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John Lilburne, d.1678, citizen and grocer, of the Lilburn family of Sunderland, and his wife Isabella. The earliest monument in the Church, and certainly very sculptural. It is a pillar monument, that is to say a plaque which is curved to better fit to a pillar in the Church. The Latin inscription is in a delicate oval wreath of linked flowers or buds, with to left and right little standing figures of the couple, he with cloak and long flowing hair above a tunic, with big cuffs and slender shoes, she a slender wasted figure with long, flaring skirt, puffed out bodice and again drapes over and behind her head. A charming pose with her arms crossed in front of her. Below, winged cherubic heads and a knotted fabric, above, a flanking pair of particularly horrible cherubs, one apparently sucking on some stick, with between them a high relief sculpture of a woman dancing with Death, who is a skeleton wearing a long skirt, above a festoon of flowers. On top of the whole, a coat of arms with large acanthus leaf surround, and little helmet. All in white marble; a skilfully executed and inventive monument.
The Coventry Martyrs Memorial, Coventry, West Midlands (34/52)
Granite monument erected in 1910 commemorating Coventry Martyrs executed during 16th century.
The memorial is surrounded by junction 5 of the cities ring road.
Please, if you have some extra browsing time have a look at the rest of my 'Project 52 2024' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72177720313921683
Please, if you have even more time, have a browse at my previous years projects:-
'Project 52 2013' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157632445195620
'Project 52 2014' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157639407666594
'Project 52 2015' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157650090374041
'Project 52 2016' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157660757070783
'Project 52 2017' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157677419784130
'Project 52 2018' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157689104924052
'Project 52 2019' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157702107071042
'Project 52 2020' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157712523161043
'Project 52 2021' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72157717690744777
'Project 52 2022' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72177720295823113
'Project 52 2023' photo set www.flickr.com/photos/29663856@N03/albums/72177720305238552
Egypt 1936: Indiana Jones has failed. He was somehow captured and executed by the Nazis. Fortunately, the Ark was not found. It is still hidden in Tanis beneath the dunes. Now... 14 sets of people have been chosen to be sent back to the thirties to hunt the
ark...
The rules: find the Ark. And deliver it safely to the Allied nations before the Nazis find it.
May the best combatant win!
SCENARIO:
In the desert....
A wormhole opens and drops two individuals into the sand... One clad in a flanel shirt and jeans, the other his wife. Kenny and Becca receive their instructions and look out at the soldier infested dig site...
Nathan and Ashley find themselves in the desert as well. They know their job, and Nathan looks out at the surroundings, picking up on details only an absolute movie geek would even know. He tightens his fedora and strides forward, wife in hand.
A small door appears in the sand. Out walks a young blonde girl who just received directions from a white rabbit. "Curiouser and curiouser...."
A small tornado drops a house in the dunes. As the door creaks open a young brunette and her dog realize they aren't in Kansas anymore....
In the camp the Nazis.... A robed man is yanked into a tent. A minute later the same man appears again. Or does he? Look closely and you can see that this man has green feet and two toes. Leonardo's eyes look forward with purpose as he seeks anyone with answers...
Another portal drops a well dressed man with a panama hat in the sand. Juan Valdez screams as his pot of Columbian coffee spills on his hand. He stands, and with a quizzical look says, "Que?"
Explosions rock the front lines and a bearded man breaks another soldier's neck. Chuck Norris, cowboy hat and all, as arrived. He grabs the only remaining German soldier by the neck and slams him into a truck. "Where is the Ark....?"
After draining his Canteen full of cookie dough down his throat, Cookie Monster continues his trek towards the Archaelogical dig. Willing and ready to find the Ark, which he plans to fill with Milanos....
A similar portal drops a small white glove in the kitchen area of the Nazi camp. He contemplates two things.... One: How Cheeseburger helper would make even these meals better and Two: How does one hand carry an Ark?
A Disc like craft crashes into the nearby desert. A tentacled being crawls from the wreckage and initates the self destruct and blows the craft apart. The creature had been promised that the artifact he searches for will guarantee a future victory over Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum....
Sweating and breathing heavily, William Shatner (NOT Kirk) struggles to reach the camp in time. The whole time wondering what sort of deals Priceline may have on Hotels locally.....
The door to the weapons bunker creaks open... Bill Nye in a blue overcoat enters and looks the situation over. Wondering what he may be able to construct to save the Ark and save the future...
Slave One lands, allowing the most feared bounty hunter in the "Galaxy far, far away" to search for his most expensive bounty yet. Boba Fett cocks his gun, and slowly moves toward the site...
Billy Mays uses a Zorbeez to wipe the sweat off his brow. He curses Vince Offer as his towel is nowhere near as absorbent as ShamWow. He secretly wishes that the Ark could be found with 5 easy payment of $19.95....
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Cette statue avait été exécutée à la fin du XVIIIe siècle pour Mlle Clairon, célèbre actrice du Théâtre-Français, et décorait la maison qu'elle avait achetée en 1786 à Issy, près de Paris. Sur le socle, elle avait fait graver deux vers de Voltaire:
"qui que tu sois, voici ton maître:
il l'est, le fut, ou le doit être!"
Achetée ensuite par A. D. Cromot de Fougy, conseiller du roi, l'oeuvre fut transférée sous la Révolution au dépôt du château de Sceaux, puis exposée au musée des Monuments français où elle figura de 1796 à 1806. En 1807, le ministre de l'Intérieur Champagny signa l'ordre de la transférer à Malmaison, où elle était destinée à orner le nouveau temple de l'Amour construit dans le parc de l'impératrice en bordure de la rivière anglaise. Ce petit bâtiment de forme classique, surélevé sur un podium de quatre marches, présentait en façade un fronton décoré d'une couronne de fleurs encadrées par des rubans et six colonnes en marbre des Flandres. Pour compléter ce décor, des vases de fleurs furent installés à l'entrée et des massifs de rhododendrons plantés sur les berges de la rivière.
C'est à l'intérieur de ce temple, sous la voûte ornée de rosaces, que fut placée la statue de Tassaert. Ce sculpteur anversois, qui étudia à Londres puis à Paris, fut agréé à l'Académie en 1769 et réalisa également deux statues de Louis XV et une de Madame de Pompadour en Diane. Appelé à Berlin en 1775 par le roi de Prusse Frédéric II comme sculpteur officiel de sa cour, il y fut très actif, décorant les divers châteaux royaux jusqu'à sa mort en 1788.
En 1877, lors de la vente du domaine de Malmaison, cette sculpture entra dans les collections du musée du Louvre, qui la déposa au château en 1970.
Webster Replying to Senator Hayne, the centerpiece painting in the Great Hall at Faneuil Hall, was executed by artist George Peter Alexander Healy from 1843-1850. The largest painting in the Hall's collection, it depicts Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster debating with South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne on preserving the Union when the country was on the brink of the Civil War.
Faneuil Hall, part of the Boston National Historical Park and a well-known stop along the Freedom Trail, has served as a marketplace and meeting hall since 1742. Known as the "Cradle of Liberty", it was the site of several important events of the American Revolution including James Otis' re-dedication address in 1763, Samuel Adams' impassioned plea following the Boston Massacre in 1970 that eventually led to the establishment of the Committee of Correspondence here in 1772, and the first meeting in protest of the imposed tea tax in 1773 that ultimately led to the Boston Tea Party.
The original Hall was built by artist John Smibert in 1740–1742 in the style of an English country market, with an open ground floor and an assembly room above. The 38-pound, 52-inch gilded grasshopper weathervane on top of the building was created by silversmith Shem Drowne in 1742 and was modeled on the grasshopper weathervane on the London Royal Exchange. Funded by a wealthy Boston merchant, Peter Faneuil, who died shortly after the building was completed. Almost destroyed by a fire in 1761, it was rebuilt with funds raised by the state lottery and re-opened in 1763.
By 1806, the city had outgrown the hall and Charles Bulfinch was commissioned to expand the building--doubling the height and width, while managing to keep intact the walls from the original structure. Four new bays were added, to make seven in all; a third floor was added; the open arcades were enclosed; and the cupola was centered and moved to the east end of the building. Bulfinch applied Doric brick pilasters to the lower two floors, with Ionic pilasters on the third floor. This renovation added galleries around the assembly hall and increased its height. The building was entirely rebuilt in 1898–1899, of noncombustible materials. The building underwent a major internal renovation during the 1970's.
Faneuil Hall is now part of the larger Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which includes three long granite buildings called North Market, Quincy Market, and South Market. Its success in the late 1970s led to the emergence of similar marketplaces in other U.S. cities. Inside the Hall are dozens of paintings of famous Americans, including the mural of Webster's Reply to Hayne and Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington at Dorchester Heights. The first floor operates as a market, while the second floor is taken up by the Great Hall, where Boston's town meetings were once held. The third floor houses the museum and armory of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. Founded in 1638, this is the oldest military company in the US, and considered the third oldest in the world.
In recent history, Faneuil Hall was the home to President John F. Kennedy's last campaign speech and Senator John Kerry's concession speech in the 2004 presidential election.
The Marketplace fronted by Miss Anne Whitney's Samuel Adams statue on Congress Street.
In 2007, Faneuil Hall Marketplace was ranked #64 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
In 2008, Faneuil Hall was ranked #4 in America's 25 Most Visited Tourist Sites by Forbes Traveler.
National Historic Register #66000368
Below is a list of notable people buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Thomas Ashe - died on hunger strike in 1917
Kevin Barry - a medical student executed by the British for his role in the Irish War of Independence. (His body was moved from Mountjoy Prison to Glasnevin in October 2001, having been accorded a state funeral.)
Piaras Beaslai - Easter Rising survivor turned writer
Sir Alfred Chester Beatty - art collector
Brendan Behan - author and playwright
Harry Boland - friend of Michael Collins and anti-Treaty politician. Image of Harry Boland's grave
Christy Brown - writer of My Left Foot and subject of the film of the same name
Father Francis Browne - Jesuit priest and photographer who took the last known photographs of RMS Titanic
Cathal Brugha - first President of Dáil Éireann (January - April 1919) Image of Cathal Brugha's grave
Sir Roger Casement - Human rights campaigner turned Irish revolutionary, executed by the British in 1916.2Image of Casement grave
Robert Erskine Childers - Irish republican and Treaty signatory executed by the Irish Free State government during the Irish Civil War. Erskine Childers' grave, located in the Republican Plot.
J. J. Clancy - Irish Nationalist MP (1847-1928)
Michael Collins - assassinated republican leader, Anglo-Irish Treaty signatory & first internationally recognised Irish head of government.
Dáithí Ó Conaill - a founder member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Roddy Connolly - socialist politician and son of James Connolly.
Andy Cooney - Irish republican
John Philpot Curran - patriotic barrister, renowned wit, lawyer on behalf of Wolfe Tone and other United Irishmen, Sarah Curran's father.
William Dargan - Ireland's rail pioneer
Charlotte Despard
Éamon de Valera - 3rd President of Ireland (1959-1973) and dominant leader of 20th century.
Sinéad de Valera - wife of Éamon de Valera, buried in the same plot.
Anne Devlin - famed housekeeper of Robert Emmet
John Devoy - Fenian leader. Image of John Devoy's grave.
John Blake Dillon - Irish writer and politician
Martin Doherty IRA member
Frank Duff - founder of the Legion of Mary
James Fitzmaurice - aviation pioneer
Edmund Dwyer Gray - Irish 19th century MP, son of Sir John Gray.
Sir John Gray - Irish 19th century MP. Image of Sir John Gray's gravestone
Maud Gonne - nationalist campaigner, love of W.B. Yeats's life, famed beauty and mother of Nobel & Lenin Peace Prize winner Seán MacBride, who is buried in the grave also. Image of Maud Gonne & Seán MacBride's grave
Arthur Griffith - President of Dáil Éireann (January - August 1922).
Joseph Patrick Haverty - Irish painter
Tim Healy - 1st Governor-General of the Irish Free State. image of Tim Healy's grave.
Denis Caulfield Heron - lawyer and politician
Gerard Manley Hopkins - poet
Peadar Kearney - composer of the Irish National Anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann
Kitty Kiernan - fiancée of Michael Collins
James Larkin - Irish trade union leader and founder of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU).
Seán MacBride - founder of Clann na Poblachta and a founder-member of Amnesty International.
Edward Cardinal MacCabe - late 19th century Archbishop of Dublin & Primate of Ireland. Image of the elaborate monument to Cardinal MacCabe.
Dick McKee - prominent member of the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence.
Terence MacManus - Irish rebel and shipping agent.
James Patrick Mahon - Irish nationalist politician and mercenary.
Countess Constance Markiewicz - first woman elected to the British House of Commons and a minister in the first Irish government.
Manchester Martyrs - gravestone honouring three members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood known in history as the Manchester Martyrs who were in fact buried in the grounds of a British prison following their execution by the British.
Dermot Morgan - Irish satirist and star of Father Ted. He was cremated in Glasnevin but is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery.
Kate Cruise O'Brien - writer & publisher. This is not Kate O'Brien who is buried in Faversham Cemetery.
Daniel O'Connell - dominant Irish political leader from 1820s to 1840s. O'Connell's tomb under the specially built round tower O'Connell's tomb interior
Patrick Denis O'Donnell - well-known Irish military historian, writer, and former UN peace-keeper.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa - Fenian leader. Patrick Pearse's oration at his funeral in 1915 has gone down in history.
Eoin O'Duffy - Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and leader of The Blueshirts.
Thomas O'Hagan, 1st Baron O'Hagan - Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Kevin O'Higgins - assassinated Vice-President of the Executive Council.
Seán T. O'Kelly - 2nd President of Ireland (1945-1959).
John O'Mahony - a founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
John O' Leary (Fenian poet) [1]
James O'Mara - nationalist leader and member of the First Dáil
Henry O'Neill - painter and archaeologist.
Charles Stewart Parnell - dominant Irish political leader from 1875 to 1891.
Patrick (P.J.) Ruttledge - Minister in Éamon de Valera's early governments.
Daniel D. Sheehan - first independent Irish labour MP.
Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington - founder of Irish Women's Franchise League
Patrick James Smyth Journalist and politician
David P. Tyndall - prominent Irish businessman who transformed the grocery business
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cycle paths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onward, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event, with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island, which expanded to two days in 2003, then three days by 2004.
Edward John Kerling, one of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In June 1942, is shown in a mugshot after his arrest.
The Washington Star photo editor re-touched Kerling's shirt on the image on the right and put an X across the image on the left.
Kerling was born in Wiesbaden, Germany on June 12, 1909. He joined the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1928.
Kerling left Germany later that year settling in New York City. After a time working in a packing house in Manhattan as a shipping clerk, Kerling served as a chauffeur for Eli Culbertson, a bridge expert, in Hicksville, Long Island.
On October 31, 1931 he married Marie Sichart. After his marriage Kerling worked as a chauffeur for W. J. Hoggson, a banker in Greenwich, Connecticut. While in Florida, Kerling met Hedwig Engemann, who became his mistress.
In 1939 when Germany went to war, Edward Kerling and several friends, including Hermann Neubauer, bought the yacht Lekala. They intended to sail it to Germany. The U.S. Coast Guard, fearing the group might be attempting to supply U-Boats, prohibited the voyage. The boat was sold in Miami.
In June 1940, Kerling sailed via passenger ship to Germany. Kerling left his wife and lover behind in the USA. In August, Kerling joined the German Army and was assigned to a listening post in Deauville, France.
In April, 1942 he was recruited into the Abwehr where he was assigned to sabotage training at Brandenburg. Kerling was appointed a team leader in Operation Pastorius. Kerling landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (by U-Boat) in June, 1942.
Pastorius was a sabotage mission against the United States during World War Two. After one of the team members from the Long Island group went straight to the FBI, Kerling was arrested in New York City a few days later.
He was tried by a military tribunal in July, 1942 and executed on August 8, 1942 in the Washington D.C. district jail by electrocution. Also executed that day were his old friend Hermann Neubauer and teammates Werner Thiel and Herbert Haupt. Two of the Long Island group, Heinrich Heinck and Richard Quirin also died in the electric chair.
Kerling’s wife claimed that attempt to retrieve his remains were barred by the U.S. government. Attempts by Kerling’s wife to retrieve his remains were denied by the U.S. government. Similar efforts by the lawyer representing Erna Haupt, Haupt’s mother, were also reportedly rejected.
All six of the German agents were all buried in a government potters field for un-claimed bodies. Kerling’s grave was marked by a wooden board numbered 279. In 1982 more permanent grave markers were placed.
Background to Operation Pastorius
After the U.S. declared war on Germany following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler authorized a mission to sabotage the American war effort and attack civilian targets to demoralize the American civilian population inside the United States.
Recruited for Operation Pastorius, named for the leader of the first German settlement in America, were eight German residents who had lived in the United States.
Two of them, Ernst Burger and Herbert Haupt, were American citizens. The others, George John Dasch, Edward John Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Werner Thiel, had worked at various jobs in the United States.
All eight were recruited into the Abwehr military intelligence organization and were given three weeks of intensive sabotage training in the German High Command school on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin, Germany. The agents were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiaries, primers, and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.
The agents were also instructed to spread a wave of terror by planting explosives on bridges, railroad stations, water facilities, and public places. They were given counterfeit birth certificates, Social Security Cards, draft deferment cards, nearly $175,000 in American money, and driver's licenses, and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission began, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
On the night of June 12, 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202, landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 100 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach.
It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Heinck). The team came ashore wearing German Navy uniforms so that if they were captured, they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought their explosives, primers and incendiaries, and buried them along with their uniforms, and put on civilian clothes to begin an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch offered Cullen a $260 bribe. Cullen feigned cooperation but reported the encounter. An armed patrol returned to the site but found only the buried equipment; the Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked into a hotel. A massive manhunt was begun.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on June 16, 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group came ashore wearing bathing suits but wore German Navy hats. After landing ashore, they threw away their hats, put on civilian clothes, and started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
The two teams were to meet on July 4 in a hotel in Cincinnati to coordinate their sabotage operations.
Dasch called Burger into their upper-story hotel room and opened a window, saying they would talk, and if they disagreed, "only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." Dasch told him he had no intention of going through with the mission, hated Nazism, and planned to report the plot to the FBI. Burger agreed to defect to the United States immediately.
On June 15, Dasch phoned the New York office of the FBI to explain who he was, but hung up when the agent answering doubted his story. Four days later, he took a train to Washington, DC and walked into FBI headquarters, where he gained the attention of Assistant Director D. M. Ladd by showing him the operation's budget of $84,000 cash.
Besides Burger, none of the other German agents knew they were betrayed. Over the next two weeks, Burger and the other six were arrested. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made no mention that Dasch had turned himself in, and claimed credit for the FBI for cracking the spy ring.
Information that Dasch and Burger had exposed the operation was withheld from the public until after World War II was over in order to make it appear to the American public and to Nazi Germany that the FBI was effective in preventing sabotage.
Fearful that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Roosevelt issued Executive Proclamation 2561 on July 2, 1942 creating a military tribunal to prosecute the Germans. Placed before a seven-member military commission, the Germans were charged with the following offenses:
1) Violating the law of war;
2) Violating Article 81 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy;
3) Violating Article 82 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of spying; and
4) Conspiracy to commit the offenses alleged in the first three charges.
The trial was held in Assembly Hall #1 on the fifth floor of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. on July 8, 1942.
Lawyers for the accused, who included Lauson Stone and Kenneth Royall, attempted to have the case tried in a civilian court but were rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that was later cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
The trial for the eight defendants ended on August 1, 1942. Two days later, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt commuted Burger's sentence to life in prison and Dasch's to 30 years because they had turned themselves in and provided information about the others.
The others were executed on August 8, 1942 in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail and buried in a potter's field in the Blue Plains area in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.
In April 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman granted clemency to Dasch and Burger who were deported to the American zone in Germany and required to live in that area or face re-imprisonment.
Fourteen other people were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. They were Walter and Lucille Froehling, Otto and Kate Wergin, Harry and Emma Jaques, Anthony Cramer, Helmut Leiner, Herman Heinrich, Maria Kerling, Hedwig Engemann, Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt, and Ernest Kerkhof.
Nearly all were held as enemy aliens and several were sentenced to death for treason, but had their convictions reversed on appeal. Some were re-tried on lesser charges. Some never went to trial.
--Information partially excerpted from Wikipedia
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Det Kongelige Slott 01/03/2014 10h12
In front of the slott the rider statue of the Swedish-Norwegian king Karl XIV Johan, executed by sculptor Brynjulf Bergslien (1830-1898).
Det Kongelige Slott
The Royal Palace (Norwegian: Slottet or formally Norwegian: Det kongelige slott (or Norwegian: Det kongelige slottet)) in Oslo was built in the first half of the 19th century as the Norwegian residence of King Charles III, who also reigned as king of Sweden and otherwise resided there, and is the official residence of the present Norwegian monarch. The crown prince resides at Skaugum in Asker west of Oslo. The palace has 173 rooms.
Until the completion of the Royal Palace, Norwegian royalty resided in Paleet, the magnificent town house in Christiania that the wealthy merchant Bernt Anker bequeathed to the State in 1805 to be used as a royal residence. During the last years of the union with Denmark it was used by the viceroys of Norway, and in 1814 by the first king of independent Norway, Christian Frederick. King Charles III John of the Bernadotte dynasty resided there as crown prince (1814-1818) and later as king during his frequent visits to his Norwegian capital.
During the reign and residence of King Olav V from 1957 to 1991, there was no money for renovation, something the poor build quality of the original structure direly needed. After Norway mutated from Scandinavia's poor house to its most wealthy member, the current monarch, King Harald V, could start a comprehensive renovation project. He was criticized because of the amount of money needed to bring the Palace up to a satisfactory state even if much of this went to rectify construction deficits from a century and a half ago. Since public tours began in 2002, the general public has been able to view and appreciate the renovation and splendour that the palace now boasts.
[ Source and more information: Wikipedia - Det Kongelige Slott ]
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
.Ernest Peter Burger, one of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In June 1942, is shown in a full head-to-toe mugshot after his arrest.
Burger was born in Augsburg in 1906. He was a machinist by trade who joined the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party at the age of 17.
Burger immigrated to America in 1927 and became a U.S. citizen in 1933. He had lived in the United States for some years, even joining the National Guard in 1931.
During the Depression, Burger returned to Germany, he rejoined the Nazi Party and became an aide-de-camp to Ernst Roehm, the chief of the Nazi storm troopers. Later, he wrote a paper critical of the Gestapo—a move that earned him seventeen months in a concentration camp.
Despite his history as a survivor of a Nazi internment camp and harassment of his wife by Nazi party members, Burger was recruited by the Abwehr, Nazi Germany's intelligence organization.
After the U.S. declared war on Germany following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler authorized a mission to sabotage the American war effort and attack civilian targets to demoralize the American civilian population inside the United States.
Recruited for Operation Pastorius, named for the leader of the first German settlement in America, were eight German residents who had lived in the United States.
Two of them, Ernst Burger and Herbert Haupt, were American citizens. The others, George John Dasch, Edward John Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Werner Thiel, had worked at various jobs in the United States.
All eight were recruited into the Abwehr military intelligence organization and were given three weeks of intensive sabotage training in the German High Command school on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin, Germany. The agents were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiaries, primers, and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.
The agents were also instructed to spread a wave of terror by planting explosives on bridges, railroad stations, water facilities, and public places. They were given counterfeit birth certificates, Social Security Cards, draft deferment cards, nearly $175,000 in American money, and driver's licenses, and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission began, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
On the night of June 12, 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202, landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 100 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach.
It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Heinck). The team came ashore wearing German Navy uniforms so that if they were captured, they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought their explosives, primers and incendiaries, and buried them along with their uniforms, and put on civilian clothes to begin an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch offered Cullen a $260 bribe. Cullen feigned cooperation but reported the encounter. An armed patrol returned to the site but found only the buried equipment; the Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked into a hotel. A massive manhunt was begun.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on June 16, 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group came ashore wearing bathing suits but wore German Navy hats. After landing ashore, they threw away their hats, put on civilian clothes, and started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
The two teams were to meet on July 4 in a hotel in Cincinnati to coordinate their sabotage operations.
Dasch called Burger into their upper-story hotel room and opened a window, saying they would talk, and if they disagreed, "only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." Dasch told him he had no intention of going through with the mission, hated Nazism, and planned to report the plot to the FBI. Burger agreed to defect to the United States immediately.
On June 15, Dasch phoned the New York office of the FBI to explain who he was, but hung up when the agent answering doubted his story. Four days later, he took a train to Washington, DC and walked into FBI headquarters, where he gained the attention of Assistant Director D. M. Ladd by showing him the operation's budget of $84,000 cash.
Besides Burger, none of the other German agents knew they were betrayed. Over the next two weeks, Burger and the other six were arrested. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made no mention that Dasch had turned himself in, and claimed credit for the FBI for cracking the spy ring.
Information that Dasch and Burger had exposed the operation was withheld from the public until after World War II was over in order to make it appear to the American public and to Nazi Germany that the FBI was effective in preventing sabotage.
Fearful that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Roosevelt issued Executive Proclamation 2561 on July 2, 1942 creating a military tribunal to prosecute the Germans. Placed before a seven-member military commission, the Germans were charged with the following offenses:
1) Violating the law of war;
2) Violating Article 81 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy;
3) Violating Article 82 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of spying; and
4) Conspiracy to commit the offenses alleged in the first three charges.
The trial was held in Assembly Hall #1 on the fifth floor of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. on July 8, 1942.
Lawyers for the accused, who included Lauson Stone and Kenneth Royall, attempted to have the case tried in a civilian court but were rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that was later cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
The trial for the eight defendants ended on August 1, 1942. Two days later, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt commuted Burger's sentence to life in prison and Dasch's to 30 years because they had turned themselves in and provided information about the others.
The others were executed on August 8, 1942 in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail and buried in a potter's field in the Blue Plains area in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C. The site was only indicated with only wooden markers and numbers. In 1982 a grave stone was added to the burial plot.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman granted executive clemency to Dasch and Burger on the condition that they be deported to the American Zone of occupied Germany. They were not welcomed back in Germany, as they were regarded as traitors who had caused the death of their comrades.
Although they had reportedly been promised pardons by J. Edgar Hoover in exchange for their cooperation, Burger died in 1975 and Dasch died in 1992 without either man ever receiving them.
Fourteen other people were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. They were Walter and Lucille Froehling, Otto and Kate Wergin, Harry and Emma Jaques, Anthony Cramer, Helmut Leiner, Herman Heinrich, Maria Kerling, Hedwig Engemann, Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt, and Ernest Kerkhof.
Nearly all were held as enemy aliens and several were sentenced to death for treason, but had their convictions reversed on appeal. Some were re-tried on lesser charges. Some never went trial.
--Information partially excerpted from Wikipedia
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Iran is planning to execute another protester, Mohammad Ghobadlou, for the crime of protesting. We call on the Western leaders to call out Iran’s regime to halt the execution.
#SayNoToHanging #MohammadGhobadlou
Romanian soldiers execute a live-fire drill with rocket-propelled grenades during Exercise Steadfast Defender 21.
Steadfast Defender 2021 is a NATO-led exercise involving over 9,000 troops from more than 20 NATO Allies and partners. The objective is to ensure that NATO forces are trained, able to operate together and ready to respond to any threat from any direction.
Astoria, Queens
The Astoria Play Center is one of a group of eleven immense new outdoor swimming pools which were opened in the summer of 1936 in a series of grand ceremonies presided over by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Park Commissioner Robert Moses. All were constructed largely with funding provided by the Works Progress Administration, one of the many New Deal agencies created during the 1930s to address the effects of America's Great Depression. Designed to accommodate a total of 49,000 users simultaneously at locations scattered across the entire city, and completed just two and a half years after the LaGuardia administration took office, the new pool complexes gained quick recognition as being among the most remarkable public recreational facilities ever constructed in this country.
Many architects, landscape architects, and engineers were hired to execute the pool program and the hundreds of other new construction and rehabilitation projects undertaken between 1934 and 1936 by a newly consolidated Park Department. They were guided by a senior team composed of staff members and consultants who had earlier worked for Moses at various governmental agencies, including the New York State Council of Parks and the Long Island State Park Commission. They included architect Aymar Embury II, landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Allyn R. Jennings, and civil engineers W. Earle Andrews and William H. Latham. Surviving documents also indicate that Robert Moses, himself a long-time swimming enthusiast, gave detailed attention to the designs for the new pool complexes.
Opened on July 2, 1936, with a capacity of 6,200 swimmers, and designed mainly by consulting Park Department architect John Matthews Hatton, the Astoria Play Center commands a striking waterfront location in Astoria Park. The vast scale of the pool complex is complemented by that of its setting - the distant vistas westward framed by the monumental forms of the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges. Embedded into what has now become a densely wooded slope which descends to the water's edge from 19th Street, the play center complex was designed to take full advantage of its surroundings. The entire roof of the bath house structure is used for multi-level viewing terraces. Extensive concrete bleacher sections are located on the western side of the bath house and around the diving pool. They offer far more outdoor seating than is available at the other play centers; perhaps the abundant seating is related to the fact that the final trials for the 1936 Summer Olympics were held here.
Like Hatton's later design for the 1939 bath house at Betsy Head, the Astoria Play Center structure makes extensive use of glass block; it forms the lower recessed sections of the locker room walls which are topped by the original metal louver windows. Massive piers laid up in decorative bonds demarcate the bays. Glass block also forms extensive sections of the lateral walls of the entryway: the original Art Moderne style ticket booth and signage are its other significant features. Among the Center's more unusual design elements are the whimsical saucerlike roofs atop the upper portions of the filter house structure on the western side of the swimming pool. The areas adjacent to the pool complex include extensive pathway systems, playing areas, and a striking comfort station designed in a style similar to that of the bath house.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History of the Astoria Park Pool Site
The setting for the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center is the sloping, sixty-six acre Astoria Park, located on the east shore of the Hell Gate channel across from Ward's Island in western Queens. The complex has a panoramic view of the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan framed between the towering Triborough Bridge to the south and the majestic Hell Gate Bridge to the north. Long Island City and Astoria became part of greater New York City in the consolidation of 1898. By 1907, the land now occupied by Astoria Park and its surroundings remained occupied by fading, former estates of prominent families and ship captains, who had moved away as industrial and residential developments loomed ever closer. The pace of urbanization picked up after the opening of the Queensborough Bridge in 1909, adding many more factories and houses.
Around the turn of the century, sentiment emerged to increase public access to the East River and Hell Gate waterfront. In 1913, the City of New York acquired fifty-six acres of land along the shorefront for what was to become Astoria Park. Originally, named for Mayor William J. Gaynor, who served from 1910 to 1913, the name of the park was soon changed to Astoria Park. According to Parks Department Records, Astoria Park - which was originally equipped with two playgrounds, six tennis courts, three baseball diamonds, a wading pool, bandstand, and comfort station - was the first large park in New York City to provide for organized, rather than passive, recreation.
The Hell Gate Bridge, designed by engineer Gustav Lindenthal and architect Henry Hornbostel, was constructed over the northern park of Astoria Park in 1917; its majestic towers forming the park's northern vista. Major improvements to Astoria Park were undertaken in the 1930s under the auspices of the popular mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia and his legendary Park Commissioner, Robert Moses. These changes included the addition of 4.5 acres of parkland under the Triborough Bridge, which was finished in 1936, the same year of the opening of the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center. Engineered by O.H. Ammann and designed by the architect Aymar Embury II, the Triborough Bridge, along with the pool complex, added a sleek modernity to the park. The improvements of the 1930s were made largely by using funds obtained from the Works Progress Administration, one of the many public works programs created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States Congress during the Great Depression.
Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Moses and the New Deal
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1932 in the middle of the Great Depression that followed the stock market crash in 1929. Roosevelt promised to rebuild confidence in American capitalism and to improve the nation's standard of living by creating the New Deal economic program of unprecedented public spending on social programs and construction projects.
New York City had been especially hard hit by the economic downturn, and its citizens, hoping for change, elected Fiorello LaGuardia to the mayoralty of New York City in 1933 under a reform-minded "fusion" ticket. He chose New York State Park Commissioner, Robert Moses, a champion of reform politics, as New York City's new Park Commissioner. The new mayor's success in securing a lion's share of monies made available by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), and Moses' superb management skills and his ability to attract talented designers and engineers to his staff, resulted in profound physical changes in the environment of New York City. The construction and renovation of neighborhood recreation areas, such as pools and play grounds, were some of the most ambitious and successful programs undertaken by Moses with funds largely provided by the WPA.
Fiorello H. La Guardia was sworn in as the ninety-ninth mayor of the City of New York in January 1934, as an anti-Tammany Hall reform candidate. A maverick Republican and a five-term congressman from East Harlem, LaGuardia won the 1933 mayoral election on the "Fusion" ticket after losing the 1929 mayoral race on the Republican line. The Fusion Conference Committee at first considered running Robert Moses, another Republican, who was appointed Chairman of the New York State Council of Parks in 1924 by his political mentor, Governor Alfred E. Smith, a Tammany Hall Democrat from New York City. However, the committee decided against Moses because of his association with Smith, and chose LaGuardia instead. At the time, Moses was a popular public figure with a reputation as a progressive, and as the builder of great parks and parkways like Jones Beach and the Northern State Parkway on Long Island.
His endorsement of LaGuardia during the campaign was considered instrumental in securing a victory for LaGuardia. Within a week of the election, LaGuardia invited Moses to join his incoming administration as a reward.
In the 1920s, Moses was at the forefront of the national recreation movement began in the first decade of the twentieth century, led by such men as President Theodore Roosevelt and the lesser-known George D. Butler of the National Recreation Association. The movement gained momentum after President Calvin Coolidge convened the first National Conference on Outdoor Recreation in 1924.
During the1930s Depression, the need to provide for or to improve outdoor recreation, especially in urban areas, became most urgent, and fit into the FDR's New Deal economic programs. Moses accepted the position of Commissioner of Parks in the LaGuardia administration on the condition that the five existing independent Park Departments (one for each borough) would be consolidated into a single department with himself as the sole Commissioner, and that the Park Commissioner's authority also include control of the City's parkways. He also demanded to be appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Triborough Bridge Authority, which was then building the bridge of that name, and that a new agency, the Marine Parkway Authority, which would build a bridge to the Rockaways, be created with himself at the helm.
Already in charge of the Long Island State Park Commission, the New York State Council of Parks, the Jones Beach State Park Authority, and the Bethpage State Park Authority, Moses would then be in control of all existing and proposed parks and parkways in the New York metropolitan region, except for areas outside of New York State.
Moses began to assess the state of the City's parks and to plan for their future as soon as LaGuardia announced his intention to appoint Moses as Park Commissioner. According to one source: "Immediately after the election he wrote out, on a single piece of paper, a plan for putting 80,000 men to work on 1,700 relief projects." Moses hired a consulting engineer and three assistant engineers to survey every park and parkway in the City. The survey was completed by the time he took office in mid-January 1934.
When Moses took over the Park Department, it was already employing 69,000 relief workers funded mainly by the federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). However, Moses found the men to be ill-equipped and inadequately supervised, and considered many of the construction projects to have been poorly designed. He immediately began to revamp the entire operation of the Park Department and established a Division of Design, located at the Arsenal in Central Park. The staff was to be headed up by experienced professionals drawn mainly from his State agencies. Some of his talented staff of young architects, landscape architects and engineers had worked on the designs for Long Island's highly acclaimed parks, including Jones Beach, which is considered one of Moses' greatest accomplishments.
His staff also included a number of well-known and accomplished designers, among them architects Aymar Embury II and John M. Hatton, and the landscape architect and civil engineer Gilmore D. Clarke. Other top members of Moses' staff were the landscape architect Allyn R. Jennings, and civil engineers W. Earle Andrews and William H. Latham.
The Department needed to produce plans and blueprints immediately so the growing force of relief workers could be assigned to worthwhile projects as quickly as possible. Within a week, Moses managed to persuade CWA officials to drop some of the regulations governing the hiring of staff and to relax its spending limits on project planning, allowing him to hire 600 architects, engineers and draftsmen at salaries above CWA wage guidelines. By the first of February, they were busily producing designs and blueprints.
The Park Department's Division of Design was organized in the following manner: a topographical unit of about 400 surveyors and draftsmen, a landscape architecture unit of about sixty people, an architecture unit made up of sixty architects and draftsmen, and an engineering unit of about fifty. Smaller units included an Arboricultural Department and an Inspection Department. All the work in the Division of Design was under the direct supervision of the Park Engineer, who was aided and advised by a Consulting Architect, a Consulting Landscape Architect, and a Consulting Engineer. All new projects began in the topographical unit, where a complete survey of the land was prepared. It then moved on to the landscaping unit, where the basic concept for the design was developed. Next, the three units: landscape, architecture, and engineering, collaborated to produce the final design and all the necessary construction documents.
The Park Engineer and his aides had to approve all of the plans. Moses himself sometimes stepped in to revise or overrule a design, especially on the larger, more visible projects.
Moses' superior management ability and political savvy allowed him to move projects along very quickly and to produce concrete results, gaining for him much public admiration. However, his personal demeanor was notoriously stubborn and arrogant, and he sometimes fired people on the spot for no apparent reason.
At times, he disregarded the legitimate authority of other governmental agencies. Once, when the Department of Plant and Structures refused to suspend a ferry service that used a terminal in the path of constructing the Triborough Bridge approach road, Moses had his men demolish the terminal while the boat was on the other side of the river. He feuded with President Franklin D. Roosevelt for years, even while Washington was pouring millions of dollars into Moses' own Park Department. His later battles with and subsequent triumphs over community groups opposed to the routing of the Gowanus and the Cross-Bronx Expressways through their neighborhoods are now legendary. Moses was also known to have been insensitive to people of color, and tried to restrict access to many of his recreational facilities, including the pools. He determined that the Colonial Park pool in Harlem would be the only one for minority use. Most of the other pools, including Astoria, were placed in white neighborhoods.
The Thomas Jefferson Park pool, located in East Harlem was (LaGuardia's old congressional district) was close to Spanish Harlem where the city's growing Puert Rican population was settling, and also not very far from African-American Harlem. To discourage minority use at the Jefferson Park facility, Moses kept the water heating system turned off, believing that the cold water would not bother Caucasian swimmers, "but would deter any 'colored' people who happened to enter it once from returning." To many he was a master builder; to others he was a spoiled bully; and he seemingly always had his way.
In the summer of 1934, however, Robert Moses was a hero. Hundreds of projects, covering virtually every neighborhood in the city, had been completed. Structures were repainted, tennis courts resurfaced, and lawns reseeded. Hundreds of new construction projects were either underway or being designed. Among the projects being drawn up at the time was the Astoria Park Pool.
The Designers Behind the Planning of the Astoria Park Pool
Aymar Embury II and Gilmore D. Clarke, respectively the Park Department's Consulting Architect and Consulting Landscape Architect, were employed by the City on a part-time basis to oversee designs for park projects under Robert Moses. The head of the Division of Design at the time was the Park Engineer, William H. Latham, who was responsible for the preparation of all plans and specifications within the department. Major design problems were discussed by Embury and Clarke before the preliminary sketches were made under Latham's direction. Completed sketches were subject to approval by the Park Engineer, the General Superintendent, and Commissioner Moses. The consultants would give regular criticism during the preparations of the plans.
Aymar Embury II (1880-1966) was born in New York City and studied engineering at Princeton University, where he received a Master of Science degree in 1901. He acquired his architectural training through apprenticeships with three New York firms: George B. Post, Howells and Stokes, and Palmer and Hornbostel. He also worked for Cass Gilbert. In 1905, Embury won both first and second prize in a contest held by the Garden City Company for a modest country house to be built in Garden City, Long Island. This gained for him a reputation as a talented designer, and led to many commissions for country houses in the New York metropolitan area. He subsequently published seven books and several pamphlets, mainly on early American architecture, establishing him as an authority on that subject. By the start of the Great Depression, he was well-known and had received a wide range of commissions all over the east coast of the United States, including college buildings and social clubs, in addition to residences.
He designed the Players and Nassau Clubs in Princeton, New Jersey, the Princeton Club in New York City, and the University Club in Washington, D.C.
Embury was said to have supervised the design of over six hundred public projects, including Orchard Beach, Bryant Park, the New York City Building at the 1939 World's Fair, the Donnell Branch of the New York Public Library, the Hofstra University Campus, the Central Park and Prospect Park Zoos, Jacob Riis Park, five of the eleven neighborhood pool and play centers, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, and many more. His relationship to the planning of the Astoria Pool and Play Center appears to have been limited to his role as the department's consulting architect.
Gilmore D. Clarke (1892-1982) was born in New York City and studied landscape architecture and civil engineering at Cornell University, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1913. He served as an engineer in the army during World War I, receiving many citations and decorations, and remained in the Army Reserve Corps until 1939. During the 1920s, he served on several local, state and federal commissions as landscape architect, including the Architectural Advisory Board for the United States Capital, the New York State Council of Parks (which was headed by Robert Moses), and the Westchester County Park Commission, among many others. For his work in Westchester County, which included the Rye Beach Playland, the Saw Mill River Parkway, and the Bronx River Parkway, Clarke was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor in Landscape Architecture from the Architectural League of New York in 1931.
By the time of the Great Depression, Clarke was already established as the most popular landscape architect in public works in America.
His career advanced during the 1930s. Besides being hired by Robert Moses as the Consulting Landscape Architect to the New York City Park Department, he also became a member of the National Commission on Fine Arts, the New York State Planning Council, and the Board of Design for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In addition to Astoria Park, his work for the Park Department included Bryant Park, Central Park Zoo, City Hall Park, Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and the Henry Hudson Parkway. He taught landscape architecture at Cornell University from 1935 to 1950, serving as dean from 1939 until his retirement in 1950 and wrote several articles for trade periodicals. In 1935, Clarke joined Michael Rapuano, an engineer and landscape architect, establishing the New York civil engineering and landscape architectural firm Clarke & Rapuano, Inc. Clarke was president of the firm from 1962 until his retirement in 1972.
Later in his career, Clarke worked as a consultant on the construction of the United Nations Headquarters in New York and became a Trustee for the American Museum of Natural History.
Architect John M. Hatton was born c.1886 in Iowa, and first appears in New York City directories in 1915. His professional training remains undetermined, but he practiced architecture in New York City into the late 1940s. In the early 1920s, he formed a partnership with architect Diego DeSuarez (DeSuarez & Hatton), which lasted only a few years. In addition to the Astoria Pool, his other works for the Department of Parks in the 1930s include the Betsy Head Pool in Brooklyn and Pelham Bay Park golf clubhouse. In the 1940s, he was considered an expert in store modernization (lighting, space layout, customer comfort, display, fixtures, and storefronts) and his designs for commercial spaces and storefronts were published in several architectural periodicals. Among his clients was the Stetson Hat Company. He also did work for the New York City Housing Authority in the 1940s.
The Design and Construction of the Astoria Park Pool
The Astoria Play Center is one of the group of eleven immense new outdoor swimming pools that opened in the summer of 1936 in a series of grand ceremonies presided over by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Park Commissioner Robert Moses. All were constructed mainly with funds provided by the WPA. Designed to accommodate a total of 49,000 users simultaneously at locations scattered across the entire city and completed just two-and-a-half years after LaGuardia took office, the new pool complexes completely dwarfed the city's two pre-existing outdoor public pools and gained quick recognition as being among the most remarkable public recreational facilities ever constructed in this country. The city's pool construction program was reported to have been the most expensive in terms of total cost.
Robert Moses, an avid swimmer who had a home near the ocean in Babylon, Long Island, was known to have taken a special interest in the design and construction of bathing and swimming facilities, such as Jones Beach, Orchard Beach and Riis Park, as well as the neighborhood swimming pools, including Astoria Pool. As a result of his special attention, along with that of Embury and Clarke, the design and execution of New York City's aquatic facilities in the 1930s were a cut above most other park projects at the time.
At the start, the Park Department adopted a list of shared guidelines for the entire pool project in order to enhance the efficiency of the design effort, to unify the operations of each complex, and to meet the various local and federal requirements of the relief programs. For example, each pool complex was to have separate swimming, diving and wading pools, and a large bath house, the locker room sections of which doubled as gymnasiums during non-swimming months. The bath houses, which would serve as the centerpieces of each complex, would be distinctive pavilions that would establish the design motif of each facility. Concrete bleachers at the perimeter of the pools would furnish spectator viewing areas to be augmented at some sites with rooftop promenades and galleries. There would be a minimum width for the decks to provide enough room for sunbathing and circulation. There had to be underwater lighting for night swimming.
At least one dimension of each swimming pool would have to be a multiple of fifty five yards to allow swimming competitions to be held at standard distances in either English or metric systems. Plus, the complexes had to share low-cost building materials, principally brick and cast concrete, as required by the federal government.
To satisfy federal stipulation on low-cost materials, it appears that the design team for the pools determined that the streamlined and curvilinear forms of the Art Moderne and Modern Classical styles would best meet the low-cost needs and still permit pleasing aesthetics. As a group, the pools were also distinguished by the innovative mechanical systems required to heat, filter, and circulate the vast amounts of water they used. Many of these innovations set new standards for swimming pool construction, such as scum gutters that allowed in enough sunlight to naturally kill off bacteria and a series of footbaths filled with foot cleaning solution through which bathers were forced to pass upon entering the pool areas from the locker rooms.
Sited in existing older parks or built on other city-owned land subsequently developed with as parks and playgrounds, the huge pool complexes were provided with landscape settings which included additional recreational areas, connecting pathway systems, and comfort stations. Despite the fact that the basic components were essentially the same and that the WPA required that only the cheapest materials be used, each of these swimming pool complexes is especially notable its distinctive and unique setting, appearance, and character.
Although each pool complex has been credited to a particular architect, the designs appear to actually have been collaborative efforts among the army of architects, draftsmen, engineers, and landscape architects employed by the Park Department in the 1930s. In the instance of the Astoria Play Center, the architect John M. Hatton is credited with the design. Plans on file at the Parks Department archives show that Hatton only drew the main façades and certain details of the bath house and bleachers, while Gregory Kiely drew the bath house's minor façades and some additional details. The filter house was done by C.E. Nelson, J.D. McGarr, and Joseph L. Hautman and details such as the clock, signage, lettering, light fixtures, railings, and phone booths by Harry Ahrens and F.J. Svarti.
Since the eleven pool facilities shared many common features and specifications that could be repeated at each site, and contained other elements that were similar from complex to complex, these junior designers, having different areas of expertise, apparently moved quickly from project to project. The department produced designs and construction documents simultaneously with great speed so that eleven pools and hundreds of other park projects, including some massive undertakings like Orchard Beach, were completed within a few years. The lead architect for each pool project, who in the case of the Astoria center was John M. Hatton, designed the bath house, which was unique to each site, establishing the motif that guided the design and detailing of the rest of the complex.
In October 1934, the Park Department announced the start of excavations and site work for several of the new pools, including Astoria, although the excavation plan for Astoria was not issued until December. The new Astoria Pool was to be located at the site of an existing, smaller wading pool, just to the north of the Triborough Bridge, which was then under construction. The earliest reference to the design of the bath house is in an internal Park Department document from July 1935, which describes a sketch that appears not to have survived. The memorandum also discusses footings for the main pool as having already been poured, as well as the concrete floor for the pipe tunnel and the northeast corner wall of the pool. The cast iron drain and sub-piping had also been laid. The diving pool, however, was still being excavated and no work had yet begun on the wading pool. Plans were still being prepared for the filter house and comfort station.
By August 1935, however, the fully developed plans for the façades of the bath house were released as were the landscape and bleacher plans. The filter house plans were completed that November. Revisions continued through 1936. During the period from December 1935 through October 1936, scores of construction and engineering blueprints were completed by the staff, and building continued at a steady pace until late in the year. Enough of the complex was completed for the Astoria Pool to open with much fanfare on July 2, 1936, on the first day of trials for the U.S. Olympic swim team.
The year 1936 was known as "the swimming pool year," since ten of the eleven giant neighborhood pools were opened that summer, one per week for ten weeks. Each opening day was a memorable event for its neighborhood. The day-long events featured parades, blessings of the waters, swimming races, diving competitions, appearances by Olympic stars, and performances by swimming clowns. Mayor LaGuardia attended every opening to perform the ribbon cutting. Festivities continued well after dusk with LaGuardia pulling the switch to turn on each pool's spectacular underwater lighting to the "oooohs" of the crowds. The opening ceremony at Astoria Pool was attended by 20,000 people.
The completed Astoria Pool complex was widely acclaimed and was featured in American Architect and Architecture (November 1936) and Architectural Forum (August 1937). The use of glass block construction and louvers received special praise. Astoria was the city's largest pool at 54,450 square feet, and the second largest WPA project in Queens after Jacob Riis Park. Harry Hopkins, the WPA administrator, called the Astoria Pool "the finest in the world." It remains the city's largest public pool, and one of the major achievements of the New Deal in New York City.
Subsequent History
Upon opening, the Astoria Park Pool hosted the swimming, water polo, and diving trials for the United States Olympic Team, preparing for the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.
The events were widely covered in local newspapers, and the Astoria Pool was often referred to instead as the Olympic Tryout Pool in the articles.
There were very few alterations in the years immediately after the completion of the pool; mainly systems upgrades and minor repairs were made. However, the original stainless steel sculptures of female athletes that had been produced by the noted sculptor Emil Siebern (1889-1942), who was a pioneer in the medium of stainless steel, had been removed from the pedestals over the west side of the main entryway before 1943 due to deterioration. Also, the surrounding playgrounds were reconstructed in 1946 and new gutters were installed in the pool in 1948. Sometime between 1948 and 1963, a one-story, brick rooftop addition containing concession stands was constructed on the filter house.
In the early 1940s, a group of boys from the Astoria neighborhood got together to perform swimming stunts on Wednesday nights at the pool. Known as the Aquazines, they donned costumes and treated audiences to choreographed swimming acts with music, backdrops, props and, sometimes, trained dogs. The routines showcased their talents as swimmers and divers. One of the Aquazines, Whitney Hart, became a professional diver and was later inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame.
The Astoria Park Pool was again host to the swimming and diving trials for the United States Olympic Teams in 1964. In preparation for the events, the facility was rehabilitated in 1963, its first comprehensive overhaul since it was opened twenty-seven years earlier. The work included the installation of new light weight concrete decks on the upper and lower promenades, as well as replacement of some window sash, and new paint throughout. The original glass pylons over the main entryway were resurfaced with brick.
In 1979-82, the playground to the southwest of the pool was removed and replaced with ball courts and the south comfort station in that area was demolished. Much of Astoria Park itself was reconstructed between 1983 and 1987; the project included the rehabilitation of the comfort station in the north playground and reconstruction of the seawall. In 1991, the main swimming pool was reconstructed, including the replacement of the pool floor, drains, supply islands and gutters; this replacement project was repeated in 1998-99 at which time the pool received a major systems upgrade, including new lights, pumps, piping, electric lines, filter system, showers, and improved chlorination and security systems. Also, an accessibility ramp was installed in the main pool and the supply islands in that pool were removed for safety reasons and replaced with bottom supply inlets.
Between 1996 and 2001, the north playground was rebuilt, the comfort station restored, and the park itself was the subject of a large erosion control and re-landscaping project. At this time, some replacement of the curbing and paving on the east entry ramps to the bath house took place, but there were no changes to the configuration of the ramps and walks. Additional minor site work and erosion control projects took place around the pool complex in 2000 to 2004.
The Architecture and Site of the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center
The New Deal construction projects within New York City, such as the Astoria Park Pool, were a part of a national trend that included similar projects undertaken by various governmental agencies, ranging from the vast Tennessee Valley Authority to small cities and towns. Urban projects built with WPA funding often possessed similar qualities from region to region, partly because the difficult economic climate dictated the use of inexpensive building materials, but also because the programs provided employment opportunities for a generation of young architects and engineers, many of whom were committed to modernism. For example, the bathhouse and waterfront facilities at Aquatic Park in San Francisco are similar in plan and appearance to the public pool and beachfront projects being built at about the same time in New York City.
The California facility, with its streamlined, concrete façade and steel-framed windows, bears a striking resemblance to the façade added in 1936 with WPA funds to the bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park in Queens.
The original and creative use made of these modest materials by Moses' talented design teams and the careful siting of each project makes every one of them a distinguished, individual design, as much related to their specific environment and needs as to one another.
The Astoria Play Center commands a striking waterfront location in Astoria Park. The vast scale of the pool complex is complemented by that of its setting - the distant vistas westward framed by the monumental forms of the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges. Embedded into a wooded slope which descends to the water's edge from 19th Street, the play-center complex was designed to take full advantage of its surroundings. The entire roof of the bath house structure is used for multi-level viewing terraces. Extensive concrete bleacher sections are located on the western side of the bath house and around the diving pool. They offer far more outdoor seating than is available at the other play centers; perhaps the abundant seating is related to the fact that the United States team trials for the 1936 summer Olympic Games were held there.
Like Hatton's later design for the 1939 bath house at Betsy Head Park in Brooklyn, the Astoria Play Center structure makes extensive use of glass block wall construction; it forms the lower recessed sections of the locker room walls which are topped by the original metal louver windows. Massive piers laid up in decorative bonds demarcate the bays. Glass blocks also form the extensive sections of the lateral walls of the entry lobby: the original Art Moderne-style ticket booth and signage are its other significant features. Among the center's more unusual design elements are the whimsical saucer-like roofs atop the filter house on the western side of the complex. In a playground to the northwest of the center is a striking comfort station designed in a style similar to that of the bath house.
Description
Plan and Circulation. The pool is complex is approached via either one of two stepped ramps leading westward down from 19th Street to a wide plaza located in front of the east façade of the bath house. There are also two ancillary stairways that lead down to the plaza from the pathways which connect the sidewalk along 19th Street to the viewing platforms on the roof of the bath house. The viewing platforms are on two levels connected by steps and provide views of the pools and the west vista, which includes the Hell Gate Channel, the Triborough Bridge, the Hell Gate Bridge, and Wards Island. There are also steps from the lower viewing platforms to the park pathways that surround the pool complex and lead down to the ball courts, playground, lawn and Shore Boulevard. Upon entering the centrally located, open-air lobby from the entry plaza, patrons buy admissions from the freestanding ticket booth and are led to either the men's or women's locker rooms thorough doorways on the sides of the lobby.
From the locker rooms, access to the deck areas surrounding the pool is provided by doors on the west façade of the bath house. The three pools are surrounded by wide decks and sun bathing areas. There are additional viewing platforms and a non-original concession stand located atop the filter house on the west side of the complex. Extensive bleacher areas extend across nearly the entire eastern deck and curve around the southern side of the complex near the diving pool, ending at the filter house. There is a smaller bleacher area on the north side near the wading pool. There are also several service entrances leading in from the surrounding park and pathways on all sides of the complex.
The Bath House and Rooftop Viewing Platforms. The one-story bath house, which is partially built into the slope of the park, employs a U-shaped plan and is constructed of concrete, Flemish-bond brick (now mostly painted), and glass blocks. Its height varies to accommodate two levels of rooftop viewing platforms. It has a centrally-located open-air lobby, and a series of stairway which connect the viewing platforms to one another, and to the surrounding park pathways. The concrete foundation is stepped on the east side and incorporates steel gratings on the top step.
The east façade is fifteen bays with a centrally located main entryway, which opens into an outdoor lobby. At the center of the lobby is a multi-sided ticket booth designed in a nautical motif. The base of the ticket booth consists of terrazzo slabs angled outward toward the countertop, which is protected by a mesh cage. The roof of the booth, which aligns with the multi-side counter below, is supported by steel columns that are set back behind the counter. The roof features two step-backs, the lower one featuring a series of moldings, while the upper one has slotted openings serving to ventilate the booth. The booth is topped by short stack-like motif decorated with large cogs.
The floor of the lobby is paved with brick with a bluestone and granite border, while the ceiling consists of the exposed concrete underside of the rooftop viewing terrace and its supportive beams. The original clock is suspended from the westernmost beam. The three bays of each sidewall in the lobby are separated by compound piers clad in decorative brickwork. Each bay contains a set of wood doors, painted black, topped by a decorative steel lintel supporting a large expanse of glass blocks that have decorative aluminum grills at the bottom. The grills at the center bays have applied, deco-style aluminum lettering that denote the men's and women's locker rooms to either side of the lobby. There are also angled deco-style aluminum signs also identifying the men's and women's locker rooms on either side of the lobby. Wrought-iron fences and gates are located on the east and west sides.
The entryway is flanked on the west side by massive brick piers which step in toward the lobby and feature full-height expanses of glass blocks. Massive, molded concrete beams span the east and west openings. Parks Department signage has been added to the piers. The remaining bays consist of a series of recessed expanses of glass block walls topped by the original metal and glass louver windows (covered with non- historic mesh grills) and convex, fluted aluminum lintels. One bay is presently boarded up. Massive, projecting piers laid up in decorative brick bonds demarcate the bays. The entire façade is topped by bluestone coping.
The north side wing is partially built in the slope of the park, and has only one exposed façade, which faces south, but this façade is only partially exposed due to the slope of the hill. Abutting this façade is a concrete stairway with deco-style steel railings, which leads from the north pathway to the viewing terraces down to the main entrance plaza to the lobby. The side wing's façade has two bays and consists of brick walls and a wide horizontal band of glass blocks (now painted over). The bays are separated by a wide pier that is similar to the piers of the east façade of the bath house. Steel railings are attached to the brick. An original doorway in the pier has been sealed with wood covered with painted aluminum sheets. The south side wing is a mirror-image of the north wing, but its glass blocks have not been painted over. A narrow part of the south wing's brick south façade is exposed due to the slope of the site.
Its fenestration, now boarded up, is partially exposed above steel grates. There is also a service entry with a bulkhead at this location.
The bath house's seventeen-bay west façade is similar to the east façade, but is lower due to the slope of the site and because its roof accommodates the lower viewing terrace. In addition, the façade has two sets of paired wooden exit doors, painted black, from the men's and women's locker rooms. These doors are set in semicircular coves near the north and south ends of the façade. There are also non-historic security lamps, cameras, and annunciators attached to the bricks near the lobby.
The entire roof of the bath house, including the side wings, is paved for use as either viewing platforms or pathways leading to the platforms from the park's paths. The decks are paved with concrete with bluestone borders. All of these publicly-accessible areas are enclosed by deco-style steel railings, which incorporate flagpoles on the east side of the roof. The platforms are connected by concrete steps with historic steel railings. There are two oval, header-brick pylons (now painted) located on either side of the main entryway to the pool; they were originally made of glass blocks and were altered to their present appearance in 1963. On the west side are two lower, multi-sided concrete ventilators, aligned with the glass block expanses in the piers flanking the lobby. They originally also served as the bases for the original metal sculptures of nymphs holding balls that had been removed by 1943. The walls on the lower part of the upper viewing platform are made of brick.
The Pools and Deck Areas. The enclosed pool area to the west of the bath house forms an ellipse with its long axis set from north to south. Within this area are located the rectangular swimming pool flanked on either side by semicircular pools for diving on the south and wading on the north. Altogether, the three pools, which are separated by concrete decks, echo the elliptical shape of the enclosure. Concrete bleachers of varying heights line most of the inner sides of the brick perimeter walls of the pool area. These walls are topped by wrought-iron fences. The shallow wading pool has two non-original spray spouts near its center and eleven non-original spray spouts spaced at regular distances along its curved sides. The swimming pool is large expanse of water lined with a concrete gutter. It has a non-historic handicap ramp on the east side.
The diving pool, which is no longer in use and presently fenced off, includes at its south end, the pool's original, dramatically curved concrete, multi-level main diving platform. Each of the three platforms is cantilevered above the pool and protected by deco-style copper that match the copper railings that surround the perimeter of the diving pool. The main diving platform is flanked by two similar, but lower, cantilevered diving platforms. Two other low, concrete diving platforms that appear to be later in date are suspended over the pool from the deck on its north side. The deck surrounding the pool has non-historic lampposts, non-original drinking fountains near the bath house, and a flagpole, which is located between the swimming and wading pools. There are two other flagpoles south of the diving pool; they have floodlights attached to them.
The Flemish-bond brick perimeter wall (now painted), which is topped by concrete coping and wrought-iron fences, rises in height toward the south end of the site due to the topography. At the north end it is a freestanding wall lined on the inside with low bleachers. There are also service entries consisting of wrought-iron gates flanked by tall, decorative brick posts with cast- concrete coping. At its south and southwest portions, the perimeter wall is tall enough to incorporate service areas beneath the bleacher areas. There are service entrances covered with roll-down steel gates, and windows covered with steel grates and plates in the south part of the wall. Some windows are now sealed with brick. The bleachers also extend below the west façade of the bath house. They are interrupted at the locker room entryway by shallow concrete steps. Steel tube railings protect the bleachers at these locations.
There is another flight of concrete steps upon the bleachers in front of the bath house lobby; it has a steel tube hand rail. There are non-historic steel support columns on the southwest portion of bleachers. These are used in the summer to support shade covers.
The Filter House. The filter house is the rectangular-in-plan, Flemish bond-brick building (now painted) on the west side of the pool; it includes raised areas at either end containing viewing platforms covered with cast-concrete, saucer-shaped roofs with scalloped edges. Reached via cantilevered, concrete steps, the viewing platforms have concrete floors and are protected with deco-style steel railings. There is also a non- historic brick and concrete concession stand on the lower part of its roof, which is just a few steps above deck level due to changes in the elevation of the site. Thus, the filter house's west façade rises to a full story in height at the center and two full stories at the raised ends beneath the saucers. The east façade of the filter house has brick walls covered with non-original, painted murals. The west façade is seven bays and is articulated in a similar manner as the east and west façades of the bath house.
Originally, it had steel casements, but these have been filled in with brick and narrow strips of glass blocks. There are also empty niches lined with painted concrete on the areas of the façade that align with the saucer roofs (The original blueprints specified glass blocks at these locations, which have been removed). These taller sections have coursed brick façades. The north façade is fronted by service ramps and entryways and steel sash at the second story. The south façade of the filter house consists of coursed brick, a service entrance, and security lights and equipment.
The Surrounding Park including the Playground, Comfort Station, and Ball Court. The portions of Astoria Park that are part of the landmark site include a series of pathways paved with either blacktop or hexagonal blocks with either concrete or bluestone curbs. Some of these paths predate the pool complex, while others were installed at that time. Some of the paths are stepped, most notably both of the diagonal stepped paths leading from 19th Street down to the main entry plaza on the east side of the bath house. There are circular, concrete-paved areas at the top of both of these ramps that demarcate the locations of original fountains that have long since been removed. The one on the south side has brass letters and segments embedded in the concrete to form a compass. The plaza also has iron tube railings parallel to the main façade.
There are also park benches, bollards (both iron and concrete), wrought-iron fences and park lamps at various locations; these appear not to be original features of the park and to post date the construction of the play center. There is a lawn on the east side of the complex which features a granite memorial commemorating the First World War. The memorial was placed in Astoria Park in 1926, and was moved to its present location during construction of the play center. The memorial is flanked by flagpoles. An asphalt-paved ball court to the southwest of the pool complex has non-historic chain link fences surrounding it and non-historic concrete steps. A playground to the northwest to the site, enclosed by non- historic wrought-iron fences, has non-historic play equipment. A Flemish-bond brick comfort station (now painted), built at the same time and in the same style as the pool complex, is located on the south side of the playground.
The one-story building is square in plan and features projecting end piers with decorative brickwork, curved wall surfaces near the entrances, incised lettering indicated and girls/boys rooms, glass block wall surfaces, non-historic roof-top weathervane and decorative cast concrete embellishments. There is also non-historic Parks Department signage and security lighting applied to the walls. A brick, curving retaining wall extends westward from the filter house. It is topped by concrete coping and wrought-iron fencing that matches the rest of the complex.
- From the 2006 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
The history of Lollards Pit – A Grim Tale of Persecution.
During the 15th. and 16th. centuries, people were executed for their religious beliefs by being 'burnt at the stake’ on or very near to the site of the pub. The number of people executed is not known, but there are three mentioned in 1428, half a dozen during the first half of the 16th. century, including Thomas Bilney in 1531 and up to 50 burned during the reign of “Bloody” Queen Mary (1st. October 1553 to 17th. November 1558) including Thomas Carmen in 1558.
The pit was long associated with the church and it was held by the Bishop of Norwich. Early chalk drawings were dug out to provide foundations for Norwich Cathedral, hence the creation of a pit. It was also just outside the city walls, and therefore a good place to dispose of those who had been cast out by the church.
For many years the area was shunned by local people, given its evil connotations. It later became a tannery where wherrymen used to load and unload cargo. It then became a camp ground for gypsies, and finally ended up as the site of the public house of today.
Who were the Lollards?
Put simply, Lollards were anti-clerical. They believed the Church was corrupt in many ways and looked to scripture as the basis for their religion. The movement was started by John Wycliffe (1320 – 1384), a prominent theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Church. Wycliffe was also an early advocate for the translation of the Bible into the common language. Wycliffe's aim was to do away with the existing church hierarchy and replace it with the 'poor priests' who lived in poverty and were bound by no vows.
Wycliffe's followers were known as Lollards, Lollardi or Lollers, a popular derogatory nickname given to those without an academic background. They were a somewhat rebellious movement which preached anticlerical and biblically-centered reforms. The Lollard movement was a precursor to the Protestant Reformation.
Wycliffe was declared a heretic on 4th May 1415 (40 years after his death) and his writings were banned by the Council of Constance. The church were afraid that his grave would become a religious shrine, so Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln acting on the instructions of Pope Martin V, ordered officials to exhume the corpse, burn it and scatter the ashes on the River Swift which runs through Lutterworth, Leicestershire.
The Lollards Pit was previously know as the Bridge House.
This beautifully decorated orthodox church is situated up a hill in Lagoydi, Kos
We are given special permission to access the off-limits upper floor (nobody has access for the last 2000 years until now) of the church from where I'm able to get some beautiful views of the stunning frescoes and unravel an ancient secret.
This is the Gospel of Mark. Not any "Gospel according to Mark" but the first original manuscript that Mark actually wrote back in the year 70AD when the Jewish War was raging, and the Roman under the command of Titus had just devastated the Second Temple in Jerusalem and in the process kick started the Jewish Diaspora. St Paul had been executed in Rome 2 years back. This is literally an eye-witness account of Jesus's life and all the narratives described in the bible. Mark's Gospel is by and large the earliest of the 4 Gospels of the new testament that was written in view of his stylistic and theological writings. This is the time when Christianity is still in its infancy embryonic stage.
According to a reliable ancient Q source (2-source hypothesis, synoptic problem), Mark initially intended to have it written in Aramaic which Jesus spoke in his sermons during his ministry. However, he changes his mind at the last minute and writes in Greek instead, in order to reach out to the majority Greek speaking gentiles in Asia Minor and around the Mediterranean region. Unlike the earliest known fragmentary Gospel of Mark in existence which dates to the third century AD, this one is a near complete first century AD document. The exact date of completion of the book was clearly inscribed along with Mark's autograph in chapter 23:04. This manuscript contained the original resurrection narrative beyond Mark 16:8 of the canonical bible. (16:9-20 extract material from later Gospel tradition in Matthew/Luke/John as well as embellishments from medieval scribes)
It is a highly sought-after ancient Christian scripture that was presumably lost for 2000 years. Scholars all over the world have been desperately looking for it since antiquity but failed.
This is the first Gospel from which all other Gospels are based on, including the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Luke/Act and John which form the essential part of the New Testament of 27books.
The only biblical authoritative scriptures that predate it are the epistles of Paul which he wrote some 2 decades earlier. However, Paul (formerly Saul) does not describe the life of Jesus, he only accounts for his death, resurrection and his divine teachings. The reason why Paul is not interested in the historical flesh and blood Jesus is because that was associated with Judaism in which Jesus was believed to be the Messiah. He came to earth to liberate the Jewish people. However, his messianic activities caught the attention of the Roman authorities which viewed him as a political agitator. He was arrested charged with political subversion and subsequently crucified. (the gospels however were written in such a way as to discount any Romans involvement, the Jews were the ones that were responsible for Jesus death instead) For Judaism, once the Messiah is killed, that signal the end of his potentials. The leader is gone forever as Jews don't believe Jesus would return as a divine figure continuing in his fight for liberation as nobody is divine in Judaism. Paul wanted to drive on his notion with the historical failure in leadership is utterly wipe out and create a brand new theology which put Jesus as a divine figure. Paul is not a disciple of Jesus during his lifetime. In fact Paul is a prosecutor of the early followers of Jesus's movement. (known as The Way and subsequently evolved into a religious movement known as Ebionites)
Paul became a believer after his visionary encounter with Jesus during his journey to Damascus to arrest Jesus followers shortly after Jesus' crucifixion. To him, the divine Jesus provides him with the best and the most accurate information from heaven than the historical earthy Jesus which is sometimes hard to understand. Therefore, he should be the one to convey Jesus's teaching and not his close disciples. Inarguably, besides Jesus himself Paul (despite not knowing Jesus in person) is the most important figure in the foundation of proto-orthodoxy which eventually evolved into the present day Christianity. His contributions, religious conviction and bearing is phenomenal. The images we see today about Jesus, from Hollywood movies to Renaissance paintings are drawn from the 4 gospels which above all, Paul's idea. We do not know how Jesus looks like, let alone his biography. That's simply we do not have any written records from the people who knew him well and the early church, such as the Jerusalem Church which James, the brother of Jesus took over after Jesus' passing.
Mark's manuscript is of paramount significance to biblical scholars which specialize in the field of textual criticism. The writings of this gospel would provide the foundation to gauge the accuracy of the rest of the scriptures. We could then make very accurate comparisons and correct much of the known textual discrepancies and variants found in our existing collection of ancient manuscripts numbering in the thousands. (Greek - 5800, Latin - >10,000 and >9000 various other ancient languages such as Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian.) The numbers would grow as new discoveries are made. (ie the Nag Hammadi library which a series of gnostic gospels dated to the first half of the second century have been discovered in 1945 in Egypt. Among which is the Gospel of Thomas, written in Coptic. It contains 114 sayings of Jesus. Some which are not found in the canonical gospels. According to Thomas (twin brother of Jesus Didymus Judas Thomas ), there is no virgin birth and salvation does not come in the form of resurrection but rather through the deep understanding of the secret teachings of Jesus himself (it says "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death." However, for obvious reasons, nobody understood a single word he said as nobody remains alive since then). Nevertheless, it has provided a refreshing insight to the still-evolving teaching of Christ practice by the numerous sects of early Christianity. One of these Judeo-Christian sect which do not believe in the resurrected Christ fabricated the twin story. The paradox provided a framework for their crucified messiah to continue fighting for liberation for their followers.
We knew a fair bit about the gnostic gospels from the works of Christian historian Eusebius in the fourth century.. He was a compelling opponent to the non-orthodox teachings. In his works he mentioned the gospel of Thomas, gospel of Philip etc. It is not until the modern times that we get to see the actual copy of these non-canonical works thru' archeological discoveries. Incidentally, the gnostic works are certainly not composed by the apostles of Jesus as it was claimed. They are dated to the late second and third century. All of the apostles are long gone already.
There are numerous debates on the accuracy of the Bible relating to the transmission process which resulted in the contradiction of texts being found. However, the concept is crystal clear, if one takes it as a book of faith there is absolutely no reason to doubt its authenticity. Since it is an authoritative scripture, it is God's true words regardless.
However, in the quest for historical knowledge it's desirable to seek hard evidence to account for the narratives which invariably put us in a collision course with theological ideologies.
The answer is simple, there is not a single shred of archaeological remains ever found relating to any of the bible narratives. Except for the discovery of Pilate Stone in 1961 which confirms the existence of one of the major actors in the trial narrative (Jesus judge, Pontivs Pilativs) That though, does not historically proved that the trial actually took place as described in all of the 4 gospels or Jesus actually existed. Ironically, that also does not mean any of the biblical events did not take place.
In fact, very few would leave behind an archeological trail for people to uncover thousands of years later.
All cross reference to the major characters and events in the bible came from implicit and sometimes controversial writings by ancient historians such as Josephus, Tacitus etc.. All being said, we don't need any sort of contemporary evidence for the bible, which is regarded as a "certified true copy" from God.
But the bottom line is that the bible is written by a long line of fallible human scribes and not solely by God himself. Invariably, there are mistakes made, lots of them. Humans have evolved to be imperfect and particularly have an inherent natural talent of lying through the teeth to fulfil polysized theological ideas and political agendas.
The arguments go on and on and probably would, for another 2 thousand years.
Perhaps God wants to keep it that way to make things interesting for us. He has no desire to reveal his plan just yet.
Fact : The bible shown above is dated 1938AD. (Jenny's hand, though, is not:) ) so it's just a couple of decades old instead of 2000 years old. The 4 Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John In order of the sequence in which they are written) of the New Testaments are in fact anonymous. The true authors remain unknown to this day (wish I know who wrote them). They are assigned with the names as we know today sometimes in the second century AD by Apostolic church fathers. One hypothesis suggests that each of the Gospel is not written by one single person and instead is composed by a collection of documents written by a community of people. That is to say eg the Gospel of Mark is written by a community of people that knew Mark who is their leader and decisively write down his teachings and thoughts over a period of time. The same formula is applied to the rest of the Gospels.
Why 4 Gospels instead of other numbers? By theological reasoning, Christians believe in the 4 corners of the Earth and that would be the most plausible outcome. The book of Acts is neatly separated from the Gospel of Luke (same author) to form a separate book by itself.
Why Mark, Matthew, Luke and John and not somebody else?
Well, by reasonable means, we know that Peter and Paul are the original founders of Christianity in Rome. Peter is said to be the Apostle to the Jews and Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Both wanted a fair share of the pie. Matthew (tax collector) and John(son of Zebedee) are believed to be the close followers of Jesus. Mark was said to be the disciple of Peter and Luke was a disciple and also a personal physician of Paul. So now we have 2 close followers of Jesus and 2 close followers of Jesus followers. Voila ! now we have the 4 names, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. That is the most probable reason to how the names came to be associated with the Gospels that we know today.
The gospel narrative, though, is either fictitious or partially hypothesized with available information gathered from various sources. For most part of the writings however, is based on my personal understanding of various published articles currently in circulation and partly from my own imaginations.
Side dish :
Have you ever wondered what BC and AD stand for? These 2 terms are indispensable when it comes to establishing historical timeline or merely describing an historical event. I use them all the time. BC is Before Christ and AD is Anno Domini (year of our Lord). The idea was devised by a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century AD to standardise how we record time so that Easter celebration can be synchronised all over the Roman empire. Before that, people were using different time measurements based on certain important dates. The Greeks used the year 776 BC (first Olympic game) while the Roman used 753 BC (the founding of their city) as their baseline. That led to confusion in historical dates recording and misjudgement of the calendar. In addition, and most importantly, the minute inconsistency in the natural celestial movement of the earth resulted in a compounded error in the calendar which shows up over a long period of time. The idea is to use the birth of Jesus as the standard baseline. Therefore 1 AD means 1 year after Jesus was born and 1BC indicates 1 year before Jesus was born. Jesus was conceptually born in 0BC even though the concept of 0 did not exist in Roman numerals. Despite that, our calendar had been adjusted a couple of times over the last 2000 years due to the described astronomical phenomenon. Nonetheless, the solution had provided us with a nice fix to a range of major date-related problems.
This system was accepted and used for more than 1500 years until scholars discovered a major flaw. According to the New Testament Documents, Jesus was born just before Herod the Great died. Herod died in 4BC based on rock solid historical records so Jesus (unfortunately we have no historical records of any kind or any collaborative evidence of his birth, everything we know about him came from the Christian Bible) have to be born in around 6BC because the Bible mentioned that Herod ordered all baby boys up to 2 years of age to be killed out of fear that his kingly position would be threaten. (the evaluation is based on the account given in Matthew’s Gospel. However, Luke’s account would lead us to another set of dates which falls on 6AD. Nonetheless, such discrepancies would be logically accepted (at least by myself) due to the fact that the Gospels were written decades after Jesus. The accounts were not straight history, they were written from a theological standpoint. Therefore the exact dates do not really matter)
As such, it would be confusing to explain Jesus was born 6 years Before Christ (ie born 6 years before he was born). In order to get around the confusion, BC was changed to BCE- Before Common Era and AD became CE-Common Era. In that case, the terms Before Christ/Anno Domini could then be removed from the equation along with the confusion. Another important point to take note is that all Christian elements (Before Christ, year of our Lord) can be safely jettisoned from the context to evade potential religious bias.
In a nutshell, the year remains the same only BC is now BCE and AD is now CE.
eg The Roman dictator, Julia Cesar was stabbed to death in 44BC, which is 44BCE. Tiberius Caesar Augustus, the second Roman emperor died in 37AD, is now 37CE.
Which year Jesus was born
Over the decades, scholars have been debating exactly when Jesus was born. However, there is no definitive answer for it. The date would depend on which camp you’re in. From a religious standpoint, he has to be born in the year '0' in the current context. After all, our calendar is based on the idea of Jesus’ Birth. However, there is no such thing as ‘0’ year as it was not invented just yet. In Roman context, the year 1BC would follow by 1AD, which denote Before Christ and Anno Domini respectively. The calendar system was conceptualized in the 6th century CE and it’s known to have a discrepancy of a couple of years. As we now realize, Jesus was most likely born in the BC period. Which also means Jesus was born before he was born. That becomes a thorny issue. To reconcile that, the term BC is changed to BCE (before common era) and AD changed to CE(common era). Another advantage of this naming convention is that by doing so, it removes the Christian element (Christ) from the equation thus making it more neutral, avoiding any religious misinterpretation. In fact, the Jews have been using the dating system for a while already.
Well, now if we look at it through the lens of History, things get far more complex but nevertheless interesting.
Everything we know about Jesus came from the Gospels. However, the Birth narrative is only found in Matthew and Luke Gospels. Ironically, there are contradictions on the dates as we soon see.
In order to draw any reasonable conclusion, we first must have some insights as to what actually happened during this particular time frame in the region. Let’s see what history has to offer and use the data to establish a timeline upon which we'll superimpose the Gospel dates and try to make sense out of it.
In 63BCE, Roman Legions led by General Pompey captured Palestine and renamed it Judea. At that point in time, Rome was not yet an empire, it was still a republic dominated by 3 Roman leaders battling for power. Namely, Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar. Crassus was killed in action in 53BCE (good for the other 2 guys) which leaves Pompey to battle it out with Julius Caesar. Pompey was assassinated in 48BCE (good news for Caesar)
Caesar then became the sole ruler (dictator) of Rome. However, the celebration didn’t last long. In 44BCE he was in turn assassinated. Caesar’s adopted Son Octavian took over power but he was not alone. Another 2 guys also wanted to have a share of the pie. Namely Lepidus and Mark Anthony (Queen Cleopatra’s lover). In 36BCE, Lepidus fell out of power leaving Mark Anthony and Octavian to battle it out. Octavian defeated Mark Anthony in the famous sea battle at Actium in 31BCE sending Mark and Cleopatra to Heaven.
In 27BCE, Octavian declared himself the First Emperor of Rome (Augustus) and Rome became an Empire. His reign lasted for 40 years dying in 14CE. He was then succeeded by his adopted son Tiberius who reigned for 22 years dying in 37CE. These are well attested, undisputed historical dates. We can then use them as reference points for our chronology.
After Pompey captured Jerusalem, he put Hyrcanus (local Jewish ruler) in charge. Later, Mark Anthony installed Herod the Great as King of the Jews and ruled Jerusalem from 37BCE. This is verified by references found in Josephus' works as well as Roman records. Josephus also mentioned that Herold’s conquest of Jerusalem was 27 years after Pompey’s conquest of Jerusalem. That helps to pinpoint the date to be 37BCE as well. This particular year is crucial for calculating Jesus’ birth.
Josephus states that Herold dies 34 years after conquering Jerusalem which brings us to 4BCE. He also mentioned Herod died during the Passover season and shortly after a lunar eclipse. That date is confirmed with astronomical reference as the only lunar eclipse that had occurred around that time period. Josephus was spot-on.
After the passing of Herod, one of his sons named Archelaus continued to rule the area. However, he fell out of favor with Augustus and eventually was deposed in 6CE. From then on, Judea was no longer ruled by local Jewish kings and instead by Roman governors/prefect. The first 4 are relatively unknown in history but the fifth one had made his way into the greatest story ever told. His name is Pontius Pilate, the man mentioned in the Bible that sent Jesus to the cross. He governed from 26CE to 36CE, one year before Emperor Tiberius Died.
Now we turn our attention back to the Bible. The Birth narrative is only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. First let’s look at what Matthew has to say. According to Matthew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem during when Herod the Great was king. So, Jesus must have been born before the year 4BCE because this was when Herod died. After Jesus is born, some wise men(Magi) from the east visit Herod and tell him that they have come to worship a newly born king of the Jews. Herod told them to look for them in Bethlehem and report back to him of the exact location after they've found the child on the pretext that he too wishes to worship the new king. However, the Magi head straight home after they found the little Jesus. Herod was mad after learning that he was tricked and became paranoid thinking that his throne is threatened and ordered all male children 2 years old or younger to be killed. Jesus and his parents then escaped to Egypt. Herod dies shortly. After which, his son Archelaus takes over. Jesus and his parents then return to Nazareth.
Ironically, Matthew doesn’t tell us how much time passed between the birth of Jesus and the visit from the wise men. Herod ordered all male children 2 years old or younger to be killed, so the assumption that it could have been as much as 2 years. Which means the typical nativity scene (showing 3 Magi) is just an embellishment to the birth story. According to Matthew's narrative, there's no mention of the number of wise men and almost certainly no wise men were present at the time of Jesus’ birth.
Retrospectively, Jesus must be born between 4BCE and 6BCE.
According to Luke, Jesus was born during a time when Quirinus was the governor of Syria and during a census. According to Roman historical data, both info from Luke’s Gospel were credible enough. There was indeed a man called Quirinus. He was the governor of Syria at that time. So, when Augustus deposed Archelaus in 6CE, he sent Quirinus over from nearby Syria (Syria was already a Roman province) to conduct a census for taxation purposes. However, it was not a census for the entire empire and neither did it require people to return to their hometown as mentioned in Luke’s narrative. In Luke's account, no wise men are mentioned.
So, according to Matthew, Jesus was born before the year 4BCE (according to most scholars, Jesus was born in 6BCE.) but according to Luke, Jesus was born sometime around 6CE. How do we reconcile such contradictions? In my opinion, we can't and we don’t need to.
To me, the main point is that the Bible is written to make theological points and not to record literal history. Secondly, the Gospels were written by different individuals in different parts of the Roman empire decades after Jesus’ death. Their writings were based largely on a chain of oral traditions transmitted over a period of time and to some extent influenced by the local culture, belief and literature. Even though the Bible is an authoritative text inspired by God supposedly true in every word, it has come to be written by human scribes. Inevitably, there are discrepancies simply because humans do make mistakes and on top of that, their writings are governed by a string of political and religious influences and motivations.
End
Extracts from the Gospels :
Matthew 2:1–23
The Visit of the Wise Men
2 Now hafter Jesus was born in iBethlehem of Judea jin the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men1 from kthe east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born lking of the Jews? For we saw mhis star when it rose2 and have come to nworship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where othe Christ was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:
6 p“ ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will qshepherd my people Israel.’ ”
7 Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” 9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, rthey offered him gifts, sgold and tfrankincense and umyrrh. 12 And vbeing warned win a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
The Flight to Egypt
13 Now when they had departed, behold, xan angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. yThis was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, z“Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Herod Kills the Children
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 aThen was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
18 b“A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they care no more.”
The Return to Nazareth
19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20 saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for dthose who sought the child’s life are dead.” 21 And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and ebeing warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23 And he went and lived in a city called fNazareth, gso that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.
LUKE 2:1-20
The Birth of Jesus
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.
12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,
18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
21 On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived.
My interpretation on John 8 : 1-11 adulterous woman
Jesus wrote on the ground
Probably read as :
I knew you guys committed the adultery with the woman(you guys should be stoned to death too)
Jesus then said to the priests
Whoever did not commit any sin cast the first stone and they all ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.
Jesus then turned to the woman and tell her not to sin again.
If Jesus said go ahead and stone her he violate his own teachings (forgiveness)
If he let her go he violate the Torah
@Kos Island, Greece (9.9.2019AD)
Astoria, Queens
The Astoria Play Center is one of a group of eleven immense new outdoor swimming pools which were opened in the summer of 1936 in a series of grand ceremonies presided over by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Park Commissioner Robert Moses. All were constructed largely with funding provided by the Works Progress Administration, one of the many New Deal agencies created during the 1930s to address the effects of America's Great Depression. Designed to accommodate a total of 49,000 users simultaneously at locations scattered across the entire city, and completed just two and a half years after the LaGuardia administration took office, the new pool complexes gained quick recognition as being among the most remarkable public recreational facilities ever constructed in this country.
Many architects, landscape architects, and engineers were hired to execute the pool program and the hundreds of other new construction and rehabilitation projects undertaken between 1934 and 1936 by a newly consolidated Park Department. They were guided by a senior team composed of staff members and consultants who had earlier worked for Moses at various governmental agencies, including the New York State Council of Parks and the Long Island State Park Commission. They included architect Aymar Embury II, landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Allyn R. Jennings, and civil engineers W. Earle Andrews and William H. Latham. Surviving documents also indicate that Robert Moses, himself a long-time swimming enthusiast, gave detailed attention to the designs for the new pool complexes.
Opened on July 2, 1936, with a capacity of 6,200 swimmers, and designed mainly by consulting Park Department architect John Matthews Hatton, the Astoria Play Center commands a striking waterfront location in Astoria Park. The vast scale of the pool complex is complemented by that of its setting - the distant vistas westward framed by the monumental forms of the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges. Embedded into what has now become a densely wooded slope which descends to the water's edge from 19th Street, the play center complex was designed to take full advantage of its surroundings. The entire roof of the bath house structure is used for multi-level viewing terraces. Extensive concrete bleacher sections are located on the western side of the bath house and around the diving pool. They offer far more outdoor seating than is available at the other play centers; perhaps the abundant seating is related to the fact that the final trials for the 1936 Summer Olympics were held here.
Like Hatton's later design for the 1939 bath house at Betsy Head, the Astoria Play Center structure makes extensive use of glass block; it forms the lower recessed sections of the locker room walls which are topped by the original metal louver windows. Massive piers laid up in decorative bonds demarcate the bays. Glass block also forms extensive sections of the lateral walls of the entryway: the original Art Moderne style ticket booth and signage are its other significant features. Among the Center's more unusual design elements are the whimsical saucerlike roofs atop the upper portions of the filter house structure on the western side of the swimming pool. The areas adjacent to the pool complex include extensive pathway systems, playing areas, and a striking comfort station designed in a style similar to that of the bath house.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
History of the Astoria Park Pool Site
The setting for the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center is the sloping, sixty-six acre Astoria Park, located on the east shore of the Hell Gate channel across from Ward's Island in western Queens. The complex has a panoramic view of the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan framed between the towering Triborough Bridge to the south and the majestic Hell Gate Bridge to the north. Long Island City and Astoria became part of greater New York City in the consolidation of 1898. By 1907, the land now occupied by Astoria Park and its surroundings remained occupied by fading, former estates of prominent families and ship captains, who had moved away as industrial and residential developments loomed ever closer. The pace of urbanization picked up after the opening of the Queensborough Bridge in 1909, adding many more factories and houses.
Around the turn of the century, sentiment emerged to increase public access to the East River and Hell Gate waterfront. In 1913, the City of New York acquired fifty-six acres of land along the shorefront for what was to become Astoria Park. Originally, named for Mayor William J. Gaynor, who served from 1910 to 1913, the name of the park was soon changed to Astoria Park. According to Parks Department Records, Astoria Park - which was originally equipped with two playgrounds, six tennis courts, three baseball diamonds, a wading pool, bandstand, and comfort station - was the first large park in New York City to provide for organized, rather than passive, recreation.
The Hell Gate Bridge, designed by engineer Gustav Lindenthal and architect Henry Hornbostel, was constructed over the northern park of Astoria Park in 1917; its majestic towers forming the park's northern vista. Major improvements to Astoria Park were undertaken in the 1930s under the auspices of the popular mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia and his legendary Park Commissioner, Robert Moses. These changes included the addition of 4.5 acres of parkland under the Triborough Bridge, which was finished in 1936, the same year of the opening of the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center. Engineered by O.H. Ammann and designed by the architect Aymar Embury II, the Triborough Bridge, along with the pool complex, added a sleek modernity to the park. The improvements of the 1930s were made largely by using funds obtained from the Works Progress Administration, one of the many public works programs created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States Congress during the Great Depression.
Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Moses and the New Deal
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1932 in the middle of the Great Depression that followed the stock market crash in 1929. Roosevelt promised to rebuild confidence in American capitalism and to improve the nation's standard of living by creating the New Deal economic program of unprecedented public spending on social programs and construction projects.
New York City had been especially hard hit by the economic downturn, and its citizens, hoping for change, elected Fiorello LaGuardia to the mayoralty of New York City in 1933 under a reform-minded "fusion" ticket. He chose New York State Park Commissioner, Robert Moses, a champion of reform politics, as New York City's new Park Commissioner. The new mayor's success in securing a lion's share of monies made available by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), and Moses' superb management skills and his ability to attract talented designers and engineers to his staff, resulted in profound physical changes in the environment of New York City. The construction and renovation of neighborhood recreation areas, such as pools and play grounds, were some of the most ambitious and successful programs undertaken by Moses with funds largely provided by the WPA.
Fiorello H. La Guardia was sworn in as the ninety-ninth mayor of the City of New York in January 1934, as an anti-Tammany Hall reform candidate. A maverick Republican and a five-term congressman from East Harlem, LaGuardia won the 1933 mayoral election on the "Fusion" ticket after losing the 1929 mayoral race on the Republican line. The Fusion Conference Committee at first considered running Robert Moses, another Republican, who was appointed Chairman of the New York State Council of Parks in 1924 by his political mentor, Governor Alfred E. Smith, a Tammany Hall Democrat from New York City. However, the committee decided against Moses because of his association with Smith, and chose LaGuardia instead. At the time, Moses was a popular public figure with a reputation as a progressive, and as the builder of great parks and parkways like Jones Beach and the Northern State Parkway on Long Island.
His endorsement of LaGuardia during the campaign was considered instrumental in securing a victory for LaGuardia. Within a week of the election, LaGuardia invited Moses to join his incoming administration as a reward.
In the 1920s, Moses was at the forefront of the national recreation movement began in the first decade of the twentieth century, led by such men as President Theodore Roosevelt and the lesser-known George D. Butler of the National Recreation Association. The movement gained momentum after President Calvin Coolidge convened the first National Conference on Outdoor Recreation in 1924.
During the1930s Depression, the need to provide for or to improve outdoor recreation, especially in urban areas, became most urgent, and fit into the FDR's New Deal economic programs. Moses accepted the position of Commissioner of Parks in the LaGuardia administration on the condition that the five existing independent Park Departments (one for each borough) would be consolidated into a single department with himself as the sole Commissioner, and that the Park Commissioner's authority also include control of the City's parkways. He also demanded to be appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Triborough Bridge Authority, which was then building the bridge of that name, and that a new agency, the Marine Parkway Authority, which would build a bridge to the Rockaways, be created with himself at the helm.
Already in charge of the Long Island State Park Commission, the New York State Council of Parks, the Jones Beach State Park Authority, and the Bethpage State Park Authority, Moses would then be in control of all existing and proposed parks and parkways in the New York metropolitan region, except for areas outside of New York State.
Moses began to assess the state of the City's parks and to plan for their future as soon as LaGuardia announced his intention to appoint Moses as Park Commissioner. According to one source: "Immediately after the election he wrote out, on a single piece of paper, a plan for putting 80,000 men to work on 1,700 relief projects." Moses hired a consulting engineer and three assistant engineers to survey every park and parkway in the City. The survey was completed by the time he took office in mid-January 1934.
When Moses took over the Park Department, it was already employing 69,000 relief workers funded mainly by the federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). However, Moses found the men to be ill-equipped and inadequately supervised, and considered many of the construction projects to have been poorly designed. He immediately began to revamp the entire operation of the Park Department and established a Division of Design, located at the Arsenal in Central Park. The staff was to be headed up by experienced professionals drawn mainly from his State agencies. Some of his talented staff of young architects, landscape architects and engineers had worked on the designs for Long Island's highly acclaimed parks, including Jones Beach, which is considered one of Moses' greatest accomplishments.
His staff also included a number of well-known and accomplished designers, among them architects Aymar Embury II and John M. Hatton, and the landscape architect and civil engineer Gilmore D. Clarke. Other top members of Moses' staff were the landscape architect Allyn R. Jennings, and civil engineers W. Earle Andrews and William H. Latham.
The Department needed to produce plans and blueprints immediately so the growing force of relief workers could be assigned to worthwhile projects as quickly as possible. Within a week, Moses managed to persuade CWA officials to drop some of the regulations governing the hiring of staff and to relax its spending limits on project planning, allowing him to hire 600 architects, engineers and draftsmen at salaries above CWA wage guidelines. By the first of February, they were busily producing designs and blueprints.
The Park Department's Division of Design was organized in the following manner: a topographical unit of about 400 surveyors and draftsmen, a landscape architecture unit of about sixty people, an architecture unit made up of sixty architects and draftsmen, and an engineering unit of about fifty. Smaller units included an Arboricultural Department and an Inspection Department. All the work in the Division of Design was under the direct supervision of the Park Engineer, who was aided and advised by a Consulting Architect, a Consulting Landscape Architect, and a Consulting Engineer. All new projects began in the topographical unit, where a complete survey of the land was prepared. It then moved on to the landscaping unit, where the basic concept for the design was developed. Next, the three units: landscape, architecture, and engineering, collaborated to produce the final design and all the necessary construction documents.
The Park Engineer and his aides had to approve all of the plans. Moses himself sometimes stepped in to revise or overrule a design, especially on the larger, more visible projects.
Moses' superior management ability and political savvy allowed him to move projects along very quickly and to produce concrete results, gaining for him much public admiration. However, his personal demeanor was notoriously stubborn and arrogant, and he sometimes fired people on the spot for no apparent reason.
At times, he disregarded the legitimate authority of other governmental agencies. Once, when the Department of Plant and Structures refused to suspend a ferry service that used a terminal in the path of constructing the Triborough Bridge approach road, Moses had his men demolish the terminal while the boat was on the other side of the river. He feuded with President Franklin D. Roosevelt for years, even while Washington was pouring millions of dollars into Moses' own Park Department. His later battles with and subsequent triumphs over community groups opposed to the routing of the Gowanus and the Cross-Bronx Expressways through their neighborhoods are now legendary. Moses was also known to have been insensitive to people of color, and tried to restrict access to many of his recreational facilities, including the pools. He determined that the Colonial Park pool in Harlem would be the only one for minority use. Most of the other pools, including Astoria, were placed in white neighborhoods.
The Thomas Jefferson Park pool, located in East Harlem was (LaGuardia's old congressional district) was close to Spanish Harlem where the city's growing Puert Rican population was settling, and also not very far from African-American Harlem. To discourage minority use at the Jefferson Park facility, Moses kept the water heating system turned off, believing that the cold water would not bother Caucasian swimmers, "but would deter any 'colored' people who happened to enter it once from returning." To many he was a master builder; to others he was a spoiled bully; and he seemingly always had his way.
In the summer of 1934, however, Robert Moses was a hero. Hundreds of projects, covering virtually every neighborhood in the city, had been completed. Structures were repainted, tennis courts resurfaced, and lawns reseeded. Hundreds of new construction projects were either underway or being designed. Among the projects being drawn up at the time was the Astoria Park Pool.
The Designers Behind the Planning of the Astoria Park Pool
Aymar Embury II and Gilmore D. Clarke, respectively the Park Department's Consulting Architect and Consulting Landscape Architect, were employed by the City on a part-time basis to oversee designs for park projects under Robert Moses. The head of the Division of Design at the time was the Park Engineer, William H. Latham, who was responsible for the preparation of all plans and specifications within the department. Major design problems were discussed by Embury and Clarke before the preliminary sketches were made under Latham's direction. Completed sketches were subject to approval by the Park Engineer, the General Superintendent, and Commissioner Moses. The consultants would give regular criticism during the preparations of the plans.
Aymar Embury II (1880-1966) was born in New York City and studied engineering at Princeton University, where he received a Master of Science degree in 1901. He acquired his architectural training through apprenticeships with three New York firms: George B. Post, Howells and Stokes, and Palmer and Hornbostel. He also worked for Cass Gilbert. In 1905, Embury won both first and second prize in a contest held by the Garden City Company for a modest country house to be built in Garden City, Long Island. This gained for him a reputation as a talented designer, and led to many commissions for country houses in the New York metropolitan area. He subsequently published seven books and several pamphlets, mainly on early American architecture, establishing him as an authority on that subject. By the start of the Great Depression, he was well-known and had received a wide range of commissions all over the east coast of the United States, including college buildings and social clubs, in addition to residences.
He designed the Players and Nassau Clubs in Princeton, New Jersey, the Princeton Club in New York City, and the University Club in Washington, D.C.
Embury was said to have supervised the design of over six hundred public projects, including Orchard Beach, Bryant Park, the New York City Building at the 1939 World's Fair, the Donnell Branch of the New York Public Library, the Hofstra University Campus, the Central Park and Prospect Park Zoos, Jacob Riis Park, five of the eleven neighborhood pool and play centers, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, and many more. His relationship to the planning of the Astoria Pool and Play Center appears to have been limited to his role as the department's consulting architect.
Gilmore D. Clarke (1892-1982) was born in New York City and studied landscape architecture and civil engineering at Cornell University, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1913. He served as an engineer in the army during World War I, receiving many citations and decorations, and remained in the Army Reserve Corps until 1939. During the 1920s, he served on several local, state and federal commissions as landscape architect, including the Architectural Advisory Board for the United States Capital, the New York State Council of Parks (which was headed by Robert Moses), and the Westchester County Park Commission, among many others. For his work in Westchester County, which included the Rye Beach Playland, the Saw Mill River Parkway, and the Bronx River Parkway, Clarke was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor in Landscape Architecture from the Architectural League of New York in 1931.
By the time of the Great Depression, Clarke was already established as the most popular landscape architect in public works in America.
His career advanced during the 1930s. Besides being hired by Robert Moses as the Consulting Landscape Architect to the New York City Park Department, he also became a member of the National Commission on Fine Arts, the New York State Planning Council, and the Board of Design for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In addition to Astoria Park, his work for the Park Department included Bryant Park, Central Park Zoo, City Hall Park, Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and the Henry Hudson Parkway. He taught landscape architecture at Cornell University from 1935 to 1950, serving as dean from 1939 until his retirement in 1950 and wrote several articles for trade periodicals. In 1935, Clarke joined Michael Rapuano, an engineer and landscape architect, establishing the New York civil engineering and landscape architectural firm Clarke & Rapuano, Inc. Clarke was president of the firm from 1962 until his retirement in 1972.
Later in his career, Clarke worked as a consultant on the construction of the United Nations Headquarters in New York and became a Trustee for the American Museum of Natural History.
Architect John M. Hatton was born c.1886 in Iowa, and first appears in New York City directories in 1915. His professional training remains undetermined, but he practiced architecture in New York City into the late 1940s. In the early 1920s, he formed a partnership with architect Diego DeSuarez (DeSuarez & Hatton), which lasted only a few years. In addition to the Astoria Pool, his other works for the Department of Parks in the 1930s include the Betsy Head Pool in Brooklyn and Pelham Bay Park golf clubhouse. In the 1940s, he was considered an expert in store modernization (lighting, space layout, customer comfort, display, fixtures, and storefronts) and his designs for commercial spaces and storefronts were published in several architectural periodicals. Among his clients was the Stetson Hat Company. He also did work for the New York City Housing Authority in the 1940s.
The Design and Construction of the Astoria Park Pool
The Astoria Play Center is one of the group of eleven immense new outdoor swimming pools that opened in the summer of 1936 in a series of grand ceremonies presided over by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Park Commissioner Robert Moses. All were constructed mainly with funds provided by the WPA. Designed to accommodate a total of 49,000 users simultaneously at locations scattered across the entire city and completed just two-and-a-half years after LaGuardia took office, the new pool complexes completely dwarfed the city's two pre-existing outdoor public pools and gained quick recognition as being among the most remarkable public recreational facilities ever constructed in this country. The city's pool construction program was reported to have been the most expensive in terms of total cost.
Robert Moses, an avid swimmer who had a home near the ocean in Babylon, Long Island, was known to have taken a special interest in the design and construction of bathing and swimming facilities, such as Jones Beach, Orchard Beach and Riis Park, as well as the neighborhood swimming pools, including Astoria Pool. As a result of his special attention, along with that of Embury and Clarke, the design and execution of New York City's aquatic facilities in the 1930s were a cut above most other park projects at the time.
At the start, the Park Department adopted a list of shared guidelines for the entire pool project in order to enhance the efficiency of the design effort, to unify the operations of each complex, and to meet the various local and federal requirements of the relief programs. For example, each pool complex was to have separate swimming, diving and wading pools, and a large bath house, the locker room sections of which doubled as gymnasiums during non-swimming months. The bath houses, which would serve as the centerpieces of each complex, would be distinctive pavilions that would establish the design motif of each facility. Concrete bleachers at the perimeter of the pools would furnish spectator viewing areas to be augmented at some sites with rooftop promenades and galleries. There would be a minimum width for the decks to provide enough room for sunbathing and circulation. There had to be underwater lighting for night swimming.
At least one dimension of each swimming pool would have to be a multiple of fifty five yards to allow swimming competitions to be held at standard distances in either English or metric systems. Plus, the complexes had to share low-cost building materials, principally brick and cast concrete, as required by the federal government.
To satisfy federal stipulation on low-cost materials, it appears that the design team for the pools determined that the streamlined and curvilinear forms of the Art Moderne and Modern Classical styles would best meet the low-cost needs and still permit pleasing aesthetics. As a group, the pools were also distinguished by the innovative mechanical systems required to heat, filter, and circulate the vast amounts of water they used. Many of these innovations set new standards for swimming pool construction, such as scum gutters that allowed in enough sunlight to naturally kill off bacteria and a series of footbaths filled with foot cleaning solution through which bathers were forced to pass upon entering the pool areas from the locker rooms.
Sited in existing older parks or built on other city-owned land subsequently developed with as parks and playgrounds, the huge pool complexes were provided with landscape settings which included additional recreational areas, connecting pathway systems, and comfort stations. Despite the fact that the basic components were essentially the same and that the WPA required that only the cheapest materials be used, each of these swimming pool complexes is especially notable its distinctive and unique setting, appearance, and character.
Although each pool complex has been credited to a particular architect, the designs appear to actually have been collaborative efforts among the army of architects, draftsmen, engineers, and landscape architects employed by the Park Department in the 1930s. In the instance of the Astoria Play Center, the architect John M. Hatton is credited with the design. Plans on file at the Parks Department archives show that Hatton only drew the main façades and certain details of the bath house and bleachers, while Gregory Kiely drew the bath house's minor façades and some additional details. The filter house was done by C.E. Nelson, J.D. McGarr, and Joseph L. Hautman and details such as the clock, signage, lettering, light fixtures, railings, and phone booths by Harry Ahrens and F.J. Svarti.
Since the eleven pool facilities shared many common features and specifications that could be repeated at each site, and contained other elements that were similar from complex to complex, these junior designers, having different areas of expertise, apparently moved quickly from project to project. The department produced designs and construction documents simultaneously with great speed so that eleven pools and hundreds of other park projects, including some massive undertakings like Orchard Beach, were completed within a few years. The lead architect for each pool project, who in the case of the Astoria center was John M. Hatton, designed the bath house, which was unique to each site, establishing the motif that guided the design and detailing of the rest of the complex.
In October 1934, the Park Department announced the start of excavations and site work for several of the new pools, including Astoria, although the excavation plan for Astoria was not issued until December. The new Astoria Pool was to be located at the site of an existing, smaller wading pool, just to the north of the Triborough Bridge, which was then under construction. The earliest reference to the design of the bath house is in an internal Park Department document from July 1935, which describes a sketch that appears not to have survived. The memorandum also discusses footings for the main pool as having already been poured, as well as the concrete floor for the pipe tunnel and the northeast corner wall of the pool. The cast iron drain and sub-piping had also been laid. The diving pool, however, was still being excavated and no work had yet begun on the wading pool. Plans were still being prepared for the filter house and comfort station.
By August 1935, however, the fully developed plans for the façades of the bath house were released as were the landscape and bleacher plans. The filter house plans were completed that November. Revisions continued through 1936. During the period from December 1935 through October 1936, scores of construction and engineering blueprints were completed by the staff, and building continued at a steady pace until late in the year. Enough of the complex was completed for the Astoria Pool to open with much fanfare on July 2, 1936, on the first day of trials for the U.S. Olympic swim team.
The year 1936 was known as "the swimming pool year," since ten of the eleven giant neighborhood pools were opened that summer, one per week for ten weeks. Each opening day was a memorable event for its neighborhood. The day-long events featured parades, blessings of the waters, swimming races, diving competitions, appearances by Olympic stars, and performances by swimming clowns. Mayor LaGuardia attended every opening to perform the ribbon cutting. Festivities continued well after dusk with LaGuardia pulling the switch to turn on each pool's spectacular underwater lighting to the "oooohs" of the crowds. The opening ceremony at Astoria Pool was attended by 20,000 people.
The completed Astoria Pool complex was widely acclaimed and was featured in American Architect and Architecture (November 1936) and Architectural Forum (August 1937). The use of glass block construction and louvers received special praise. Astoria was the city's largest pool at 54,450 square feet, and the second largest WPA project in Queens after Jacob Riis Park. Harry Hopkins, the WPA administrator, called the Astoria Pool "the finest in the world." It remains the city's largest public pool, and one of the major achievements of the New Deal in New York City.
Subsequent History
Upon opening, the Astoria Park Pool hosted the swimming, water polo, and diving trials for the United States Olympic Team, preparing for the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.
The events were widely covered in local newspapers, and the Astoria Pool was often referred to instead as the Olympic Tryout Pool in the articles.
There were very few alterations in the years immediately after the completion of the pool; mainly systems upgrades and minor repairs were made. However, the original stainless steel sculptures of female athletes that had been produced by the noted sculptor Emil Siebern (1889-1942), who was a pioneer in the medium of stainless steel, had been removed from the pedestals over the west side of the main entryway before 1943 due to deterioration. Also, the surrounding playgrounds were reconstructed in 1946 and new gutters were installed in the pool in 1948. Sometime between 1948 and 1963, a one-story, brick rooftop addition containing concession stands was constructed on the filter house.
In the early 1940s, a group of boys from the Astoria neighborhood got together to perform swimming stunts on Wednesday nights at the pool. Known as the Aquazines, they donned costumes and treated audiences to choreographed swimming acts with music, backdrops, props and, sometimes, trained dogs. The routines showcased their talents as swimmers and divers. One of the Aquazines, Whitney Hart, became a professional diver and was later inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame.
The Astoria Park Pool was again host to the swimming and diving trials for the United States Olympic Teams in 1964. In preparation for the events, the facility was rehabilitated in 1963, its first comprehensive overhaul since it was opened twenty-seven years earlier. The work included the installation of new light weight concrete decks on the upper and lower promenades, as well as replacement of some window sash, and new paint throughout. The original glass pylons over the main entryway were resurfaced with brick.
In 1979-82, the playground to the southwest of the pool was removed and replaced with ball courts and the south comfort station in that area was demolished. Much of Astoria Park itself was reconstructed between 1983 and 1987; the project included the rehabilitation of the comfort station in the north playground and reconstruction of the seawall. In 1991, the main swimming pool was reconstructed, including the replacement of the pool floor, drains, supply islands and gutters; this replacement project was repeated in 1998-99 at which time the pool received a major systems upgrade, including new lights, pumps, piping, electric lines, filter system, showers, and improved chlorination and security systems. Also, an accessibility ramp was installed in the main pool and the supply islands in that pool were removed for safety reasons and replaced with bottom supply inlets.
Between 1996 and 2001, the north playground was rebuilt, the comfort station restored, and the park itself was the subject of a large erosion control and re-landscaping project. At this time, some replacement of the curbing and paving on the east entry ramps to the bath house took place, but there were no changes to the configuration of the ramps and walks. Additional minor site work and erosion control projects took place around the pool complex in 2000 to 2004.
The Architecture and Site of the Astoria Park Pool and Play Center
The New Deal construction projects within New York City, such as the Astoria Park Pool, were a part of a national trend that included similar projects undertaken by various governmental agencies, ranging from the vast Tennessee Valley Authority to small cities and towns. Urban projects built with WPA funding often possessed similar qualities from region to region, partly because the difficult economic climate dictated the use of inexpensive building materials, but also because the programs provided employment opportunities for a generation of young architects and engineers, many of whom were committed to modernism. For example, the bathhouse and waterfront facilities at Aquatic Park in San Francisco are similar in plan and appearance to the public pool and beachfront projects being built at about the same time in New York City.
The California facility, with its streamlined, concrete façade and steel-framed windows, bears a striking resemblance to the façade added in 1936 with WPA funds to the bathhouse at Jacob Riis Park in Queens.
The original and creative use made of these modest materials by Moses' talented design teams and the careful siting of each project makes every one of them a distinguished, individual design, as much related to their specific environment and needs as to one another.
The Astoria Play Center commands a striking waterfront location in Astoria Park. The vast scale of the pool complex is complemented by that of its setting - the distant vistas westward framed by the monumental forms of the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges. Embedded into a wooded slope which descends to the water's edge from 19th Street, the play-center complex was designed to take full advantage of its surroundings. The entire roof of the bath house structure is used for multi-level viewing terraces. Extensive concrete bleacher sections are located on the western side of the bath house and around the diving pool. They offer far more outdoor seating than is available at the other play centers; perhaps the abundant seating is related to the fact that the United States team trials for the 1936 summer Olympic Games were held there.
Like Hatton's later design for the 1939 bath house at Betsy Head Park in Brooklyn, the Astoria Play Center structure makes extensive use of glass block wall construction; it forms the lower recessed sections of the locker room walls which are topped by the original metal louver windows. Massive piers laid up in decorative bonds demarcate the bays. Glass blocks also form the extensive sections of the lateral walls of the entry lobby: the original Art Moderne-style ticket booth and signage are its other significant features. Among the center's more unusual design elements are the whimsical saucer-like roofs atop the filter house on the western side of the complex. In a playground to the northwest of the center is a striking comfort station designed in a style similar to that of the bath house.
Description
Plan and Circulation. The pool is complex is approached via either one of two stepped ramps leading westward down from 19th Street to a wide plaza located in front of the east façade of the bath house. There are also two ancillary stairways that lead down to the plaza from the pathways which connect the sidewalk along 19th Street to the viewing platforms on the roof of the bath house. The viewing platforms are on two levels connected by steps and provide views of the pools and the west vista, which includes the Hell Gate Channel, the Triborough Bridge, the Hell Gate Bridge, and Wards Island. There are also steps from the lower viewing platforms to the park pathways that surround the pool complex and lead down to the ball courts, playground, lawn and Shore Boulevard. Upon entering the centrally located, open-air lobby from the entry plaza, patrons buy admissions from the freestanding ticket booth and are led to either the men's or women's locker rooms thorough doorways on the sides of the lobby.
From the locker rooms, access to the deck areas surrounding the pool is provided by doors on the west façade of the bath house. The three pools are surrounded by wide decks and sun bathing areas. There are additional viewing platforms and a non-original concession stand located atop the filter house on the west side of the complex. Extensive bleacher areas extend across nearly the entire eastern deck and curve around the southern side of the complex near the diving pool, ending at the filter house. There is a smaller bleacher area on the north side near the wading pool. There are also several service entrances leading in from the surrounding park and pathways on all sides of the complex.
The Bath House and Rooftop Viewing Platforms. The one-story bath house, which is partially built into the slope of the park, employs a U-shaped plan and is constructed of concrete, Flemish-bond brick (now mostly painted), and glass blocks. Its height varies to accommodate two levels of rooftop viewing platforms. It has a centrally-located open-air lobby, and a series of stairway which connect the viewing platforms to one another, and to the surrounding park pathways. The concrete foundation is stepped on the east side and incorporates steel gratings on the top step.
The east façade is fifteen bays with a centrally located main entryway, which opens into an outdoor lobby. At the center of the lobby is a multi-sided ticket booth designed in a nautical motif. The base of the ticket booth consists of terrazzo slabs angled outward toward the countertop, which is protected by a mesh cage. The roof of the booth, which aligns with the multi-side counter below, is supported by steel columns that are set back behind the counter. The roof features two step-backs, the lower one featuring a series of moldings, while the upper one has slotted openings serving to ventilate the booth. The booth is topped by short stack-like motif decorated with large cogs.
The floor of the lobby is paved with brick with a bluestone and granite border, while the ceiling consists of the exposed concrete underside of the rooftop viewing terrace and its supportive beams. The original clock is suspended from the westernmost beam. The three bays of each sidewall in the lobby are separated by compound piers clad in decorative brickwork. Each bay contains a set of wood doors, painted black, topped by a decorative steel lintel supporting a large expanse of glass blocks that have decorative aluminum grills at the bottom. The grills at the center bays have applied, deco-style aluminum lettering that denote the men's and women's locker rooms to either side of the lobby. There are also angled deco-style aluminum signs also identifying the men's and women's locker rooms on either side of the lobby. Wrought-iron fences and gates are located on the east and west sides.
The entryway is flanked on the west side by massive brick piers which step in toward the lobby and feature full-height expanses of glass blocks. Massive, molded concrete beams span the east and west openings. Parks Department signage has been added to the piers. The remaining bays consist of a series of recessed expanses of glass block walls topped by the original metal and glass louver windows (covered with non- historic mesh grills) and convex, fluted aluminum lintels. One bay is presently boarded up. Massive, projecting piers laid up in decorative brick bonds demarcate the bays. The entire façade is topped by bluestone coping.
The north side wing is partially built in the slope of the park, and has only one exposed façade, which faces south, but this façade is only partially exposed due to the slope of the hill. Abutting this façade is a concrete stairway with deco-style steel railings, which leads from the north pathway to the viewing terraces down to the main entrance plaza to the lobby. The side wing's façade has two bays and consists of brick walls and a wide horizontal band of glass blocks (now painted over). The bays are separated by a wide pier that is similar to the piers of the east façade of the bath house. Steel railings are attached to the brick. An original doorway in the pier has been sealed with wood covered with painted aluminum sheets. The south side wing is a mirror-image of the north wing, but its glass blocks have not been painted over. A narrow part of the south wing's brick south façade is exposed due to the slope of the site.
Its fenestration, now boarded up, is partially exposed above steel grates. There is also a service entry with a bulkhead at this location.
The bath house's seventeen-bay west façade is similar to the east façade, but is lower due to the slope of the site and because its roof accommodates the lower viewing terrace. In addition, the façade has two sets of paired wooden exit doors, painted black, from the men's and women's locker rooms. These doors are set in semicircular coves near the north and south ends of the façade. There are also non-historic security lamps, cameras, and annunciators attached to the bricks near the lobby.
The entire roof of the bath house, including the side wings, is paved for use as either viewing platforms or pathways leading to the platforms from the park's paths. The decks are paved with concrete with bluestone borders. All of these publicly-accessible areas are enclosed by deco-style steel railings, which incorporate flagpoles on the east side of the roof. The platforms are connected by concrete steps with historic steel railings. There are two oval, header-brick pylons (now painted) located on either side of the main entryway to the pool; they were originally made of glass blocks and were altered to their present appearance in 1963. On the west side are two lower, multi-sided concrete ventilators, aligned with the glass block expanses in the piers flanking the lobby. They originally also served as the bases for the original metal sculptures of nymphs holding balls that had been removed by 1943. The walls on the lower part of the upper viewing platform are made of brick.
The Pools and Deck Areas. The enclosed pool area to the west of the bath house forms an ellipse with its long axis set from north to south. Within this area are located the rectangular swimming pool flanked on either side by semicircular pools for diving on the south and wading on the north. Altogether, the three pools, which are separated by concrete decks, echo the elliptical shape of the enclosure. Concrete bleachers of varying heights line most of the inner sides of the brick perimeter walls of the pool area. These walls are topped by wrought-iron fences. The shallow wading pool has two non-original spray spouts near its center and eleven non-original spray spouts spaced at regular distances along its curved sides. The swimming pool is large expanse of water lined with a concrete gutter. It has a non-historic handicap ramp on the east side.
The diving pool, which is no longer in use and presently fenced off, includes at its south end, the pool's original, dramatically curved concrete, multi-level main diving platform. Each of the three platforms is cantilevered above the pool and protected by deco-style copper that match the copper railings that surround the perimeter of the diving pool. The main diving platform is flanked by two similar, but lower, cantilevered diving platforms. Two other low, concrete diving platforms that appear to be later in date are suspended over the pool from the deck on its north side. The deck surrounding the pool has non-historic lampposts, non-original drinking fountains near the bath house, and a flagpole, which is located between the swimming and wading pools. There are two other flagpoles south of the diving pool; they have floodlights attached to them.
The Flemish-bond brick perimeter wall (now painted), which is topped by concrete coping and wrought-iron fences, rises in height toward the south end of the site due to the topography. At the north end it is a freestanding wall lined on the inside with low bleachers. There are also service entries consisting of wrought-iron gates flanked by tall, decorative brick posts with cast- concrete coping. At its south and southwest portions, the perimeter wall is tall enough to incorporate service areas beneath the bleacher areas. There are service entrances covered with roll-down steel gates, and windows covered with steel grates and plates in the south part of the wall. Some windows are now sealed with brick. The bleachers also extend below the west façade of the bath house. They are interrupted at the locker room entryway by shallow concrete steps. Steel tube railings protect the bleachers at these locations.
There is another flight of concrete steps upon the bleachers in front of the bath house lobby; it has a steel tube hand rail. There are non-historic steel support columns on the southwest portion of bleachers. These are used in the summer to support shade covers.
The Filter House. The filter house is the rectangular-in-plan, Flemish bond-brick building (now painted) on the west side of the pool; it includes raised areas at either end containing viewing platforms covered with cast-concrete, saucer-shaped roofs with scalloped edges. Reached via cantilevered, concrete steps, the viewing platforms have concrete floors and are protected with deco-style steel railings. There is also a non- historic brick and concrete concession stand on the lower part of its roof, which is just a few steps above deck level due to changes in the elevation of the site. Thus, the filter house's west façade rises to a full story in height at the center and two full stories at the raised ends beneath the saucers. The east façade of the filter house has brick walls covered with non-original, painted murals. The west façade is seven bays and is articulated in a similar manner as the east and west façades of the bath house.
Originally, it had steel casements, but these have been filled in with brick and narrow strips of glass blocks. There are also empty niches lined with painted concrete on the areas of the façade that align with the saucer roofs (The original blueprints specified glass blocks at these locations, which have been removed). These taller sections have coursed brick façades. The north façade is fronted by service ramps and entryways and steel sash at the second story. The south façade of the filter house consists of coursed brick, a service entrance, and security lights and equipment.
The Surrounding Park including the Playground, Comfort Station, and Ball Court. The portions of Astoria Park that are part of the landmark site include a series of pathways paved with either blacktop or hexagonal blocks with either concrete or bluestone curbs. Some of these paths predate the pool complex, while others were installed at that time. Some of the paths are stepped, most notably both of the diagonal stepped paths leading from 19th Street down to the main entry plaza on the east side of the bath house. There are circular, concrete-paved areas at the top of both of these ramps that demarcate the locations of original fountains that have long since been removed. The one on the south side has brass letters and segments embedded in the concrete to form a compass. The plaza also has iron tube railings parallel to the main façade.
There are also park benches, bollards (both iron and concrete), wrought-iron fences and park lamps at various locations; these appear not to be original features of the park and to post date the construction of the play center. There is a lawn on the east side of the complex which features a granite memorial commemorating the First World War. The memorial was placed in Astoria Park in 1926, and was moved to its present location during construction of the play center. The memorial is flanked by flagpoles. An asphalt-paved ball court to the southwest of the pool complex has non-historic chain link fences surrounding it and non-historic concrete steps. A playground to the northwest to the site, enclosed by non- historic wrought-iron fences, has non-historic play equipment. A Flemish-bond brick comfort station (now painted), built at the same time and in the same style as the pool complex, is located on the south side of the playground.
The one-story building is square in plan and features projecting end piers with decorative brickwork, curved wall surfaces near the entrances, incised lettering indicated and girls/boys rooms, glass block wall surfaces, non-historic roof-top weathervane and decorative cast concrete embellishments. There is also non-historic Parks Department signage and security lighting applied to the walls. A brick, curving retaining wall extends westward from the filter house. It is topped by concrete coping and wrought-iron fencing that matches the rest of the complex.
- From the 2006 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Karen Perry
Nigel Wilson commented: Simple, powerful, very well executed wildlife shot. Very evocative.
Officers investigating the recent spate of firearms discharges in Salford have executed a series of warrants in Little Hulton and Eccles.
In the early hours of this morning, Friday 16 October 2015, officers from Greater Manchester Police’s Salford Division searched nine properties throughout the division in the hunt for firearms linked to the recent shootings in the area.
The warrants were executed as part of a Project Gulf operation designed to tackle organised crime. Gulf is part of Programme Challenger, the Greater Manchester approach to tackling organised criminality across the region.
Seven men and one woman have been arrested on suspicion of a number of offences, ranging from possession with intent to supply to handling stolen goods.
A significant amount of Class A and Class B drugs were seized as part of the operation, though no firearms were found.
Detective Inspector Alan Clitherow said: “This series of warrants are just one element of the continuing and relentless operation being orchestrated to tackle organised crime gangs in Salford.
“They came about as a result of the on-going investigation into the recent spate of firearms discharges in Salford, including the horrific attack of young Christian Hickey and his mother Jayne.
“We wanted to show our communities that we are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for those responsible for the abhorrent attack on an innocent child and his mother, and that we will not stand for the spate of shootings taking place on our streets in recent weeks.
“But there is still more to do and, as with any fight against organised crime groups embedded in our city, we need residents to come to us with information so we can put a stop to this criminality.
“There has been much said about people breaking this wall of silence in Salford, and once again I urge people to search their consciences and please come forward.
“You could provide the information that may help prevent any further innocent lives being touched by this senseless violence, and prevent further children being injured by thugs that many people within Salford seem so intent on protecting.
“I want to stress that if you come forward with what you know, we can offer you complete anonymity and I assure you that you will have our full support. Or if you don’t feel you can talk to police but you have information, you can speak to Crimestoppers anonymously.”
A dedicated information hotline has been set up on 0161 856 9775, or people can also pass information on by calling 101, or the independent charity, Crimestoppers, anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Fresco (plural frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.
TECHNOLOGY
Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of room temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster, intonaco, is used. Because of the chemical makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco, which itself becomes the medium holding the pigment. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries in reaction to air: it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. The chemical processes are as follows:
calcination of limestone in a lime kiln: CaCO3 → CaO + CO2
slaking of quicklime: CaO + H2O → Ca(OH)2
setting of the lime plaster: Ca(OH)2 + CO2 → CaCO3 + H2O
In painting buon fresco, a rough underlayer called the arriccio is added to the whole area to be painted and allowed to dry for some days. Many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later,[when?]new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, and a bag of soot (spolvero) banged on them on produce black dots along the lines. If the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. On the day of painting, the intonaco, a thinner, smooth layer of fine plaster was added to the amount of wall that was expected to be completed that day, sometimes matching the contours of the figures or the landscape, but more often just starting from the top of the composition. This area is called the giornata ("day's work"), and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, by a sort of seam that separates one from the next.
Buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Generally, a layer of plaster will require ten to twelve hours to dry; ideally, an artist would begin to paint after one hour and continue until two hours before the drying time - giving seven to nine hours working time. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, and the unpainted intonaco must be removed with a tool before starting again the next day. If mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area - or to change them later, a secco.
A technique used in the popular frescoes of Michelangelo and Raphael was to scrape indentations into certain areas of the plaster while still wet to increase the illusion of depth and to accent certain areas over others. The eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark 'outlining' of his central figures within his frescoes.
In a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were originally, nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes, these divisions may be seen from the ground. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has since fallen off.
One of the first painters in the post-classical period to use this technique was the Isaac Master (or Master of the Isaac fresco, and thus a name used to refer to the unknown master of a particular painting) in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist.
OTHER TYPES OF WALL PAINTING
A secco or fresco-secco painting, in contrast, is done on dry plaster (secco meaning "dry" in Italian). The pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg (tempera), glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall. It is important to distinguish between a secco work done on top of buon fresco, which according to most authorities was in fact standard from the Middle Ages onwards, and work done entirely a secco on a blank wall. Generally, buon fresco works are more durable than any a secco work added on top of them, because a secco work lasts better with a roughened plaster surface, whilst true fresco should have a smooth one. The additional a secco work would be done to make changes, and sometimes to add small details, but also because not all colours can be achieved in true fresco, because only some pigments work chemically in the very alkaline environment of fresh lime-based plaster. Blue was a particular problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli, the only two blue pigments then available, works well in wet fresco.
It has also become increasingly clear, thanks to modern analytical techniques, that even in the early Italian Renaissance painters quite frequently employed a secco techniques so as to allow the use of a broader range of pigments. In most early examples this work has now entirely vanished, but a whole fresco done a secco on a surface roughened to give a key for the paint may survive very well, although damp is more threatening to it than to buon fresco.
A third type called a mezzo-fresco is painted on nearly dry intonaco - firm enough not to take a thumb-print, says the sixteenth-century author Ignazio Pozzo - so that the pigment only penetrates slightly into the plaster. By the end of the sixteenth century this had largely displaced buon fresco, and was used by painters such as Gianbattista Tiepolo or Michelangelo. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work.
The three key advantages of work done entirely a secco were that it was quicker, mistakes could be corrected, and the colours varied less from when applied to when fully dry - in wet fresco there was a considerable change.
For wholly a secco work, the intonaco is laid with a rougher finish, allowed to dry completely and then usually given a key by rubbing with sand. The painter then proceeds much as he would on a canvas or wood panel. The two types of fresco painting are buon fresco and fresco secco. Buon fresco is painting into wet plaster, which makes a painting last a long time. Fresco secco is painting onto dry plaster, which does not last as long.
HISTORY
ANCIENT NEAR EAST
The earliest known examples of frescoes done in the Buon Fresco method date at around 1500 BC and are to be found on the island of Crete in Greece. The most famous of these, The Toreador, depicts a sacred ceremony in which individuals jump over the backs of large bulls. While some similar frescoes have been found in other locations around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Egypt and Morocco, their origins are subject to speculation.
Some art historians believe that fresco artists from Crete may have been sent to various locations as part of a trade exchange, a possibility which raises to the fore the importance of this art form within the society of the times. The most common form of fresco was Egyptian wall paintings in tombs, usually using the a secco technique.
CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
Frescoes were also painted in ancient Greece, but few of these works have survived. In southern Italy, at Paestum, which was a Greek colony of the Magna Graecia, a tomb containing frescoes dating back to 470 BC, the so-called Tomb of the Diver was discovered on June 1968. These frescoes depict scenes of the life and society of ancient
Greece, and constitute valuable historical testimonials. One shows a group of men reclining at a symposium while another shows a young man diving into the sea.
Roman wall paintings, such as those at the magnificent Villa dei Misteri (1st century B.C.) in the ruins of Pompeii, and others at Herculaneum, were completed in buon fresco.
Late Roman Empire (Christian) 1st-2nd-century frescoes were found in catacombs beneath Rome and Byzantine Icons were also found in Cyprus, Crete, Ephesus, Cappadocia and Antioch. Roman frescoes were done by the artist painting the artwork on the still damp plaster of the wall, so that the painting is part of the wall, actually colored plaster.
Also a historical collection of Ancient Christian frescoes can be found in the Churches of Goreme Turkey.
INDIA
Thanks to large number of ancient rock-cut cave temples, valuable ancient and early medieval frescoes have been preserved in more than 20 locations of India. The frescoes on the ceilings and walls of the Ajanta Caves were painted between c. 200 BC and 600 and are the oldest known frescoes in India. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences
as Bodhisattva. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research on the subject since the time of the site's rediscovery in 1819. Other locations with valuable preserved ancient and early medieval frescoes include Bagh Caves, Ellora Caves, Sittanavasal, Armamalai Cave, Badami Cave Temples and other locations. Frescoes have been made in several techniques including tempera technique.
The later Chola paintings were discovered in 1931 within the circumambulatory passage of the Brihadisvara Temple in India and are the first Chola specimens discovered.
Researchers have discovered the technique used in these frescos. A smooth batter of limestone mixture is applied over the stones, which took two to three days to set. Within that short span, such large paintings were painted with natural organic pigments.
During the Nayak period the Chola paintings were painted over. The Chola frescos lying underneath have an ardent spirit of saivism expressed in them. They probably synchronised with the completion of the temple by Rajaraja Cholan the Great.
The frescoes in Dogra/ Pahari style paintings exist in their unique form at Sheesh Mahal of Ramnagar (105 km from Jammu and 35 km west of Udhampur). Scenes from epics of Mahabharat and Ramayan along with portraits of local lords form the subject matter of these wall paintings. Rang Mahal of Chamba (Himachal Pradesh) is another site of historic Dogri fresco with wall paintings depicting scenes of Draupti Cheer Haran, and Radha- Krishna Leela. This can be seen preserved at National Museum at New Delhi in a chamber called Chamba Rang Mahal.
SRI LANKA
The Sigiriya Frescoes are found in Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. Painted during the reign of King Kashyapa I (ruled 477-495 AD). The generally accepted view is that they are portrayals of women of the royal court of the king depicted as celestial nymphs showering flowers upon the humans below. They bear some resemblance to the Gupta style of painting found in the Ajanta Caves in India. They are, however, far more enlivened and colorful and uniquely Sri Lankan in character. They are the only surviving secular art from antiquity found in Sri Lanka today.
The painting technique used on the Sigiriya paintings is “fresco lustro.” It varies slightly from the pure fresco technique in that it also contains a mild binding agent or glue. This gives the painting added durability, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that they have survived, exposed to the elements, for over 1,500 years.
Located in a small sheltered depression a hundred meters above ground only 19 survive today. Ancient references however refer to the existence of as many as five hundred of these frescoes.
MIDDLE AGES
The late Medieval period and the Renaissance saw the most prominent use of fresco, particularly in Italy, where most churches and many government buildings still feature fresco decoration. This change coincided with the reevaluation of murals in the liturgy. Romanesque churches in Catalonia were richly painted in 12th and 13th century, with both decorative and educational -for the illiterate faithfuls- role, as can be seen in the MNAC in Barcelona, where is kept a large collection of Catalan romanesque art. In Denmark too, church wall paintings or kalkmalerier were widely used in the Middle Ages (first Romanesque, then Gothic) and can be seen in some 600 Danish churches as well as in churches in the south of Sweden which was Danish at the time.
One of the rare examples of Islamic fresco painting can be seen in Qasr Amra, the desert palace of the Umayyads in the 8th century Magotez.
EARLY MODERN EUROPE
Northern Romania (historical region of Moldavia) boasts about a dozen painted monasteries, completely covered with frescos inside and out, that date from the last quarter of the 15th century to the second quarter of the 16th century. The most remarkable are the monastic foundations at Voroneţ (vo ro nets) (1487), Arbore (are' bo ray) (1503), Humor (hoo mor) (1530), and Moldoviţa (mol do vee' tsa) (1532). Suceviţa (sue che vee' tsa), dating from 1600, represents a late return to the style developed some 70 years earlier. The tradition of painted churches continued into the 19th century in other parts of Romania, although never to the same extent.
Andrea Palladio, the famous Italian architect of the 16th century, built many mansions with plain exteriors and stunning interiors filled with frescoes.
Henri Clément Serveau produced several frescos including a three by six meter painting for the Lycée de Meaux, where he was once a student. He directed the École de fresques at l'École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, and decorated the Pavillon du Tourisme at the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Paris), Pavillon de la Ville de Paris; now at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In 1954 he realized a fresco for the Cité Ouvrière du Laboratoire Débat, Garches. He also executed mural decorations for the Plan des anciennes enceintes de Paris in the Musée Carnavalet.
The Foujita chapel in Reims completed in 1966, is an example of modern frescos, the interior being painted with religious scenes by the School of Paris painter Tsuguharu Foujita. In 1996, it was designated an historic monument by the French Government.
MEXICAN MURALISM
José Clemente Orozco, Fernando Leal, David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera the famous Mexican artists, renewed the art of fresco painting in the 20th century. Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo contributed more to the history of Mexican fine arts and to the reputation of Mexican art in general than anybody else. Together with works by Orozco, Siqueiros, and others, Fernando Leal and Rivera's large wall works in fresco established the art movement known as Mexican Muralism.
CONSERVATION OF FRESCOES
The climate and environment of Venice has proved to be a problem for frescoes and other works of art in the city for centuries. The city is built on a lagoon in northern Italy. The humidity and the rise of water over the centuries have created a phenomenon known as rising damp. As the lagoon water rises and seeps into the foundation of a building, the water is absorbed and rises up through the walls often causing damage to frescoes. Venetians have become quite adept in the conservation methods of frescoes. The mold aspergillus versicolor can grow after flooding, to consume nutrients from frescoes.
The following is the process that was used when rescuing frescoes in La Fenice, a Venetian opera house, but the same process can be used for similarly damaged frescoes. First, a protection and support bandage of cotton gauze and polyvinyl alcohol is applied. Difficult sections are removed with soft brushes and localized vacuuming. The other areas that are easier to remove (because they had been damaged by less water) are removed with a paper pulp compress saturated with bicarbonate of ammonia solutions and removed with deionized water. These sections are strengthened and reattached then cleansed with base exchange resin compresses and the wall and pictorial layer were strengthened with barium hydrate. The cracks and detachments are stopped with lime putty and injected with an epoxy resin loaded with micronized silica.
WIKIPEDIA
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
JURY DISTINCTION
CATEGORY 2. WOMEN AND MEN OF SCIENCE
Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Julien Busset
An anatomical specialist is assessing the real-time injection of a blood analogue under fluoroscopy using a vascular imaging system. Knowledge and assessment of the intricate vascular system is vital in the development of post-mortem techniques aimed at creating realistic conditions for surgical training on anatomical specimens.
Comment by the jury:
This very well executed shot with beautiful lightning takes the viewer into the moment: the intensity of the scientist’s gaze as he looks at the screen signals that something is going on – he is seeing, analysing, understanding.
George John Dasch, one of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In June 1942, is shown in a full head-to-toe mugshot after his arrest.
Dasch was a German agent who landed on American soil during World War II. He helped to destroy Nazi Germany’s espionage program in the United States by defecting to the American cause, but was tried and convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
George John Dasch was born in Speyer, Germany in 1903. He entered a Roman Catholic seminary at the age of 13 to study for the priesthood. However, he was expelled the following year.
Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Imperial German Army and served in Belgium during the final months of World War I.
In 1923, he entered the United States illegally through a port in Philadelphia by ship as a stowaway then stayed in New York City. For four years, he drifted among several New York restaurants with one season spent at a hotel in Miami Beach.
In 1927, Dasch enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was assigned to the 5th Composite Group of Newton field in Honolulu and served with the 72nd Bombardment Squadron, but after a year, he purchased himself out of the Army, receiving an honorable discharge.
He then worked as a waiter in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and back in New York City. In 1930, he married Rose Marie Guille, an American citizen.
Dasch reenlisted in the US Army in 1936. Dasch was stationed at Ft. Ontario in Oswego New York. George Dasch served with the 1st Infantry Division, 28th regiment, L Company. While stationed at Fort Ontario Dasch met a young local girl by the name of Charlotte Holliday.
George Dasch and Charlotte Holliday were married in Oswego at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in the parsonage in March 1936. According to City and church records George married Charlotte Holliday using the alias of George Henry Aldasch to hide his bigamy.
George resided with his new wife Charlotte Aldasch at her father Jay Holliday's home located at 11 Murray St in Oswego NY while serving at Fort Ontario.
On October 20, 1937 George and Charlotte had a son named Howard Elliot Aldasch. Some time in 1938 George Dasch left the US Army abandoning his wife and son.
Dasch returned to Germany in 1938. Charlotte Aldasch would eventually learn the real identity of her husband in 1942 when Dasch turned himself in to the FBI.
After the U.S. declared war on Germany following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler authorized a mission to sabotage the American war effort and attack civilian targets to demoralize the American civilian population inside the United States.
Recruited for Operation Pastorius, named for the leader of the first German settlement in America, were eight German residents who had lived in the United States.
Two of them, Ernst Burger and Herbert Haupt, were American citizens. The others, George John Dasch, Edward John Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Werner Thiel, had worked at various jobs in the United States.
All eight were recruited into the Abwehr military intelligence organization and were given three weeks of intensive sabotage training in the German High Command school on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin, Germany. The agents were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiaries, primers, and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.
The agents were also instructed to spread a wave of terror by planting explosives on bridges, railroad stations, water facilities, and public places. They were given counterfeit birth certificates, Social Security Cards, draft deferment cards, nearly $175,000 in American money, and driver's licenses, and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission began, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
On the night of June 12, 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202, landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 100 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach.
It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Heinck). The team came ashore wearing German Navy uniforms so that if they were captured, they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought their explosives, primers and incendiaries, and buried them along with their uniforms, and put on civilian clothes to begin an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch offered Cullen a $260 bribe. Cullen feigned cooperation but reported the encounter. An armed patrol returned to the site but found only the buried equipment; the Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked into a hotel. A massive manhunt was begun.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on June 16, 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group came ashore wearing bathing suits but wore German Navy hats. After landing ashore, they threw away their hats, put on civilian clothes, and started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
The two teams were to meet on July 4 in a hotel in Cincinnati to coordinate their sabotage operations.
Dasch called Burger into their upper-story hotel room and opened a window, saying they would talk, and if they disagreed, "only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." Dasch told him he had no intention of going through with the mission, hated Nazism, and planned to report the plot to the FBI. Burger agreed to defect to the United States immediately.
On June 15, Dasch phoned the New York office of the FBI to explain who he was, but hung up when the agent answering doubted his story. Four days later, he took a train to Washington, DC and walked into FBI headquarters, where he gained the attention of Assistant Director D. M. Ladd by showing him the operation's budget of $84,000 cash.
Besides Burger, none of the other German agents knew they were betrayed. Over the next two weeks, Burger and the other six were arrested. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made no mention that Dasch had turned himself in, and claimed credit for the FBI for cracking the spy ring.
Information that Dasch and Burger had exposed the operation was withheld from the public until after World War II was over in order to make it appear to the American public and to Nazi Germany that the FBI was effective in preventing sabotage.
Fearful that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Roosevelt issued Executive Proclamation 2561 on July 2, 1942 creating a military tribunal to prosecute the Germans. Placed before a seven-member military commission, the Germans were charged with the following offenses:
1) Violating the law of war;
2) Violating Article 81 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy;
3) Violating Article 82 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of spying; and
4) Conspiracy to commit the offenses alleged in the first three charges.
The trial was held in Assembly Hall #1 on the fifth floor of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. on July 8, 1942.
Lawyers for the accused, who included Lauson Stone and Kenneth Royall, attempted to have the case tried in a civilian court but were rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that was later cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
The trial for the eight defendants ended on August 1, 1942. Two days later, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt commuted Burger's sentence to life in prison and Dasch's to 30 years because they had turned themselves in and provided information about the others.
The others were executed on August 8, 1942 in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail and buried in a potter's field in the Blue Plains area in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.
In April 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman granted clemency to Dasch and Burger who were deported to the American zone in Germany and required to live in that area or face re-imprisonment.
Dasch and Burger were not welcomed back because they were regarded as traitors who had caused the death of their comrades. Although they had reportedly been promised pardons by Hoover in exchange for their cooperation, both men died without ever receiving them.
Dasch died in 1992 at the age of 89 in Ludwigshafen.
Fourteen other people were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. They were Walter and Lucille Froehling, Otto and Kate Wergin, Harry and Emma Jaques, Anthony Cramer, Helmut Leiner, Herman Heinrich, Maria Kerling, Hedwig Engemann, Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt, and Ernest Kerkhof.
Nearly all were held as enemy aliens and several were sentenced to death for treason, but had their convictions reversed on appeal. Some were re-tried on lesser charges. Some never went to trial.
--Information partially excerpted from Wikipedia
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Performance by Joan Morey, "BAREBACK. Fenomenología de la comunión [BAREBACK: Phenomenology of Communion] 2010. Reenactment executed by Manuel Segade, original performer and author of the text. Presented in the framework of the exhibition "COLLAPSE. Desiring machine, working machine", Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona - Fabra i Coats, 15 November 2018. Photo: Noemi Jariod. Courtesy the artist.
Each of the six programmed performance reenactments is extracted from its original context as studies or scenes from earlier projects and given an independent life. These live-action fragments encompass ritualistic exercises following the artist’s rules, tableaux vivants, and dramatic orations based on texts by the artist or by playwrights such as Samuel Beckett. Whenever possible the performances maintain their original interpreters, yet inevitably they are reinforced or degraded through their repetition, adding another layer to the artist’s exploration of control.
This reading was originally conceived as the closing performance of ‘BAREBACK: Power and death’ (2010), which took place at the former chapel of la Casa de la Misericòrdia in Palma de Mallorca. The speaker, dressed in the clerical attire of a priest, delivers a personal and theoretical address, a form of self-reflective homily or sermon, accompanied by an image of a billboard showing an unmade double bed with the hollows left by two heads in the pillows. This image documents artist Félix González-Torres’s ‘Untitled’ (1991), a public-art project about private loss, a memorial to the artist’s partner who had recently died of an AIDS-related illness. The text begins as a reflection on the experience of the act of lending authority to the voice and announces itself as a series of digressions around its ostensible topic: the practice of unprotected sex and the homosexual “barebacking” subculture, in which the risk of HIV infection is considered irrelevant or even desirable. The speech hinges on the elision of the words community—in particular the gay community—and communion. While acknowledging the Christian ceremonial connotations of the latter, the text more abstractly deals with communion as the intimate union of feelings and bodies, and the compounding of the private, political, and philosophical spheres in the life and work of individuals such as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and the speaker himself.
© Text by Latitudes
—
Since the late 1990s, Joan Morey (Mallorca, 1972) has produced an expansive body of live events, videos, installations, sound and graphic works, that has explored the intersection of theatre, cinema, philosophy, sexuality, and subjectivity. Morey’s work both critiques and embodies one of the most thorny and far-reaching aspects of human consciousness and behaviour – how we relate ourselves to others, as the oppressed or the oppressor. This central preoccupation with the exercise of power and authority seemingly accounts for the black and ominous tenor of his art.
COLLAPSE encompasses three parts. The first is presented over two floors of the Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona - Fabra i Coats. ‘Desiring machine, Working machine’ is a survey of ten projects from the last fifteen years of the artist’s work. An exhibition display based around vitrines and video screens deployed as if sarcophagi or reliquaries, is presented alongside a continuous programme of audio works and a schedule of live performance extracts.
The second part of COLLAPSE takes place at the Centre d’Art Tecla Sala, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (23 November 2018–13 January 2019) and is the definitive version of the touring exhibition ‘Social Body’.
Titled ‘Schizophrenic Machine’, the third and final part of the project comprises a major new performance event which will take place on January 10, 2019, at an especially resonant – yet deliberately undisclosed – location in Barcelona, where live action will be integrated within the longer narrative of the site’s physical and discursive past.
COLLAPSE is curated by Latitudes.
—> info: www.lttds.org/projects/morey/
—> info: ajuntament.barcelona.cat/centredart/en/projectes/3396
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Dear *All The **Industrial Machinery & Trade Sector*,
Hope my mail will find you well.
*Guls Studio-Pakistan * welcomes to all participants of *ITIF ASIA -
2014, *(29-31 March 2014) - Expo Centre Karachi Pakistan.
As per our credentials* ,Guls Studio Pakistan *is serving *350+* clients
and executed *5000 *exhibitions stands for last 15 years .We ranked
ourselves as '*Number ONE* ' Stand and Ambiance builder and are proud to
claim as the only company providing *'One Stop Shop' * in all Exhibition
services.
We are serving Global Defense Industry, Automobile Companies, Blue
chip multinationals, Financial Institutions , Construction & Real
Estates companies, renowned MNC's and 'FORTUNE 500' companies. The
said company holds few '*Guinness World Records* 'for *Procter
&Gamble *brands (Details available on our website *www.gulsstudio.com
* )
Having execution facility available throughout Pakistan (Karachi ,Islamabad
, Lahore, Faisalabad etc.) Guls Studio is approaching its prestigious
clients to serve in *ITIF ASIA** - 2014*.
Our highly skilled Graphics & production department is pitching series of
design to ITIF ASIA-2014 participants which are cost effective too.
I therefore request you to please send us your stand briefing, Hall Plan &
other details to propose you an eye catching design options.
please visit our face book link Guls Studio built numerous International &
National clients stands with exhibition Ambiance*.*
*http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guls-Studio/197970336900996?ref=hl
*
*CONTACT-REQUEST A QUOTE*
Feel free to write us if you have any query regarding this.
With Best Regards,
*(MAJID ALI)*
*Client Service*
*Mobile: +92-333-3940641 *
*GULS STUDIO*
*Plot # B-12 Block # 15 Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi - Pakistan*
*Email: majidali@gulsstudio.com *
*Web: www.gulsstudio.com *
*[image: cid:image002.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
*GULS STUDIO COMPANY PROFILE,*
I'm pleased to introduce you *Guls Studio,*the name of Global Exhibit,
Architecture Designers and Event Exhibition Company in Pakistan.
Serving over *500+* clients '*Guls Studio'* has executed many award
winning exhibition Stands locally & internationally and are '*official
Stand Builder'* for almost all the DAWN leading exhibitions from 2001
to 2014 in Pakistan.* & Also *serving* '*all the exhibition
organizers' since its inception and were official ambiance designer
from 2001 to 2014 for 200 top exhibitions ,we were responsible to
built Seminar Ambiance, City Ambiance, Expo Center Ambiance,
Inauguration & Registration Areas, Gala Dinner ,which were executed at
high level of satisfaction to *exhibition organizers & clients*.
Beside this ,many renowned Blue chip multinationals, Pharmaceutical,
Financial Institutions , Construction & Real Estates Groups, FMCG's
and many 'FORTUNE 500' companies are among our prestigious clients.
The said company also holds few *'Guinness World Records'* for
*Procter & Gamble* brands. (Details can be seen on our website
We have our own manufacturing facility on *200,000 Sq ft* in
Karachi-Pakistan, with large number of inventory of Raw & Finish
materials used in stand/Ambiance building, giving us a clear edge on
the competitors of the industry.
*Gulzar Mughal Company MD Introduction:*
Muhammad Gulzar Mughal, born in 1967, in shahdadpur, sindh is an invincible
force driving Guls Studio in the marketplace today. Guls studio is seen as
a top -notch full service Exhibition & Designing Stand Building and Event
Management Company in Pakistan.
In the past 10 years, Muhammad Gulzar Mughal has demonstrated exceptional
talent and skills in making Guls Studio as a trendsetter in the field of
Event Management. Prior to Guls Studio, Customers used to make their own
stalls, dismantle them and then send them to the warehouse, facing much
inconvenience and hassle. Guls Studio changed things for the better-naming
the new trend Exhibition Stand Rental Trend.
Today due to Muhammad Gulzar Mughal' relentless efforts Guls Studio has
become the pioneer in the field of events and exhibition. He has been
activity involved in introducing several new concepts and ideas, including
the rental packages, furnishing 5000 rental exhibits to 500 major clients.
Mr.Mughal's work has been characterized by excellence in Exhibition Design,
construction, Expo Ambiance & Decoration services. As a brand scientist,
Mr. Mughal made Guls Studio a market leader and bench marked in events
management in Pakistan. Mr. Mughal believes that while Guls Studio's client
frequently win best-show awards, their real success is seen in the new
business that they generate and behind the scenes, it is Guls Studio's
continuous work towards new ideas and new concepts for the client's success.
Muhammad Gulzar Mughal should also be accredited for introducing various
plans and packages designed at facilitating the clients towards making
their campaigns more successful and efficacious. One of such plans has been
the "Corporate Clients Membership Benefits Plan". This unique program has
been designed to provide regular and new complementary services including
the free layout Plan. Some of the most prominent life-time achievements of
Mr.Mughal include the brand of the year Award 2009; The 10th year official
stand builder of all Mega Exhibitions in Pakistan; rental Trade Setter in
Exhibition industries, accomplishing various events as Ambiance Trend Set
in Expo Centre; Stall Rental Packages Introduce In Market; Pamper World
Largest Display at Metro Lahore and many more.
What is noteworthy is that Muhammad Gulzar Mughal, who hails from a rural
town in Sindh, was able to accept the challenges as well as the
opportunities that were ahead of him in his journey towards success. He was
instrumental in programming Guls studio as a brand activity focused on
Event management dynamics and on earning increasing numbers of customers.
This foresight coupled with sensing the need for quality and innovation was
one of the key ingredients to reach new heights.
*Guls Studio Pakistan mega Exhibition Official Ambiance Design from 2001 to
2012:*
Guls Studio has been Official Ambiance Designer for the last 10 years (from
2001 to 2012) Every 9 out of 10 Exhibitor's Official Ambiance Designs
belongs to Guls Studio. Many thanks to Almighty ALLAH for granting this
creditability.
gulsstudio.com/events/official_ambiance.html
*Guls Studio Pakistan mega Exhibition Official Stand Builder from 2001 to
2012:*
Guls Studio has been Official Stand Builder for the last 10 years (from
2001 to 2012) Every 9 out of 10 Exhibitor's Official Stand Builders belongs
to Guls Studio. Many thanks to Almighty ALLAH for granting this
creditability.
gulsstudio.com/events/official_stand.html
*Infrastructure Setup with Storage Facility Aprox. 200,000 sqft: *
At its factory, Guls Studio stores customized stalls of the 500 Clients. On
re-rental the customized design, our clients' participant in the exhibition
by controlling their budget.
Clients get rid of dealing with their vendors again and again. Tension free
and with full confidence the Clients focus on activity to achieve the
target provided by their management in the exhibition.
Beside this, many renowned Blue chip multinationals, Pharmaceutical,
Financial Institutions, Construction & Real Estates Groups, FMCG's and many
'FORTUNE 500' companies are among our prestigious clients. (Details can be
seen on our website www.gulsstudio.com ).
We have our own manufacturing facility on *200,000 Sq ft* in
Karachi-Pakistan, with large number of inventory of Raw & Finish materials
used in stand/Ambiance building, giving us a clear edge on the competitors
of the industry.
As per our expansion plan, we are approaching you and offering you to be
our strategic partner in Far East i.e. in Malaysia & Singapore to cater our
clients there Vice Versa.
Our proposed joint working terms are:
If *Guls Studio-Pak* will procure any business or secure client for all
over the Pakistan & GCC countries will be forwarded to *your end.* As our
as a strategic partner you will get 100% of billing amount from the client
& forward to GULSSTUDIO for the execution and we will get 15% for you pay
as a agency commission.
*Available Inventory's in Storage for your Event on Rental Basis:*
§ Custom Exhibition Stands Packages
§ Modular Exhibits Stands Rentals Packages
§ Prefabricated Exhibits Rentals Options
§ Grid Structure
§ Double Decker Exhibits Stands for Exhibitions
§ Mall Events Ambiance Setup
§ Expo Exhibition Ambiance Setup on Rental Basis
§ Mall Activity Kiosk Rental all over Pakistan
§ Floats Rentals
§ Palate Display Setup for In store Activity
§ Thematic Ambiance Setup Modification
*Guls Studio Stand Building from 2001 to 2012 with Rental & Re-rental Trend
Setter in Pakistan:*
During the past 15 years, Guls Studio has made a lot of Trend set in the
field of Event Management Industry. So we say we are Trend-Setter. Out of
this, we made a Trend in exhibition industry. Its name is Exhibition Stand
Rental Trend. Before this practice the clients made their stall at own,
dismantle and then sent to their warehouse. For this process the clients
have to face many problems. Now Guls Studio finished such procedure.
Today Guls Studio has the position of *Pioneer in Event & Exhibition
Industries*. Guls Studio has introduced several Rental Packages. We have
launched Rental Exhibit in the year 2003. By the grace of Almighty Allah
Guls Studio furnished *5000 Rental Exhibits to 500 major Clients* from 2001
to 2012.
gulsstudio.com/events/trend_settter.html
*Top Clients from 2001 to 2012:*
Emirates Airlines, PIA Airlines, P&G, Karachi Chamber of Commerce, CEMS
Pakistan, Mobilink, United Mobile, Samsung, Kenwood, Pak Suzuki Motors,
Hyundai, Dewan Motors, Tapal Tea, Axact, Pakistan Airlines (PIA), LU
Biscuits Pakistan, LG, JVC, K.E.S.C.,PTCL, Rufi Builders, Tessori Jewelers,
Hamdard Laborities and many more........
gulsstudio.com/events/clients.html
*Event Management Projects from 2001 to 2012:*
§ IDEAS 2004.2008.2012.
§ International Housing Industry Exhibition 2005.
§ Textile Asia 2005.
§ DAWN Life Styles Exhibition 2006.
§ KEEF 2006.
§ Expo Pakistan 2006.
§ Health Asia Int'l Exhibition & Conference 2007 to 2010.
§ Muslim BIG Gala 2007.
§ Akber Alam Benefit Match 2008.
§ IDEAS 2008.
§ ITCN ASIA 2008.
§ Build Asia 2008.
§ IPEX.
§ SAARC.
§ Express Family Festival 2009.
§ Ariel World's Largest Kurta.
§ Head & Shoulders Bottle.
§ Global Hand Wash Day.
§ Safeguard.
§ Launching Ceremony of Suzuki Liana.
§ Suzuki Plant Extension.
gulsstudio.com/events/event_management.html
*Banch Mark World Records Events, Event Management:*
*ARIEL*
By managing the marvelous event "The World's Largest Kurta" measured by SGS
Pakistan as 101 ft. long and 59.6 ft. wide. Consisting approx 800m high
quality fabric, kurta created in own ware house and hanged on huge 125 ft.
high iron frame with 7 long armed crane support at Pakistan Sport Board
Ground Opt. Karachi National Stadium with very colorful event ceremony. P&G
Pakistan & Guls Studio's making history at Metro Karachi for Ariel Largest
Pyramid product display. Dimension of Pyramid is 60' wide, 60' length & 60'
tall and total weight of structure is 150 tons. By the grace of Almighty
Allah Guls hardworking team brought to success and achievement, that was
applauded by enormous viewers.
*SAFEGUARD*
Guls made the World's Largest Safe Guard Soap Display on 36 hours short
notice only for Procter & Gamble (Pakistan). This display was arranged at
the parking area of Metro Lahore. 200000 Safe Guard Soap were displayed on
approx 200 pilots. Guls Studio also made the 2nd World's Largest Safe Guard
Soap Display at Metro Lahore Pakistan 400000 Safe Guard Soap were displayed
on approx 400 pilots. The weight of soaps was in tons. Hand washing setup
was also arranged, by the grace of Allah, the Event Management team made it
possible for Guls to achieve success in such project in making the World
Record. Really we are thankful to Almighty Allah for its successful
completion in a very short time.
*PAMPERS*
Guls made the Largest Pamper Display on 36 pilots Makro Star Gate, Karachi.
Approximately 15,000 Pampers were displayed for the public for a period of
one month at Makro. Thousands of peoples appreciated and bought the
Pampers. Event Management Department of Guls Studio executed the design. It
was World's third record event that was managed and executed by Guls for
P&G.
*HEAD & SHOULDERS*
Guls created World's Largest Head & Shoulders Bottle which height was 20
ft. not only created the bottle but also carried out over all event
management. A marvelous and beautiful event ambiance was designed by Guls
20 ft. bottle icon has been covered with high-drip on the big stage and
unveiled after in augural addresses. Follow & spot lighting was creating
wonderful impact inside and the whole surrounding, at the end of launching,
colorful fireworks set off that was really fantastic.
gulsstudio.com/events/world_record.html
gulsstudio.com/events/banch_mark.html
*IDEAS Defense Exhibition 2004 to 2008:*
Serving over *350+* clients 'Guls* Studio'* has executed many award winning
exhibition Stands locally & internationally and are '*official Stand
Builder'* for almost all the leading exhibitions specially 'International
Defense Exhibition *IDEAS* in Pakistan.
'*Guls Studio' *is serving* '*International Defense Exhibition'
(*IDEAS) *event,
since its inception and were official stand builder for *IDEAS-2008.* In
*IDEAS-2008* ,we were responsible to built Seminar Ambiance, City Ambiance,
Expo Center Ambiance, Inauguration & Registration Areas, Gala Dinner and
company's stands of Pakistan Ordinance Factory, DGMP, Pakistan Machine Tool
Factory, TISAS,USAID,TEKSAV,GATE Electronics, THALES, People Steel Mills,
PIA ,which were executed at high level of satisfaction to *DEPO* and to the
individual clients.
*Clients Recognition from 2001 to 2012:*
§ Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Pegasus Consultancy (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Dewan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Tapal Tea (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Express Family Festival 2009.
§ Pakistan Airlines (PIA).
§ Qarshi Industries (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Nestle Pakistan Ltd.
§ Dawlance Pakistan Ltd.
§ Cems Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ KEEF 2006.
§ Oriental Media Links.
§ Womenza 2008.
§ IDEAS PAKISTAN 2008.
§ SUZUKI Launching Ceremony 2008.
§ Ariel Pakistan.
§ Head & Shoulders Pakistan.
§ Safeguard Pakistan.
§ Pampers Pakistan.
§ Prince Biscuits Pakistan.
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
*Dawn Life Style Exhibitions for 2001 to 2011:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 32 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*ITCN ASIA Exhibitions for 2001 to 2013:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 15 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*Build Asia Exhibitions for 2001 to 2013:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 12 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*Brand Awards & Brand Scientist 2009 to 2014:*
"By the Grace of Allah" Guls has been awarded one of the most acclaimed
Brand of Pakistan. Brands Award Council of Pakistan has instituted a
special honor by awarding Medal of Brand Scientist to only 11 Best Brand
Guardians in Pakistan, which has been selected by the management of Brands
Award Council.
We are thankful to Almighty Allah that he has given us very big result for
our little hard work as well as we are thankful to our corporate clients
because of their trust in Guls we have obtained these achievement in event
industry.
Guls Studio is the first Event Management Company in Pakistan which has
been awarded Brands of the Year Award by Brand Council in the category of
best Event Management and Ambiance Designer in Pakistan.
gulsstudio.com/events/brand_scientist.html
*Events Ambiance Rental Offers Packages:*
§ Mall Events
§ Product Launchings
§ Inaugurations Set Design
§ Thematic Events Setup
§ Interior Design Services
gulsstudio.com/events/packages.html
*Exhibitions Stand Rental Offers Packages For UAE:*
§ 1 time ka Exhibit 1 time ki Cost
§ Guls Triplicate Exhibit Package
§ 6 Types of Exhibits
§ Spend 1 time Use 5 times
§ Trigger Three Exhibit Package Deals
§ Kiosk Rental Package
§ Emirates Sexier
§ 7 Times Stall Building Exhibition Package
gulsstudio.com/events/packages.html
*Life Time Free Design Membership:*
Guls Studio is No. 1 exhibit designing company of Pakistan with over 15
year experience of industry and we are very proud to serve more than 152
clients from different industries. We are happy to announce our "Corporate
Clients Membership Benefits Plan". This unique program has been designed to
provide our regular and new clients a bunch of complementary services
including Free Layout Plan, Free 3d Views, Free Estimation and many more,
after getting in to our members club you can enjoy these complementary
services. After all, this time is won't cost you anything and you may
happen upon a profitable discovery. Looking forward to privilege of serving
and awaits your kind reply. You can obtain our membership with Best regards.
gulsstudio.com/events/free_design.html
*Working as a Strategic Partner with you:*
Guls Studio is proud to have the honor of a major contributor to every
small and large Exhibition in Pakistan. After the Almighty Allah we are
thankful to all Exhibition Organizers who trusted and supported us by
making their strategic partner, to achieve the position of Guls Studio
today enjoys in the market.
*Guls Website:*
*http://www.gulsstudio.com *
*Guls Profile Link:*
*www.gulsstudio.com/guls-studio-profile.rar
*
*http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guls-Studio/197970336900996
*
*Guls BTL Activation Division Establish & Work 2005:*
There are several mode of engagement coined to provide brand experience
directly to target consumers like POME, POHC, ACTIVITIES. Door to Door
selling / convincing, road shows like multimedia units, customers relation
building shows like arena / malls / flats / mohalla activation, store
interception & event management etc. (School Activity, College Activity,
University Activity).
*Guls Studio 15000 Sketches Turn into Reality:*
Guls Studio has so far given the shape of reality to 15000 sketches. So all
corporate and business houses knows we are the "turn sketch into reality"
and offer concept design to the valued clients free of charge.
gulsstudio.com/events/sketches.html
*Mall Kiosk Rental Offers Package:*
All kiosks are designed to maximize your sales potential and follow mall
criteria. Whether you need one customized mall kiosk or a hundred, Guls
Studio can design, build, and install them for you.
Using Computer Assisted Design, we'll mass-produce exact replicas of your
mall kiosks, or easily implement small variations. We specialize in
customized kiosks.
Even if you need large-scale rollouts and simultaneous deliveries, Guls
Studio will deliver and install your custom store fixtures anywhere in
Pakistan & UAE.
Business owners have been coming to us for decades to build their Jewelry
Kiosks, Cell Phone Kiosks, and Food Kiosks. Our clients have included big
names such as P&G, United Mobile, LG, Tapal Tea, Tessori Jewelers, LU
Biscuits Pakistan, etc; as well as hundreds of ambitious individuals. We
install the kiosk for well known Shopping Mall in Pakistan such as Park
Tower, Forum, Millennium Mall, Dolman Mall, Hyper Star, Liberty Market,
Macro, Metro, etc.
If you're a first-time buyer, be sure to consult our Checklist, then
contact us and we'll lead you get through the process. We'll make sure your
mall kiosk satisfies the local government requirements, and all the mall
criteria. Not to mention your own.
We'll work directly with the mall and advise you on different options
involving dimensions, materials used, color, and appearance of your mall
kiosk.
Guls Studio has over 15 years of experience, and can handle large-scale
rollouts and simultaneous deliveries. When you need the highest care and
quality, delivered on-time and within your budget, contact us for a free
quote.
*Our Partner:*
gulsstudio.com/events/partner.html
*Guls Studio News Letters:*
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
*Guls Studio Broachers:*
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
*Guls Studio Prefabricated Stand:*
gulsstudio.com/events/prefabricated.html
*Guls Studio Custom Fabrication Stand:*
gulsstudio.com/events/custom_fabrication.html
*Guls Studio Pallet Display & Mobile Float Rental:*
gulsstudio.com/events/pallet_display.html
gulsstudio.com/events/mobile_float.html
*Guls Studio Rental & Rental Accessories: *
gulsstudio.com/events/rental.html
gulsstudio.com/events/rental_accessories.html
*Guls Studio Achievements & Awards: *
gulsstudio.com/events/achievment.html
gulsstudio.com/events/awards.html
For your reference please check our website : www.gulsstudio.com
*CONTACT-REQUEST A QUOTE*
Feel free to write us if you have any query regarding this.
With Best Regards,
*(MAJID ALI)*
*Clients Service*
*Mobile: +92-333-3940641 *
*GULS STUDIO-PAKISTAN*
*[image: cid:image001.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
*full service exhibit & event management*
*Plot # B-12 Block # 15*
*Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi - Pakistan*
*Email: majidali@gulsstudio.com *
*Web: www.gulsstudio.com *
*[image: cid:image002.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
Dear *All The **Industrial Machinery & Trade Sector*,
Hope my mail will find you well.
*Guls Studio-Pakistan * welcomes to all participants of *ITIF ASIA -
2014, *(29-31 March 2014) - Expo Centre Karachi Pakistan.
As per our credentials* ,Guls Studio Pakistan *is serving *350+* clients
and executed *5000 *exhibitions stands for last 15 years .We ranked
ourselves as '*Number ONE* ' Stand and Ambiance builder and are proud to
claim as the only company providing *'One Stop Shop' * in all Exhibition
services.
We are serving Global Defense Industry, Automobile Companies, Blue
chip multinationals, Financial Institutions , Construction & Real
Estates companies, renowned MNC's and 'FORTUNE 500' companies. The
said company holds few '*Guinness World Records* 'for *Procter
&Gamble *brands (Details available on our website *www.gulsstudio.com
* )
Having execution facility available throughout Pakistan (Karachi ,Islamabad
, Lahore, Faisalabad etc.) Guls Studio is approaching its prestigious
clients to serve in *ITIF ASIA** - 2014*.
Our highly skilled Graphics & production department is pitching series of
design to ITIF ASIA-2014 participants which are cost effective too.
I therefore request you to please send us your stand briefing, Hall Plan &
other details to propose you an eye catching design options.
please visit our face book link Guls Studio built numerous International &
National clients stands with exhibition Ambiance*.*
*http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guls-Studio/197970336900996?ref=hl
*
*CONTACT-REQUEST A QUOTE*
Feel free to write us if you have any query regarding this.
With Best Regards,
*(MAJID ALI)*
*Client Service*
*Mobile: +92-333-3940641 *
*GULS STUDIO*
*Plot # B-12 Block # 15 Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi - Pakistan*
*Email: majidali@gulsstudio.com *
*Web: www.gulsstudio.com *
*[image: cid:image002.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
*GULS STUDIO COMPANY PROFILE,*
I'm pleased to introduce you *Guls Studio,*the name of Global Exhibit,
Architecture Designers and Event Exhibition Company in Pakistan.
Serving over *500+* clients '*Guls Studio'* has executed many award
winning exhibition Stands locally & internationally and are '*official
Stand Builder'* for almost all the DAWN leading exhibitions from 2001
to 2014 in Pakistan.* & Also *serving* '*all the exhibition
organizers' since its inception and were official ambiance designer
from 2001 to 2014 for 200 top exhibitions ,we were responsible to
built Seminar Ambiance, City Ambiance, Expo Center Ambiance,
Inauguration & Registration Areas, Gala Dinner ,which were executed at
high level of satisfaction to *exhibition organizers & clients*.
Beside this ,many renowned Blue chip multinationals, Pharmaceutical,
Financial Institutions , Construction & Real Estates Groups, FMCG's
and many 'FORTUNE 500' companies are among our prestigious clients.
The said company also holds few *'Guinness World Records'* for
*Procter & Gamble* brands. (Details can be seen on our website
We have our own manufacturing facility on *200,000 Sq ft* in
Karachi-Pakistan, with large number of inventory of Raw & Finish
materials used in stand/Ambiance building, giving us a clear edge on
the competitors of the industry.
*Gulzar Mughal Company MD Introduction:*
Muhammad Gulzar Mughal, born in 1967, in shahdadpur, sindh is an invincible
force driving Guls Studio in the marketplace today. Guls studio is seen as
a top -notch full service Exhibition & Designing Stand Building and Event
Management Company in Pakistan.
In the past 10 years, Muhammad Gulzar Mughal has demonstrated exceptional
talent and skills in making Guls Studio as a trendsetter in the field of
Event Management. Prior to Guls Studio, Customers used to make their own
stalls, dismantle them and then send them to the warehouse, facing much
inconvenience and hassle. Guls Studio changed things for the better-naming
the new trend Exhibition Stand Rental Trend.
Today due to Muhammad Gulzar Mughal' relentless efforts Guls Studio has
become the pioneer in the field of events and exhibition. He has been
activity involved in introducing several new concepts and ideas, including
the rental packages, furnishing 5000 rental exhibits to 500 major clients.
Mr.Mughal's work has been characterized by excellence in Exhibition Design,
construction, Expo Ambiance & Decoration services. As a brand scientist,
Mr. Mughal made Guls Studio a market leader and bench marked in events
management in Pakistan. Mr. Mughal believes that while Guls Studio's client
frequently win best-show awards, their real success is seen in the new
business that they generate and behind the scenes, it is Guls Studio's
continuous work towards new ideas and new concepts for the client's success.
Muhammad Gulzar Mughal should also be accredited for introducing various
plans and packages designed at facilitating the clients towards making
their campaigns more successful and efficacious. One of such plans has been
the "Corporate Clients Membership Benefits Plan". This unique program has
been designed to provide regular and new complementary services including
the free layout Plan. Some of the most prominent life-time achievements of
Mr.Mughal include the brand of the year Award 2009; The 10th year official
stand builder of all Mega Exhibitions in Pakistan; rental Trade Setter in
Exhibition industries, accomplishing various events as Ambiance Trend Set
in Expo Centre; Stall Rental Packages Introduce In Market; Pamper World
Largest Display at Metro Lahore and many more.
What is noteworthy is that Muhammad Gulzar Mughal, who hails from a rural
town in Sindh, was able to accept the challenges as well as the
opportunities that were ahead of him in his journey towards success. He was
instrumental in programming Guls studio as a brand activity focused on
Event management dynamics and on earning increasing numbers of customers.
This foresight coupled with sensing the need for quality and innovation was
one of the key ingredients to reach new heights.
*Guls Studio Pakistan mega Exhibition Official Ambiance Design from 2001 to
2012:*
Guls Studio has been Official Ambiance Designer for the last 10 years (from
2001 to 2012) Every 9 out of 10 Exhibitor's Official Ambiance Designs
belongs to Guls Studio. Many thanks to Almighty ALLAH for granting this
creditability.
gulsstudio.com/events/official_ambiance.html
*Guls Studio Pakistan mega Exhibition Official Stand Builder from 2001 to
2012:*
Guls Studio has been Official Stand Builder for the last 10 years (from
2001 to 2012) Every 9 out of 10 Exhibitor's Official Stand Builders belongs
to Guls Studio. Many thanks to Almighty ALLAH for granting this
creditability.
gulsstudio.com/events/official_stand.html
*Infrastructure Setup with Storage Facility Aprox. 200,000 sqft: *
At its factory, Guls Studio stores customized stalls of the 500 Clients. On
re-rental the customized design, our clients' participant in the exhibition
by controlling their budget.
Clients get rid of dealing with their vendors again and again. Tension free
and with full confidence the Clients focus on activity to achieve the
target provided by their management in the exhibition.
Beside this, many renowned Blue chip multinationals, Pharmaceutical,
Financial Institutions, Construction & Real Estates Groups, FMCG's and many
'FORTUNE 500' companies are among our prestigious clients. (Details can be
seen on our website www.gulsstudio.com ).
We have our own manufacturing facility on *200,000 Sq ft* in
Karachi-Pakistan, with large number of inventory of Raw & Finish materials
used in stand/Ambiance building, giving us a clear edge on the competitors
of the industry.
As per our expansion plan, we are approaching you and offering you to be
our strategic partner in Far East i.e. in Malaysia & Singapore to cater our
clients there Vice Versa.
Our proposed joint working terms are:
If *Guls Studio-Pak* will procure any business or secure client for all
over the Pakistan & GCC countries will be forwarded to *your end.* As our
as a strategic partner you will get 100% of billing amount from the client
& forward to GULSSTUDIO for the execution and we will get 15% for you pay
as a agency commission.
*Available Inventory's in Storage for your Event on Rental Basis:*
§ Custom Exhibition Stands Packages
§ Modular Exhibits Stands Rentals Packages
§ Prefabricated Exhibits Rentals Options
§ Grid Structure
§ Double Decker Exhibits Stands for Exhibitions
§ Mall Events Ambiance Setup
§ Expo Exhibition Ambiance Setup on Rental Basis
§ Mall Activity Kiosk Rental all over Pakistan
§ Floats Rentals
§ Palate Display Setup for In store Activity
§ Thematic Ambiance Setup Modification
*Guls Studio Stand Building from 2001 to 2012 with Rental & Re-rental Trend
Setter in Pakistan:*
During the past 15 years, Guls Studio has made a lot of Trend set in the
field of Event Management Industry. So we say we are Trend-Setter. Out of
this, we made a Trend in exhibition industry. Its name is Exhibition Stand
Rental Trend. Before this practice the clients made their stall at own,
dismantle and then sent to their warehouse. For this process the clients
have to face many problems. Now Guls Studio finished such procedure.
Today Guls Studio has the position of *Pioneer in Event & Exhibition
Industries*. Guls Studio has introduced several Rental Packages. We have
launched Rental Exhibit in the year 2003. By the grace of Almighty Allah
Guls Studio furnished *5000 Rental Exhibits to 500 major Clients* from 2001
to 2012.
gulsstudio.com/events/trend_settter.html
*Top Clients from 2001 to 2012:*
Emirates Airlines, PIA Airlines, P&G, Karachi Chamber of Commerce, CEMS
Pakistan, Mobilink, United Mobile, Samsung, Kenwood, Pak Suzuki Motors,
Hyundai, Dewan Motors, Tapal Tea, Axact, Pakistan Airlines (PIA), LU
Biscuits Pakistan, LG, JVC, K.E.S.C.,PTCL, Rufi Builders, Tessori Jewelers,
Hamdard Laborities and many more........
gulsstudio.com/events/clients.html
*Event Management Projects from 2001 to 2012:*
§ IDEAS 2004.2008.2012.
§ International Housing Industry Exhibition 2005.
§ Textile Asia 2005.
§ DAWN Life Styles Exhibition 2006.
§ KEEF 2006.
§ Expo Pakistan 2006.
§ Health Asia Int'l Exhibition & Conference 2007 to 2010.
§ Muslim BIG Gala 2007.
§ Akber Alam Benefit Match 2008.
§ IDEAS 2008.
§ ITCN ASIA 2008.
§ Build Asia 2008.
§ IPEX.
§ SAARC.
§ Express Family Festival 2009.
§ Ariel World's Largest Kurta.
§ Head & Shoulders Bottle.
§ Global Hand Wash Day.
§ Safeguard.
§ Launching Ceremony of Suzuki Liana.
§ Suzuki Plant Extension.
gulsstudio.com/events/event_management.html
*Banch Mark World Records Events, Event Management:*
*ARIEL*
By managing the marvelous event "The World's Largest Kurta" measured by SGS
Pakistan as 101 ft. long and 59.6 ft. wide. Consisting approx 800m high
quality fabric, kurta created in own ware house and hanged on huge 125 ft.
high iron frame with 7 long armed crane support at Pakistan Sport Board
Ground Opt. Karachi National Stadium with very colorful event ceremony. P&G
Pakistan & Guls Studio's making history at Metro Karachi for Ariel Largest
Pyramid product display. Dimension of Pyramid is 60' wide, 60' length & 60'
tall and total weight of structure is 150 tons. By the grace of Almighty
Allah Guls hardworking team brought to success and achievement, that was
applauded by enormous viewers.
*SAFEGUARD*
Guls made the World's Largest Safe Guard Soap Display on 36 hours short
notice only for Procter & Gamble (Pakistan). This display was arranged at
the parking area of Metro Lahore. 200000 Safe Guard Soap were displayed on
approx 200 pilots. Guls Studio also made the 2nd World's Largest Safe Guard
Soap Display at Metro Lahore Pakistan 400000 Safe Guard Soap were displayed
on approx 400 pilots. The weight of soaps was in tons. Hand washing setup
was also arranged, by the grace of Allah, the Event Management team made it
possible for Guls to achieve success in such project in making the World
Record. Really we are thankful to Almighty Allah for its successful
completion in a very short time.
*PAMPERS*
Guls made the Largest Pamper Display on 36 pilots Makro Star Gate, Karachi.
Approximately 15,000 Pampers were displayed for the public for a period of
one month at Makro. Thousands of peoples appreciated and bought the
Pampers. Event Management Department of Guls Studio executed the design. It
was World's third record event that was managed and executed by Guls for
P&G.
*HEAD & SHOULDERS*
Guls created World's Largest Head & Shoulders Bottle which height was 20
ft. not only created the bottle but also carried out over all event
management. A marvelous and beautiful event ambiance was designed by Guls
20 ft. bottle icon has been covered with high-drip on the big stage and
unveiled after in augural addresses. Follow & spot lighting was creating
wonderful impact inside and the whole surrounding, at the end of launching,
colorful fireworks set off that was really fantastic.
gulsstudio.com/events/world_record.html
gulsstudio.com/events/banch_mark.html
*IDEAS Defense Exhibition 2004 to 2008:*
Serving over *350+* clients 'Guls* Studio'* has executed many award winning
exhibition Stands locally & internationally and are '*official Stand
Builder'* for almost all the leading exhibitions specially 'International
Defense Exhibition *IDEAS* in Pakistan.
'*Guls Studio' *is serving* '*International Defense Exhibition'
(*IDEAS) *event,
since its inception and were official stand builder for *IDEAS-2008.* In
*IDEAS-2008* ,we were responsible to built Seminar Ambiance, City Ambiance,
Expo Center Ambiance, Inauguration & Registration Areas, Gala Dinner and
company's stands of Pakistan Ordinance Factory, DGMP, Pakistan Machine Tool
Factory, TISAS,USAID,TEKSAV,GATE Electronics, THALES, People Steel Mills,
PIA ,which were executed at high level of satisfaction to *DEPO* and to the
individual clients.
*Clients Recognition from 2001 to 2012:*
§ Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Pegasus Consultancy (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Dewan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Tapal Tea (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Express Family Festival 2009.
§ Pakistan Airlines (PIA).
§ Qarshi Industries (Pvt) Ltd.
§ Nestle Pakistan Ltd.
§ Dawlance Pakistan Ltd.
§ Cems Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd.
§ KEEF 2006.
§ Oriental Media Links.
§ Womenza 2008.
§ IDEAS PAKISTAN 2008.
§ SUZUKI Launching Ceremony 2008.
§ Ariel Pakistan.
§ Head & Shoulders Pakistan.
§ Safeguard Pakistan.
§ Pampers Pakistan.
§ Prince Biscuits Pakistan.
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
*Dawn Life Style Exhibitions for 2001 to 2011:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 32 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*ITCN ASIA Exhibitions for 2001 to 2013:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 15 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*Build Asia Exhibitions for 2001 to 2013:*
9 0ut of 10 clients & approx. 12 Major Brands trusted Guls Studio for the
Designing and Execution of their stall on turnkey solution basis.
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
gulsstudio.com/events/appreciation.html
gulsstudio.com/events/client_views.html
*Brand Awards & Brand Scientist 2009 to 2014:*
"By the Grace of Allah" Guls has been awarded one of the most acclaimed
Brand of Pakistan. Brands Award Council of Pakistan has instituted a
special honor by awarding Medal of Brand Scientist to only 11 Best Brand
Guardians in Pakistan, which has been selected by the management of Brands
Award Council.
We are thankful to Almighty Allah that he has given us very big result for
our little hard work as well as we are thankful to our corporate clients
because of their trust in Guls we have obtained these achievement in event
industry.
Guls Studio is the first Event Management Company in Pakistan which has
been awarded Brands of the Year Award by Brand Council in the category of
best Event Management and Ambiance Designer in Pakistan.
gulsstudio.com/events/brand_scientist.html
*Events Ambiance Rental Offers Packages:*
§ Mall Events
§ Product Launchings
§ Inaugurations Set Design
§ Thematic Events Setup
§ Interior Design Services
gulsstudio.com/events/packages.html
*Exhibitions Stand Rental Offers Packages For UAE:*
§ 1 time ka Exhibit 1 time ki Cost
§ Guls Triplicate Exhibit Package
§ 6 Types of Exhibits
§ Spend 1 time Use 5 times
§ Trigger Three Exhibit Package Deals
§ Kiosk Rental Package
§ Emirates Sexier
§ 7 Times Stall Building Exhibition Package
gulsstudio.com/events/packages.html
*Life Time Free Design Membership:*
Guls Studio is No. 1 exhibit designing company of Pakistan with over 15
year experience of industry and we are very proud to serve more than 152
clients from different industries. We are happy to announce our "Corporate
Clients Membership Benefits Plan". This unique program has been designed to
provide our regular and new clients a bunch of complementary services
including Free Layout Plan, Free 3d Views, Free Estimation and many more,
after getting in to our members club you can enjoy these complementary
services. After all, this time is won't cost you anything and you may
happen upon a profitable discovery. Looking forward to privilege of serving
and awaits your kind reply. You can obtain our membership with Best regards.
gulsstudio.com/events/free_design.html
*Working as a Strategic Partner with you:*
Guls Studio is proud to have the honor of a major contributor to every
small and large Exhibition in Pakistan. After the Almighty Allah we are
thankful to all Exhibition Organizers who trusted and supported us by
making their strategic partner, to achieve the position of Guls Studio
today enjoys in the market.
*Guls Website:*
*http://www.gulsstudio.com *
*Guls Profile Link:*
*www.gulsstudio.com/guls-studio-profile.rar
*
*http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guls-Studio/197970336900996
*
*Guls BTL Activation Division Establish & Work 2005:*
There are several mode of engagement coined to provide brand experience
directly to target consumers like POME, POHC, ACTIVITIES. Door to Door
selling / convincing, road shows like multimedia units, customers relation
building shows like arena / malls / flats / mohalla activation, store
interception & event management etc. (School Activity, College Activity,
University Activity).
*Guls Studio 15000 Sketches Turn into Reality:*
Guls Studio has so far given the shape of reality to 15000 sketches. So all
corporate and business houses knows we are the "turn sketch into reality"
and offer concept design to the valued clients free of charge.
gulsstudio.com/events/sketches.html
*Mall Kiosk Rental Offers Package:*
All kiosks are designed to maximize your sales potential and follow mall
criteria. Whether you need one customized mall kiosk or a hundred, Guls
Studio can design, build, and install them for you.
Using Computer Assisted Design, we'll mass-produce exact replicas of your
mall kiosks, or easily implement small variations. We specialize in
customized kiosks.
Even if you need large-scale rollouts and simultaneous deliveries, Guls
Studio will deliver and install your custom store fixtures anywhere in
Pakistan & UAE.
Business owners have been coming to us for decades to build their Jewelry
Kiosks, Cell Phone Kiosks, and Food Kiosks. Our clients have included big
names such as P&G, United Mobile, LG, Tapal Tea, Tessori Jewelers, LU
Biscuits Pakistan, etc; as well as hundreds of ambitious individuals. We
install the kiosk for well known Shopping Mall in Pakistan such as Park
Tower, Forum, Millennium Mall, Dolman Mall, Hyper Star, Liberty Market,
Macro, Metro, etc.
If you're a first-time buyer, be sure to consult our Checklist, then
contact us and we'll lead you get through the process. We'll make sure your
mall kiosk satisfies the local government requirements, and all the mall
criteria. Not to mention your own.
We'll work directly with the mall and advise you on different options
involving dimensions, materials used, color, and appearance of your mall
kiosk.
Guls Studio has over 15 years of experience, and can handle large-scale
rollouts and simultaneous deliveries. When you need the highest care and
quality, delivered on-time and within your budget, contact us for a free
quote.
*Our Partner:*
gulsstudio.com/events/partner.html
*Guls Studio News Letters:*
gulsstudio.com/events/newsletter.html
*Guls Studio Broachers:*
gulsstudio.com/events/brochure.html
*Guls Studio Prefabricated Stand:*
gulsstudio.com/events/prefabricated.html
*Guls Studio Custom Fabrication Stand:*
gulsstudio.com/events/custom_fabrication.html
*Guls Studio Pallet Display & Mobile Float Rental:*
gulsstudio.com/events/pallet_display.html
gulsstudio.com/events/mobile_float.html
*Guls Studio Rental & Rental Accessories: *
gulsstudio.com/events/rental.html
gulsstudio.com/events/rental_accessories.html
*Guls Studio Achievements & Awards: *
gulsstudio.com/events/achievment.html
gulsstudio.com/events/awards.html
For your reference please check our website : www.gulsstudio.com
*CONTACT-REQUEST A QUOTE*
Feel free to write us if you have any query regarding this.
With Best Regards,
*(MAJID ALI)*
*Clients Service*
*Mobile: +92-333-3940641 *
*GULS STUDIO-PAKISTAN*
*[image: cid:image001.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
*full service exhibit & event management*
*Plot # B-12 Block # 15*
*Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi - Pakistan*
*Email: majidali@gulsstudio.com *
*Web: www.gulsstudio.com *
*[image: cid:image002.jpg@01CF12B5.98F88C80]*
Edward John Kerling, one of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In June 1942, is shown in a full head-to-toe mugshot after his arrest.
Kerling was born in Wiesbaden, Germany on June 12, 1909. He joined the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1928.
Kerling left Germany later that year settling in New York City. After a time working in a packing house in Manhattan as a shipping clerk, Kerling served as a chauffeur for Eli Culbertson, a bridge expert, in Hicksville, Long Island.
On October 31, 1931 he married Marie Sichart. After his marriage Kerling worked as a chauffeur for W. J. Hoggson, a banker in Greenwich, Connecticut. While in Florida, Kerling met Hedwig Engemann, who became his mistress.
In 1939 when Germany went to war, Edward Kerling and several friends, including Hermann Neubauer, bought the yacht Lekala. They intended to sail it to Germany. The U.S. Coast Guard, fearing the group might be attempting to supply U-Boats, prohibited the voyage. The boat was sold in Miami.
In June 1940, Kerling sailed via passenger ship to Germany. Kerling left his wife and lover behind in the USA. In August, Kerling joined the German Army and was assigned to a listening post in Deauville, France.
In April, 1942 he was recruited into the Abwehr where he was assigned to sabotage training at Brandenburg. Kerling was appointed a team leader in Operation Pastorius. Kerling landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (by U-Boat) in June, 1942.
Pastorius was a sabotage mission against the United States during World War Two. After one of the team members from the Long Island group went straight to the FBI, Kerling was arrested in New York City a few days later.
He was tried by a military tribunal in July, 1942 and executed on August 8, 1942 in the Washington D.C. district jail by electrocution. Also executed that day were his old friend Hermann Neubauer and teammates Werner Thiel and Herbert Haupt. Two of the Long Island group, Heinrich Heinck and Richard Quirin also died in the electric chair.
Kerling’s wife claimed that attempt to retrieve his remains were barred by the U.S. government. Attempts by Kerling’s wife to retrieve his remains were denied by the U.S. government. Similar efforts by the lawyer representing Erna Haupt, Haupt’s mother, were also reportedly rejected.
All six of the German agents were all buried in a government potters field for un-claimed bodies. Kerling’s grave was marked by a wooden board numbered 279. In 1982 more permanent grave markers were placed.
Background to Operation Pastorius
After the U.S. declared war on Germany following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler authorized a mission to sabotage the American war effort and attack civilian targets to demoralize the American civilian population inside the United States.
Recruited for Operation Pastorius, named for the leader of the first German settlement in America, were eight German residents who had lived in the United States.
Two of them, Ernst Burger and Herbert Haupt, were American citizens. The others, George John Dasch, Edward John Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Werner Thiel, had worked at various jobs in the United States.
All eight were recruited into the Abwehr military intelligence organization and were given three weeks of intensive sabotage training in the German High Command school on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin, Germany. The agents were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiaries, primers, and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.
The agents were also instructed to spread a wave of terror by planting explosives on bridges, railroad stations, water facilities, and public places. They were given counterfeit birth certificates, Social Security Cards, draft deferment cards, nearly $175,000 in American money, and driver's licenses, and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission began, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
On the night of June 12, 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202, landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 100 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach.
It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Heinck). The team came ashore wearing German Navy uniforms so that if they were captured, they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought their explosives, primers and incendiaries, and buried them along with their uniforms, and put on civilian clothes to begin an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch offered Cullen a $260 bribe. Cullen feigned cooperation but reported the encounter. An armed patrol returned to the site but found only the buried equipment; the Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked into a hotel. A massive manhunt was begun.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on June 16, 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group came ashore wearing bathing suits but wore German Navy hats. After landing ashore, they threw away their hats, put on civilian clothes, and started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
The two teams were to meet on July 4 in a hotel in Cincinnati to coordinate their sabotage operations.
Dasch called Burger into their upper-story hotel room and opened a window, saying they would talk, and if they disagreed, "only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." Dasch told him he had no intention of going through with the mission, hated Nazism, and planned to report the plot to the FBI. Burger agreed to defect to the United States immediately.
On June 15, Dasch phoned the New York office of the FBI to explain who he was, but hung up when the agent answering doubted his story. Four days later, he took a train to Washington, DC and walked into FBI headquarters, where he gained the attention of Assistant Director D. M. Ladd by showing him the operation's budget of $84,000 cash.
Besides Burger, none of the other German agents knew they were betrayed. Over the next two weeks, Burger and the other six were arrested. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made no mention that Dasch had turned himself in, and claimed credit for the FBI for cracking the spy ring.
Information that Dasch and Burger had exposed the operation was withheld from the public until after World War II was over in order to make it appear to the American public and to Nazi Germany that the FBI was effective in preventing sabotage.
Fearful that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Roosevelt issued Executive Proclamation 2561 on July 2, 1942 creating a military tribunal to prosecute the Germans. Placed before a seven-member military commission, the Germans were charged with the following offenses:
1) Violating the law of war;
2) Violating Article 81 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy;
3) Violating Article 82 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of spying; and
4) Conspiracy to commit the offenses alleged in the first three charges.
The trial was held in Assembly Hall #1 on the fifth floor of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. on July 8, 1942.
Lawyers for the accused, who included Lauson Stone and Kenneth Royall, attempted to have the case tried in a civilian court but were rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that was later cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
The trial for the eight defendants ended on August 1, 1942. Two days later, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt commuted Burger's sentence to life in prison and Dasch's to 30 years because they had turned themselves in and provided information about the others.
The others were executed on August 8, 1942 in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail and buried in a potter's field in the Blue Plains area in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.
In April 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman granted clemency to Dasch and Burger who were deported to the American zone in Germany and required to live in that area or face re-imprisonment.
Fourteen other people were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. They were Walter and Lucille Froehling, Otto and Kate Wergin, Harry and Emma Jaques, Anthony Cramer, Helmut Leiner, Herman Heinrich, Maria Kerling, Hedwig Engemann, Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt, and Ernest Kerkhof.
Nearly all were held as enemy aliens and several were sentenced to death for treason, but had their convictions reversed on appeal. Some were re-tried on lesser charges. Some never went to trial.
--Information partially excerpted from Wikipedia
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Dawn raids saw 10 people arrested as part of a crackdown on the supply of drugs in the Bury area
This morning (Thursday 13 June 2019) a team of officers executed warrants at properties across 6 addresses in the Manchester, Oldham, Salford and Bury areas.
The warrants were part of Operation Ballerina – set up by GMP to target those believed to be involved in the supply of Class A drugs across the Bury area.
A large amount of Class A drugs and cash was recovered and 7 men and 3 women were arrested on suspicion of possession with intent to supply and supplying Class A drugs and remain in custody
Superintendent Paul Walker, of GMP’s Bury district, said: “This was the second raid in as many weeks that specifically targeted the supply of drugs, and has now seen 18 people arrested. This morning was a huge success with a large amount of Class A drugs and cash recovered, along with several vehicles used in the commission of criminal offences.
“Our stance remains the same, we do not tolerate the supply of drugs, and we will continue to take action if there is any suspicion of offences being committed in Greater Manchester.
“Operation Ballerina is very much ongoing, and we are continuing to crack down on the supply of drugs across Bury and the wider region.
"Our most powerful tool in the fight against drugs is the information we receive from the community. If you suspect drugs are being used or cultivated in your area, we urge you to get in touch with the police as soon as you can."
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0161 856 9023, or anonymously via the independent charity Crimestoppers, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website. www.gmp.police.uk
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
Fresco (plural frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.
TECHNOLOGY
Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of room temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster, intonaco, is used. Because of the chemical makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco, which itself becomes the medium holding the pigment. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries in reaction to air: it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. The chemical processes are as follows:
calcination of limestone in a lime kiln: CaCO3 → CaO + CO2
slaking of quicklime: CaO + H2O → Ca(OH)2
setting of the lime plaster: Ca(OH)2 + CO2 → CaCO3 + H2O
In painting buon fresco, a rough underlayer called the arriccio is added to the whole area to be painted and allowed to dry for some days. Many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later,[when?]new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, and a bag of soot (spolvero) banged on them on produce black dots along the lines. If the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. On the day of painting, the intonaco, a thinner, smooth layer of fine plaster was added to the amount of wall that was expected to be completed that day, sometimes matching the contours of the figures or the landscape, but more often just starting from the top of the composition. This area is called the giornata ("day's work"), and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, by a sort of seam that separates one from the next.
Buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Generally, a layer of plaster will require ten to twelve hours to dry; ideally, an artist would begin to paint after one hour and continue until two hours before the drying time - giving seven to nine hours working time. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, and the unpainted intonaco must be removed with a tool before starting again the next day. If mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area - or to change them later, a secco.
A technique used in the popular frescoes of Michelangelo and Raphael was to scrape indentations into certain areas of the plaster while still wet to increase the illusion of depth and to accent certain areas over others. The eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark 'outlining' of his central figures within his frescoes.
In a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were originally, nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes, these divisions may be seen from the ground. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has since fallen off.
One of the first painters in the post-classical period to use this technique was the Isaac Master (or Master of the Isaac fresco, and thus a name used to refer to the unknown master of a particular painting) in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist.
OTHER TYPES OF WALL PAINTING
A secco or fresco-secco painting, in contrast, is done on dry plaster (secco meaning "dry" in Italian). The pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg (tempera), glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall. It is important to distinguish between a secco work done on top of buon fresco, which according to most authorities was in fact standard from the Middle Ages onwards, and work done entirely a secco on a blank wall. Generally, buon fresco works are more durable than any a secco work added on top of them, because a secco work lasts better with a roughened plaster surface, whilst true fresco should have a smooth one. The additional a secco work would be done to make changes, and sometimes to add small details, but also because not all colours can be achieved in true fresco, because only some pigments work chemically in the very alkaline environment of fresh lime-based plaster. Blue was a particular problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli, the only two blue pigments then available, works well in wet fresco.
It has also become increasingly clear, thanks to modern analytical techniques, that even in the early Italian Renaissance painters quite frequently employed a secco techniques so as to allow the use of a broader range of pigments. In most early examples this work has now entirely vanished, but a whole fresco done a secco on a surface roughened to give a key for the paint may survive very well, although damp is more threatening to it than to buon fresco.
A third type called a mezzo-fresco is painted on nearly dry intonaco - firm enough not to take a thumb-print, says the sixteenth-century author Ignazio Pozzo - so that the pigment only penetrates slightly into the plaster. By the end of the sixteenth century this had largely displaced buon fresco, and was used by painters such as Gianbattista Tiepolo or Michelangelo. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work.
The three key advantages of work done entirely a secco were that it was quicker, mistakes could be corrected, and the colours varied less from when applied to when fully dry - in wet fresco there was a considerable change.
For wholly a secco work, the intonaco is laid with a rougher finish, allowed to dry completely and then usually given a key by rubbing with sand. The painter then proceeds much as he would on a canvas or wood panel. The two types of fresco painting are buon fresco and fresco secco. Buon fresco is painting into wet plaster, which makes a painting last a long time. Fresco secco is painting onto dry plaster, which does not last as long.
HISTORY
ANCIENT NEAR EAST
The earliest known examples of frescoes done in the Buon Fresco method date at around 1500 BC and are to be found on the island of Crete in Greece. The most famous of these, The Toreador, depicts a sacred ceremony in which individuals jump over the backs of large bulls. While some similar frescoes have been found in other locations around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Egypt and Morocco, their origins are subject to speculation.
Some art historians believe that fresco artists from Crete may have been sent to various locations as part of a trade exchange, a possibility which raises to the fore the importance of this art form within the society of the times. The most common form of fresco was Egyptian wall paintings in tombs, usually using the a secco technique.
CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
Frescoes were also painted in ancient Greece, but few of these works have survived. In southern Italy, at Paestum, which was a Greek colony of the Magna Graecia, a tomb containing frescoes dating back to 470 BC, the so-called Tomb of the Diver was discovered on June 1968. These frescoes depict scenes of the life and society of ancient
Greece, and constitute valuable historical testimonials. One shows a group of men reclining at a symposium while another shows a young man diving into the sea.
Roman wall paintings, such as those at the magnificent Villa dei Misteri (1st century B.C.) in the ruins of Pompeii, and others at Herculaneum, were completed in buon fresco.
Late Roman Empire (Christian) 1st-2nd-century frescoes were found in catacombs beneath Rome and Byzantine Icons were also found in Cyprus, Crete, Ephesus, Cappadocia and Antioch. Roman frescoes were done by the artist painting the artwork on the still damp plaster of the wall, so that the painting is part of the wall, actually colored plaster.
Also a historical collection of Ancient Christian frescoes can be found in the Churches of Goreme Turkey.
INDIA
Thanks to large number of ancient rock-cut cave temples, valuable ancient and early medieval frescoes have been preserved in more than 20 locations of India. The frescoes on the ceilings and walls of the Ajanta Caves were painted between c. 200 BC and 600 and are the oldest known frescoes in India. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences
as Bodhisattva. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research on the subject since the time of the site's rediscovery in 1819. Other locations with valuable preserved ancient and early medieval frescoes include Bagh Caves, Ellora Caves, Sittanavasal, Armamalai Cave, Badami Cave Temples and other locations. Frescoes have been made in several techniques including tempera technique.
The later Chola paintings were discovered in 1931 within the circumambulatory passage of the Brihadisvara Temple in India and are the first Chola specimens discovered.
Researchers have discovered the technique used in these frescos. A smooth batter of limestone mixture is applied over the stones, which took two to three days to set. Within that short span, such large paintings were painted with natural organic pigments.
During the Nayak period the Chola paintings were painted over. The Chola frescos lying underneath have an ardent spirit of saivism expressed in them. They probably synchronised with the completion of the temple by Rajaraja Cholan the Great.
The frescoes in Dogra/ Pahari style paintings exist in their unique form at Sheesh Mahal of Ramnagar (105 km from Jammu and 35 km west of Udhampur). Scenes from epics of Mahabharat and Ramayan along with portraits of local lords form the subject matter of these wall paintings. Rang Mahal of Chamba (Himachal Pradesh) is another site of historic Dogri fresco with wall paintings depicting scenes of Draupti Cheer Haran, and Radha- Krishna Leela. This can be seen preserved at National Museum at New Delhi in a chamber called Chamba Rang Mahal.
SRI LANKA
The Sigiriya Frescoes are found in Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. Painted during the reign of King Kashyapa I (ruled 477-495 AD). The generally accepted view is that they are portrayals of women of the royal court of the king depicted as celestial nymphs showering flowers upon the humans below. They bear some resemblance to the Gupta style of painting found in the Ajanta Caves in India. They are, however, far more enlivened and colorful and uniquely Sri Lankan in character. They are the only surviving secular art from antiquity found in Sri Lanka today.
The painting technique used on the Sigiriya paintings is “fresco lustro.” It varies slightly from the pure fresco technique in that it also contains a mild binding agent or glue. This gives the painting added durability, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that they have survived, exposed to the elements, for over 1,500 years.
Located in a small sheltered depression a hundred meters above ground only 19 survive today. Ancient references however refer to the existence of as many as five hundred of these frescoes.
MIDDLE AGES
The late Medieval period and the Renaissance saw the most prominent use of fresco, particularly in Italy, where most churches and many government buildings still feature fresco decoration. This change coincided with the reevaluation of murals in the liturgy. Romanesque churches in Catalonia were richly painted in 12th and 13th century, with both decorative and educational -for the illiterate faithfuls- role, as can be seen in the MNAC in Barcelona, where is kept a large collection of Catalan romanesque art. In Denmark too, church wall paintings or kalkmalerier were widely used in the Middle Ages (first Romanesque, then Gothic) and can be seen in some 600 Danish churches as well as in churches in the south of Sweden which was Danish at the time.
One of the rare examples of Islamic fresco painting can be seen in Qasr Amra, the desert palace of the Umayyads in the 8th century Magotez.
EARLY MODERN EUROPE
Northern Romania (historical region of Moldavia) boasts about a dozen painted monasteries, completely covered with frescos inside and out, that date from the last quarter of the 15th century to the second quarter of the 16th century. The most remarkable are the monastic foundations at Voroneţ (vo ro nets) (1487), Arbore (are' bo ray) (1503), Humor (hoo mor) (1530), and Moldoviţa (mol do vee' tsa) (1532). Suceviţa (sue che vee' tsa), dating from 1600, represents a late return to the style developed some 70 years earlier. The tradition of painted churches continued into the 19th century in other parts of Romania, although never to the same extent.
Andrea Palladio, the famous Italian architect of the 16th century, built many mansions with plain exteriors and stunning interiors filled with frescoes.
Henri Clément Serveau produced several frescos including a three by six meter painting for the Lycée de Meaux, where he was once a student. He directed the École de fresques at l'École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, and decorated the Pavillon du Tourisme at the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Paris), Pavillon de la Ville de Paris; now at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In 1954 he realized a fresco for the Cité Ouvrière du Laboratoire Débat, Garches. He also executed mural decorations for the Plan des anciennes enceintes de Paris in the Musée Carnavalet.
The Foujita chapel in Reims completed in 1966, is an example of modern frescos, the interior being painted with religious scenes by the School of Paris painter Tsuguharu Foujita. In 1996, it was designated an historic monument by the French Government.
MEXICAN MURALISM
José Clemente Orozco, Fernando Leal, David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera the famous Mexican artists, renewed the art of fresco painting in the 20th century. Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo contributed more to the history of Mexican fine arts and to the reputation of Mexican art in general than anybody else. Together with works by Orozco, Siqueiros, and others, Fernando Leal and Rivera's large wall works in fresco established the art movement known as Mexican Muralism.
CONSERVATION OF FRESCOES
The climate and environment of Venice has proved to be a problem for frescoes and other works of art in the city for centuries. The city is built on a lagoon in northern Italy. The humidity and the rise of water over the centuries have created a phenomenon known as rising damp. As the lagoon water rises and seeps into the foundation of a building, the water is absorbed and rises up through the walls often causing damage to frescoes. Venetians have become quite adept in the conservation methods of frescoes. The mold aspergillus versicolor can grow after flooding, to consume nutrients from frescoes.
The following is the process that was used when rescuing frescoes in La Fenice, a Venetian opera house, but the same process can be used for similarly damaged frescoes. First, a protection and support bandage of cotton gauze and polyvinyl alcohol is applied. Difficult sections are removed with soft brushes and localized vacuuming. The other areas that are easier to remove (because they had been damaged by less water) are removed with a paper pulp compress saturated with bicarbonate of ammonia solutions and removed with deionized water. These sections are strengthened and reattached then cleansed with base exchange resin compresses and the wall and pictorial layer were strengthened with barium hydrate. The cracks and detachments are stopped with lime putty and injected with an epoxy resin loaded with micronized silica.
WIKIPEDIA
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Photography & External Artistic Management by Luis Campillo.
Tassis Project by Ars Divina.
Artistic director :
- Jose Ignacio Delgado.
Actress:
- Angy Ducci.
- Laura González.
- Mariela Rodriguez.
Hairdresser Artist Olga García.
Make Up Artist Rosa Castelló.
Loft 44 Staff:
- Artistic Management Pilar Curiel.
- Lighting Assistant Jose Antonio Vicario.
- General Assistant Begoña Jimenez.
- Making of video Javier Vicario.
Thank's to Justino Díez & Monasterio de Santa María de Palazuelo, Cabezón de Pisuerga, Valladolid.
© Luís Campillo 2014
Arbour Hill is an inner city area of Dublin, on the Northside of the River Liffey, in the Dublin 7 postal district. Arbour Hill, the road of the same name, runs west from Blackhall Place in Stoneybatter, and separates Collins Barracks, now part of the National Museum of Ireland, to the south from Arbour Hill Prison to the north, whose graveyard includes the burial plot of the signatories of the Easter Proclamation that began the 1916 Rising.
The military cemetery at Arbour Hill is the last resting place of 14 of the executed leaders of the insurrection of 1916. Among those buried there are Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Major John Mc Bride. The leaders were executed in Kilmainham and then their bodies were transported to Arbour Hill, where they were buried.
The graves are located under a low mound on a terrace of Wicklow granite in what was once the old prison yard. The gravesite is surrounded by a limestone wall on which their names are inscribed in Irish and English. On the prison wall opposite the gravesite is a plaque with the names of other people who gave their lives in 1916.
The adjoining Church of the Sacred Heart, which is the prison chapel for Arbour Hill prison, is maintained by the Department of Defence. At the rear of the church lies the old cemetery, where lie the remains of British military personnel who died in the Dublin area in the 19th and early 20th century.
A doorway beside the 1916 memorial gives access to the Irish United Nations Veterans Association house and memorial garden.
George John Dasch, one of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In June 1942, is shown in a mugshot after his arrest.
The left photo had an X placed on it by a Washington Star photo editor.
Dasch was a German agent who landed on American soil during World War II. He helped to destroy Nazi Germany’s espionage program in the United States by defecting to the American cause, but was tried and convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
George John Dasch was born in Speyer, Germany in 1903. He entered a Roman Catholic seminary at the age of 13 to study for the priesthood. However, he was expelled the following year.
Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Imperial German Army and served in Belgium during the final months of World War I.
In 1923, he entered the United States illegally through a port in Philadelphia by ship as a stowaway then stayed in New York City. For four years, he drifted among several New York restaurants with one season spent at a hotel in Miami Beach.
In 1927, Dasch enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was assigned to the 5th Composite Group of Newton field in Honolulu and served with the 72nd Bombardment Squadron, but after a year, he purchased himself out of the Army, receiving an honorable discharge.
He then worked as a waiter in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and back in New York City. In 1930, he married Rose Marie Guille, an American citizen.
Dasch reenlisted in the US Army in 1936. Dasch was stationed at Ft. Ontario in Oswego New York. George Dasch served with the 1st Infantry Division, 28th regiment, L Company. While stationed at Fort Ontario Dasch met a young local girl by the name of Charlotte Holliday.
George Dasch and Charlotte Holliday were married in Oswego at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in the parsonage in March 1936. According to City and church records George married Charlotte Holliday using the alias of George Henry Aldasch to hide his bigamy.
George resided with his new wife Charlotte Aldasch at her father Jay Holliday's home located at 11 Murray St in Oswego NY while serving at Fort Ontario.
On October 20, 1937 George and Charlotte had a son named Howard Elliot Aldasch. Some time in 1938 George Dasch left the US Army abandoning his wife and son.
Dasch returned to Germany in 1938. Charlotte Aldasch would eventually learn the real identity of her husband in 1942 when Dasch turned himself in to the FBI.
After the U.S. declared war on Germany following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler authorized a mission to sabotage the American war effort and attack civilian targets to demoralize the American civilian population inside the United States.
Recruited for Operation Pastorius, named for the leader of the first German settlement in America, were eight German residents who had lived in the United States.
Two of them, Ernst Burger and Herbert Haupt, were American citizens. The others, George John Dasch, Edward John Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Werner Thiel, had worked at various jobs in the United States.
All eight were recruited into the Abwehr military intelligence organization and were given three weeks of intensive sabotage training in the German High Command school on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin, Germany. The agents were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiaries, primers, and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.
Their mission was to stage sabotage attacks on American economic targets: hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls; the Aluminum Company of America's plants in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York; locks on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky; the Horseshoe Curve, a crucial railroad pass near Altoona, Pennsylvania, as well as the Pennsylvania Railroad's repair shops at Altoona; a cryolite plant in Philadelphia; Hell Gate Bridge in New York; and Pennsylvania Station in Newark, New Jersey.
The agents were also instructed to spread a wave of terror by planting explosives on bridges, railroad stations, water facilities, and public places. They were given counterfeit birth certificates, Social Security Cards, draft deferment cards, nearly $175,000 in American money, and driver's licenses, and put aboard two U-boats to land on the east coast of the U.S.
Before the mission began, it was in danger of being compromised, as George Dasch, head of the team, left sensitive documents behind on a train, and one of the agents when drunk announced to patrons at a bar in Paris that he was a secret agent.
On the night of June 12, 1942, the first submarine to arrive in the U.S., U-202, landed at Amagansett, New York, which is about 100 miles east of New York City, on Long Island, at what today is Atlantic Avenue beach.
It was carrying Dasch and three other saboteurs (Burger, Quirin, and Heinck). The team came ashore wearing German Navy uniforms so that if they were captured, they would be classified as prisoners of war rather than spies. They also brought their explosives, primers and incendiaries, and buried them along with their uniforms, and put on civilian clothes to begin an expected two-year campaign in the sabotage of American defense-related production.
When Dasch was discovered amidst the dunes by unarmed Coast Guardsman John C. Cullen, Dasch offered Cullen a $260 bribe. Cullen feigned cooperation but reported the encounter. An armed patrol returned to the site but found only the buried equipment; the Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked into a hotel. A massive manhunt was begun.
The other four-member German team headed by Kerling landed without incident at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, south of Jacksonville on June 16, 1942. They came on U-584, another submarine. This group came ashore wearing bathing suits but wore German Navy hats. After landing ashore, they threw away their hats, put on civilian clothes, and started their mission by boarding trains to Chicago, Illinois and Cincinnati, Ohio.
The two teams were to meet on July 4 in a hotel in Cincinnati to coordinate their sabotage operations.
Dasch called Burger into their upper-story hotel room and opened a window, saying they would talk, and if they disagreed, "only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." Dasch told him he had no intention of going through with the mission, hated Nazism, and planned to report the plot to the FBI. Burger agreed to defect to the United States immediately.
On June 15, Dasch phoned the New York office of the FBI to explain who he was, but hung up when the agent answering doubted his story. Four days later, he took a train to Washington, DC and walked into FBI headquarters, where he gained the attention of Assistant Director D. M. Ladd by showing him the operation's budget of $84,000 cash.
Besides Burger, none of the other German agents knew they were betrayed. Over the next two weeks, Burger and the other six were arrested. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made no mention that Dasch had turned himself in, and claimed credit for the FBI for cracking the spy ring.
Information that Dasch and Burger had exposed the operation was withheld from the public until after World War II was over in order to make it appear to the American public and to Nazi Germany that the FBI was effective in preventing sabotage.
Fearful that a civilian court would be too lenient, President Roosevelt issued Executive Proclamation 2561 on July 2, 1942 creating a military tribunal to prosecute the Germans. Placed before a seven-member military commission, the Germans were charged with the following offenses:
1) Violating the law of war;
2) Violating Article 81 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of corresponding with or giving intelligence to the enemy;
3) Violating Article 82 of the Articles of War, defining the offense of spying; and
4) Conspiracy to commit the offenses alleged in the first three charges.
The trial was held in Assembly Hall #1 on the fifth floor of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C. on July 8, 1942.
Lawyers for the accused, who included Lauson Stone and Kenneth Royall, attempted to have the case tried in a civilian court but were rebuffed by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that was later cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
The trial for the eight defendants ended on August 1, 1942. Two days later, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt commuted Burger's sentence to life in prison and Dasch's to 30 years because they had turned themselves in and provided information about the others.
The others were executed on August 8, 1942 in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail and buried in a potter's field in the Blue Plains area in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C.
In April 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman granted clemency to Dasch and Burger who were deported to the American zone in Germany and required to live in that area or face re-imprisonment.
Dasch and Burger were not welcomed back because they were regarded as traitors who had caused the death of their comrades. Although they had reportedly been promised pardons by Hoover in exchange for their cooperation, both men died without ever receiving them.
Dasch died in 1992 at the age of 89 in Ludwigshafen.
Fourteen other people were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. They were Walter and Lucille Froehling, Otto and Kate Wergin, Harry and Emma Jaques, Anthony Cramer, Helmut Leiner, Herman Heinrich, Maria Kerling, Hedwig Engemann, Hans Max Haupt and Erna Haupt, and Ernest Kerkhof.
Nearly all were held as enemy aliens and several were sentenced to death for treason, but had their convictions reversed on appeal. Some were re-tried on lesser charges. Some never went to trial.
--Information partially excerpted from Wikipedia
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
KIRBY MUXLOE CASTLE, KNOWN ALSO AS KIRBY CASTLE IS AN UNFINISHED 15TH CENTURY FORTIFIED MANOR HOUSE IN KIRBY MUXLOE, LEICESTERSHIRE. THE MANSION WAS LEFT UNFINISHED WHEN ITS OWNER WAS EXECUTED FOR TREASON. THE OWNER WAS WILLIAM, LORD HASTINGS, WHO BEGAN WORK ON KIRBY MUXLOE CASTLE IN 1480, CREATING A FORTIFIED HOUSE OF RED BRICK SURROUNDED BY A WIDE MOAT. THERE WAS ALREADY A 14TH CENTURY HOUSE ON THE SITE, BUILT BY THE PAKEMAN FAMILY, WHEN HASTINGS BEGAN HIS CASTLE. FOUNDATIONS OF THAT FIRST HOUSE CAN BE SEEN WITHIN THE CASTLE ENCLOSURE. THE HASTINGS FAMILY GAINED OWNERSHIP OF THE KIRBY MUXLOE ESTATE IN 1460, AND LORD HASTINGS DEMOLISHED MUCH OF THE EARLIER HOUSE IN ORDER TO USE THE STONE TO BUILD HIS NEW CASTLE.
WORK HAD ONLY BEEN GOING ON FOR THREE YEARS WHEN LORD HASTINGS WAS CAUGHT UP IN THE TRANSITION OF POWER FROM EDWARD IV TO RICHARD III. HASTINGS HAD BEEN A FIRM A FAVOURITE OF EDWARD, AND ACTUALLY SUPPORTED RICHARD'S CLAIM TO THE THRONE. SO IT CAME AS SOME SURPRISE WHEN, IN JUNE 1483, RICHARD HAD HASTINGS SUDDENLY SEIZED, CHARGED WITH TREASON, AND SUMMARILY EXECUTED. ONE THEORY IS THAT HASTINGS REFUSED TO SUPPORT RICHARD'S PLANS TO KILL HIS YOUNG NEPHEWS, THE SO-CALLED PRINCES IN THE TOWER. WHILE WE WILL PROBABLY NEVER KNOW THE TRUE REASONS FOR HASTING'S EXECUTION, THE EFFECT ON KIRBY MUXLOE CASTLE WAS DRAMATIC. WORK DID NOT CEASE IMMEDIATELY, FOR LADY HASTINGS CONTINUED CONSTRUCTION FOR A BRIEF TIME, BUT ACTIVITY PETERED OUT AFTER 1484 AND ONLY SPORADIC WORK WAS EVER DONE AFTER THAT POINT, AND EVENTUALLY THE SITE WAS ABANDONED.
THE CASTLE SITE IS ENTERED BY WAY OF AN IMPOSING GATEHOUSE, AND A STRONG THREE STORY TOWER STANDS SILENT WATCH OVER THE MOAT. THE MOAT ENCLOSES A SITE 110 METRES LONG AND 90 METRES WIDE, WHILE THE ISLAND UPON WHICH THE CASTLE STANDS IS 80 METRES BY 60 METRES. THE GATEHOUSE AND WEST TOWER ARE IN RED BRICK DRESSED WITH STONE, MAKING THIS ONE OF THE FIRST GROUPS OF BRICK BUILDINGS IN THE MIDLANDS. HARDER WEARING STONE IS USED FOR BOTH DOOR AND WINDOW SURROUNDS, HOWEVER.
THE GATEHOUSE IS VERY STRIKING; IT IS ONE OF THE FIRST IN ENGLAND TO HAVE GUNPORTS FOR FIRING AT ATTACKERS. SEVERAL OF THE GUNPORTS ARE BELOW THE WATERLINE, OUT OF SIGHT TO MODERN VISITORS. WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING GUNPORTS UNDER WATER? PRESUMABLY THEY WERE INTENDED FOR USE WHEN WATER LEVELS IN THE MOAT WERE LOW. THERE IS A LARGE, EMPTY PANEL OVER THE ENTRANCE ARCHWAY, PREPARED FOR LORD HASTINGS COAT OF ARMS, BUT THE CARVINGS WERE NEVER ADDED BEFORE THE OWNER'S DEATH LED TO BUILDING WORK BEING ABANDONED. THE GATEHOUSE IS REACHED BY A DRAWBRIDGE OVER THE MOAT, AND THE GATEWAY PASSAGE IS FURTHER DEFENDED BY A PORTCULLIS AND TWO SETS OF GATES.
THE SITE IS A ROUGH OBLONG, RATHER THAN A SQUARE PLAN LIKE ASHBY CASTLE. ONE PART OF THE CASTLE THAT WAS COMPLETE IS THE LOVELY CORNER TOWER, STANDING THREE STOREYS HIGH, WITH A SPIRAL STAIR RISING TO A CRENELLATED PARAPET WALK. THE STAIR IS MADE OF BRICK; ONE OF THE EARLIEST AND MOST IMPRESSIVE USE OF BRICK FOR A STAIRCASE IN ENGLAND.
Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio
•Designer: Designed by Francesco di Giorgio Martini (Italian, Siena 1439-1501 Siena)
•Maker: Executed under the supervision of Francesco di Giorgio Martini (Italian, Siena 1439-1501 Siena)
•Maker: Executed in the workshop of Giuliano da Maiano (Italian, Maiano 1432-1490 Naples)
•Maker: and Benedetto da Maiano (Italian, Maiano 1442-1497 Florence)
•Date: ca. 1478-1782
•Culture: Italian, Gubbio
•Medium: Walnut, beech, rosewood, oak and fruitwoods in walnut base
•Dimensions:
oHeight: 15 ft. 10 15/16 in. (485 cm)
oWidth: 16 ft. 11 15/16 in. (518 cm)
oDepth: 12 ft. 7 3/16 in. (384 cm)
•Classification: Woodwork
•Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1939
•Accession Number: 39.153
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 501.
This detail is from a study, (or studiolo), intended for meditation and study. Its walls are carried out in a wood-inlay technique known as intarsia. The latticework doors of the cabinets, shown open or partly closed, indicate the contemporary interest in linear perspective. The cabinets display objects reflecting Duke Federico’s wide-ranging artistic and scientific interests, and the depictions of books recall his extensive library. Emblems of the Montefeltro are also represented. This room may have been designed by Francesco di Giorgio (1439-1502) and was executed by Giuliano da Majano (1432-1490). A similar room, in situ, was made for the duke’s palace at Urbino.
Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings
•Inscription:
oLatin inscription in elegiac couplets in frieze: ASPICIS AETERNOS VENERANDAE MATRIS ALUMNOS // DOCTRINA EXCELSOS INGENIOQUE VIROS // UT NUDA CERVICE CADANT ANTE //.. // .. GENU // IUSTITIAM PIETAS VINCIT REVERENDA NEC ULLUM // POENITET ALTRICI SUCCUBUISSE SUAE.
oTranslation: (“You see the eternal nurselings of the venerable mother // Men pre-eminent in learning and genius, // How they fall with bared neck before // …… // ………………………………………………knee. // Honored loyalty prevails over justice, and no one // Repents having yielded to his foster mother.”)
Provenance
Duke Federico da Montefeltr, Palazzo Ducale, Gubbio, Italy (ca. 1479-1482); Prince Filippo Massimo Lancellotti, Frascati (from 1874); Lancelotti family, Frascati (until 1937; sold to Adolph Loewi, Venice); [Adolph Loewi, Venice (1937-1939; sold to MMA)]
Timeline of Art History
•Essays
oCollecting for the Kunstkammer
oDomestic Art in Renaissance Italy
oRenaissance Organs
•Timelines
oFlorence and Central Italy, 1400-1600 A.D.
MetPublications
oVermeer and the Delft School
oPeriod Rooms in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oPainting Words, Sculpting Language: Creative Writing Activities at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oOne Met. Many Worlds.
oMusical Instruments: Highlights of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 4, The Renaissance in Italy and Spain
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Spanish)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Russian)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Portuguese)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Korean)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Japanese)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Italian)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (German)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (French)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Chinese)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide (Arabic)
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
oThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
oMasterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oMasterpieces of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
o“The Liberal Arts Studiolo from the Ducal Palace at Gubbio”: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 53, no. 4 (Spring, 1996)
oGuide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oThe Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. Vol. 2, Italian Renaissance Intarsia and the Conservation of the Gubbio Studiolo
oThe Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. Vol. 1, Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and Its Studiolo
o“Carpaccio’s Young Knight in a Landscape: Christian Champion and Guardian of Liberty”: Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 18 (1983)
oThe Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look At Art
oThe Artist Project
oThe Art of Renaissance Europe: A Resource for Educators
oThe Art of Chivalry: European Arms and Armor from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
oArt and Love in Renaissance Italy
Floor Tiles (Set of 350)
•Factory: San Marco Laterizi di Noale Pottery
•Date: 1995
•Culture: Italian, Venice
•Medium: Earthenware
•Dimensions:
oHeight: 10¾ in. sq. (27.3 cm. sq.)
oWidth: 1¼ in. thick (3.2 cm. thick)
•Classification: Ceramics-Pottery
•Credit Line: Purchase, Anonymous Gift, 1996
•Accession Number: Inst.1996.1.1–.350
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 501.
Provenance
Made by San Marco Laterizi di Noale as reproductions of original tiles in the Ducal Palace in Gubbio
Timeline of Art History
•Timelines
oItalian Peninsula, 1900 A.D.-Present
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]
Civic Center, Downtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Summary
The Temple Court Building and Annex consists of two connected structures on the designated Landmark Site. The nine-story (ten stories in certain portions) Temple Court Building was commissioned by Eugene Kelly, an Irish-American multi-millionaire-merchant-banker, and built in 1881-83 to the design of architects Silliman & Farnsworth. Executed in red Philadelphia brick, tan Dorchester stone, and terra cotta above a two-story granite base, the handsome vertically-expressed design employs Queen Anne, neo-Grec, and Renaissance Revival motifs. Today, Temple Court is the earliest surviving, essentially unaltered, tall "fireproof" New York office building of the period prior to the full development of the skyscraper.
Furthermore, it is an early example of the use of brick and terra cotta for the exterior cladding of tall office buildings in the 1870s and 80s, as well as a rare surviving office building of its era constructed around a full-height interior skylighted atrium. Its two towers foreshadow the pyramidal form that later became popular for skyscrapers.
The Annex to the building, clad in Irish limestone on its principal, Nassau Street facade, was constructed for Kelly in 1889-90 to the design of James Farnsworth, in an arcaded Romanesque Revival style that complements the original building. Temple Court's significance is enhanced by its visibility as it rises above the low buildings of Park Row facing City Hall Park, its prominent towers, and its articulated facades on three sides.
Eugene Kelly
The Temple Court Building was commissioned by Eugene Kelly in 1881. Born in Ireland and apprenticed to a draper, Kelly (1808-1894) immigrated to New York City around 1835 to work as a clerk for Donnelly & Co., one of New York's foremost dry goods importers.
With the Donnelly s' assistance, he established a successful drygoods business on his own in Maysville, Ky., and later opened a branch of the Donnelly firm in St. Louis, Mo. Kelly had married Sarah Donnelly, sister of his former employer. After her death, he retired a wealthy man but, swept up in the "gold fever" of 1849, moved to San Francisco in 1850 and helped to found Donohoe, Murphy, Grant & Co., another drygoods firm.
In 1857 he married Margaret Hughes, niece of New York's first archbishop, John J. Hughes. By 1861 Kelly had also helped found two banking houses, Donohoe, Ralston & Co. (known as Donohoe, Kelly & Co. after 1864)4 in San Francisco, and Eugene Kelly & Co. in New York City, the latter the main focus of Kelly's professional attention upon his return to New York.
After the Civil War, Kelly invested in the reconstruction of Southern railroads and was a founder of the Southern Bank of Georgia, in Savannah. His various financial endeavors made him a multimillionaire, and Kelly served as a director of the Bank of New York, Emigrant Savings Bank, National Park Bank, Lloyd's, and Equitable Life Assurance Society. Active in Democratic and Irish-American politics, as well as numerous civic causes, he was chairman of the state's Electoral Committee (1884); member of the Board of Education for thirteen years; member of the Washington Arch and Statue of Liberty committees; trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; president of the National Federation of America; and treasurer of the Irish Parliamentary Fund.
He was also a major philanthropist of Catholic institutions, serving on the committee for the building of St. Patrick's Cathedral5 (begun by archbishop Hughes), and as a trustee of Seton Hall College, and a founder and trustee of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. After separating from his San Francisco firm in 1890, Kelly retired with an estate estimated at between ten and fifteen million dollars in 1892. Eugene Kelly & Co. was dissolved in 1894, several months prior to his death.
The Lady Chapel of St. Patrick's Cathedral (1901-06, Charles T. Matthews), constructed through a memorial donation of his wife and sons, contains the burial vault of Eugene Kelly and other members of the Kelly family.
The Architects
The firm of Silliman & Farnsworth, architects of the Temple Court Building, practiced from 1876 to 1882. James Mace Farnsworth (dates undetermined) apparently began his career around 1872 and worked as a draftsman with Calvert Vaux by 1873. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. (1848-1901) was the third generation in his direct family line with the same name; his grandfather, considered "the most prominent and influential scientific man in America during the first half of the nineteenth century, " had been a professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale (1802-53), while his father was also a noted professor of chemistry at Yale.
Silliman, Jr., graduated from Yale University in 1870, studied architecture for three years in Charlottenburg [Berlin], Germany, and upon his return to the U.S. worked for the firm of Vaux, Withers & Co., where he met Farnsworth. Silliman & Farnsworth obtained a number of prominent office and institutional building commissions, for which they produced designs influenced by the Rundbogenstil and the neo-Grec and Queen Anne styles, most executed in red brick and terra cotta.
Their widely-praised Morse Building (1878-80), 140 Nassau Street, was an early tall "fireproof" office building (and the location of their office). The firm also designed the Vassar Brothers Laboratory (1879-80, demolished), Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with a central tower capped by a pyramidal roof; the Orange Music Hall (1880, demolished), Orange, N.J.; a hospital (1880, demolished) at Lexington Avenue and East 52nd Street; two commercial buildings at Nos. 19 and 21 East 17th Street (1881-82);8 and Temple Court (1881-83).
Farnsworth practiced independently from 1883 to 1897, producing numerous designs for commercial and office buildings and warehouses for prominent builder-developer John Pettit, including additions to the cast-iron Bennett Building9 in 1890-94. He was responsible for the Singer Building (1886), Pittsburgh, Pa. Farnsworth also designed the Temple Court Annex, built in 1889-90, and maintained his office in Temple Court in 1890-92. Associated with a number of other architects over the years, he worked with Charles E. Miller from 1897 to 1900, then with [J.A. Henry] Flemer & [V. Hugo] Koehler in 1900-01, and as part of Koehler & Farnsworth in 1907-10; he practiced alone until around 1923.
Little is known of Silliman's subsequent practice, though he remained listed in New York City directories until around 1900. He moved to Yonkers around 1883, and former colleague George
Martin Huss reminisced after Silliman's death that "I believe [he] built largely in Yonkers."
The Tall Office Building in New York City in the Early 1880s
During the nineteenth century, commercial buildings in New York City developed from four-story structures modeled on Italian Renaissance palazzi to much taller skyscrapers. Made possible by technological advances, tall buildings challenged designers to fashion an appropriate architectural expression. Between 1870 and 1890, nine- and ten-story buildings transformed the streetscapes of lower Manhattan between Bowling Green and City Hall.
During the building boom following the Civil War, building envelopes continued to be articulated largely according to traditional palazzo compositions, with mansarded and towered roof profiles. The period of the late 1870s and 1880s was one of stylistic experimentation in which commercial and office buildings in New York incorporated diverse influences, such as the Queen Anne, Victorian Gothic, Romanesque, and neo-Grec styles, French rationalism, and the German Rundbogenstil under the leadership of such architects as Richard M. Hunt and George B. Post. New York's tallest buildings — including the seven-and-one-half-story Equitable Life Assurance Co. Building (1868-70, Gilman & Kendall and George B. Post) at Broadway and Cedar Street, the ten-story Western Union Building (1872-75, George B. Post) at Broadway and Liberty Street, and the ten-story Tribune Building (1873-75, Richard M. Hunt), at 154 Nassau Street, all now demolished — incorporated passenger elevators, iron floor beams, and fireproof building materials.
Fireproofing was of paramount concern as office buildings grew taller, and by 1881-82 systems had been devised to "completely fireproof" them.
An additional consideration in office building design was to provide maximum light and ventilation, for which contemporary architects devised several solutions. While some tall buildings in New York had open interior light wells or courts, George B. Post is credited as one of the first architects to introduce and popularize major light courts that faced the street.
Another variant was the interior court or atrium covered by a skylight. The Temple Court Building utilized the successful design, construction, fireproofing, and planning techniques of these earlier buildings.
"Newspaper Row": Park Row and Nassau Street
The vicinity of Park Row, Nassau Street, and Printing House Square, roughly from the Brooklyn Bridge to Ann Street, was the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1840s through the 1920s, while Beekman Street became the center of the downtown printing industry.
Beginning in the 1870s, this area was redeveloped with tall office buildings, most associated with the newspapers, and Park Row (with its advantageous frontage across from City Hall Park and the U.S. Post Office) and adjacent Nassau Street acquired a group of important late-nineteenth-cenrury structures: Tribune Building (1873-75, demoUshed); Morse Building (1878-80; 1900-02); Temple Court Building and Annex (1881-83; 1889-90); Potter Building (1883-86, N.G. Starkweather), 35-38 Park Row;15 New York Times Building (1888-89, George B. Post; 1904-05, Robert Maynicke), 40 Park Row; World (Pulitzer) Building (1889-90, George B. Post, demolished), 53-63 Park Row: American Tract Society Building (1894-95, R.H. Robertson), 150 Nassau Street; and Park Row Building (1896-99, R.H. Robertson), 15 Park Row.
Construction and Design of the Temple Court
In April 1881, Silliman & Farnsworth filed for the construction of a nine-story (ten stories in certain portions) office building for Eugene Kelly, to be located at the southwest corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets on the lot that Kelly had acquired in 1868 from the National Park Bank, of which he was a director.18 Both the New York Times and the Real Estate Record & Guide carried lengthy and detailed descriptions of the proposed $400,000 structure, to be known as the Kelly Building.
According to the Times, "it will be one of the finest in the lower part of the City" and was to be "constructed of granite to the third story, above which it will be Philadelphia brick, lad in red mortar, with Dorchester stone trimmings, and terra cotta panels between the windows."
Construction began in May under builder Richard Deeves; completion was originally anticipated on May 1, 1882, although a bricklayers strike in 1881 was undoubtedly one factor that contributed to a different outcome.
The Kelly Building was among the first of the major downtown office buildings to be erected after 1879, when recovery began from the financial Panic of 1873. Several notices in the Record & Guide during construction of the building indicated the shrewdness of Kelly's investment, as the nature of office buildings and the demand for space downtown changed. In December 1881 the weekly commented that the demand for offices is no longer confined to the neighborhood of the Stock, Mining, Cotton and Produce Exchanges. All the great industries which are represented in New York are using offices instead of stores, and these last are very profitable. Eugene Kelly paid $230,000for the lots on the corner of Nassau and Beekman streets. The building he erected is a very costly one, yet it is said it will net him a profit of 20 per cent, per annum.
This was followed in February 1882 by the statement that
in no part of the city has there been so great an increase in rents as in the great business centres, especially in the lower part of the island. . . The demand for well-located offices in Broad, Pine, Cedar, Wall and New streets, Exchange place and Broadway below Fulton street, is not only keeping pace, but fast outrunning the accommodations which have been provided, or which are nearing completion. Already many of the offices in the Marquand, Kelly, Mills, and Tribune structures are engaged, and at very fair figures.
An item in March 1882 indicated that a new name for the Kelly Building had been chosen: "Temple Court is the name of the splendid building just erected. . . by Mr. Eugene Kelly. Persons who wish offices in this splendid building should see Messrs. Ruland & Whiting. . . without delay, as the offices are being rented rapidly. The building is fire-proof, and has all the modern office improvements.1,24 And in May 1882 was the further comment that "the Tribune, Times, Morse buildings and Temple Court are nearer the law courts, and better for lawyers and public offices."
The Temple Court Building was completed in May 1883. Its design reflects the shift from the palazzo model for office buildings begun in the 1870s by Richard M. Hunt with the Tribune Building, among others. Temple Court was also one of the early tall office buildings that employed brick and terra-cotta cladding. The location on Beekman and Nassau Streets and Theatre Alley allows for three facades, each of which has a tripartite arrangement with end pavilions.
The vertically-expressed design is organized by continuous piers, and the building is arranged horizontally into a base, midsection, and upper section. Articulation of the facades on Beekman and Nassau Streets (and the corner return on Theatre Alley), employing Queen Anne, neo-Grec, and Renaissance Revival motifs, is similar, the walls elaborated by ornamental stone capitals, cornices, bandcourses, corbelling, arches, and terra-cotta panels. (The remainder of the Theatre Alley facade below the roof is more simply articulated.) The building is capped by a two-story slate mansard roof with dormers and has two prominent corner towers with octagonal pinnacled roofs, intended "to obtain a striking and satisfactory effect making the building appear less high than it really is."
The towers foreshadow the pyramidal form that later came to dominate skyscrapers. Temple Court provides an interesting contrast with the slightly earlier Morse Building, by the same architects, and the slightly later Potter Building, all three executed in red brick and terra cotta, at the same intersection of streets.
As built, the interior of Temple Court featured an impressive polychrome atrium entered through the main entrance and adjoining entrance hall on Beekman Street; an open ironwork staircase surrounds the central of three elevators on the south side.
More than two hundred feet square, rising nine stories, and covered by a large pyramidal skylight, the atrium has galleries supported by elaborate ornamental iron brackets and lined with iron railings surrounding it on each floor. Gallery floors are laid in encaustic tiles and gallery ceilings are formed by unusual ornamental cast-iron plates. The building's 212 offices were arranged so that they opened onto both the atrium and the exterior.
An exterior light well to the south of the staircase provided further light to the interior. Construction of the building was considered "solidly fireproof," with iron floor beams, and exterior brick walls that varied in thickness from 52 inches in the foundations to 32 inches in the upper walls.
As with most prominent tall buildings of the late nineteenth century in New York, contemporary comment on Temple Court was mixed. While Cornelius Mathews of The Manhattan. An Illustrated Literary Magazine, an early tenant, thought the building "stalwart and sumptuous," the British publication The Building News found "its architecture is nondescript, and it is surmounted by two towers, like donkey's ears, on its northern side, which give it a very unfortunate appearance." (Critic Montgomery Schuyler, however, had praised the design, prior to construction, for "that animation in the sky line.")
King's Handbook in 1892 called it "one of the finest office-buildings in New York. . . an edifice that is creditable in architecture and pleasing in nomenclature. . . a modern building in every sense. . . the quaint towers of Temple Court, with their high pyramidal roofs, are unmistakable land-marks in the heart of New York, and point the way to the scenes of vast and momentous transactions in business and finance."
New York 1895. Illustrated considered Temple Court "the pioneer among the great office buildings and the beginning of the revolution in these structures," and American Architect & Building News in 1901 called it "a popular and profitable structure.
Today, the Temple Court Building is the earliest surviving (as well as one of the very few surviving), essentially unaltered, tall "fireproof New York office building of the mid-1870s to mid-1880s, the period prior to the full development of the skyscraper.35 Its significance is enhanced by the visibility of its location near City Hall Park, its prominent towers, and its three articulated facades. (For discussion of the Annex, see below.)
Temple Court. Brick, and Architectural Terra Cotta in New York City
The Temple Court Building is an early example of the use of brick and terra cotta for the exterior cladding of tall office buildings in the 1870s and 80s, a trend seen in such brick structures as the Boreel, Western Union, and Tribune Buildings/' As observed in 1881 by Montgomery Schuyler: the architects of the present generation found commercial New York an imitation of marble, either in cast-iron or in an actual veneer of white limestone. They are likely to leave it in brick. . . Whatever of interest has since been done in business buildings has been done in baked clay, more and more including the use of terra-cotta as well as of brick. The first of the noteworthy attempts to build in brick alone . . . was Messrs. Silliman and Farnsworth's Morse Building. . .
While there had been several attempts in the 1850s to employ architectural ornament of terra cotta in New York, it was after the Chicago and Boston fires of 1871 and 1872 that terra cotta began to be used as a significant interior and exterior building material in the United States. Walter Geer noted that "by these fires it was conclusively demonstrated that fire-proof buildings could not be made of unprotected stone or iron, and that only brick and terra-cotta walls were practically fire-proof.
This increased use of brick work, and of terra-cotta as a constructive and decorative material in connection with brick work, revived the demand for the manufacture of this material in or near New York."40 In the 1870s and early 1880s architectural terra cotta was often a color that matched stone (commonly brownstone, buff or red) that could be employed in pleasant juxtaposition with brick, or as a substitute for brownstone. The Record & Guide remarked that during this period "terra cotta is most generally used for the trimming and ornamentation of buildings, taking the form of panels, courses, friezes, small tiles, roofing tiles and paving blocks. "
George B. Post was the leader in New York City in the use of exterior terra cotta, in his designs for the Braem House (1878-80), Long Island Historical Society (1878-81), New York Produce Exchange (1881-84), and Mills Building (1881-83). Among the other contemporary architects who employed terra cotta were Kimball & Wisedell, designers of the Casino Theater (1881-82), an early New York building having highly intricate, exotic terra-cotta ornament, and Silliman & Farnsworth.
The Morse Building, with terra cotta by the Boston Terra Cotta Co., was then considered the first prominent New York office building to employ exterior terra cotta (though it was used sparingly for architectural details, in conjunction with molded red and black brick).
Temple Court was an early and significant building to employ exterior architectural terra cotta, and is today a rare surviving example of a tall New York office building of its era employing exterior brick and terra cotta.
The Skylighted_Atrium in Nineteenth-Century
The nineteenth-century interior court or atrium covered by a skylight, a form that evolved in the United States for a variety of building types, allowed for both natural lighting and an enclosed, usually grand and highly decorative, volume of space. Carl Condit, in American Building Art: The Nineteenth Century, discussed the American use of the "skylighted interior court, or arcade," which he traced first to the three-story Arcade Building (1827-28, James C. Bucklin & Russell Warren), Providence, R.I. The concept was later "adapted to iron construction in New York in the 1850s in the five-story uptown A.T. Stewart Store (1859-62, John Kellum, demolished), Broadway and 10th Street.
The skylighted atrium became a popular feature for arcades, hotels, libraries, exhibition halls, department stores, and office buildings, often in association with cast-iron framing and decoration. Two significant libraries that featured cast-iron galleries around skylighted courts were the four-story State Department Library (1871-75) in Alfred B. Mullett's State, War and Navy Building, Washington, and the seven-story Peabody Institute Library (1876-78, Edmund G. Lind), Baltimore.
The Shillito Store (1878, James W. McLaughlin; altered and court filled in), Cincinnati, had a six-story interior court, while the Model Hall (c. 1878-80, Adolf Cluss & Paul Schulze) of the U.S. Patent Office Building, Washington, consisted of a long two-story skylighted gallery, and the Pension Building (1882-85, Montgomery C. Meigs), Washington, was constructed around a colossal three-and-one-half-stoiy court. In New York City, the New York Produce Exchange (1881-84, George B. Post, demolished), 2 Broadway, and the downtown A.T.
Stewart Store (after its conversion to offices in 1883-84), among other buildings, had skylighted atriums that did not rise the full height of the structure (the courts were open above), a variant exemplified by the Rookery Building (1885-86, Burnham & Root), Chicago. Schuyler mentioned of the eight-story Boreel Building (1878-79, Stephen Decatur Hatch, demolished), 115 Broadway, its "interesting plan, which is a large glazed court upon which the inner offices open."
The use of the full-height interior skylighted atrium culminated in the late nineteenth century in such prominent office and commercial buildings as the ten-story Society for Savings Building (1887-90, Burnham & Root; atrium filled in), Cleveland: the thirteen-story Chamber of Commerce Building (1888-89, Edward Baumann & Harris W. Huehl, demolished), Chicago; the twelve-story Guaranty Loan Building (1888-90, Edward T. Mix, demolished), Minneapolis; the five-story Cleveland Arcade (1888-90, John M. Eisenmann & George H. Smith), Cleveland; the nine-story Brown Palace Hotel (1889-92, Frank E. Edbrooke), Denver; the twenty-story Masonic Temple Building (1890-92, Burnham & Root, demolished), Chicago; the eight-story court of the U.S. Post Office (1892-99, Willoughby J. Edbrooke), Washington; and the five-story Bradbury Building (1893, George H. Wyman), Los Angeles.
Temple Court is an early and rare surviving example of an office building of its era constructed around an interior skylighted atrium.
Construction of the Temple Court Annex
The success of the Temple Court Building led Eugene Kelly to plan an expansion. James Farnsworth filed in January 1889 for the construction of an Annex, on the adjacent lot to the south (at 119-121 Nassau Street) that Kelly had acquired in 1886. Expected to cost $150,000, the ten-story Annex was originally to be clad in granite, brick, and Dorchester stone, the materials of the original building.
An amendment, however, was filed by Farnsworth on March 1, "substituting a new design for front, to be constructed of 'Irish limestone' as per new plans and elevations" and resulting in an estimated cost of about $200,000.
In May, the Record & Guide clarified that "the front will be a limestone from Balinasloe, Ireland, and the design will have a tendency toward the Romanesque."
Construction by September 1889 was "nearly up to the top floor" and was considered by the Record & Guide "a remarkable example of quick work."
In February 1890, the Record & Guide noted that "the handsome addition to Temple Court. . . is now being rented in single rooms and suites for office purposes.. . The building is certainly one of the best of the down-town structures." Labor issues, threatening to delay completion, were satisfactorily resolved in the spring of 1890; after a strike was called on the Temple Court Annex due to the contractor's use of non-union masonry workers, Kelly strongly urged the contractor to come to terms with the union, and the building was completed by the target date of May 1.
King's Handbook in 1892 thought that the front (Nassau Street) Annex facade "presents an attractive and imposing appearance."
Running through the block from Nassau Street to Theatre Alley, the Temple Court Annex was framed with iron. The original Buildings Department application indicated that the front and rear walls were to be "carried on girders and columns." Plans were amended to include some plate girders, as well as the notation that "all iron construction will be fireproofed with terra cotta blocks, to make same entirely fireproof.
The Annex suffered a fire, of unknown origin, in April 1893 that destroyed offices on the top four floors. This fire was of great interest to those in construction, due to the fact that it was "the most serious fire which has ever occurred, so far as we recall, in a thoroughly fireproof office building," according to Engineering News, and that "there have been so few practical tests of the modern system of fireproof construction that there is much doubt and dispute as to the actual behavior of fireproofing materials when placed in actual use and subjected to the ordeal of a conflagration. "
The fire was also covered in a front-page article in the New York Times The structure of the Annex and most of the fireproofing remained intact; furthermore, the original building was not damaged.
Later History
Throughout its history, Temple Court has housed a wide variety of office and commercial tenants. Among the original tenants were Ruland & Whiting, real estate agents (established in 1867), the Nassau Bank, and The Manhattan. An Illustrated Literary Magazine. Other tenants have included lawyers, accountants, publishers, press agents, insurance and advertising agents, architects, business representatives, detectives, unions, organizations, and employment agencies.
The trustees of Eugene Kelly's estate in 1907 transferred the Temple Court Building and Annex (located on separate lots until 1961-62) to the Temple Court Co. (Thomas Hughes Kelly, president). Thomas H. Kelly (1865-1933), son of the original owner, was trained as a lawyer but concentrated on the management of the various properties he had inherited, as well as on official corporate and institutional duties.
He was considered "one of the most important lay dignitaries of the Catholic Church in the United States," according to the New York Times, serving as Papal Chamberlain for thirty years. Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, which held the mortgage, took over the properties in 1942.
Conveyed in 1945 to the Wakefield Realty Corp., they were acquired by the Region Holding Corp. (Rubin Shulsky, president) in 1946. The properties were transferred in 1953 to the Larsan Holding Corp./Satmar Realty Corp., another Shulsky interest and still the current owners.
Description
TEMPLE COURT BUILDING (For description of the Annex, see below.)
The nine-story (ten stories in certain portions) building has facades on Beekman Street, Nassau Street, and Theatre Alley. Of fireproofed construction with iron floor beams, it was built around an interior skylighted atrium (now enclosed), with an additional exterior light well on the south side. It is clad in granite on the two-story base, and red Philadelphia brick (originally laid with red mortar), tan Dorchester stone trim, and terra-cotta panels on the upper stories.
Much of the building, other than pans of the Theatre Alley facade, has been painted. Articulation on the facades on Beekman and Nassau Streets, as well as part of that on Theatre Alley, is similar, employing Queen Anne, neo-Grec, and Renaissance Revival motifs and ornamental details. The design is arranged horizontally into a base, midsection, and upper section (with mansard roof and towers), and in addition, it has a tripartite arrangement with end pavilions on each facade.
The building is vertically expressed with continuous piers. Windows originally had one-over-one double-hung wood sash (some were double windows with a central mullion); most have been replaced by anodized aluminum windows with a variety of configurations.
Base
The two-story base is clad in granite, that on the piers rockfaced. Each story is capped by a cornice. Second-story windows in the center of the facades on Beekman and Nassau Streets are segmentally arched. All of the ground-story bays of the facades on Beekman and Nassau Streets (except the main entrance) have been converted to shopfronts over the years, and have been altered so that little historic fabric survives. Shopfronts are currently framed in metal, with rolldown gates.
Base: Beekman Street
The main entrance, located in the central bay, originally had polished red granite columns supporting an entablature bearing the name of the building, capped by an iron balustrade flanked by pinnacles; in 1949-50 the main entrance was altered with a polished marble surround, metal and glass doors, a transom, and the letters "5 Beekman." The bays flanking the entrance were originally windows; surviving below the cornice in each bay are a paneled band and decorative metal band.
The end pavilions were originally tripartite, having a central door flanked by columns and windows with bulkheads and transoms; they were later altered to single bays with a bulkhead, display window, door, and broad sign band (since altered). The easternmost storefront is still framed by original fluted stone pilasters with stylized floral capitals.
Base: Nassau Street
End pavilion bays were originally tripartite, divided by piers. These bays, as well as those of the central section, had paired windows with bulkheads and transoms (the south end undoubtedly had an entrance door to the elevator hall); these bays were later altered in a manner similar to the pavilion bays of the Beekman Street facade (since altered).
Surviving below the cornice in the south pavilion bay are a paneled band and decorative metal band.
Base: Theatre Alley
The northern section has articulation similar to that on Beekman Street. The ground and second stories of the center and southern sections are capped by stone bandcourses. The ground-story bays of these sections are divided by cast-iron piers and have transoms and ornamental iron bulkhead bands. All bays have been filled with cinderblock.
The second-story bays of the center and southern sections are divided by cast-iron piers. Midsection The brick midsection consists of the third through the sixth stories. Articulation on the principal facades (and north pavilion of Theatre Alley) is similar, with terra-cotta spandrel panels above the third, fourth, and fifth stories; bandcourses, and stone capitals with a stylized floral design on the piers, on the third, fourth, and fifth stories; windows capped by round arches (with decorative tympana) in the center sections of the fifth story; and a stone cornice capping the sixth story.
Most of the Theatre Alley facade is unadorned " Croton-faced" brick, with simple bluestone lintels and sills.
Upper Section
The upper section consists of the seventh through the tenth stories. The north section of the Theatre Alley facade has articulation similar to that on Beekman and Nassau Streets. The center portion of the two principal facades has paired windows with entablatures on the seventh story (the Theatre Alley facade is capped by a corbelled cornice on the seventh story), surmounted by, on each of the three facades, a two-story slate mansard roof with pedimented dormers (the upper dormers on Nassau Street, all dormers on
Theatre Alley, and the flanking dormers on Beekman Street, are iron). The sections of roof on Beekman and Nassau Streets appear covered with asphalt.
The end pavilions have bandcourses and terra-cotta spandrel panels above the seventh and eighth stories; round-arched windows, a subcornice, and cornice on the ninth story; a central pedimented window, and cornice with flared corner projections, on the tenth story of the northern pavilions; and a pediment on the tenth story of the southern pavilions (with a rondel on Nassau Street and corbelling on Theatre Alley).
Roof
Surviving decorative iron railings cap the mansard roof of the center section of each facade. Two prominent corner towers above the Beekman Street pavilions have octagonal pinnacled roofs, covered with slate and capped by metal finials. The corners of the pavilions are ornamented with pinnacles, and the inner side of each pavilion (except Theatre Alley) is flanked by a chimney.
The southern pavilions have gable roofs. The center portion of the building is covered by a large pyramidal skylight with a monitor.
- From the 1998 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
This picture disturbs me.... this man's last terrifying moments...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Dostler
I should point out that this is in no way intended as a Nazi sympathizing post... I am pretty sure he was an evil man and had it coming to him, but that doesn't change the horror of this photograph...
The original image was quite flared - I have cropped and tweaked the image to suit my mood and feeling....
Nothing on reverse.
Probably taken sometime during the second invasion of Serbia in 1915 by Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies.
All-in-all, the Kingdom of Serbia lost 1,100,000 inhabitants during the war (both army and civilian losses), which represented over 27% of its overall population.
Another version of this image appears here and suggests the executed men are Russian spies:
This manuscript was executed in 1475 by a scribe identified as Aristakes, for a priest named Hakob. It contains a series of 16 images on the life of Christ preceding the text of the gospels, as well as the traditional evangelist portraits, and there are marginal illustrations throughout. The style of the miniatures, which employ brilliant colors and emphasize decorative patterns, is characteristic of manuscript production in the region around Lake Van during the 15th century. The style of Lake Van has often been described in relation to schools of Islamic arts of the book. Numerous inscriptions (on fols. 258-60) spanning a few centuries attest to the manuscript's long history of use and revered preservation. The codex's later history included a re-binding with silver covers from Kayseri that date to approximately 1700. This jeweled and enameled silver binding bears a composition of the Adoration of the Magi on the front and the Ascension on the back.
To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.
La fontaine de l’Encelade fut exécutée en plomb par Gaspard Marsy entre 1675 et 1677. Le sujet en est emprunté à l’histoire de la chute des Titans, ensevelis sous les rochers de l’Olympe par les dieux qu’ils avaient voulu détrôner. Le sculpteur a représenté le géant Encelade à demi englouti sous un amoncèlement rocheux, luttant contre la mort et dont la souffrance se traduit par le puissant jet qui s’échappe de sa bouche, comme un cri. Le dessin du bosquet, dont le pourtour est scandé par des pavillons de treillage reliés par des berceaux, a été totalement modifié en 1706 par Jules Hardouin-Mansart qui transforme cet espace fermé en carrefour ouvert en supprimant les treillages, les petits bassins et la dénivellation d’origine. Un programme de restauration mené de 1992 à 1998 a permis de restituer à ce bosquet son aspect d’origine. (Source : les Bosquets - château de Versailles)
The Enceladus Fountain was made of lead by Gaspard Marsy between 1675 and 1677, and was inspired by the legend of the fall of the Giants in Greek and Roman mythology. Punished for trying to climb Mount Olympus to dethrone the gods, they were buried under a heap of rocks, as illustrated here by the figure of Enceladus, whose suffering is conveyed by the powerful water jet gushing out of his mouth like a cry of pain.
A return visit to St Mary.
I was last here about 6 years ago, parking in the little square one warm September afternoon.
Much colder in March, but plenty of parking spaces, and St Mary was surprisingly open.
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The church stands in the village square removed from the main road. The flint rubble construction and severe restoration of the exterior does not look welcoming, but the interior is most appealing with plenty of light flooding through the clerestory windows. The rectangular piers of both north and south arcades with their pointed arches and boldly carved stops are of late twelfth-century date. Between them hang some eighteenth-century text boards. The character of the church is given in the main by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century work. The high altar has four charmingly painted panels by John Ripley Wilmer in Pre-Raphaelite style, executed in 1907. At the opposite end of the church are the organ loft, font cover and baptistry, all designed by F.C. Eden, who restored the church in the early 1900s. He also designed the west window of the south aisle as part of a larger scheme which was not completed. In the south chancel wall are two windows of great curiosity. One contains a fifteenth-century figure of St Thomas Becket while the other shows figures of David and Saul. This dates from the nineteenth century and was painted by Frank Wodehouse who was the then vicar's brother. The face of David was based on that of Mme Carlotta Patti, the opera singer, while Gladstone and Disraeli can be identified hovering in the background! It is a shame that it has deteriorated badly.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Elham
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ELEHAM,
OR, as it is as frequently written, Elham, lies the next parish south-eastward from Stelling. It was written in the time of the Saxons both Uleham and Æiham, in Domesday, Albam. Philipott says, it was antiently written Helham, denoting the situation of it to be a valley among the hills, whilst others suppose, but with little probability, that it took its name from the quantity of eels which the Nailbourn throws out when it begins to run. There are Seven boroughsin it, of Bladbean, Boyke, Canterwood, Lyminge, Eleham, Town, Sibton, and Hurst.
Eleham is said to be the largest parish in the eastern parts of this county, extending itself in length from north to south, through the Nailbourn valley, about three miles and an half; and in breadth five miles and a half, that is, from part of Stelling-minnis, within the bounds of it, across the valley to Eleham down and Winteridge, and the southern part of Swinfield-minnis, almost up to Hairn-forstal, in Uphill Folkestone. The village, or town of Eleham, as it is usually called, is situated in the above-mentioned valley, rather on a rise, on the side of the stream. It is both healthy and pleasant, the houses in it being mostly modern and wellbuilt, of brick and fashed. As an instance of the healthiness of this parish, there have been within these few years several inhabitants of it buried here, of the ages of 95, 97, and 99, and one of 105; the age of 40 years being esteemed that of a young person, in this parish. The church, with the vicarage on the side of the church-yard, is situated on the eastern side of it, and the court lodge at a small distance from it. This is now no more than a small mean cottage, thatched, of, I believe, only two rooms on a floor, and unsit for habitation. It appears to be the remains of a much larger edifice, and is built of quarry-stone, with small arched gothic windows and doors, the frames of which are of ashlar stone, and seemingly very antient indeed. It is still accounted a market-town, the market having been obtained to it by prince Edward, afterwards king Edward I. in his father's life-time, anno 35 Henry III. to be held on a Monday weekly, which, though disused for a regular constancy, is held in the market-house here once in five or six years, to keep up the claim to the right of it; besides which there are three markets regularly held, for the buying and selling of cattle, in every year, on Palm, Easter, and Whit Mondays, and one fair on Oct. 20th, by the alteration of the stile, being formerly held on the day of St. Dionis, Oct. 9, for toys and pedlary. The Nailbourn, as has been already mentioned before, in the description of Liminage, runs along this valley northward, entering this parish southward, by the hamlet of Ottinge, and running thence by the town of Eleham, and at half a mile's distance, by the hamlet of North Eleham, where there are several deep ponds, in which are from time to time quantities of eels, and so on to Brompton's Pot and Wingmere, at the northern extremity of this parish. The soil in the valley is mostly an unfertile red earth, mixed with many flints; but the hills on each side of it, which are very frequent and steep, extend to a wild romantic country, with frequent woods and uninclosed downs, where the soil consists mostly of chalk, excepting towards Stelling and Swinfield minnis's, where it partakes of a like quality to that of the valley, tance,by the hamlet of North Eleham, where there only still more poor and barren. At the north-west corner of the parish, on the hill, is Eleham park, being a large wood, belonging to the lord of Eleham manor.
Dr. Plot says, he was informed, that there was the custom of borough English prevailing over some copyhold lands in this parish, the general usage of which is, that the youngest son should inherit all the lands and tenements which his father had within the borough, &c. but I cannot find any here subject to it. On the contrary, the custom here is, to give the whole estate to the eldest son, who pays to the younger ones their proportions of it, as valued by the homage of the manor, in money.
At the time of taking the survey of Domesday, anno 1080, this place was part of the possessions of the bishop of Baieux, under the general title of whose lands it is thus entered in it:
In Honinberg hundred, the bishop of Baieux holds in demesne Alham. It was taxed at six sulins. The arable land is twenty-four carucates. In demesne there are five carucates and forty-one villeins, with eight borderers having eighteen carucates. There is a church, and eight servants, and two mills of six shillings, and twenty eight acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of one hundred hogs. In the time of king Edward the Confessor, and afterwards, it was worth thirty pounds, now forty, and yet it yields fifty pounds. Ederic held this manor of king Edward.
Four years after the bishop was disgraced, and all his possessions were consiscated to the crown, whence this manor seems to have been granted to William de Albineto, or Albini, surnamed Pincerna, who had followed the Conqueror from Normandy in his expedition hither. He was succeeded by his son, of the same name, who was made Earl of Arundel anno 15 king Stephen, and Alida his daughter carried it in marriage to John, earl of Ewe, in Normandy, whose eldest son Henry, earl of Ewe, was slain at the siege of Ptolemais in 1217, leaving Alice his sole daughter and heir, who entitled her husband Ralph D'Issondon to the possession of this manor, as well as to the title of earl of Ewe. She died in the reign of king Henry III. possessed of this manor, with the advowson of the church, and sealed with Barry, a label of six points, as appears by a deed in the Surrenden library; after which it appears to have come into the possession of prince Edward, the king's eldest son, who in the 35th year of it obtained the grant of a market on a Monday, and a fair, at this manor, (fn. 1) and afterwards, in the 41st year of that reign, alienated it to archbishop Boniface, who, left he should still further inflame that enmity which this nation had conceived against him, among other foreigners and aliens, by thus increasing his possessions in it, passed this manor away to Roger de Leyborne, who died possessed of it in the 56th year of that reign, at which time it appears that there was a park here; (fn. 2) and in his name it continued till Juliana de Leyborne, daughter of Thomas, became the sole heir of their possessions, from the greatness of which she was usually called the Infanta of Kent. She was thrice married, yet she had no issue by either of her husbands, all of whom she survived, and died in the 41st year of king Edward III. upon which this manor, among the rest of her estates, escheated to the crown, there being no one who could make claim to them, by direct or even by collateral alliance. (fn. 3) Afterwards it continued in the crown till king Richard II. vested it in feoffees in trust, towards the endowment of St. Stephen's chapel, in his palace of Westminster, which he had in his 22d year, completed and made collegiate, and had the year before granted to the dean and canons this manor, among others, in mortmain. (fn. 4) All which was confirmed by king Henry IV. and VI. and by king Edward IV. in their first years; the latter of whom, in his 9th year, granted to them a fair in this parish yearly, on the Monday after Palm-Sunday, and on the Wednesday following, with all liberties, &c. In which situation it continued till the 1st year of king Edward VI. when this college was, with all its possessions, surrendered into the king's hands, where this manor did not continue long; for the king in his 5th year, granted it to Edward, lord Clinton and Saye, and he reconveyed it to the crown the same year. After which the king demised it, for the term of eighty years, to Sir Edward Wotton, one of his privy council, whose son Thomas Wotton, esq. sold his interest in it to Alexander Hamon, esq. of Acrise, who died in 1613, leaving two daughters his coheirs, the youngest of whom Catherine, married to Sir Robert Lewknor, entitled him to it; he was at his death succeeded by his son Hamon Lewknor, esq. but the reversion in see having been purchased of the crown some few years before the expiration of the above-mentioned term, which ended the last year of king James I.'s reign, to Sir Charles Herbert, master of the revels. He at the latter end of king Charles I.'s reign, alienated it to Mr. John Aelst, merchant, of London; after which, I find by the court rolls, that it was vested in Thomas Alderne, John Fisher, and Roger Jackson, esqrs. who in the year 1681 conveyed it to Sir John Williams, whose daughter and sole heir Penelope carried it in marriage to Thomas Symonds, esq. of Herefordshire, by the heirs of whose only surviving son Thomas Symonds Powell, esq. of Pengethley, in that county, it has been lately sold to Sir Henry Oxenden, bart. who is now entitled to it.
A court leet and court baron is held for this manor, which is very extensive. There is much copyhold land held of it. The demesnes of it are tithe-free. There is a yearly rent charge, payable for ever out of it, of 87l. 13s. 1d. to the ironmongers company, in London.
Shottlesfield is a manor, situated at the southeast boundary of this parish, the house standing partly in Liminge, at a small distance southward from the street or hamlet of the same name. It was, as early as the reign of king Edward II. the inheritance of a family called le Grubbe, some of whom had afterwards possessions about Yalding and Eythorne. Thomas le Grubbe was possessed of it in the 3d year of that reign, and wrote himself of Shottlesfeld, and from him it continued down by paternal descent to John Grubbe, who in the 2d year of king Richard III. conveyed it by sale to Thomas Brockman, of Liminge, (fn. 5) whose grandson Henry Brockman, in the 1st year of queen Mary, alienated it to George Fogge, esq. of Braborne, and he, in the beginning of queen Elizabeth's reign, sold it to Bing, who, before the end of that reign, passed it away to Mr. John Masters, of Sandwich, from whom it descended to Sir Edward Masters, of Canterbury, who at his decease, soon after the death of Charles I. gave it to his second son, then LL. D. from whose heirs it was alienated to Hetherington, whose last surviving son the Rev. William Hetherington, of North Cray place, died possessed of it unmarried in 1778, and by will devised it, among his other estates, to Thomas Coventry, esq. of London, who lately died possessed of it s. p. and the trustees of his will are now entitled to it.
The manor of Bowick, now called Boyke, is situated likewise in the eastern part of this parish, in the borough of its own name, which was in very antient times the residence of the Lads, who in several of their old evidences were written De Lad, by which name there is an antient farm, once reputed a manor, still known, as it has been for many ages before, in the adjoining parish of Acrise, which till the reign of queen Elizabeth, was in the tenure of this family. It is certain that they were resident here at Bowick in the beginning of king Henry VI.'s reign, and in the next of Edward IV. as appears by the registers of their wills in the office at Canterbury, they constantly stiled themselves of Eleham. Thomas Lade, of Bowick, died possessed of it in 1515, as did his descendant Vincent Lade in 1563, anno 6 Elizabeth. Soon after which it passed by purchase into the name of Nethersole, from whence it quickly afterwards was alienated to Aucher, and thence again to Wroth, who at the latter end of king Charles I.'s reign sold it to Elgar; whence, after some intermission, it was sold to Thomas Scott, esq. of Liminge, whose daughter and coheir Elizabeth, married to William Turner, esq. of the Friars, in Canterbury, at length, in her right, became possessed of it; his only surviving daughter and heir Bridget married David Papillon, esq. of Acrise, and entitled him to this manor, and his grandson Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present owner of it.
Mount and Bladbean are two manors, situated on the hills, on the opposite sides of this parish, the former near the eastern, and the latter near the western boundaries of it; the latter being antiently called Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, a name now quite forgotten. Both these manors appear to have been in the reign of the Conqueror, part of the possessions of Anschitillus de Ros, who is mentioned in Domesday as holding much land in the western part of this county, their principal manor there being that of Horton, near Farningham. One of this family made a grant of it to the Cosentons, of Cosenton, in Aylesford, to hold of their barony of Ros, as of their manor of Horton before-mentioned, by knight's service. In the 7th year of Edward III. Sir Stephen de Cosenton obtained a charter of freewarren for his lands here. He was the son of Sir William de Cosenton, sheriff anno 35 Edward I. and was sometimes written of Cosenton, and sometimes of Mount, in Eleham. At length his descendant dying in the beginning of king Henry VIII.'s reign, without male issue, his three daughters, married to Duke, Wood, and Alexander Hamon, esq. became his coheirs, and shared a large inheritance between them, and upon their division of it, the manor of Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, was allotted to Wood, and Mount to Alexander Hamon.
The manor of Bladbean, alias Jacobs-court, was afterwards alienated by the heirs of Wood to Thomas Stoughton, esq. of St. Martin's, near Canterbury, who by will in 1591 (fn. 6) gave this manor, with its rents and services, to Elizabeth his daughter and coheir, married to Thomas Wilde, esq. of St. Martin's, whose grandson Colonel Dudley Wilde, at his death in 1653, s. p. devised it to his widow, from whom it went by sale to Hills, and Mr. James Hills, in 1683, passed it away to Mr. Daniel Woollet, whose children divided this estate among them; a few years after which John Brice became, by purchase of it at different times, possessed of the whole of it, which he in 1729 conveyed by sale to Mr. Valentine Sayer, of Sandwich, who died possessed of it in 1766, and the heirs of his eldest son Mr. George Sayer, of Sandwich, are now entitled to it.
The manor of Mount, now called Mount court, which was allotted as above-mentioned, to Alexander Hamon, continued down to his grandson, of the same name, who died possessed of it in 1613, leaving two daughters his coheirs, the youngest of whom, Catherine, entitled her husband Sir Robert Lewknor, to it, in whose descendants it continued till Robert Lewknor, esq. his grandson, in 1666, alienated it, with other lands in this parish, to Thomas Papillon, esq. of Lubenham, in Leicestershire, whose descendant Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present proprietor of it.
Ladwood is another manor in this parish, lying at the eastern boundary of it, likewise on the hills next to Acrise. It was written in old evidences Ladswood, whence it may with probability be conjectured, that before its being converted into a farm of arable land, and the erecting of a habitation here, it was a wood belonging to the family of Lad, resident at Bowick; but since the latter end of king Edward III.'s reign, it continued uninterrupted in the family of Rolse till the reign of king Charles II. soon after which it was alienated to Williams, in which name it remained till Penelope, daughter of Sir John Williams, carried it in marriage to Thomas Symonds, esq. the heirs of whose only surviving son Thomas Symonds Powell, esq. sold it to David Papillon, esq. whose son Thomas Papillon, esq. now possesses it.
The manor of Canterwood, as appears by an old manuscript, seemingly of the time of Henry VIII. was formerly the estate of Thomas de Garwinton, of Welle, lying in the eastern part of the parish, and who lived in the reigns of Edward II. and III. whose greatgrandson William Garwinton, dying s. p. Joane his kinswoman, married to Richard Haut, was, in the 9th year of king Henry IV. found to be his heir, not only in this manor, but much other land in these parts, and their son Richard Haut having an only daughter and heir Margery, she carried this manor in marriage to William Isaak. After which, as appears from the court-rolls, which do not reach very high, that the family of Hales became possessed of it, in which it staid till the end of queen Elizabeth's reign, when it went by sale to Manwood, from which name it was alienated to Sir Robert Lewknor, whose grandson Robert Lewknor, esq. in 1666 sold it, with other lands in this parish already mentioned, to Thomas Papillon, esq. of Lu benham, in Leicestershire, whose descendant Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise, is the present owner of it.
Oxroad, now usually called Ostrude, is a manor, situated a little distance eastward from North Eleham. It had antiently owners of the same name; Andrew de Oxroad held it of the countess of Ewe, in the reign of king Edward I. by knight's service, as appears by the book of them in the king's remembrancer's office. In the 20th year of king Edward III. John, son of Simon atte Welle, held it of the earl of Ewe by the like service. After which the Hencles became possessed of it, from the reign of king Henry IV. to that of king Henry VIII. when Isabel, daughter of Tho. Hencle, marrying John Beane, entitled him to it, and in his descendants it continued till king Charles I.'s reign, when it was alienated to Mr. Daniel Shatterden, gent. of this parish, descended from those of Shatterden, in Great Chart, which place they had possessed for many generations. At length, after this manor had continued for some time in his descendants, it was sold to Adams, in which name it remained till the heirs of Randall Adams passed it away by sale to Papillon, in whose family it still continues, being now the property of Thomas Papillon, esq. of Acrise.
Hall, alias Wingmere, is a manor, situated in the valley at the northern boundary of this parish, next to Barham, in which some part of the demesne lands of it lie. It is held of the manor of Eleham, and had most probably once owners of the name of Wigmere, as it was originally spelt, of which name there was a family in East Kent, and in several antient evidences there is mention made of William de Wigmere and others of this name. However this be, the family of Brent appear to have been for several generations possessed of this manor, and continued so till Thomas Brent, of Wilsborough, dying in 1612,s. p. it passed into the family of Dering, of Surrenden; for in king James I.'s reign Edward Dering, gent. of Egerton, eldest son of John, the fourth son of John Dering, esq, of Surren den, who had married Thomas Brent's sister, was become possessed of it; and his only son and heir Thomas Dering, gent. in 1649, alienated it to William Codd, gent. (fn. 7) of Watringbury, who was succeeded in it by his son James Codd, esq. of Watringbury, who died s. p. in 1708, being then sheriff of this county, and being possessed at his death of this manor in fee, in gavelkind; upon which it came to the representatives of his two aunts, Jane, the wife of Boys Ore, and Anne, of Robert Wood, and they, in 1715, by fine levied, entitled Thomas Manley, and Elizabeth, his wife, to the possession of this manor for their lives, and afterwards to them in fee, in separate moieties. He died s. p. in 1716, and by will gave his moiety to John Pollard; on whose death s. p. it came, by the limitation in the above will, to Joshua Monger, whose only daughter and heir Rachael carried it in marriage to her husband Arthur Pryor, and they in 1750 joined in the sale of it to Mr. Richard Halford, gent. of Canterbury. The other moiety of this manor seems to have been devised by Elizabeth Manley above-mentioned, at her death, to her nephew Thomas Kirkby, whose sons Thomas, John, and Manley Kirkby, joined, in the above year, in the conveyance of it to Mr. Richard Halford above-mentioned, who then became possessed of the whole of it. He was third son of Richard Halford, clerk, rector of the adjoining parish of Liminge, descended from the Halfords, of Warwickshire, as appears by his will in the Prerogative-office, Canterbury, by which he devised to his several sons successively in tail, the estate in Warwickshire, which he was entitled to by the will of his kinsman William Halford, gent, of that county. They bear for their arms, Argent, a greybound passant, sable, on a chief of the second, three fleurs de lis, or. He died possessed of it in 1766, leaving by Mary his wife, daughter of Mr. Christopher Creed, of Canterbury, one son Richard Halford, gent. now of Canterbury; and two daughters, Mary married to Mr. John Peirce, surgeon, of Canterbury; and Sarah. In 1794, Mr. Peirce purchased the shares of Mr. Richard and Mrs. Sarah Halford, and he is now the present owner of this manor. He bears for his arms, Azure field, wavy bend, or, two unicorns heads, proper.
The manor OF Clavertigh is situated on the hills at the north-west boundary of this parish, next to Liminge, which antiently belonged to the abbey of Bradsole, or St. Radigund, near Dover, and it continued among the possessions of it till the 27th year of king Henry VIII. when by the act then passed, it was suppressed, as not having the clear yearly revenue of two hundred pounds, and was surrendered into the king's hands, who in his 29th year, granted the scite of this priory, with all its lands and possessions, among which this manor was included, with certain exceptions, however, mentioned in it, to archbishop Cranmer, who in the 38th year of that reign, conveyed this manor of Clavertigh, with lands called Monkenlands, late belonging to the same priory in this parish, back again to the king, who that same year granted all those premises to Sir James Hales, one of the justices of the common pleas, to hold in capite, (fn. 8) and he, in the beginning of king Edward VI.'s reign, passed them away to Peter Heyman, esq. one of the gentlemen of that prince's bedchamber who seems to have had a new grant of them from the crown, in the 2d year of that reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Ralph Heyman, esq. of Sellindge, whose descendant Sir Peter Heyman, bart. alienated the manor of Clavetigh to Sir Edward Honywood, of Evington, created a baronet in 1660, in whose descendants this manor has continued down to Sir John Honywood, bart. of Evington, who is the present possessor of it.
Charities.
Jonas Warley, D. D. gave by will in 1722, 50l. to be put out on good security, the produce to be given yearly in bread on every Sunday in the year, after divine service, to six poor widows, to each of them a two-penny loaf. The money is now vested in the vicar and churchwardens, and the produce of it being no more than 2l. 5s. per annum, only a three-halfpenny loaf is given to each widow.
Land in this parish, of the annual produce of 1l. was given by a person unknown, to be disposed of to the indigent. It is vested in the minister, churchwardens, and overseers.
Four small cottages were given to the parish, by a person unknown, and are now inhabited by poor persons. They are vested in the churchwardens and overseers.
Sir John Williams, by will in 1725, founded A CHARITY SCHOOL in this parish for six poor boys, legal inhabitants, and born in this parish, to be taught reading, writing, and accounts, to be cloathed once in two years; and one such boy to be bound out apprentice, as often as money sufficient could be raised for that use. The minister, churchwardens, and overseers to be trustees, who have power to nominate others to assist them in the management of it. The master has a house to live in, and the lands given to it are let by the trustees.
The poor constantly relieved are about seventy-five, casually fifty-five.
Eleham is within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of its own name.
The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is large and handsome, consisting of three isles, the middle one having an upper range of windows, and one chancel, having a tower steeple, with a spire shast on it, at the west end, in which are eight bells, a clock, and chimes. Within the altar-rails is a memorial for John Somner, gent. son of the learned William Somner, of Canterbury, obt. 1695; arms, Ermine, a chevron voided. In the chancel a brass plate for Michael Pyx, of Folkestone, mayor and once high bailisf to Yarmouth, obt. 1601. Another for Nicholas Moore, gent. of Bettenham, in Cranbrooke; he died at Wingmer in 1577. In the middle isle a memorial for Captain William Symons, obt. 1674; arms, Parted per pale, and fess, three trefoils slipt. A brass plate for John Hill, dean and vicar of Eleham, obt. 1730. In this church was a lamp burning, called the light of Wyngmer, given before the year 1468, probably by one of the owners of that manor.
The church of Eleham was given by archbishop Boniface, lord of the manor of Eleham, and patron of this church appendant to it, at the instance of Walter de Merton, then canon of St. Paul's, and afterwards bishop of Rochester, to the college founded by the latter in 1263, at Maldon, in Surry. (fn. 9) After which the archbishop, in 1268, appropriated this church to the college, whenever it should become vacant by the death or cession of the rector of it, saving a reasonable vicarage of thirty marcs, to be endowed by him in it, to which the warden of the college should present to him and his successors, a fit vicar, as often as it should be vacant, to be nominated to the warden by the archbishop; otherwise the archbishop and his successors should freely from thence dispose of the vicarage for that turn. (fn. 10)
¶The year before this, Walter de Merton had begun a house in Oxford, whither some of the scholars were from time to time to resort for the advancement of their studies, to which the whole society of Maldon was, within a few years afterwards, removed, and both societies united at Oxford, under the name of the warden and fellows of Merton college. This portion of thirty marcs, which was a stated salary, and not tithes, &c. to that amount, was continued by a subsequent composition or decree of archbishop Warham, in 1532; but in 1559, the college, of their own accord, agreed to let the vicarial tithes, &c. to Thomas Carden, then vicar, at an easy rent, upon his discharging the college from the before-mentioned portion of thirty marcs: and this lease, with the like condition, has been renewed to every subsequent vicar ever since; and as an addition to their income, the vicars have for some time had another lease, of some wood grounds here, from the college. (fn. 11)
The appropriation or parsonage of this church is now held by lease from the warden and fellows, by the Rev. John Kenward Shaw Brooke, of Town-Malling. The archbishop nominates a clerk to the vicarage of it, whom the warden and fellows above-mentioned present to him for institution.
This vicarage is valued in the king's books at twenty pounds, (being the original endowment of thirty marcs), and the yearly tenths at two pounds, the clear yearly certified value of it being 59l. 15s. 2d. In 1640 it was valued at one hundred pounds per annum. Communicants six hundred. It is now of about the yearly value of one hundred and fifty pounds.
All the lands in this parish pay tithes to the rector or vicar, excepting Parkgate farm, Farthingsole farm, and Eleham-park wood, all belonging to the lord of Eleham manor, which claim a modus in lieu of tithes, of twenty shillings yearly paid to the vicar. The manor farm of Clavertigh, belonging to Sir John Honywood, bart and a parcel of lands called Mount Bottom, belonging to the Rev. Mr. Thomas Tournay, of Dover, claim a like modus in lieu of tithes.
OFFENSE
Peyton ManningQBKurt Warner
Thomas JonesRBAdrian Peterson
Le'Ron McClainFBMike Sellers
Andre JohnsonWRLarry Fitzgerald
Brandon MarshallWRAnquan Boldin
Tony GonzalezTEJason Witten
Jason Peters*OTJordan Gross
Joe ThomasOTWalter Jones*
Alan FanecaOGSteve Hutchinson
Kris DielmanOGChris Snee
Kevin Mawae*CAndre Gurode
DEFENSE
Mario WilliamsDEJulius Peppers
Dwight FreeneyDEJustin Tuck
Albert HaynesworthDTKevin Williams
Kris JenkinsDTJay Ratliff
James HarrisonOLBDeMarcus Ware
Joey PorterOLBLance Briggs
Ray LewisILBPatrick Willis
Nnamdi AsomughaCBCharles Woodson*
Cortland FinneganCBAntoine Winfield
Ed ReedFSNick Collins
Troy PolamaluSSAdrian Wilson
SPECIAL TEAMS
Shane LechlerPJeff Feagles
Stephen GostkowskiKJohn Carney
Leon WashingtonKRClifton Smith
Brendon AyanbadejoSTSean Morey hirty-one NFL players made their Pro Bowl debuts this year, and most of them proved on Sunday that they belong.
Jets CB Darrelle Revis made an amazing one-handed interception of Eli Manning’s pass in the end zone in the third quarter to preserve the AFC’s lead.
Besides that interception, Manning had a solid showing in his first all-star game. He finished 8-of-14 for 111 yards and threw the winning touchdown pass to game MVP Larry Fitzgerald.
Vikings CB Antoine Winfield, making his first Pro Bowl appearance after 10 years in the league, intercepted Kerry Collins‘ pass deep in NFC territory in the third quarter, preventing the AFC from building on its lead.
The star of the AFC defensive effort was Colts first-timer Robert Mathis. In the first quarter, he sacked Drew Brees, forced a fumble and then recovered the ball. He brought down Brees again in the second quarter for a 13-yard loss.
On offense, Ravens RB Le’Ron McClain ran for the AFC’s only touchdown in the fourth quarter, while Texans receiver Owen Daniels‘ 9-yard TD reception capped the AFC’s six-play, 52 yard drive just before halftime. McClain’s touchdown came on the rarely ever seen, but well-executed, fumble-rooskie play.
Caedwalla of Wessex
In 685 it was invaded by Caedwalla of Wessex. The Jutish king of the Isle of Wight, Arwald, died in action and his nephews were betrayed to Caedwalla, who subsequently died of wounds received in the battle. The two boys were converted to Christianity and immediately executed. Their names are unknown, but are called collectively "St.Arwald"- after their pagan uncle (who died fighting Christianity).
The West Saxon invasion was by all accounts prolonged and bloody.
St.Bede states that "...After Caedwalla had obtained possession of the kingdom of the Gewissae, he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place their stead people from his own province; binding himself by a vow, though it is said that he was not yet regenerated in Christ, to give the fourth part of the land and of the spoil to the Lord, if he took the Island. He fulfilled this vow by giving the same for the service of the Lord to Bishop Wilfrid..."
It is reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that during Caedwalla's attempts to subdue the population he was gravely wounded - wounds from which he would die within a couple of years. Before final subjugation most of the Jutish population of the island were killed and the remnant forced to accept Christianity as their religion and the West Saxon dialect as their language. Bede states that Caedwalla endeavoured to "mercilessly" destroy the population, but that 300 "hides" were given to the Church in the person of St Wilfrid. A "hide" was the amount of land required to support a family, and the Island was rated at 1200 hides. Caedwalla was a Christian sympathiser under the tutelage of St Wilfrid and St Aldhelm and had promised Wilfrid a quarter of the land in return for his assistance in claiming the Wessex throne. Unfortunately for them, the Jutish Islanders were not only heathens, but apostates, and the mass conversion of the Island probably did not occur as smoothly as had been planned.
From 685 therefore the island can be considered to have become part of Wessex and following the accession of West Saxon kings as kings of all England then part of England. The island became part of the shire of Hampshire and was divided into hundreds as was the norm.
[edit] The Saxons
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells how Wiht-land suffered particularly from Viking predations. Alfred the Great's navy defeated the Danes in 871 after they had "ravaged Devon and the Isle of Wight". During the second wave of Viking attacks in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (975-1014) the Isle of Wight was taken over by the Danes as a base to harry Southern England, referred to as their "frith-stool". The inlet on the west of the River Medina at Werrar Copse seems to have been their main base. In 1002 Ethelred ordered the killing of all the Danes in England in the St. Brice's Day Massacre but the Danish Army remained intact, based on the Isle of Wight. In 1012 Sweyn Forkbeard revenged the Danish defeat. Ethelred was forced to flee England: he spent Christmas on the Isle of Wight en route to refuge in Normandy.
The Island again played a critical role in English history as the base for Harold Godwinson and his brothers in their revolt against Edward the Confessor and yet again in 1066, when Tostig Godwinson arrived to collect supplies - but very little other support - en route to his defeat by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both men had manors on the Isle of Wight - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell.
[edit] The Norman Conquest
In the Domesday book (1086) the Island's name is Wit. The Norman Conquest of 1066 transferred the overall manorial rights of the Island to William FitzOsbern as Lord of the Isle of Wight. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were founded. The Island did not come under full control of the Crown until it was sold by the dying last Norman Lord, Lady Isabella de Fortibus, to Edward I in 1293.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment, with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him.
[edit] Medieval
After the Norman Conquest, the title of Lord of the Isle of Wight was created and William Fitz-Osborne who subsequently founded Carisbrooke Priory and the fortifications on what was to become Carisbrooke Castle became the first to hold the title. (It is possible that the site of Carisbrooke Castle had previously been fortified originally by Romans and subsequently by Jutes or Saxons; there still remains a late Saxon burgh, or defensive wall, built to defend the site from Viking raiders.) The Island did not come under the full control of the crown until the Countess Isabella De Fortibus sold it to Edward I in 1293 for six thousand marks.
The Lordship thereafter became a Royal appointment with a brief interruption when Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight, King Henry VI assisting in person at the ceremony, placing the crown on his head. He died in 1445, aged 22. With no male heir, his regal title expired with him. The title of Lord of the Isle of Wight expired in the reign of Henry VII with the title of Governor or Captain being used for sometime thereafter. During the English Civil War King Charles fled to the Isle of Wight believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond. Hammond was appalled, and incarcerated the king in Carisbrooke Castle. Charles was later tried and executed in London.
Henry VIII who developed the Royal Navy and its permanent base at Portsmouth, fortifications at Yarmouth, East & West Cowes and Sandown, sometimes re-using stone from dissolved monasteries as building material. Sir Richard Worsley, Captain of the Island at this time, successfully commanded the resistance to the last of the French attacks in 1545. In July 1545; French troops had landed on the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. Their aim was to seize important areas of the island; allowing the French to gain overall control of the Isle of Wight; giving the French a valuable jumping-off point for further operations against the mainland. However, the French advance was decisively defeated, when the local Isle of Wight militia defeated the French troops in the Battle of Bonchurch. Much later on after the Spanish Armada in 1588 the threat of Spanish attacks remained, and the outer fortifications of Carisbrooke Castle were built between 1597 and 1602.
In 1587 two Roman Catholic missionaries Anderton and Marsden, originally from Lancashire, but trained in France, were returned to England in disguise on the ferry to Dover, but due to a severe gale landed in Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately for them, such was the danger they were in that they loudly prayed to God to "save the first of your seminarians to returm=n to England" which was overheard by fellow passengers who reported them to Governor Carey. They were taken to London for trial, but executed by hanging, drawing and quartering in Cowes, although the exact site is unknown. They were declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XI.
[edit] Early Modern and Modern
Charles I evaded custody under the Army at Hampton Court by riding to Southampton in order to escape to Jersey. However,he and his companion became lost in the New Forest and missed their intended ship, and fled to the Isle of Wight instead. The Governor Colonel Robert Hammond had declared for Parliament and Charles was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle. Since an extensive bowling green was built for his use this was initially in some comfort, but this was made closer after an abortive escape attempt, when he failed to get through the window to where Royalist sympathisers under John Oglander were waiting with a horse.
Charles was approached by the Presbyterian faction of Parliament and concluded the Treaty of Newport, offering him a constitutional monarchy. However Charles had no intention of accepting its restrictions upon Royal power and also concluded the Engagement with the Scots to invade on his behalf. As a result of his perceived faithlessness, the moderate faction at Parliament were discredited and Charles was moved to more prison-like conditions at Hurst Castle and thence to execution on 30 January 1649.
Later Cromwell was to use Carisbrooke Castle as a place of imprisonment for Fifth Monarchists opposed to his Protectorate including Thomas Harrison and Christopher Feake.
Queen Victoria made the Isle of Wight her home for many years, and as a result it become a major holiday resort for members of European royalty, whose many houses could later claim descent from her through the widely flung marriages of her offspring. During her reign in 1897 the World's first radio station was set up by Marconi at the Needles battery at the western tip of the Island.
The famous boat-building firm of J. Samuel White was established on the Island in 1802. Other noteworthy marine manufacturers followed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including Saunders-Roe a key manufacturer of the Flying-boats and the world's first hovercraft. The tradition of maritime industry continues on the Island today.
In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, a sizeable network of railways was built on the island, notable for its punishing gradients and numerous tunnels, particularly to reach the town of Ventnor. Since the early twentieth century, these lines were often linked to plans for a tunnel under the Solent, an idea still talked of today. Most of the rail network closed between 1956 and 1966, and is now a series of cyclepaths.
The first Governor to hold the crown representative title used now of Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Mountbatten of Burma until his murder in 1979. Lord Mottistone was the last Lord Lieutenant to also hold the title Governor (from 1992 to 1995). Since 1995 there has been no Governor appointed and Mr Christopher Bland has been the Lord Lieutenant.
[edit] Caulkheads and other Island terms
Historically, inhabitants of the Isle of Wight have been known as Vectensians or Vectians (pronounced Vec-tee-ans). These terms derive from the Latin name for the Island, Vectis. Vectian is a word used more formally to describe certain geological features which are typical of the Island. As with many other small island communities the term Islander has long been used, and is commonly heard today. The term Overner is used for people originating from mainland Great Britain. This is an abbreviated form of Overlander; which is an archaic English term for an outsider still found in a few other places such as parts of Australia.[5]
People born on the island are colloquially known as Caulkheads (sometimes erroneously written as it is spoken, Corkheads), a word comparable with the name Cockney for those born in the East End of London. Some argue that the term should only apply those who can also claim they are of established Isle of Wight stock either by proven historical roots or, for example, being third generation inhabitants from both parents' lineage.[6]
One theory about the term 'caulkhead' is that it comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking boats; a process of sealing the seams of wooden boats with oakum. It is said that the shipyard at Bucklers Hard in the New Forest employed labourers from the Isle of Wight , mainly as caulkers, in the building of early warships. Islanders may have been called "Caulkheads" during this time either because they were indeed so employed, or merely as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from another place. Another more fanciful story is that a group of armoured Island horsemen were chased into the sea by the marauding French, and took refuge on a sandbank when the tide came in, thus appearing to float in the sea despite their heavy armour, hence the name Cork- i.e. Caulk-, -heads When this supposed event happened is not clear, since the Island was frequently attacked in the Middle Ages, however in the last instance in 1546 Sandown Castle was under construction some way offshore and a battle was fought on site, resulting in the French being driven off and this could fit this particular tale.[7] In local folklore it is said that a test can be conducted on a baby by throwing it into the sea from the end of Ryde Pier whereupon a true caulkhead baby will float unharmed. Thankfully there is no record of the test ever being carried out.
[edit] Political History
The island's most ancient borough was Newtown on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding two parliamentary seats but this ultimately made it one of the most notorious of the Rotten Boroughs. By the time of the Great Reform Act that abolished the seats, it had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters. The Act also disenfranchised the borough of Yarmouth and replaced the four lost seats with the first MP for the whole Isle of Wight; Newport also retained its two MPs, though these were reduced to one in 1868 and eventually abolished completely in 1885.
Often thought of as part of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight was briefly included in that county when the first county councils were created in 1888. However, a "Home Rule" campaign led to a separate county council being established for the Isle of Wight in 1890, and it has remained separate ever since. Like inhabitants of many islands, Islanders are fiercely jealous of their real (or perceived) independence, and confusion over the Island's separate status is a perennial source of friction.
It was planned to merge the county back into Hampshire as a district in the 1974 local government reform, but a last minute change led to it retaining its county council. However, since there was no provision made in the Local Government Act 1972 for unitary authorities, the Island had to retain a two-tier structure, with a county council and two boroughs, Medina and South Wight.
The borough councils were merged with the county council on April 1, 1995, to form a single unitary authority, the Isle of Wight Council. The only significant present-day administrative link with Hampshire is the police service, the Hampshire Constabulary, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
From the closing decades of the 20th century onwards, there has been considerable debate on the Island over whether or not a bridge or tunnel should connect the island with mainland England. The Isle of Wight Party campaigned from a positive position, although extensive public debate on the subject revealed a strong body of opinion amongst islanders against such a proposal. In 2002 the Isle of Wight Council debated the issue and made a policy statement against the proposal.
[edit] Autonomy and Political Recognition
A number of discussions about the status of the island have taken place over many years, with standpoints from the extreme of wanting full sovereignty for the Isle of Wight, to perhaps the opposite extreme of merging with Hampshire. The pro-independence lobby had a formal voice in the early 1970s with the Vectis National Party. Their main claim was that the sale of the island to the Crown in 1293 was unconstitutional. However, this movement now has little serious support. Since the 1990s the debate has largely taken the form of a campaign to have the Isle of Wight recognized as a distinct region by organizations such as the EU, due to its relative poverty within the south-east of England. One argument in favour of special treatment is that this poverty is not acknowledged by such organizations as it is distorted statistically by retired and wealthy (but less economically active) immigrants from the mainland.
In more recent times, the regionalist movement has been represented by the Isle of Wight Party.
[edit] Isle of Wight Disease
In 1904 a mysterious illness began to kill honeybee colonies on the island, and had nearly wiped out all hives by 1907 when the disease jumped to the mainland, and decimated beekeeping in the British Isles. Called the Isle of Wight Disease, the cause of the mystery ailment was not identified until 1921 when a tiny parasitic mite, Acarapis woodi was first described by J. Rennie. The mite inhabited the tracheae of individual bees, and greatly shortened their lifespan, causing eventual death of the colony. The disease (now called Acarine Disease) frightened many other nations because of the importance of bees in pollination. Laws against importation of honeybees were passed, but this merely delayed the eventual spread of the parasite to the rest of the world.
[edit] The Isle of Wight Festival
Main article: Isle of Wight Festival
A large rock festival took place near Tennyson Down, West Wight in 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was notable for being the last public performance by Jimi Hendrix before his death. The festival was revived in 2002 and is now an annual event,[8] with other, smaller musical events of many different genres across the Island becoming associated with it.
The first of the modern festivals was a one day affair termed Rock Island,[9] which expanded to two days in 2003,[9] then three days by 2004.[10]