settlement on the south-west bank of the River Ouse opposite the fortress. By 237 it had been made a colonia one of only four in Britain and the others were founded for retired soldiers. York was self-governing, with a council made up of rich locals, including merchants, and veteran soldiers.
Evidence of Roman religious beliefs in York have been found including altars to Mars, Hercules, Jupiter and Fortune, while phallic amulets are the most commonly found type of good luck charm. In terms of number of reference the most popular deities were the spiritual representation (genius) of York and the Mother Goddess; there is also evidence of local or regional deities. There was also a Christian community in York although it is not known when it was first formed and there is virtually no archaeological record of it. The first evidence of this community is a document noting the attendance of Bishop Eborius of Eboracum at the Council of Arles (314), and bishops also attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the Council of Serdica, and the Council of Ariminum.
By 400 AD York's fortunes had changed for the worse. The town was undergoing periodic winter floods from the rivers Ouse and Foss, its wharf-side facilities were buried under several feet of silt and the primary Roman bridge connecting the town with the fortress may have become derelict. By this time Eboracum was probably no longer a population centre, though it likely remained a centre of authority. While the colonia remained above flood levels, it was largely abandoned as well, retaining only a small ribbon of population for a time.
There is little written evidence about York in the centuries following the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410, a pattern repeated throughout Sub-Roman Britain. There is archaeological evidence for continued settlement at York near the Ouse in the 5th century, and private Roman houses, especially suburban villas, remained occupied after the Roman withdrawal.
Some scholars have suggested that York remained a significant regional centre for the Britons, based largely on literary evidence. Several manuscripts of the Historia Brittonum, written c. 830, contain a list of 28 or 33 "civitates", originally used to describe British tribal centres under Roman rule but here translated as Old Welsh cair (caer) and probably indicating "fortified cities". Among these settlements is Cair Ebrauc. Later, the text states that Ida was the first Anglian king of Bernicia and ruler over Cair Ebrauc. These are generally taken as references to a successor to old Roman Eburacum. This mention has led to speculation about Ebrauc in post-Roman times.
Christopher Allen Snyder makes note of the evidence for Eboracum continuing to function, perhaps as a military outpost or the seat of a minor kingdom based on some old territory of the Brigantes. Snyder cites historian and archaeologist Nick Higham in saying that the settlement had declined so much by the end of the Roman period that it was unlikely to have been a significant post-Roman regional centre.
Scholar Peter Field suggests that the City of Legions (urbs legionum) mentioned by Gildas in his 6th-century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a reference to York, rather than Caerleon; if this were the case it could provide some contemporary information about Ebrauc.
A Peredur son of Efrawg is the hero of a 12th- or 13th-century Welsh romance; this would have been a variant of Ebrauc along with "Efrawg" or "Efrog", suggesting the city had royal associations in later tradition.
What later became parts of the North Riding and City of York were conquered by a Bythonic to early Angle version of Deira, Based around the Derwent.
Angles settled in the area in the early 5th century. Cemeteries that are identifiably Anglian date from this period. Cremation cemeteries from the 6th century have been excavated close to York on The Mount and at Heworth; there are, however, few objects from inside the city, and whether York was settled at all at this period remains unclear. The fortress's fate after 400 AD is not clear, it is unlikely to have been a base of Romano-British power in opposition to the Anglians. Flooded area reclamation would not be initiated until the 7th century under Edwin of Northumbria. After Angle settlement of Northern England, York was the Anglo-capital of Deira and one of the capitals when the kingdom united with Bernicia, later known as Northumbria.
By the early 7th century, York was an important royal centre for the Northumbrian kings, for it was here that Paulinus of York (later St Paulinus) came to set up his wooden church, the precursor of York Minster, and it was here that King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised in 627. The first Minster is believed to have been built in 627, although the location of the early Minster is a matter of dispute.
Throughout the succeeding centuries, York remained an important royal and ecclesiastical centre, the seat of a bishop, and later, from 735, of an archbishop. Very little about Anglian York is known and few documents survive. It is known that the building and rebuilding of the Minster was carried out, along with the construction of a thirty-altar church dedicated to Alma Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which may have been on the same site.
York became a centre of learning under Northumbrian rule, with the establishment of the library and school, the ancestor of St Peter's School. Alcuin, later adviser to Charlemagne, was its most distinguished pupil and then master.
Of this great royal and ecclesiastical centre, little is yet known archaeologically. Excavations on the Roman fortress walls have shown that they may have survived more or less intact for much of their circuit, and the Anglian Tower, a small square tower built to fill a gap in the Roman way, may be a repair of the Anglian period. The survival of the walls and gates shows that the Roman street pattern survived, at least in part, inside the fortress. Certainly excavations beneath York Minster have shown that the great hall of the Roman headquarters building still stood and was used until the 9th century.
By the 8th century York was an active commercial centre with established trading links to other areas of England, northern France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland. Excavations near the junction of the River Foss and River Ouse in Fishergate found buildings dating from the 7th and 9th century. These were located away from the Roman centre of the city may form a trading settlement that served the royal and ecclesiastical century. This and other discoveries indicate an occupation pattern during the 7th to 9th century that followed the line of the rivers, creating a long linear settlement along the River Ouse and extending along some of the River Foss.
In November 866 AD a large army of Danish Vikings, called the "Great Heathen Army", captured York, unopposed due to conflict in the Kingdom of Northumbria. The next year they held the city when the Northumbrians tried to retake it; the army left the same year putting a local puppet king in charge of York and the area around York they controlled. The army returned in 875 and its leader Halfdan took control of York. From York, Viking kings ruled an area, known to historians as "The Kingdom of Jorvik", with Danes migrating and settling in large numbers in the Kingdom and in York. In York the Old Norse placename Konungsgurtha, Kings Court, recorded in the late 14th century in relation to an area immediately outside the site of the porta principalis sinistra, the west gatehouse of the Roman encampment, perpetuated today as King's Square, perhaps indicates a Viking royal palace site based on the remains of the east gate of the Roman fortress. In 954 the last Viking king, Eric Bloodaxe, was expelled and his kingdom was incorporated in the newly consolidated Anglo-Saxon state.
A renowned scholar of this era was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York.
Several churches were built in York during the Viking Age including St Olave's, built before 1055 on Marygate, which is dedicated to St. Olaf King of Norway and St Mary Bishophill Junior which has a 10th century tower whose height was increased in the early 11th century.
Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, York was substantially damaged by the punitive harrying of the north (1069) launched by William the Conqueror in response to regional revolt. Two castles were erected in the city on either side of the River Ouse. In time York became an important urban centre as the administrative centre of the county of Yorkshire, as the seat of an archbishop, and at times in the later 13th and 14th centuries as an alternative seat of royal government. It was an important trading centre. Several religious houses were founded following the Conquest, including St Mary's Abbey and Holy Trinity Priory. The city as a possession of the crown also came to house a substantial Jewish community under the protection of the sheriff.
On 16 March 1190 a mob of townsfolk forced the Jews in York to flee into the castle keep (later replaced by Clifford's Tower), which was under the control of the sheriff. The castle was set on fire and the Jews were massacred. It is likely that various local magnates who were debtors of the Jews helped instigate this massacre or, at least, did nothing to prevent it. It came during a time of widespread attacks against Jews in Britain. The Jewish community in York did recover after the massacre and a Jewish presence remained in York until the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290.
York prospered during much of the later medieval era. Twenty-one medieval parish churches survive in whole or in part, though only eight of these are regularly used for worship. Many medieval era timber-framed buildings survive in the city. While Slum clearances in the 19th century removed some of the more decrepit ancient examples of medieval architecture in the city, such as the medieval Water Lanes, streets such as The Shambles still survive to this day. The Shambles mostly date from the later medieval era with many examples of timber-framed shops with overhanging upper floors. The street was originally occupied by butchers but is now a popular tourist attraction consisting of mostly souvenir shops. Some retain the outdoor shelves and the hooks on which meat was displayed. The medieval city walls, with their entrance gates, known as bars, encompassed virtually the entire city and survive to this day. The city was also designated as a county corporate, giving it effective county status.
The later years of the 14th and the earlier years of the 15th centuries were characterised by particular prosperity. It is in this period that the York Mystery Plays, a regular cycle of religious pageants (or plays) associated with the Corpus Christi cycle and performed by the various craft guilds grew up. Among the more important personages associated with this period was Nicholas Blackburn senior, Lord Mayor in 1412 and a leading merchant. He is depicted with his wife Margaret Blackburn in glass in the (now) east window of All Saints' Church in North Street. There seems to have been economic contraction and a dwindling in York's regional importance in the period from the later 15th century. The construction of the city's new Guildhall around the middle of the century can be seen as an attempt to project civic confidence in the face of growing uncertainty. Brandsby-type ware and Humber ware ceramics were popular in the city at this time.
Few buildings of significance were put up in the century after the completion of the Minster in 1472, the exceptions being the completion of the King's Manor (which from 1537 to 1641 housed the Council of the North) and the rebuilding of the church of St. Michael le Belfrey, where Guy Fawkes was baptised in 1570.
During the dissolution of the monasteries all the monastic institutions in the City were closed including St. Leonards Hospital and in 1539 St. Mary's Abbey. In 1547, fifteen parish churches were closed, reducing their number from forty to twenty-five, a reflection of the decline in the city's population. Despite the English Reformation making the practice of Roman Catholicism illegal, a Catholic Christian community remained in York although this was mainly in secret. Its members included St. Margaret Clitherow who was executed in 1586 for harbouring a priest and Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
Following his break with Parliament, King Charles I established his Court in York in 1642 for six months. Subsequently, during the English Civil War, the city was regarded as a Royalist stronghold and was besieged and eventually captured by Parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax in 1644. After the war, York slowly regained its former pre-eminence in the North, and, by 1660, was the third-largest city in England after London and Norwich.
In 1686 the Bar Convent was founded, in secret due to anti-catholic Laws, making it the oldest surviving convent in England.
York elected two members to the Unreformed House of Commons.
The Judges Lodgings is a Grade I listed townhouse that was built between 1711 and 1726 and later used to house judges when they attended the quarterly sessions of the Assizes at York Castle.
On 22 March 1739 the highwayman Dick Turpin was convicted at the York Grand Jury House of horse-stealing, and was hanged at the Knavesmire on 7 April 1739. Turpin is buried in the churchyard of St George's Church, where his tombstone also shows his alias, John Palmer.
In 1740, the city's first hospital, York County Hospital, opened in Monkgate and it moved into larger premises in 1745. The building was funded by public subscription. The building was expanded on the same site in 1851, and finally closed in 1976 when York District Hospital was opened.
In 1796 Quaker William Tuke founded The Retreat, a hospital for the mentally ill, situated in the east of the city outside the city walls, which used moral treatment.
The Yorkshire Museum was opened in 1830, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its first meeting here in 1831.
Largely thanks to the efforts of "Railway King" George Hudson, York became a major centre for the railways during the 19th century, a status it maintained well into the 20th century. The Colliergate drill hall was completed in 1872 and the Tower Street drill hall was completed in 1885.
On 29 April 1942, York was bombed as part of the retaliatory Baedeker Blitz by the German Luftwaffe; 92 people were killed and hundreds injured. Buildings damaged in the raid included the Railway Station, Rowntree's Factory, St Martin-le-Grand Church, the Bar Convent and the Guildhall which was completely gutted and not restored until 1960.
During the Cold War the headquarters of the Number 20 Group, Royal Observer Corps was moved to the newly constructed York Cold War Bunker in the Holgate area of town. It was opened on 16 December 1961, was in operation until 1991, and was then turned into a museum owned by English Heritage. In 1971 York was made an army Saluting Station, firing gun salutes five times a year such as the Queen's Birthday. The date marked 1900 years of army in York. The University of York was launched on sites at Heslington and the King's Manor and took its first students in 1963. In 1975 the National Railway Museum was opened, near the centre of York.
In October and November 2000 the River Ouse rose and York experienced very severe flooding; over 300 houses were flooded though no-one was seriously hurt.
Taken on a delivery job to North Eastern England, the operator recipient apparently shared this company's (Skelton Mini Buses) facilities. Sadly I believe, my friend and customer never did receive his full payment, but that's another story. The yard scene is typical of many an independent's premisis at the end of the 1980s/ early '90s, with several examples of the Bedford marque in evidence. Two are worthy of note, the green and white liveried one on the far right being a late model VAM, and the one second to the left standing proud seems to have received a little Supreme trim to it's Elite front end. By this time, Elites of any sort were a touch thin on the ground.
For a while now I have been in discussions with LSU Press about writing a book. As you can see above, the contract finally got signed today. The book is going to be called Water Under Everything. For those of you who don’t happen to be obsessive Eudora Welty fans, the title comes from a short story she published in the New Yorker in 1952 titled, No Place For You My Love.
It tells the story of two single people who are seated together at a brunch at Galatoire's. After getting to know each other a bit they decide to drive out of New Orleans and down to Venice at the tip of where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf. The story is about the way Louisiana changes as it descends towards the water and about how the people change as well. At one point a character in the story say “The water was under everything.”
Anyone who has been to Grand Isle or who has thought much about the physical nature of the state of Louisiana can attest that this description fits the state as a whole. Water Under Everything will be about that Louisiana, the constantly changing, green, slipping, aquatic, half-mad world that is everywhere a place unto itself. In short, it is going to be about what I love about Louisiana and the things I fear are threatening our own unique corner of the world.
I put together a little reading list to get me started and I am listing it below. If you have suggestions then please say so, but I am trying to limit the total number of books to around 10. I have read most of the ones listed below but it never hurts to re-familiarize yourself with the masters. I am also taking suggestions for chapter subjects. Each chapter will deal with a different place, festival, restaurant or town. So, let me know a little about your favorites. I am sure you will be hearing more about it as the project moves forward. And, by the way, you now can stop worrying about what you are going to get everyone for Christmas 2013.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Check out more at my blog, Lemons and Beans, for lots of photos, recipes, travel writing and other ramblings. I appreciate any feedback but, please do not post graphic awards or invitations in the comments, I'm just not crazy about them. Also, if you want to use any of my Commercial Commons licensed photos please link the attribution back to my blog (listed above) and use my full name, Frank McMains. Thanks! Sorry, but you have to pay to use fully copyright protected photos.
This vehicle was on soon to be withdrawn KCC Contracted Route 58 from Maidstone Hospital to Trotiscliffe and Wrotham Heath, and was seen passing the Duke Wellington Pub at Ryarsh near West Malling, though this is not the best shot as I wasn't able to get into position for a better angle: www.flickr.com/photos/69558134@N05/52009211573/.
And be sure to check by my other acount: www.flickr.com/photos_user.gne?path=&nsid=77145939%40..., to see what else I saw Last Week!!
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
Following Hungary's membership of NATO in 1999, there were several proposals to achieve a NATO-compatible fighter force. Considerable attention went into studying second-hand aircraft options as well as modifying the nation's existing MiG-29 fleet. In 2001, Hungary received several offers of new and used aircraft from various nations, including Sweden, Belgium, Israel, Turkey, and the US. Although the Hungarian government initially intended to procure the F-16, in November 2001 it was in the process of negotiating a 10-year lease contract for 12 Gripen aircraft from Sweden, with an option to purchase the aircraft at the end of the lease period.
As part of the procurement arrangements, Saab had offered an offset deal valued at 110 per cent of the cost of the 14 fighters. Initially, Hungary had planned to lease several Batch II Saab 39s; however, the inability to conduct aerial refueling and weapons compatibility limitations had generated Hungarian misgivings. The contract was then renegotiated and eventually signed on 2 February 2003 for a total of 14 Gripens, which had originally been A/B standard and had undergone an extensive upgrade process to the NATO-compatible C/D 'Export Gripen' standard. At the same time, the need for an advanced jet trainer as a replacement for the Hungarian Air Force’s last eight MiG-21UM aircraft became more and more imminent. The Gripen two-seaters alone could not cope with this task and were operationally too expensive to be used as trainers, so that Hungary requested an additional offer for a small number of Sk 90 trainers from Swedish surplus stock.
Developed under the designation FSK900, the Saab Sk 90 was a replacement for the Saab 105 (also known as Saab Sk 60) transitional trainer, light attack and reconnaissance aircraft. The FSK900 was a conservative design, with a configurational resemblance to the Dassault-Dornier Alpha Jet, even though the FSK900 was overall bigger and heavier, and the two machines could be easily told apart at a glance.
The Swedish Air Force accepted Saab’s design, leading to a contract for two nonflying static-test airframes and four flying prototypes. Detail design was complete by the end of 1993 and prototype construction began in the spring of 1994, leading to the initial prototype’s first flight on 29 July 1994. The first production Sk 90 A, how the basic trainer type was officially dubbed, was delivered to the Swedish Air Force in 1996.
A total of 108 production Sk 90s were built until 1999 for Sweden in several versions. The initial Sk 90 A trainer was the most common variant and the basis for the Sk 90 B version, which carried a weather radar as well as more sophisticated avionics that enabled the deployment of a wider range of weapons and other ordnance. However, this version was not adopted by the Swedish air force but exported to Austria as the Sk 90 Ö. Another variant was the S 90 C (for “Spaning” = reconnaissance); a small number was produced with a set of cameras in the nose for the Swedish Air Force, where it replaced the ground attack/reconnaissance Sk 60 Cs.
In service, the Sk 90 was regarded as strong, agile, and pleasant to fly, while being cheap to operate. But despite its qualities and potential, the Sk 90 did not attain much foreign interest, primarily suffering from bad timing and from the focus on domestic demands. The aircraft came effectively 10 years too late to become a serious export success, and in the end the Sk 90 was very similar to the Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet (even though it was cheaper to operate), at a time when the German Luftwaffe started to prematurely phase out its attack-capable variant and flooded the global market with cheap secondhand aircraft in excellent condition. Furthermore, the Saab Sk 90 had on the global market with the BAe Hawk another proven competitor with a long and positive operational track record all over the world.
Beyond Hungary, potential Sk 90 buyers were Malaysia as well as Singapore, Myanmar, Finland, and Poland. Austria eventually procured 36 Sk 90 Ö in 2002, replacing its Saab 105 fleet and keeping up its close connection with Saab since the Seventies. A late operator became the independent Republic of Scotland in 2017, with a dozen leased secondhand Saab Sk 90 A trainers which were later purchased.
The Swedish Sk 90 offer for Hungary was a 10-year lease contract similar to the Gripen package, and comprised five refurbished Sk 90 A trainers from the first production batch, which had been stored in Sweden for spares. The Hungarian Sk 90 deal also included an option to purchase the aircraft at the end of their lease period. In parallel, to save maintenance costs for the relatively small fleet of a completely new/different aircraft type, an agreement with neighboring neutral Austria could be arranged to outsource major overhauls to the Austrian Air Force and its newly established Sk 90 Ö service base at Linz – a deal from which both sides benefited. However, to improve flight safety over Austria’s mountainous terrain during these transfer flights, the Hungarian Sk 90 As had a simple navigational radar retrofitted with a small radome in their noses. Otherwise, the machines were basically identical with the original Swedish aircraft.
The aircraft were flown under civil registration from Sweden to Hungary between April and September 2005. To keep the distance to their Austrian service station short, the machines were not allocated to the 59th Air Regiment at Kecskemét Air Base, where the Hungarian Gripen fleet was based, but rather to the 47th Air Regiment at Pápa Air Base in Northwestern Hungary, where the last Hungarian MiG-21UM trainers had been operated. These were fully retired in 2008.
Beyond their primary role as advanced/jet conversion trainers, the Hungarian Sk 90 As were also intended to be used for tactical reconnaissance duties with Orpheus pods with daylight cameras and an infrared line scanner, inherited from the Italian Air Force, as light attack aircraft and ─ armed with gun pods and air-to-air missiles ─ as (anti-tank) helicopter hunters. Reflecting these low-level tasks, the machines received a tactical camouflage in green and tan, similar to the former MiG-21s, instead of the Gripens’ all-grey air superiority scheme.
While the Hungarian Air Force operated its total of 14 Gripen and 5 Sk 90 aircraft under lease, in 2011, the country reportedly intended to purchase these aircraft outright. However, in January 2012, the Hungarian and Swedish governments agreed to extend the lease period for a further ten years. According to Hungarian Defence Minister Csaba Hende, this agreement represented considerable cost savings, so that the running business model was retained. The service agreement with Austria could be extended, too.
One Sk 90 A was lost in a landing accident in May 2016, and two Gripens had to be written off through accidents in the meantime, too. To fill these gaps, Hungary signed a replacement contract in 2018 to come back to its full fleet of 14 Gripen, and the Sk 90 A fleet was expanded to seven aircraft. These new machines were delivered in 2019.
General characteristics:
Crew: two pilots in tandem
Length incl. pitot: 13.0 m (42 ft 8 in)
Wingspan: 9.94 m (32 ft 7 in)
Height: 4.6 m (15 ft 1 in)
Empty weight: 3,790 kg (8,360 lb)
Max. takeoff weight: 7,500 kg (16,530 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Williams International FJ44-4M turbofans without reheat, rated at 16.89 kN (3,790 lbst) each
Performance:
Maximum speed: 1,038 km/h (645 mph)
Stall speed: 167 km/h (104 mph, 90 kn)
Range: 1,670 km (900 nm; 1,036 m) with two 450 L (99 imp gal; 120 US gal) drop tanks
Service ceiling: 15,240 m (50,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 51 m/s (10,000 ft/min)
Armament:
No internal gun; five hardpoints for 2,500 kg (5,500 lb) of payload and a variety of ordnance,
including AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and a conformal, ventral gun pod (not used by the Hungarian
Air Force, instead, UPK-23-250 pods with a fixed twin-barrel GSh-23L cannon and 200-250 rounds
were carried under the fuselage and/or the inner wing hardpoints)
The kit and its assembly:
This additional member of my fictional Sk 90 family came spontaneously when I studied information concerning the MiG-21. I came across the Hungarian trainers and wondered with what they could have been replaced after 2000 – and “my” fictional Sk 90 came to my mind. I also had a suitable decal set in store, so I dug out a(nother) Hasegawa T-4 and created this whiffy Hungarian variant.
The kit is the old/first T-4 mold; Hasegawa did the T-4 twice, and both kits differ considerably from each other in their construction. The first one has a fuselage consisting of two simple halves with separate wings attached to it; the later mold features a separate cockpit section and a single dorsal wing section, so that the wings’ anhedral is ensured upon assembly.
The air intakes are also different: the old mold features ducts which are open at their ends, while the new mold comes with additional inserts for the intakes which end in a concave wall, making them hard to paint. The fin of the old kit consists of two full halves, while the new one has the rudder molded into just one half of the fin for a thinner trailing edge. The same goes for the wings’ upper halves: on the new mold, they comprise the full flaps and ailerons, while the old kit has them split up, resulting in a marginally thicker training edge. However, you can hardly recognize this and it’s IMHO not a flaw.
Personally, I prefer the old kit, because it is much more straightforward and pleasant to build – even though some details like the main landing gear struts are better on the new mold.
The (old) kit itself is relatively simple and fit is quite good, even though some PSR was necessary on almost every seam. The only mods I made are additional emergency handles on the seats (made from thin wire), and I added an Orpheus recce pod under the fuselage with an integral pylon, left over from an Italeri F-104G kit. The OOB underwing pylons were used, together with the original drop tanks.
Painting and markings:
The prime reason for a Hungarian Sk 90 was the paint scheme, and the fact that I have a sweet spot for Hungary in genarl. The livery was adapted from the late Hungarian MiG-21bis, a more or less symmetrical pattern consisting of a yellowish light tan and a bluish dark green, with light blue undersides. It’s actually a very simple paint scheme, and my adaptation is a free interpretation, since the T-4’s layout with shoulder-mounted wings is quite different from the sleek Fishbed with mid-mounted delta wings.
Finding good color matches was not easy, because pictures of reference Hungarian MiG-21s show a wide variety of green and brown shades, even though I assume that this is just weathering. I found some good pictures of a late MiG-21UM trainer with an apparently fresh paint job, and these suggested a hard contrast between the upper tones. With this benchmark I settled for Humbrol 63 (Sand), and Modelmaster 2091 (RLM 82, Dunkelgrün). The undersides were painted with Humbrol 47 (Sea Blue Gloss), since they appeared rather bright and pale in reference pictures.
The cockpit interior was painted in medium grey (Revell 47), the landing gear and the air intakes in white (Revell 301), very conservative. The Orpheus pod was painted in light grey (FS 36375, Humbrol 127) to set it apart from the light blue undersurfaces. The drop tanks were painted in green and blue.
National markings, the large orange “47” decoration and the small emblems on nose and fin came from a Mistercraft MiG-21UM decal sheet. The tactical code in red, etched with white, was created with single digits from a Hungarian Aero Decals (HAD) sheet for Mi-24s, reflecting the aircraft’s (fictional) serial numbers’ final three digits.
Finally, after some light weathering and post-shading (for a slightly sun-bleached look, esp. on the upper surfaces), the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).
Number four in my growing Sk 90 family, and certainly not the last one. A quick and simple project since the model itself was built almost OOB, and the “old” Hasegawa T-4 is really a simple build. However, I am amazed (once more) how much potential a T-4 travesty bears: even in Hungarian colors and markings this whif looks disturbingly convincing. The green/brown/blue paint scheme suits the aircraft well, too, even though it looks a lot like an Alpha Jet now, and there’s even a Su-25ish look to it?!
Copenhagen Movia´s sole contracted 12m CNG bus . Due to a bus shortage some bus is better than no bus! For afternoon peak this gas bus made probably its 1st visit to route 10 covering for a Volvo B7RLE - it has defective destinations which explains why it was available when workshop needed to make up a shortfall