Features red lightbrick behind the LEGO logo. Stairs go up to a future McDonalds.

Published by David McKay in 1948. Cover artist unknown.

Collection Building by MVRDV Architects - opened November 2021

This public art depot for the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam NL, features exhibition halls, a sculpture roof garden and a restaurant, in addition to an enormous amount of storage space for art. The public can see what’s going on behind the scenes in a museum and private art collectors will be able to store their own collection under ideal museum conditions. The design – a reflective round volume – responds to its surroundings, Rotterdam’s Museumpark.

Collection Building is an art depot open to the public. A public route zigzags through the building, from the lobby on the ground floor where a café can be found up to an exhibition space, sculpture garden and restaurant on the roof. On the way up the route passes along and through art depots and restoration workshops. In depots visible from the route, the exhibition can be changed on a daily basis by simply moving storage racks so each visit to the building can offer a unique experience. On three floors the route passes through exhibition spaces which will be programmed by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

The building - which will store the precious art collection of Rotterdam - will also have spaces not accessible to the general public. For example logistics, quarantine and room for private art collections whose owners can visit their art and even enjoy it in private spaces comparable to the art equivalent of a sky box. This is a new commercial service offered by the museum. The roof featuring a restaurant, sculpture garden and exhibition space offers wide views over Rotterdam.

The Collection Building was realised on the northern edge of Rotterdam's Museumpark, realised by OMA with Yves Brunier in 1994. In order to spare the park, the volume is designed as a compact round volume with a small footprint and will be clad with a reflective glass façade. This will make the building less visible and allow reflections, the public can see what is happening elsewhere in the park. Where needed the reflection will be lesser for transparency and to avoid unwanted light effects. 99% of the works will be visible or accessible to the public. The building will feature seven different climatic conditions facilitating ideal conditions for art storage, offices and the public. The ambition was to reach the equivalent of sustainability classification BREEAM Excellent.

Every night, after the sun sets, you can catch a beautiful light show at the Depot. A video installation called “Wasting life on you” by Swiss artist Pilotti Rist will be projected from a colourful pole beside the museum.

 

Fish, any of approximately 34,000 species of vertebrate animals (phylum Chordata) found in the fresh and salt waters of the world. Living species range from the primitive jawless lampreys and hagfishes through the cartilaginous sharks, skates, and rays to the abundant and diverse bony fishes. Most fish species are cold-blooded; however, one species, the opah (Lampris guttatus), is warm-blooded.

 

The term fish is applied to a variety of vertebrates of several evolutionary lines. It describes a life-form rather than a taxonomic group. As members of the phylum Chordata, fish share certain features with other vertebrates. These features are gill slits at some point in the life cycle, a notochord, or skeletal supporting rod, a dorsal hollow nerve cord, and a tail. Living fishes represent some five classes, which are as distinct from one another as are the four classes of familiar air-breathing animals—amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. For example, the jawless fishes (Agnatha) have gills in pouches and lack limb girdles. Extant agnathans are the lampreys and the hagfishes. As the name implies, the skeletons of fishes of the class Chondrichthyes (from chondr, “cartilage,” and ichthyes, “fish”) are made entirely of cartilage. Modern fish of this class lack a swim bladder, and their scales and teeth are made up of the same placoid material. Sharks, skates, and rays are examples of cartilaginous fishes. The bony fishes are by far the largest class. Examples range from the tiny seahorse to the 450-kg (1,000-pound) blue marlin, from the flattened soles and flounders to the boxy puffers and ocean sunfishes. Unlike the scales of the cartilaginous fishes, those of bony fishes, when present, grow throughout life and are made up of thin overlapping plates of bone. Bony fishes also have an operculum that covers the gill slits.

 

The study of fishes, the science of ichthyology, is of broad importance. Fishes are of interest to humans for many reasons, the most important being their relationship with and dependence on the environment. A more obvious reason for interest in fishes is their role as a moderate but important part of the world’s food supply. This resource, once thought unlimited, is now realized to be finite and in delicate balance with the biological, chemical, and physical factors of the aquatic environment. Overfishing, pollution, and alteration of the environment are the chief enemies of proper fisheries management, both in fresh waters and in the ocean. (For a detailed discussion of the technology and economics of fisheries, see commercial fishing.) Another practical reason for studying fishes is their use in disease control. As predators on mosquito larvae, they help curb malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

 

Fishes are valuable laboratory animals in many aspects of medical and biological research. For example, the readiness of many fishes to acclimate to captivity has allowed biologists to study behaviour, physiology, and even ecology under relatively natural conditions. Fishes have been especially important in the study of animal behaviour, where research on fishes has provided a broad base for the understanding of the more flexible behaviour of the higher vertebrates. The zebra fish is used as a model in studies of gene expression.

 

There are aesthetic and recreational reasons for an interest in fishes. Millions of people keep live fishes in home aquariums for the simple pleasure of observing the beauty and behaviour of animals otherwise unfamiliar to them. Aquarium fishes provide a personal challenge to many aquarists, allowing them to test their ability to keep a small section of the natural environment in their homes. Sportfishing is another way of enjoying the natural environment, also indulged in by millions of people every year. Interest in aquarium fishes and sportfishing supports multimillion-dollar industries throughout the world.

 

Fishes have been in existence for more than 450 million years, during which time they have evolved repeatedly to fit into almost every conceivable type of aquatic habitat. In a sense, land vertebrates are simply highly modified fishes: when fishes colonized the land habitat, they became tetrapod (four-legged) land vertebrates. The popular conception of a fish as a slippery, streamlined aquatic animal that possesses fins and breathes by gills applies to many fishes, but far more fishes deviate from that conception than conform to it. For example, the body is elongate in many forms and greatly shortened in others; the body is flattened in some (principally in bottom-dwelling fishes) and laterally compressed in many others; the fins may be elaborately extended, forming intricate shapes, or they may be reduced or even lost; and the positions of the mouth, eyes, nostrils, and gill openings vary widely. Air breathers have appeared in several evolutionary lines.

 

Many fishes are cryptically coloured and shaped, closely matching their respective environments; others are among the most brilliantly coloured of all organisms, with a wide range of hues, often of striking intensity, on a single individual. The brilliance of pigments may be enhanced by the surface structure of the fish, so that it almost seems to glow. A number of unrelated fishes have actual light-producing organs. Many fishes are able to alter their coloration—some for the purpose of camouflage, others for the enhancement of behavioral signals.

 

Fishes range in adult length from less than 10 mm (0.4 inch) to more than 20 metres (60 feet) and in weight from about 1.5 grams (less than 0.06 ounce) to many thousands of kilograms. Some live in shallow thermal springs at temperatures slightly above 42 °C (100 °F), others in cold Arctic seas a few degrees below 0 °C (32 °F) or in cold deep waters more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) beneath the ocean surface. The structural and, especially, the physiological adaptations for life at such extremes are relatively poorly known and provide the scientifically curious with great incentive for study.

 

Almost all natural bodies of water bear fish life, the exceptions being very hot thermal ponds and extremely salt-alkaline lakes, such as the Dead Sea in Asia and the Great Salt Lake in North America. The present distribution of fishes is a result of the geological history and development of Earth as well as the ability of fishes to undergo evolutionary change and to adapt to the available habitats. Fishes may be seen to be distributed according to habitat and according to geographical area. Major habitat differences are marine and freshwater. For the most part, the fishes in a marine habitat differ from those in a freshwater habitat, even in adjacent areas, but some, such as the salmon, migrate from one to the other. The freshwater habitats may be seen to be of many kinds. Fishes found in mountain torrents, Arctic lakes, tropical lakes, temperate streams, and tropical rivers will all differ from each other, both in obvious gross structure and in physiological attributes. Even in closely adjacent habitats where, for example, a tropical mountain torrent enters a lowland stream, the fish fauna will differ. The marine habitats can be divided into deep ocean floors (benthic), mid-water oceanic (bathypelagic), surface oceanic (pelagic), rocky coast, sandy coast, muddy shores, bays, estuaries, and others. Also, for example, rocky coastal shores in tropical and temperate regions will have different fish faunas, even when such habitats occur along the same coastline.

 

Although much is known about the present geographical distribution of fishes, far less is known about how that distribution came about. Many parts of the fish fauna of the fresh waters of North America and Eurasia are related and undoubtedly have a common origin. The faunas of Africa and South America are related, extremely old, and probably an expression of the drifting apart of the two continents. The fauna of southern Asia is related to that of Central Asia, and some of it appears to have entered Africa. The extremely large shore-fish faunas of the Indian and tropical Pacific oceans comprise a related complex, but the tropical shore fauna of the Atlantic, although containing Indo-Pacific components, is relatively limited and probably younger. The Arctic and Antarctic marine faunas are quite different from each other. The shore fauna of the North Pacific is quite distinct, and that of the North Atlantic more limited and probably younger. Pelagic oceanic fishes, especially those in deep waters, are similar the world over, showing little geographical isolation in terms of family groups. The deep oceanic habitat is very much the same throughout the world, but species differences do exist, showing geographical areas determined by oceanic currents and water masses.

 

All aspects of the life of a fish are closely correlated with adaptation to the total environment, physical, chemical, and biological. In studies, all the interdependent aspects of fish, such as behaviour, locomotion, reproduction, and physical and physiological characteristics, must be taken into account.

 

Correlated with their adaptation to an extremely wide variety of habitats is the extremely wide variety of life cycles that fishes display. The great majority hatch from relatively small eggs a few days to several weeks or more after the eggs are scattered in the water. Newly hatched young are still partially undeveloped and are called larvae until body structures such as fins, skeleton, and some organs are fully formed. Larval life is often very short, usually less than a few weeks, but it can be very long, some lampreys continuing as larvae for at least five years. Young and larval fishes, before reaching sexual maturity, must grow considerably, and their small size and other factors often dictate that they live in a habitat different than that of the adults. For example, most tropical marine shore fishes have pelagic larvae. Larval food also is different, and larval fishes often live in shallow waters, where they may be less exposed to predators.

 

After a fish reaches adult size, the length of its life is subject to many factors, such as innate rates of aging, predation pressure, and the nature of the local climate. The longevity of a species in the protected environment of an aquarium may have nothing to do with how long members of that species live in the wild. Many small fishes live only one to three years at the most. In some species, however, individuals may live as long as 10 or 20 or even 100 years.

 

Fish behaviour is a complicated and varied subject. As in almost all animals with a central nervous system, the nature of a response of an individual fish to stimuli from its environment depends upon the inherited characteristics of its nervous system, on what it has learned from past experience, and on the nature of the stimuli. Compared with the variety of human responses, however, that of a fish is stereotyped, not subject to much modification by “thought” or learning, and investigators must guard against anthropomorphic interpretations of fish behaviour.

 

Fishes perceive the world around them by the usual senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste and by special lateral line water-current detectors. In the few fishes that generate electric fields, a process that might best be called electrolocation aids in perception. One or another of these senses often is emphasized at the expense of others, depending upon the fish’s other adaptations. In fishes with large eyes, the sense of smell may be reduced; others, with small eyes, hunt and feed primarily by smell (such as some eels).

 

Specialized behaviour is primarily concerned with the three most important activities in the fish’s life: feeding, reproduction, and escape from enemies. Schooling behaviour of sardines on the high seas, for instance, is largely a protective device to avoid enemies, but it is also associated with and modified by their breeding and feeding requirements. Predatory fishes are often solitary, lying in wait to dart suddenly after their prey, a kind of locomotion impossible for beaked parrot fishes, which feed on coral, swimming in small groups from one coral head to the next. In addition, some predatory fishes that inhabit pelagic environments, such as tunas, often school.

 

Sleep in fishes, all of which lack true eyelids, consists of a seemingly listless state in which the fish maintains its balance but moves slowly. If attacked or disturbed, most can dart away. A few kinds of fishes lie on the bottom to sleep. Most catfishes, some loaches, and some eels and electric fishes are strictly nocturnal, being active and hunting for food during the night and retiring during the day to holes, thick vegetation, or other protective parts of the environment.

 

Communication between members of a species or between members of two or more species often is extremely important, especially in breeding behaviour (see below Reproduction). The mode of communication may be visual, as between the small so-called cleaner fish and a large fish of a very different species. The larger fish often allows the cleaner to enter its mouth to remove gill parasites. The cleaner is recognized by its distinctive colour and actions and therefore is not eaten, even if the larger fish is normally a predator. Communication is often chemical, signals being sent by specific chemicals called pheromones.

 

Many fishes have a streamlined body and swim freely in open water. Fish locomotion is closely correlated with habitat and ecological niche (the general position of the animal to its environment).

 

Many fishes in both marine and fresh waters swim at the surface and have mouths adapted to feed best (and sometimes only) at the surface. Often such fishes are long and slender, able to dart at surface insects or at other surface fishes and in turn to dart away from predators; needlefishes, halfbeaks, and topminnows (such as killifish and mosquito fish) are good examples. Oceanic flying fishes escape their predators by gathering speed above the water surface, with the lower lobe of the tail providing thrust in the water. They then glide hundreds of yards on enlarged, winglike pectoral and pelvic fins. South American freshwater flying fishes escape their enemies by jumping and propelling their strongly keeled bodies out of the water.

 

So-called mid-water swimmers, the most common type of fish, are of many kinds and live in many habitats. The powerful fusiform tunas and the trouts, for example, are adapted for strong, fast swimming, the tunas to capture prey speedily in the open ocean and the trouts to cope with the swift currents of streams and rivers. The trout body form is well adapted to many habitats. Fishes that live in relatively quiet waters such as bays or lake shores or slow rivers usually are not strong, fast swimmers but are capable of short, quick bursts of speed to escape a predator. Many of these fishes have their sides flattened, examples being the sunfish and the freshwater angelfish of aquarists. Fish associated with the bottom or substrate usually are slow swimmers. Open-water plankton-feeding fishes almost always remain fusiform and are capable of rapid, strong movement (for example, sardines and herrings of the open ocean and also many small minnows of streams and lakes).

 

Bottom-living fishes are of many kinds and have undergone many types of modification of their body shape and swimming habits. Rays, which evolved from strong-swimming mid-water sharks, usually stay close to the bottom and move by undulating their large pectoral fins. Flounders live in a similar habitat and move over the bottom by undulating the entire body. Many bottom fishes dart from place to place, resting on the bottom between movements, a motion common in gobies. One goby relative, the mudskipper, has taken to living at the edge of pools along the shore of muddy mangrove swamps. It escapes its enemies by flipping rapidly over the mud, out of the water. Some catfishes, synbranchid eels, the so-called climbing perch, and a few other fishes venture out over damp ground to find more promising waters than those that they left. They move by wriggling their bodies, sometimes using strong pectoral fins; most have accessory air-breathing organs. Many bottom-dwelling fishes live in mud holes or rocky crevices. Marine eels and gobies commonly are found in such habitats and for the most part venture far beyond their cavelike homes. Some bottom dwellers, such as the clingfishes (Gobiesocidae), have developed powerful adhesive disks that enable them to remain in place on the substrate in areas such as rocky coasts, where the action of the waves is great.

 

The methods of reproduction in fishes are varied, but most fishes lay a large number of small eggs, fertilized and scattered outside of the body. The eggs of pelagic fishes usually remain suspended in the open water. Many shore and freshwater fishes lay eggs on the bottom or among plants. Some have adhesive eggs. The mortality of the young and especially of the eggs is very high, and often only a few individuals grow to maturity out of hundreds, thousands, and in some cases millions of eggs laid.

 

Males produce sperm, usually as a milky white substance called milt, in two (sometimes one) testes within the body cavity. In bony fishes a sperm duct leads from each testis to a urogenital opening behind the vent or anus. In sharks and rays and in cyclostomes the duct leads to a cloaca. Sometimes the pelvic fins are modified to help transmit the milt to the eggs at the female’s vent or on the substrate where the female has placed them. Sometimes accessory organs are used to fertilize females internally—for example, the claspers of many sharks and rays.

 

In the females the eggs are formed in two ovaries (sometimes only one) and pass through the ovaries to the urogenital opening and to the outside. In some fishes the eggs are fertilized internally but are shed before development takes place. Members of about a dozen families each of bony fishes (teleosts) and sharks bear live young. Many skates and rays also bear live young. In some bony fishes the eggs simply develop within the female, the young emerging when the eggs hatch (ovoviviparous). Others develop within the ovary and are nourished by ovarian tissues after hatching (viviparous). There are also other methods utilized by fishes to nourish young within the female. In all live-bearers the young are born at a relatively large size and are few in number. In one family of primarily marine fishes, the surfperches from the Pacific coast of North America, Japan, and Korea, the males of at least one species are born sexually mature, although they are not fully grown.

 

Some fishes are hermaphroditic—an individual producing both sperm and eggs, usually at different stages of its life. Self-fertilization, however, is probably rare.

 

Successful reproduction and, in many cases, defense of the eggs and the young are assured by rather stereotypical but often elaborate courtship and parental behaviour, either by the male or the female or both. Some fishes prepare nests by hollowing out depressions in the sand bottom (cichlids, for example), build nests with plant materials and sticky threads excreted by the kidneys (sticklebacks), or blow a cluster of mucus-covered bubbles at the water surface (gouramis). The eggs are laid in these structures. Some varieties of cichlids and catfishes incubate eggs in their mouths.

 

Some fishes, such as salmon, undergo long migrations from the ocean and up large rivers to spawn in the gravel beds where they themselves hatched (anadromous fishes). Some, such as the freshwater eels (family Anguillidae), live and grow to maturity in fresh water and migrate to the sea to spawn (catadromous fishes). Other fishes undertake shorter migrations from lakes into streams, within the ocean, or enter spawning habitats that they do not ordinarily occupy in other ways.

 

The basic structure and function of the fish body are similar to those of all other vertebrates. The usual four types of tissues are present: surface or epithelial, connective (bone, cartilage, and fibrous tissues, as well as their derivative, blood), nerve, and muscle tissues. In addition, the fish’s organs and organ systems parallel those of other vertebrates.

 

The typical fish body is streamlined and spindle-shaped, with an anterior head, a gill apparatus, and a heart, the latter lying in the midline just below the gill chamber. The body cavity, containing the vital organs, is situated behind the head in the lower anterior part of the body. The anus usually marks the posterior termination of the body cavity and most often occurs just in front of the base of the anal fin. The spinal cord and vertebral column continue from the posterior part of the head to the base of the tail fin, passing dorsal to the body cavity and through the caudal (tail) region behind the body cavity. Most of the body is of muscular tissue, a high proportion of which is necessitated by swimming. In the course of evolution this basic body plan has been modified repeatedly into the many varieties of fish shapes that exist today.

 

The skeleton forms an integral part of the fish’s locomotion system, as well as serving to protect vital parts. The internal skeleton consists of the skull bones (except for the roofing bones of the head, which are really part of the external skeleton), the vertebral column, and the fin supports (fin rays). The fin supports are derived from the external skeleton but will be treated here because of their close functional relationship to the internal skeleton. The internal skeleton of cyclostomes, sharks, and rays is of cartilage; that of many fossil groups and some primitive living fishes is mostly of cartilage but may include some bone. In place of the vertebral column, the earliest vertebrates had a fully developed notochord, a flexible stiff rod of viscous cells surrounded by a strong fibrous sheath. During the evolution of modern fishes the rod was replaced in part by cartilage and then by ossified cartilage. Sharks and rays retain a cartilaginous vertebral column; bony fishes have spool-shaped vertebrae that in the more primitive living forms only partially replace the notochord. The skull, including the gill arches and jaws of bony fishes, is fully, or at least partially, ossified. That of sharks and rays remains cartilaginous, at times partially replaced by calcium deposits but never by true bone.

 

The supportive elements of the fins (basal or radial bones or both) have changed greatly during fish evolution. Some of these changes are described in the section below (Evolution and paleontology). Most fishes possess a single dorsal fin on the midline of the back. Many have two and a few have three dorsal fins. The other fins are the single tail and anal fins and paired pelvic and pectoral fins. A small fin, the adipose fin, with hairlike fin rays, occurs in many of the relatively primitive teleosts (such as trout) on the back near the base of the caudal fin.

 

The skin of a fish must serve many functions. It aids in maintaining the osmotic balance, provides physical protection for the body, is the site of coloration, contains sensory receptors, and, in some fishes, functions in respiration. Mucous glands, which aid in maintaining the water balance and offer protection from bacteria, are extremely numerous in fish skin, especially in cyclostomes and teleosts. Since mucous glands are present in the modern lampreys, it is reasonable to assume that they were present in primitive fishes, such as the ancient Silurian and Devonian agnathans. Protection from abrasion and predation is another function of the fish skin, and dermal (skin) bone arose early in fish evolution in response to this need. It is thought that bone first evolved in skin and only later invaded the cartilaginous areas of the fish’s body, to provide additional support and protection. There is some argument as to which came first, cartilage or bone, and fossil evidence does not settle the question. In any event, dermal bone has played an important part in fish evolution and has different characteristics in different groups of fishes. Several groups are characterized at least in part by the kind of bony scales they possess.

 

Scales have played an important part in the evolution of fishes. Primitive fishes usually had thick bony plates or thick scales in several layers of bone, enamel, and related substances. Modern teleost fishes have scales of bone, which, while still protective, allow much more freedom of motion in the body. A few modern teleosts (some catfishes, sticklebacks, and others) have secondarily acquired bony plates in the skin. Modern and early sharks possessed placoid scales, a relatively primitive type of scale with a toothlike structure, consisting of an outside layer of enamel-like substance (vitrodentine), an inner layer of dentine, and a pulp cavity containing nerves and blood vessels. Primitive bony fishes had thick scales of either the ganoid or the cosmoid type. Cosmoid scales have a hard, enamel-like outer layer, an inner layer of cosmine (a form of dentine), and then a layer of vascular bone (isopedine). In ganoid scales the hard outer layer is different chemically and is called ganoin. Under this is a cosminelike layer and then a vascular bony layer. The thin, translucent bony scales of modern fishes, called cycloid and ctenoid (the latter distinguished by serrations at the edges), lack enameloid and dentine layers.

 

Skin has several other functions in fishes. It is well supplied with nerve endings and presumably receives tactile, thermal, and pain stimuli. Skin is also well supplied with blood vessels. Some fishes breathe in part through the skin, by the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the surrounding water and numerous small blood vessels near the skin surface.

 

Skin serves as protection through the control of coloration. Fishes exhibit an almost limitless range of colours. The colours often blend closely with the surroundings, effectively hiding the animal. Many fishes use bright colours for territorial advertisement or as recognition marks for other members of their own species, or sometimes for members of other species. Many fishes can change their colour to a greater or lesser degree, by movement of pigment within the pigment cells (chromatophores). Black pigment cells (melanophores), of almost universal occurrence in fishes, are often juxtaposed with other pigment cells. When placed beneath iridocytes or leucophores (bearing the silvery or white pigment guanine), melanophores produce structural colours of blue and green. These colours are often extremely intense, because they are formed by refraction of light through the needlelike crystals of guanine. The blue and green refracted colours are often relatively pure, lacking the red and yellow rays, which have been absorbed by the black pigment (melanin) of the melanophores. Yellow, orange, and red colours are produced by erythrophores, cells containing the appropriate carotenoid pigments. Other colours are produced by combinations of melanophores, erythrophores, and iridocytes.

 

The major portion of the body of most fishes consists of muscles. Most of the mass is trunk musculature, the fin muscles usually being relatively small. The caudal fin is usually the most powerful fin, being moved by the trunk musculature. The body musculature is usually arranged in rows of chevron-shaped segments on each side. Contractions of these segments, each attached to adjacent vertebrae and vertebral processes, bends the body on the vertebral joint, producing successive undulations of the body, passing from the head to the tail, and producing driving strokes of the tail. It is the latter that provides the strong forward movement for most fishes.

 

The digestive system, in a functional sense, starts at the mouth, with the teeth used to capture prey or collect plant foods. Mouth shape and tooth structure vary greatly in fishes, depending on the kind of food normally eaten. Most fishes are predacious, feeding on small invertebrates or other fishes and have simple conical teeth on the jaws, on at least some of the bones of the roof of the mouth, and on special gill arch structures just in front of the esophagus. The latter are throat teeth. Most predacious fishes swallow their prey whole, and the teeth are used for grasping and holding prey, for orienting prey to be swallowed (head first) and for working the prey toward the esophagus. There are a variety of tooth types in fishes. Some fishes, such as sharks and piranhas, have cutting teeth for biting chunks out of their victims. A shark’s tooth, although superficially like that of a piranha, appears in many respects to be a modified scale, while that of the piranha is like that of other bony fishes, consisting of dentine and enamel. Parrot fishes have beaklike mouths with short incisor-like teeth for breaking off coral and have heavy pavementlike throat teeth for crushing the coral. Some catfishes have small brushlike teeth, arranged in rows on the jaws, for scraping plant and animal growth from rocks. Many fishes (such as the Cyprinidae or minnows) have no jaw teeth at all but have very strong throat teeth.

 

Some fishes gather planktonic food by straining it from their gill cavities with numerous elongate stiff rods (gill rakers) anchored by one end to the gill bars. The food collected on these rods is passed to the throat, where it is swallowed. Most fishes have only short gill rakers that help keep food particles from escaping out the mouth cavity into the gill chamber.

 

Once reaching the throat, food enters a short, often greatly distensible esophagus, a simple tube with a muscular wall leading into a stomach. The stomach varies greatly in fishes, depending upon the diet. In most predacious fishes it is a simple straight or curved tube or pouch with a muscular wall and a glandular lining. Food is largely digested there and leaves the stomach in liquid form.

 

Between the stomach and the intestine, ducts enter the digestive tube from the liver and pancreas. The liver is a large, clearly defined organ. The pancreas may be embedded in it, diffused through it, or broken into small parts spread along some of the intestine. The junction between the stomach and the intestine is marked by a muscular valve. Pyloric ceca (blind sacs) occur in some fishes at this junction and have a digestive or absorptive function or both.

 

The intestine itself is quite variable in length, depending upon the fish’s diet. It is short in predacious forms, sometimes no longer than the body cavity, but long in herbivorous forms, being coiled and several times longer than the entire length of the fish in some species of South American catfishes. The intestine is primarily an organ for absorbing nutrients into the bloodstream. The larger its internal surface, the greater its absorptive efficiency, and a spiral valve is one method of increasing its absorption surface.

 

Sharks, rays, chimaeras, lungfishes, surviving chondrosteans, holosteans, and even a few of the more primitive teleosts have a spiral valve or at least traces of it in the intestine. Most modern teleosts have increased the area of the intestinal walls by having numerous folds and villi (fingerlike projections) somewhat like those in humans. Undigested substances are passed to the exterior through the anus in most teleost fishes. In lungfishes, sharks, and rays, it is first passed through the cloaca, a common cavity receiving the intestinal opening and the ducts from the urogenital system.

 

Oxygen and carbon dioxide dissolve in water, and most fishes exchange dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide in water by means of the gills. The gills lie behind and to the side of the mouth cavity and consist of fleshy filaments supported by the gill arches and filled with blood vessels, which give gills a bright red colour. Water taken in continuously through the mouth passes backward between the gill bars and over the gill filaments, where the exchange of gases takes place. The gills are protected by a gill cover in teleosts and many other fishes but by flaps of skin in sharks, rays, and some of the older fossil fish groups. The blood capillaries in the gill filaments are close to the gill surface to take up oxygen from the water and to give up excess carbon dioxide to the water.

 

Most modern fishes have a hydrostatic (ballast) organ, called the swim bladder, that lies in the body cavity just below the kidney and above the stomach and intestine. It originated as a diverticulum of the digestive canal. In advanced teleosts, especially the acanthopterygians, the bladder has lost its connection with the digestive tract, a condition called physoclistic. The connection has been retained (physostomous) by many relatively primitive teleosts. In several unrelated lines of fishes, the bladder has become specialized as a lung or, at least, as a highly vascularized accessory breathing organ. Some fishes with such accessory organs are obligate air breathers and will drown if denied access to the surface, even in well-oxygenated water. Fishes with a hydrostatic form of swim bladder can control their depth by regulating the amount of gas in the bladder. The gas, mostly oxygen, is secreted into the bladder by special glands, rendering the fish more buoyant; the gas is absorbed into the bloodstream by another special organ, reducing the overall buoyancy and allowing the fish to sink. Some deep-sea fishes may have oils, rather than gas, in the bladder. Other deep-sea and some bottom-living forms have much-reduced swim bladders or have lost the organ entirely.

 

The swim bladder of fishes follows the same developmental pattern as the lungs of land vertebrates. There is no doubt that the two structures have the same historical origin in primitive fishes. More or less intermediate forms still survive among the more primitive types of fishes, such as the lungfishes Lepidosiren and Protopterus.

 

The circulatory, or blood vascular, system consists of the heart, the arteries, the capillaries, and the veins. It is in the capillaries that the interchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and other substances such as hormones and waste products takes place. The capillaries lead to the veins, which return the venous blood with its waste products to the heart, kidneys, and gills. There are two kinds of capillary beds: those in the gills and those in the rest of the body. The heart, a folded continuous muscular tube with three or four saclike enlargements, undergoes rhythmic contractions and receives venous blood in a sinus venosus. It passes the blood to an auricle and then into a thick muscular pump, the ventricle. From the ventricle the blood goes to a bulbous structure at the base of a ventral aorta just below the gills. The blood passes to the afferent (receiving) arteries of the gill arches and then to the gill capillaries. There waste gases are given off to the environment, and oxygen is absorbed. The oxygenated blood enters efferent (exuant) arteries of the gill arches and then flows into the dorsal aorta. From there blood is distributed to the tissues and organs of the body. One-way valves prevent backflow. The circulation of fishes thus differs from that of the reptiles, birds, and mammals in that oxygenated blood is not returned to the heart prior to distribution to the other parts of the body.

 

The primary excretory organ in fishes, as in other vertebrates, is the kidney. In fishes some excretion also takes place in the digestive tract, skin, and especially the gills (where ammonia is given off). Compared with land vertebrates, fishes have a special problem in maintaining their internal environment at a constant concentration of water and dissolved substances, such as salts. Proper balance of the internal environment (homeostasis) of a fish is in a great part maintained by the excretory system, especially the kidney.

 

The kidney, gills, and skin play an important role in maintaining a fish’s internal environment and checking the effects of osmosis. Marine fishes live in an environment in which the water around them has a greater concentration of salts than they can have inside their body and still maintain life. Freshwater fishes, on the other hand, live in water with a much lower concentration of salts than they require inside their bodies. Osmosis tends to promote the loss of water from the body of a marine fish and absorption of water by that of a freshwater fish. Mucus in the skin tends to slow the process but is not a sufficient barrier to prevent the movement of fluids through the permeable skin. When solutions on two sides of a permeable membrane have different concentrations of dissolved substances, water will pass through the membrane into the more concentrated solution, while the dissolved chemicals move into the area of lower concentration (diffusion).

 

The kidney of freshwater fishes is often larger in relation to body weight than that of marine fishes. In both groups the kidney excretes wastes from the body, but the kidney of freshwater fishes also excretes large amounts of water, counteracting the water absorbed through the skin. Freshwater fishes tend to lose salt to the environment and must replace it. They get some salt from their food, but the gills and skin inside the mouth actively absorb salt from water passed through the mouth. This absorption is performed by special cells capable of moving salts against the diffusion gradient. Freshwater fishes drink very little water and take in little water with their food.

 

Marine fishes must conserve water, and therefore their kidneys excrete little water. To maintain their water balance, marine fishes drink large quantities of seawater, retaining most of the water and excreting the salt. Most nitrogenous waste in marine fishes appears to be secreted by the gills as ammonia. Marine fishes can excrete salt by clusters of special cells (chloride cells) in the gills.

 

There are several teleosts—for example, the salmon—that travel between fresh water and seawater and must adjust to the reversal of osmotic gradients. They adjust their physiological processes by spending time (often surprisingly little time) in the intermediate brackish environment.

 

Marine hagfishes, sharks, and rays have osmotic concentrations in their blood about equal to that of seawater and so do not have to drink water nor perform much physiological work to maintain their osmotic balance. In sharks and rays the osmotic concentration is kept high by retention of urea in the blood. Freshwater sharks have a lowered concentration of urea in the blood.

 

Endocrine glands secrete their products into the bloodstream and body tissues and, along with the central nervous system, control and regulate many kinds of body functions. Cyclostomes have a well-developed endocrine system, and presumably it was well developed in the early Agnatha, ancestral to modern fishes. Although the endocrine system in fishes is similar to that of higher vertebrates, there are numerous differences in detail. The pituitary, the thyroid, the suprarenals, the adrenals, the pancreatic islets, the sex glands (ovaries and testes), the inner wall of the intestine, and the bodies of the ultimobranchial gland make up the endocrine system in fishes. There are some others whose function is not well understood. These organs regulate sexual activity and reproduction, growth, osmotic pressure, general metabolic activities such as the storage of fat and the utilization of foodstuffs, blood pressure, and certain aspects of skin colour. Many of these activities are also controlled in part by the central nervous system, which works with the endocrine system in maintaining the life of a fish. Some parts of the endocrine system are developmentally, and undoubtedly evolutionarily, derived from the nervous system.

 

As in all vertebrates, the nervous system of fishes is the primary mechanism coordinating body activities, as well as integrating these activities in the appropriate manner with stimuli from the environment. The central nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord, is the primary integrating mechanism. The peripheral nervous system, consisting of nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord to various body organs, carries sensory information from special receptor organs such as the eyes, internal ears, nares (sense of smell), taste glands, and others to the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system also carries information via different nerve cells from the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. This coded information is carried to the various organs and body systems, such as the skeletal muscular system, for appropriate action in response to the original external or internal stimulus. Another branch of the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, helps to coordinate the activities of many glands and organs and is itself closely connected to the integrating centres of the brain.

 

The brain of the fish is divided into several anatomical and functional parts, all closely interconnected but each serving as the primary centre of integrating particular kinds of responses and activities. Several of these centres or parts are primarily associated with one type of sensory perception, such as sight, hearing, or smell (olfaction).

 

The sense of smell is important in almost all fishes. Certain eels with tiny eyes depend mostly on smell for location of food. The olfactory, or nasal, organ of fishes is located on the dorsal surface of the snout. The lining of the nasal organ has special sensory cells that perceive chemicals dissolved in the water, such as substances from food material, and send sensory information to the brain by way of the first cranial nerve. Odour also serves as an alarm system. Many fishes, especially various species of freshwater minnows, react with alarm to a chemical released from the skin of an injured member of their own species.

 

Many fishes have a well-developed sense of taste, and tiny pitlike taste buds or organs are located not only within their mouth cavities but also over their heads and parts of their body. Catfishes, which often have poor vision, have barbels (“whiskers”) that serve as supplementary taste organs, those around the mouth being actively used to search out food on the bottom. Some species of naturally blind cave fishes are especially well supplied with taste buds, which often cover most of their body surface.

 

Sight is extremely important in most fishes. The eye of a fish is basically like that of all other vertebrates, but the eyes of fishes are extremely varied in structure and adaptation. In general, fishes living in dark and dim water habitats have large eyes, unless they have specialized in some compensatory way so that another sense (such as smell) is dominant, in which case the eyes will often be reduced. Fishes living in brightly lighted shallow waters often will have relatively small but efficient eyes. Cyclostomes have somewhat less elaborate eyes than other fishes, with skin stretched over the eyeball perhaps making their vision somewhat less effective. Most fishes have a spherical lens and accommodate their vision to far or near subjects by moving the lens within the eyeball. A few sharks accommodate by changing the shape of the lens, as in land vertebrates. Those fishes that are heavily dependent upon the eyes have especially strong muscles for accommodation. Most fishes see well, despite the restrictions imposed by frequent turbidity of the water and by light refraction.

 

Fossil evidence suggests that colour vision evolved in fishes more than 300 million years ago, but not all living fishes have retained this ability. Experimental evidence indicates that many shallow-water fishes, if not all, have colour vision and see some colours especially well, but some bottom-dwelling shore fishes live in areas where the water is sufficiently deep to filter out most if not all colours, and these fishes apparently never see colours. When tested in shallow water, they apparently are unable to respond to colour differences.

 

Sound perception and balance are intimately associated senses in a fish. The organs of hearing are entirely internal, located within the skull, on each side of the brain and somewhat behind the eyes. Sound waves, especially those of low frequencies, travel readily through water and impinge directly upon the bones and fluids of the head and body, to be transmitted to the hearing organs. Fishes readily respond to sound; for example, a trout conditioned to escape by the approach of fishermen will take flight upon perceiving footsteps on a stream bank even if it cannot see a fisherman. Compared with humans, however, the range of sound frequencies heard by fishes is greatly restricted. Many fishes communicate with each other by producing sounds in their swim bladders, in their throats by rasping their teeth, and in other ways.

 

A fish or other vertebrate seldom has to rely on a single type of sensory information to determine the nature of the environment around it. A catfish uses taste and touch when examining a food object with its oral barbels. Like most other animals, fishes have many touch receptors over their body surface. Pain and temperature receptors also are present in fishes and presumably produce the same kind of information to a fish as to humans. Fishes react in a negative fashion to stimuli that would be painful to human beings, suggesting that they feel a sensation of pain.

 

An important sensory system in fishes that is absent in other vertebrates (except some amphibians) is the lateral line system. This consists of a series of heavily innervated small canals located in the skin and bone around the eyes, along the lower jaw, over the head, and down the mid-side of the body, where it is associated with the scales. Intermittently along these canals are located tiny sensory organs (pit organs) that apparently detect changes in pressure. The system allows a fish to sense changes in water currents and pressure, thereby helping the fish to orient itself to the various changes that occur in the physical environment.

  

The Firehydrant..chapter one..Busted..an excerpt from a story set in 1973/74

After that first court appearance in the Windsor courthouse I was sitting in the back of the paddy wagon being transported along with a few other criminals to the county bucket a five minute or so ride from the courthouse. I was still pretty high, if you look at it from a different perspective, I’d been high for about four or five years. Once, years earlier at the Don Gaol in Toronto, I was serving a four day weekend when these two cool hip looking Yankee dudes asked me what the prices were on the streets for weed and hash, shit like that. They had all the hippie trappings, long hair, hawk like features from looking over their shoulders too often. Briefly I thought maybe they were cops, plants, but they were Americans and had just left the O.R. in Guelph where they knew my buddy Coop de Grasser who was the head of the inmate committee at that time. I knew the difference in body language and voices from that of common pigs, they gave me that term, “we’ve been high for seven years, then we got busted” they had a Cheech and Chong quality about them especially in the eyes, they were crazies too, coming from California I could grasp their earlier introduction to the Herb.

 

Sitting in that wagon, (nic nac paddy whack, paddy wagon gonna take ya back, lock ya up and thro away the keys) handcuffed to some murderer or child molester, it just didn’t feel right, or seem right. I was not in the same criminal category as “those” criminals. They were bad, I just sold recreational drugs, which made people happy. I looked out the unmarked vans wired windows at some familiar sights. There was the Ambassador Bridge the Hippies at school had marched on the year before protesting for an end to the war in Vietnam while the Simon and Garfunkel song A Bridge Over Troubled Water played over loudspeakers. It was the same bridge Pete Kalci and self used to score the Hookers, buy the case of Ripple Wine, cross over to attend the Ravi Shankar and Traffic concerts. The very same bridge that took you to Ann Arbour and all the hip people living near those Michigan campuses. I was feeling greasy, very dirty, sweat was stinking up my armpits, my new blue leisure jacket was all wrinkled from being used as a pillow in the police station cell the night before where I once again carved the initials CTuna into the institutional paint.

 

Prison is a very sobering experience. That morning in the courtroom a man in his thirties, a violent robber, he threatened the people he robbed, gave them a smack with a gun to get their attention, you’d think this guy was rock solid, wouldn’t crack, no matter what. He started to ball when they gave him eight years in Federal Penitentiary, His lawyer had pleaded for leniency as he had a wife and a new baby on the way. You could tell the judge wasn’t swayed by this plea bargaining, he had to protect society from this monster repeat offender. Downstairs in the dungeon like remand cells I stayed away from him he was so emotionally distraught he might of lashed out at me.

 

You don’t get to pick your company in jail. At the county prison where I would be held for six weeks waiting for my trial and sentencing I was put through the usual routines, fingerprinted, again as I had already been fingerprinted at the police station the night before when I was arrested. At the county jail your clothes are taken from you and put in a bag with your name on them. The intake officer instructs you to have a shower in this big stall that was doorless. Afterwards you are instructed to stand there while a another officer sprays you for lice with a pressure mister that resembles a brass plant and weed sprayer similar to one you would use in your garden to kill bugs. All loose things like lighters, smokes, pills, cough candies, change, had been put into a manila envelope with your name on it at the police station downtown. This included my teacher/friends Don and Carol’s car keys to their car which I had parked on one of the upper floors at the Toronto Airport before taking the flight to Windsor. The paddy wagon driver another pink faced anglo saxon refugee handed that manila envelope over to the guard on duty when we arrived through the heavy steel gates and through a small brick lined tunnel into the courtyard of the very old county jail, the steel gates clanked shut automatically.

 

The desk guard had each of us answer some rudimentary questions, sex, race, age, education, religion, he looked startled and upset when he heard I was Taoist (pronounced Daoist). This was my spiritual flavour of the month, a Chinese faith based on the worship of Nature.

 

My bed for the next six weeks was located on the second tier of the three tiered old thick stone building built I would think in the last century. On this tier there were three other wards each ward holding a dozen cages/cells/cribs, each cell comprised of a steel bed a dull once stainless steel washbasin and a similar steel toilet without a seat, a piece of four inch square stainless steel was mounted above the sink, the mirror. The tier was designed to allow a single guard to patrol all four wards on the floor from the command centre located in the centre of the unit. There were always two guards on each floor one in the booth, the other always roaming. A roll of toilet paper had been issued to me as well as a cheap toothbrush and some tooth powder a threadbare facecloth and a towel big enough to dry your face and hands. A twenty five watt bulb glowed in the ceiling above, it would be on from six in the morning, till lights out at ten.

 

Home Sweet Home. My roommates were of various criminal backgrounds, there was a tall skinny biker with greasy yellow hair like the kind a worker at a wrecking yard might have, he was in for rape, his partner slept in the next set of cells, a portly unshaven fellow possibly related to a black bear or Kentucky mountain person, he was also in for rape, the two of them belonged to the Loners M.C, the local biker club. Next to me in the adjoining cell was a guy named Bill Hoskins who was quiet, had a scared look on his face, hadn’t shaved in a while, slightly receding, looked a bit like Garth Hudson of the Band, he was in on a smuggling marijuana charge and was not pleased with his circumstances. Little Mikey was the ward comic, shit disturber, go between, who was the one who bridged social classes and intermingled with all types, a chatterbox. There were a few quiet chaps and there was a young likeable guy all tattooed with crudely tattooed LOVE and HATE on his knuckles who it seemed had spent most of his young life in jail. He was just hoping to get sent to a prison in the area The Burtch Institution, he spoke of Burtch the way we would usually talk about home. Besides this motley crew there was one guy who everyone liked, I don’t recall his name, it might have been Jim he was coming down from using junk, he was dark haired and sort of reminded me of the Veteres from my youth, my neighbourhood Mt.Dennis, this Jim, he was street wise, quick to talk, he’d been around for his young twenty something age.

 

In very quick fashion a new person is sized up by the powers on the ward of any prison in any country, and it isn’t very long before the new prisoners place in the prison pack is established. For some reason my popularity irritated the power and after a few days I was asked to give the bad guys smokes while we were out in the small yard strolling around getting fresh air, I gave this some thought and passed out a few TMs as tailor made cigarettes were called but not without some resistance, the bikers weren’t very pleased to have a smart ass comparatively wealthy guy like myself around who might wrestle the minds of the weaker members of the pack from them.

 

As usual I became quite popular, my ability to tell stories and write stories about the fabled life in Toronto, the apartment building full of drugs (Rochdale) had every ones eyes bulging out. By this time two black brothers from Detroit were in the same ward with a minor infraction, they passed themselves off as bona fide black 'gangstas', I bought their story, they needed a connection to some crystal meth in TO and I turned them on to a pair of bikers who were living in the west end and whom I thought might appreciate the referral. As it was I had a list of phone numbers hidden in my shoes under the lining which along with some of my street clothes I was allowed to wear after they had been fumigated and cleaned since I was on remand and not yet officially a ward of the government. The black guys got bail fast, I never saw them again. Later in life the guys I referred them to paid me a visit as I worked the day shift at the Queensbury Arms, they weren’t pleased with my introduction. It could have been curtains for me, had I not been able to think on my feet. They thought the black guys may have been cops..

 

There was a crooked screw (guard) on the floor who for a price would smuggle in drugs and other contraband for those who had money and cravings. His name was Sidney and he was very tight with the diverse criminal element. In every prison man ever created there have been bent guards. Up to this time in life I had only known the soft side of Windsor, the niceties of the University scene, this was a much different perspective as the other folk I was now incarcerated with thought this situation as one of their schools of higher learning, a step in the ladder of criminality.

 

To help make time pass we played cards at the larger than picnic table sized metal tables that were bolted to the floor along with metal benches that were also bolted I suppose so no one would use them to hit each other with. A box shaped colour TV set sat in one corner of the ward. It was hung on one of those hospital style adjustable mounts and it was only put on at certain times, in the evenings from 7 to 10 or a bit later if something that was important was being shown. On weekends that TV might be on all day, starting with cartoons in the morning, which I recall quite a few of the people enjoying, then sports, and then hockey at night. There wasn’t much to do on weekends everybody’s routines ground to a halt.

 

The news story of the day was Richard Nixon’s impeachment from office. The previous year it seemed as if I had lost touch with events in the world. On reflection it may have been a lack of interest in the news that television and other media fed you. Lacking very many options at this time I began to join the herd and watched and laughed at All in The Family. The dreaded hockey games were on Saturday nights. Hockey is a Canadian staple and there were fierce conversations about various teams. Being so close to Detroit made for a lively rivalry, there weren’t as many teams in the league, it was an easier sport to appreciate.

 

Besides these time fillers I wrote pages and pages of short stories, some lyrical, like poems or songs. One in particular was a rhyming story about a “Gypsy Caravan” that parked under the full moon and where my lost love wept for me as I’d been sent to war. There were numerous verses and choruses, it was in my eyes a grand work. Several of the inmates would gather around the table as I would recite these stories, I recall Jim the Junkie giving the story his blessing and that was quite important for me as his sense of beauty and appreciation was different than the others. The other prisoners on remand held him in awe for some reason, he was like a Robin Hood type, a criminal All Star born and raised in Windsor. He got out on bail and a short while later word filtered back that he had died of an overdose of heroin and I always felt good that I had painted this nice scene for him of gypsies and love along a riverbank in golden days, like a Van Morrison lyric and his praise still ranks with the praise of others given me over the years.

 

Perhaps that is where my new nickname came from, that story about the gypsies. Around then someone tagged me with the title ‘Gypsy’ and it stuck right through my prison life. It took a while at first to get used to the new title, after all, nicknames were nothing new to me, as a kid I had been called Brooks by Bud Walford after Brooks Robinson the ballplayer with the Baltimore Orioles, Barb Sue Kevin and Shane often called me Weaver “Hey Weave” when we were younger playing cards on Victoria Blvd, then early on I used to carve my initials into the poured concrete sidewalks all over our area called Mount Dinky. C Tuna I would carve, using a stick or a piece of rock. Around this time there was a cartoon character called Charlie Tuna who was seen in tv advertisements for the Starkist Tuna company, there was a jingle with the ads and the ads were based on the premise that only the finest Tunas were good enough for Starkist customers and old Charlie a suave, Jackie Gleason type of Tuna with slicked back hair was always thrown back in to the sea. C Tuna was scraped also in the odd prison cell of Toronto’s #12, #31 and #52 Divisions as well as the gritty Don Gaol and now Windsor. One time, in Toronto I woke up from a drunken stupor and a police man at the #52 Divison asked me, “are you Charles Gregory aka C Tuna?” I replied I was, and was curtly charged with being drunk in a public place. I went back to sleep and was released in the morning, I couldn’t have been much more than sixteen.

 

My long relationship with the drink started around fifteen or so. While hanging out at Nick’s Pool Hall on Weston Road near Eglinton I met guys who were a bit older and liked to drink, especially on the weekends. An older guy named Bud a good pool player would go to the beer store and buy us a box of beer, I had developed a taste for it. Today, when I reflect on this behavior I have difficulty in recalling why I drank so much to the point often of blacking out as the consumption of beer became mixed with that of hard alcohol, whiskey, scotch etcetera. A common Saturday night would find me drinking a dozen beers with a mickey of Johnny Walker red as a chaser. At one time, I had been arrested six weekends in a row for drinking under age, drinking in a public place, drunk and disorderly…My mom was fed up bailing me out on Sunday mornings at the local police holding cells, located in the police stations, 31 division and 12 division. The fine for such behavior was usually $25 or $35 dollars or three days in jail. Not once do I recall anyone saying, this boy needs counseling. I may have been such a ‘tough nut’ that they felt it would have been a waste of time.

 

My friend George Holmes loved shouting out “here comes Tuna Fish” up at the corner of Keele and Eglinton during my greaseball period. This period took place between frat days and hippy days. Around town in my greaseball days that name C Tuna was recognizable up in the Junction, over on St Clair at Blackthorn and as well at Lansdowne and St Clair, also farther west towards Jane and Wilson and in Weston proper. I suppose the greasers up at Dufferin and Eglinton like Kenny Tanaka and Danny MacDonald had also known my AKA. It wasn’t that I was a prize fighter or anything a moniker was more a Title like that of a knight or a duke, sort of a right of passing, like a coming of age. Lots of guys had nick names just like the TV gangsters of the day, or the good guy bad guys in cowboy films. Names that quickly come to mind are, Hook, Coop de Grassser, Gooch, Scarecrow, Mars, Jake the Snake, Crazy Ivan, Fat Jack Hamilton, Mod, Vern the Tern, Dump, Butler, The Kid, Toot, Count, one guy, my friend Dave Wellwood had several nick names, The Goat, News, The General, Pee Wee and on and on.

 

Chassly Gangbusters was a favourite of the Hook and Coop years, Herbie used to like calling me Storch it was his invention he’d say it ‘Storch’ then back off a few steps in case I’d give him a smack, I always gave him a nasty sneer when he called me that. Charlie, Chuck, Chas, but almost never Charles. My name comes from a friend of my dads, Charles Bishop who died in the second war. Lately Schmiddy has been calling me the Kaliph of Keene which I really like. In the tradition of moms father Leon Yamel, actually Noel Lemay I’ve often tagged myself as Selrahc Yrogerg, this dates back to my saying words backwards while I waited to get on the field at the Smythe Park baseball league.

 

After a few days in the ward I could almost feel the drugs leaving my system and after two or three weeks I’d never been so clean, voluntarily. Even when I had the Hepatitis at Rochdale earlier that winter I was toking the finest hash and bud available. I must admit there was a new clarity to my mental comprehension, I could not adjust myself with other substances, alcohol included.

 

The food was awful, repetitive, I smoked like a chimney, there was a few hundred dollars in my pocket when I was picked up, I don’t recall the figure exactly. These funds in prison buy a lot of tobacco! To keep the peace I gave out as many smokes as required to avoid the bad guys wanting to shank me. We played cards night and day to pass the time, if anything I can remember that in particular, the time passing real slowly. That’s what more seasoned guys were saying that once you got where you were going, once you were sentenced you would find that your days took on structure and time was easier to do. This kind of time, waiting to be sentenced is called Dead Time and rightly so.

 

Michael Snyder the lawyer supplied free via the government legal aid program was a little lame in court during my first appearance. I took him aside and chewed him out. I wrote a letter to the court system, maybe the judge or the Attorney Generals Office, I’m not sure. The crooked screw Sidney read the letter and informed the lawyer of my dissatisfaction this got his attention and he did a fine job afterwards. I wonder if that letter ever made it out of that place.

 

Bill Hoskins as it turns out was in for a serious smuggling rap that he was not telling any of us about. He was on a sailing boat that had come up from the Bahamas area loaded with marijuana. The pot was hidden in false walls built into the customized ship, tons and tons of gange. As advisory counsel for my defense he nixed my hand written ten page dialogue about my historical accounting of the events leading up to my arrest, from the dysfunctional family situation with big Al at home which I used as my starting point in the dialogue, nixed the U.I.C. appeals process where I was cut off pogey for quitting my position without proper reason, nixed it all. He said to get a bunch of people to write letters who could speak for your good side, which in point of fact wasn’t so long ago, just the previous year I was bringing the teachers apples and cleaning the chalk off of the blackboards.

 

Turns out Sidney the crooked guard did me a favour by reading the mail that I had addressed to the law society and others regarding my lawyers lameness. When the lawyer caught wind of this he rushed in to appease me. Three weeks in the bucket passed and I was anxious to get on with things, when asked how I wished to plead it was a no brainer, I pled guilty. In court the judge found me guilty of all the charges, trafficking in narcotics, marijuana, hashish, peyote, acid, there was no blow left and I guess they didn’t bother to analyze the salt like crystal meth, there wasn’t much of it. I sat in the dock, again resolved, resolved not to break down and cry when sentenced like that other guy had done. I had to wait three more weeks for sentencing as the judge had asked for a pre-sentence report, which is like a record of your life, the details of your life, your failures and your successes if any. I recall finding this worrisome, although in my mind, having recently attended university under trying (at home) circumstances as a mature student, I felt I was on the right track, just jumped off the track momentarily.

 

That morning back in the court holding cells this big young Coloured man, I repeat, this was a big, strong athletic mean and angry twenty year old who wore those thick soled, tan coloured boots that motorcycle riders wore in the day, Fry Boots was their name. A diddler, a full grown twenty something farm kid from the sticks had just been returned to the holding cells in the basement of the court house, he walked with his head down, ashamed and afraid at the same time. As if in a movie the cell area was dimly lit an invitation for terror.

 

The farm kid went into a cell at the back of the block, none of the cell doors were locked. In court it came out that a couple of young girls had been molested the day before, quite young, under ten or so. You know how they say the jail system has its own way of getting folk, well this kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That big negro boy took his hatred out on that boy, he went into that cell and put the boots to the farm kids face, his gut, his balls, his legs, you name it, he got hit real hard. Nobody, no prisoner, no guard interfered I just watched stunned, I didn’t try to break it up, I just watched in my own kind of terror, that’s the way it can be in prison for diddlers they get no mercy, they are garbage. The guards very slowly came and broke it up, put the diddler in a solitary area, by this time his assailant had left the cell, he just brushed pass us all, me the other prisoners, the guards and took a seat in a cell holding his head in his hands, the screws never even bothered to ask what had happened, then we all went to the jailhouse in the paddy wagon, the diddler got separate transportation. Funny, I never saw that black guy again, he may have gone up to court and been given bail.

 

At the county bucket they put the diddler in a cell on my ward. That night we got him there as well but in a different way. Myself and others made a mixture of shit and piss, cold tea, spit and saliva, toilet water any vile substance we could find and poured it all over him as he lay in a back corner of the ward, not saying a word, afraid for his life, afraid to say anything, I mean we really humiliated him, I was a big part of this humiliation, this hazing, it was worse than a military blackballing. I’d been involved as a recipient in a mild fraternity hazing, I suppose that is where I got the idea. Over the years I’ve had a lot of remorse about this event but I still hold that this punishment, this prison tar and feathering was better than him losing his life, his balls or an eye or an ear.

 

They moved the big scared blonde haired blue eyed farm boy diddler from the ward that night put him into solitary confinement. In the visiting room the next day Frankie Herbert’s dad Frank Sr. came to visit, my first visit in nearly a month. Mr. Herbert worked as a travelling salesman for a big novelty company, he toured Ontario selling kitschy stuff like bingo markers, and roulette wheels and all sorts of things fundraising organizations use in their work and that large corporate stores stocked. At the same time Frank Sr. was visiting the diddler was visiting his dad, telling his dad through his pulverized face that I was one of his enemies, one of the perpetrators of his black eyes and bruises. That diddler, he don’t know how close he come to dying in that cell downtown. Frank Sr. he just looked at this farm kid with the shiners, looked at me, Frank Sr. he knew what the score was, he just shook his head, my father figure, surrogate dad visiting his son in gaol. Years earlier, Mr. Herbert had put up bail for me when the RCMP had placed a bag of pot in our groups car (actually a stretch Cadillac limo) as we tried to enter the Rockwood Festival. We had heard via the radio that everyone was getting busted that heading to the concert so we had stopped and stashed our goods in the woods, a ways from the entrance. The other five people were given bail but I was refused because of a previous minor offence. The charges were all thrown out in court later. I told the RCMP, this guy last name of Ryan, that if I saw him on the streets, I would kick the shit of him!

 

A couple of university school chums paid a visit one day after I had been sentenced, Tim, a bright musician type from the university showed up with my old baked and breaded sardine dinner girlfriend, Mary Lewis. That was kind of them to show up at that depressing place, it was the last time I ever saw or heard from them except when I contacted Mary Lewis and she sent me a year book from the university. A book I looked at maybe twice then mysteriously wrapped in several windings of masking tape for thirty years and hid in a milk crate with several old photo albums on top, securing its hiding place, was that my soul in that book? Who was that guy?

 

Bill the Smuggler had a birthday card sent in from someone on the outside, in the card, on the nose of the clown they had poured some liquid LSD and Bill did some, offered me a taste, I declined, felt the surroundings not conducive to a good trip. Bill laid some on the bikers to secure their loyalty. Now here you have these three or four biker types running around all looney, higher than kites, grooving to the little AM radio playing in the corner, digging the tunes, staring at hallucinations only they could see. In a way it was like the lawyer in Easy Rider getting turned on, except these were bad guys, getting all soft and mushy, I stayed in my crib that night until the party settled down. I think I was scared the bikers might be able (through the power of acid) be able to see my true feelings for them. Like many a night I read to sleep. Dostoyevsky offered imaginable experiences to escape to.

 

Next day in the yard the bikers were hovering together, conspiring, they were good at that, at joining forces, intimidation by numbers. At some point this middle aged black inmate took an epileptic fit, started shaking all over, fell to the ground, I thought he had been shot, the guards blew their stupid whistles they thought someone had beaten the guy up. We all had to stand at attention while the screws came and took the fellow away on a stretcher. It was a cool forty five degree F morning, the sun was shining. The heavy grey cloth winter coats we’d been issued had to be turned in when we went back inside, it felt so good being out in the yard, the fresh air, the bit of Spring green showing on the small lawn. Another inmate pointed out where they used to do the hangings, there remained a shuttered doorway a few levels up I was also shown where they used to bury the bodies they had hung, this was becoming a real adult experience.

 

Universal Studios Florida is a theme park located in Orlando, Florida. Opened on June 7, 1990, the park's theme is the entertainment industry, in particular movies and television. Universal Studios Florida inspires its guests to "ride the movies", and it features numerous attractions and live shows. The park is one component of the larger Universal Orlando Resort.

 

In 2013, the park hosted an estimated 7.06 million guests, ranking it the eighth-most visited theme park in the United States, and ranking it sixteenth worldwide.[2]

  

Contents [hide]

1 History 1.1 Park history

1.2 Branding

1.3 Timeline

1.4 Previous attractions

 

2 Park design 2.1 Production Central

2.2 New York

2.3 San Francisco

2.4 London/Diagon Alley

2.5 World Expo

2.6 Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone

2.7 Hollywood

 

3 Character appearances

4 Production facilities

5 Annual events 5.1 Grad Bash and Gradventure

5.2 Halloween Horror Nights

5.3 Macy's Holiday Parade

5.4 Mardi Gras

5.5 Rock the Universe

5.6 Summer Concert Series

 

6 Universal's Express Pass

7 Attendance

8 See also

9 References

10 External links

  

History[edit]

  

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010)

     

The original entrance to the theme park.

Over the years, Universal Studios Florida has not limited itself to attractions based on its own vast film library. It has occasionally licensed popular characters from other rival studios, many of whom did not operate theme parks themselves. Some examples include Ghostbusters and Men in Black, (Sony's Columbia Pictures), The Simpsons (20th Century Fox) and Shrek (DreamWorks Animation).

 

Many of the park's past and present attractions were developed with the actual creators of the films they were based on, and feature the original stars as part of the experience. Steven Spielberg helped create E.T. Adventure and was a creative consultant for Back to the Future: The Ride, Twister...Ride it Out, An American Tail Theatre, Jaws, Men in Black: Alien Attack and Transformers: The Ride.

 

In many current rides, the original stars reprised their film roles including: Rip Torn and Will Smith in Men in Black: Alien Attack, Brendan Fraser for Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in Twister...Ride it Out, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton reprised their roles for Terminator 2: 3-D Battle Across Time, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow for Shrek 4D, Steve Carell, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, and Elsie Fisher reprised their roles from Despicable Me for Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, and Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprised their roles as Optimus Prime and Megatron for Transformers: The Ride.

 

In many former rides, the many original stars were also to reprise their film roles such as: Christopher Lloyd and Thomas F. Wilson in Back to the Future: The Ride, Roy Scheider recorded a voice over for the conclusion of Jaws, Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins appeared in Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies, additionally, various Nicktoon voice actors reprised their roles in Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast.

 

Park history[edit]

 

From its inception in 1982,[3] Universal Studios Florida was designed as a theme park and a working studio. It was also the first time that Universal Studios had constructed an amusement park "from the ground up." However, the proposed project was put on hold until 1986, when a meeting between Steven Spielberg, a co-founder for the park, and Peter N. Alexander prompted for the creation of a Back to the Future simulator ride in addition to the already planned King Kong based ride.[4]

 

A major component of the original park in Hollywood is its studio tour, which featured several special-effects exhibits and encounters built into the tour, such as an attack by the great white shark from the film Jaws. For its Florida park, Universal Studios took the concepts of the Hollywood tour scenes and developed them into larger, stand-alone attractions. As an example, in Hollywood, the studio tour trams travel close to a shoreline and are "attacked" by Jaws before they travel to the next part of the tour. In Florida, guests entered the "Jaws" attraction and would board a boat touring the fictitious Amity Harbor, where they encountered the shark, then exited back into the park at the conclusion of the attraction. Universal Studios Florida originally had a Studio Tour attraction that visited the production facilities, but that tour has since been discontinued.

 

Branding[edit]

 

Previous slogans for Universal Studios Florida were: See the Stars. Ride the Movies. (1990 - 1998); No one makes believe like we do! (1990 - 1998); Ride the Movies (1998 - 2008); Jump into the Action (2008–2012). The current slogan is: Experience the Movies (2012–present).

 

Timeline[edit]

1986: Land clearing takes place on the swamp land purchased by MCA/Universal that would hold the park.

1987: Universal Studios Florida is announced at a press conference on the Hollywood property, with a planned opening date of December 1989.

1988: Universal Studios Florida's opening date is delayed from December, 1989 to May 1, 1990. Shortly following, MCA/Universal releases a video detailing the future park, which stars Christopher Lloyd as the Universal character Doc Brown interacting with the various attractions at the Florida park.[5] Universal Studios allows guests to witness the production of television shows and motion pictures in the Florida park's soundstages in middle 1988, while the rest of the studio/park is still under construction.[6]

1989: MCA/Universal Studios claims that The Walt Disney Company and its CEO, Michael Eisner copied several concepts of the Universal Studios Florida park, and integrated them into Disney's recently opened Disney/MGM Studios park.[7]

1990: On January 31, Universal Studios Florida's opening date is again delayed from May 1, 1990 to June 7, 1990.[8] Universal Studios Florida begins soft openings for the general public in late May.[9] Many of the park's attractions are not yet open at the time, and still under testing. Universal Studios Florida is officially opened with a grand opening style ceremony on June 7.[10] The park opens with five themed areas: The Front Lot (entrance area), Production Central, New York, San Francisco/Amity, Expo Center, Hollywood as well as a Lagoon located in the center of the park. The Front Lot and Production Central areas are referred to as "In Production", the New York section is referred to as "Now Shooting", the San Francisco and Amity sections are referred to as "On Location" and the Expo Center area is referred to as "The World of CineMagic Center". Nickelodeon Studios also opened on this day where there was a grand opening ceremony hosted by Marc Summers. Due to massive technical problems with the original Kongfrontation, Earthquake: The Big One and Jaws rides, Universal begins a temporary voucher service to allow guests to re-visit the studio/park when the attractions are operating.[10] Jaws is temporarily closed by Universal on September 30 due to persistent major technical problems. During the shut-down, Universal sues the original designer of the Jaws ride,[11] Ride & Show Engineering, and hires Totally Fun Company to create a re-designed version of most of the ride.

1991: Universal adds four new attractions to the park: The Blues Brothers Show, StreetBusters, The Screen Test Home Video Adventure and How to Make a Mega Movie Deal.[12] Back to the Future: The Ride officially opens in the World Expo Center area of the park, in a grand opening ceremony.[13] The ride is considered to be a success, and receives positive reception from theme park critics.[14] Fright Nights debuts at the park. In 1992, it is renamed to Halloween Horror Nights.

1993: Jaws is re-opened, with many scenes altered. MCA/Universal announces plans to expand Universal Studios Florida into the Universal City, Florida resort complex, including a second theme park and multiple hotels.[15]

1995: Universal Studios Florida celebrates its 5th anniversary. A Day in the Park with Barney opens in the World Expo area. The Production Studio Tour is closed due to a dwindle in the studios' recent Film/TV production.

1996: Terminator 2: 3-D Battle Across Time opens in the Hollywood area.[16]

1997: Universal announces that Ghostbusters Spooktacular will be replaced by Twister...Ride it Out, with a planned opening date of Spring 1998[17] Universal Studios announces that the sole Studio park will be expanded into the Universal Studios Escape, including the Islands of Adventure park, Universal CityWalk Orlando and multiple hotels. The Islands of Adventure Preview Center opens in the New York area, replacing The Screen Test Home Video Adventure. It is meant to give guests a preview of the up-coming Islands of Adventure park, as well as expansion of the Studio park into the Universal Studios Escape resort.

1998: The expansion begins as the original open parking lot for Universal Studios Florida is demolished and replaced by CityWalk and a parking garage complex.[18] Universal delays the opening of Twister...Ride it Out from March, 1998 to May 4, 1998 out of respect for the 42 deaths caused by a recent El Nino outbreak of tornadoes in the central Florida area. Twister...Ride it Out opens in the New York area, replacing Ghostbusters Spooktacular.[19] A new area of the park, Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone, is officially opened, holding the attractions Curious George Goes to Town, StarToons and the previously opened Fievel's Playland, E.T. Adventure, Animal Actors Stage and A Day in the Park with Barney; CityWalk opens outside of the park.

1999: Woody Woodpecker's Nuthouse Coaster opens in the Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone area. Islands of Adventure opens next door to Universal Studios Florida.[20]

2000: Men in Black: Alien Attack opens in the World Expo area, on the former site of The Swamp Thing Set. Universal Studios Florida's 10th anniversary celebration.

2001: Animal Planet Live opens, replacing Animal Actors Stage.

2002: Universal Studios Escape is renamed Universal Orlando Resort. Kongfrontation closes in a closing ceremony. Halloween Horror Nights is moved to Islands of Adventure. Macy's Holiday Parade debuts at the park.

2003: Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast opens, replacing The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera.[21] Shrek 4-D opens with Donkey's Photo Finish, replacing Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies and Stage 54 respectively.[22]

2004: Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride opens, replacing Kongfrontation.[23] Halloween Horror Nights takes place in both Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure.

2005: Universal Express Plus is introduced, replacing Universal Express. Nickelodeon Studios closes after nearly 15 years. Fear Factor Live opens, replacing The Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show. Universal Studios Florida celebrates its 15th anniversary.

2006: Delancey Street Preview Center opens in the New York area. Universal 360: A Cinesphere Spectacular opens, replacing Dynamite Nights Stunt Spectacular. Animal Planet Live is closed, and replaced by Animal Actors on Location. Halloween Horror Nights returns to Universal Studios Florida for its "Sweet 16".

2007: Back to the Future: The Ride closes on March 30.[24] Blue Man Group Sharp Aquos Theatre opens in CityWalk, replacing Nickelodeon Studios. Earthquake: The Big One closes in the San Francisco area on November 5.

2008: Disaster!: A Major Motion Picture Ride...Starring You! opens, replacing Earthquake: The Big One.[25] Universal announces Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, with a planned opening of Spring 2009. The Simpsons Ride opens, replacing Back to the Future: The Ride.[26]

2009: The Universal Music Plaza Stage opens, replacing The Boneyard. Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit opens.

2010: The 20th anniversary of Universal Studios Florida in June, as well as Halloween Horror Nights in October.

2011: The 10th anniversary of Macy's Holiday Parade at the park.[27]

2012: Jaws and the surrounding Amity themed area closes, as announced on December 2, 2011.[28] Universal announces the additions of Universal’s Cinematic Spectacular: 100 Years of Movie Memories and Universal's Superstar Parade to the park, with openings on May 8, 2012.[29] Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, opens replacing Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast; as announced on March 14, 2011 as "...one of many exciting things planned for the next couple of years".[30] Universal Orlando Resort announced Transformers: The Ride will officially open in the summer of 2013, replacing Soundstages 44 and 54, which were demolished on June 24, 2012.[31] SpongeBob StorePants,a gift shop themed after SpongeBob SquarePants opened in Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone replacing the Universal Cartoon Store

2013: The opening date for Transformers The Ride is announced for June 20, 2013. Details of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter expansion are officially announced. Details for the new Simpsons Land are announced and expected to open in the summer of 2013. Transformers: The Ride officially opens in the Production Central area replacing Soundstage 44. Simpsons Fast Food Boulevard (renamed Springfield U.S.A.) concludes its expansion as it includes one new ride: Kang and Kodos Twirl 'n' Hurl.

2014: The opening date for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Diagon Alley is announced for July 8, 2014 amid the Diagon Alley preview red carpet premiere on June 18, 2014 with Domhnall Gleeson, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis, James and Oliver Phelps, Tom Felton, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis and Helena Bonham Carter attending the premiere. King's Cross station opens on July 1, 2014 as well as the Hogwarts Express Hogsmeade station at Universal's Islands of Adventure, connecting park visitors to both theme Harry Potter theme parks via a full scale replica of the train that appears in the Harry Potter film series. Diagon Alley officially opens, replacing Jaws and the Amity section of the park.

 

Previous attractions[edit]

 

Main article: List of former Universal Studios Florida attractions

     

The previous icon of the Jaws ride is still a popular photo spot.

Like all theme parks, attractions are sometimes closed due to aging and replaced with more contemporary attractions. Universal has seen this happen several times. Some notable closures include Kongfrontation, Back to the Future: The Ride, The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera and Jaws. The closures of Kongfrontation, Back to the Future, and Jaws have been given homages by the park to honor veteran visitors who revered the former rides.

 

Park design[edit]

 

Main article: List of Universal Studios Florida attractions

 

Universal Studios Florida features seven themed areas all situated around a large lagoon. In 2012, this lagoon was the site of Universal’s Cinematic Spectacular: 100 Years of Movie Memories, a thematic display that showcased scenes from various Universal films, featuring lasers, projectors and fountains, and pyrotechnics.

 

The seven surrounding themed areas, clockwise from the entrance, are Production Central, New York, San Francisco, London/Diagon Alley, World Expo, Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone and Hollywood. Each area features a combination of rides, shows, attractions, character appearances, dining outlets and merchandise stores. A new area, based on Harry Potter's Diagon Alley was added to the park in the July of 2014.

 

Production Central[edit]

  

Ride

 

Year opened

 

Manufacturer

  

Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem 2012 Intamin

Shrek 4-D 2003 PDI/DreamWorks

Hollywood Rip, Ride, Rockit 2009 Maurer Söhne

Transformers: The Ride 3D 2013 Oceaneering International

The Universal Music Plaza Stage 2009

  

The area is also home to a variety of dining outlets and merchandise shops. Food and beverage items can be purchased from Beverly Hills Boulangerie or Universal Studios' Classic Monsters Cafe while merchandise can be bought from a variety of themed stores including Universal Studios Store, Studio Sweets, It's a Wrap!, Super Silly Stuff, Shrek's Ye Olde Souvenir Shoppe, and Transformers: Supply Vault.[32][33]

 

Attila Kapitany's Open Garden.

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The garden features an extraordinary collection of architectural agaves, aloes and yuccas amid colourful ground-covering succulents and Australian bottle trees in a series of terraced garden rooms..

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Established progressively over the past 14 years on a 0.4 hectare house block, the garden is enclosed by a boundary hedge of conifers and opens out to a view of a large ornamental lake..

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Attila and Michele Kapitany have adapted their gardening and planting strategies over the years to deal with the difficult challenges of a sloping site and nutrient deficient soils. The result has been a garden entirely devoted towards a diverse range of water-wise plants such as succulents, native trees and shrubs, flaxes and grasses. Incredibly, most of the 10,000-odd plants in the garden have been grown from seeds or cuttings raised by Attila and Michele.

The Designer Spotlight™ series features the unique design aesthetics of Mattel's most talented doll artists. Heather Fonseca created the second doll in the series and her love of art history is reflected in the elegance and classicism of this orginal design. Barbie® wears an elegant floor length black gown that closes in the back with small snaps. The fitted bodice is made of black faille, trimmed with black velvet ribbon. That same ribbon is used as shoulder straps for the gown. The top skirt is made of black panne velvet with multiple bustles on the right side, creating a flowing and full effect. This top skirt is longer in the back, forming a subtle train. The top skirt is split in the front at the waistline to reveal a black and off-white foile print taffeta underskirt. Accessories include black spiked pumps, long stretch charmeuse gloves in natural white, and a black ribbon choker necklace tied in a small bow in front, accented with a delicate silver rhinestone.

Today's airbrushed style pinup photo features Melissa in this salute to the WW2 Jeep! Answering a call from the US Army for automobile makers to replace the ageing WW1 vehicles in the face of the upcoming WW2 conflict, two different companies jumped into process. Only 11 days later, bids were received by Willys-Overland Motors, American Bantam, and eventually the Ford Motor Company. Bantam won the contract, but couldn't sustain production need for war and as such Willys and Ford were given the blueprints to develop and improve upon Bantam's design. Each company made their own version of the Bantam design in 1941 and began to produce their own models (Willys making the 'MA': 'M'ilitary model 'A' and Ford making the 'GP': 'G'eneral 'P'urpose). In mid-1941 the government decided to select one of the companies to produce their vehicle in order to standardize production. Willys won the contract after improving upon the earlier model and incorporating the best parts of the Bantam and Ford designs. The resulting vehicle was called the 'MB' (Military model B). When Willys couldn't keep up with the demand, Ford was asked to help produce the MBs which were then called GPW (General Purpose Willys). Willys produced over 360,000 MBs and ford produced over 280,000 GPWs. The Jeep would go on to be one of the most iconic vehicles of all time with post-war versions of the military Jeep being produced into the 1960s. You can still see some designs of the original Jeep in many of the current Jeep company models.

 

Did you know you can order many of the pinups you see posted on here? Check out the Dietz Dolls online store where you can find military pinups, classic pinups, the propaganda pinup poster series, and lots more in sizes ranging from 8x10 prints to 24x36 posters! www.dietzdolls.com/catalog

 

Model: Melissa

Photographer: Britt Dietz

Online Pinup Print and Poster Store: www.dietzdolls.com/catalog

© Dietz Dolls Vintage Pinup Photography: www.dietzdolls.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/vintagepinups/

Facebook Fan Page: www.facebook.com/DietzPinupPhotography

This owl features a striking, silhouetted owl sitting on a tree branch in front of the shimmering moon – painted in glow-in-the-dark paint. The irises of the owl’s eyes – created using broken, red, reflector lights, in a mosaic style, also glow in the dark, making this a luminously lovely Midnight Owl.

 

Artist: Jayne Deeley

Jayne Deeley, a Staffordshire based artist, was creative from an early age and this has continued to the present day. She studied HND 3D Design and it was during this time that she discovered new materials to work with and techniques to create Art and Craft works – skills that she later used in her role as a window dresser within a department store and still uses today, while creating handmade greetings cards, jewellery and anything else that inspires her!

Find out more about Jayne at www.facebook.com/JayneDeeleyArtDesign

 

Sponsor: Fort Dunlop

Auction Price: £6000

 

The Big Hoot captured the imagination of everyone in Birmingham and beyond, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets with their Big Hoot Trail maps to explore the colourful invasion of individually designed owls. Taking in the city’s 10 districts, tourists and residents alike enjoyed their owl adventure, discovering and celebrating the extraordinary creativity produced by many of Birmingham’s artistic community and over 25,000 young people.

 

The Big Hoot owls went under the hammer on 15 October 2015 at The Big Hoot auction sponsored by Vodafone and we are thrilled to have smashed our target by raising the incredible sum of £508,035!

 

The money raised from the auction will support Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity’s £3.65m Star Appeal. This appeal will enable us to create a first of its kind, a Rare Diseases Centre in the UK specifically for children. It will provide co-ordinated care, treatment, support and most importantly hope to children and families living with a rare or undiagnosed condition.

 

In addition the auction raised £15,000 for G’owl’d by Temper with proceeds going to Edward’s Trust, and £7,800 for Fleet and Free with proceeds going to Birchfield Harriers.

 

So thank you - we simply couldn’t have done it without you.

 

Artists have played a major role in The Big Hoot, creating almost 100 owl sculptures. We would like to thank all the artists for their incredible creativity and hard work.

Professional artists from Birmingham, the wider Midlands region and further afield have created extraordinary giant owls that are all unique in style and character and represent the city’s creativity, history and heritage, music, fashion, architecture and attractions.

Birmingham is home to a wealth of artistic and creative individuals and communities and many award-winning and nationally and internationally acclaimed artists. We are delighted with the response from Birmingham’s creative community and are thrilled to work in collaboration with them to transform the streets, squares and parks of the city.

For five months artists have been creating owls in their studios, at home and in The Big Hoot Artists’ Studio at the Custard Factory in Digbeth. Their inspiring and innovative designs have been realised in genres including graffiti, illustration, fine art, graphics, typography, mosaic and new media. They have worked with both community groups and with corporates to realise ideas and create their stunning designs.

The Big Hoot not only provides a high quality and ambitious free public event for families but also supports the creativity of artists and celebrates talent and diversity. The Big Hoot has provided an inspiring relationship between the city and the arts.

The artists have also reached out to communities enabling more people to participate in the arts, to experience working with professional artists and to be inspiring and inspired. From the north to the south of the city residents groups, youth groups and older peoples’ groups have been collaborating with artists to generate ideas, design and create owls for The Big Hoot.

Creativity is everywhere but the opportunity to participate is not. A range of activities have been programmed within Birmingham’s diverse communities and people from the age of 3 – 97 and from wards within the city boundaries have contributed to The Big Hoot and helped make the event extraordinary. Our projects have seen artists working with hundreds of residents and community members including children in looked after care, older peoples’ clubs, young people and residents organisations to design and decorate the owls displayed as part of the 10 week public event.

Northumberland Park

Landscape In Tynemouth, Tyne And Wear

 

A traditional Victorian Park packed with features sitting between Tynemouth and North Shields.

 

Situated twixt North Shields and Tynemouth sits Northumberland Park, a traditional Victorian Park positioned in the gently sloping natural dene created by the Pow Burn.

 

The park is 12 hectares in size, but has lots crammed into it including St Leonard's hospital and chapel, sculpture trail, play area, herb garden, BMX track, bowling green, lake, herb garden, a bandstand with regular musical performances and most importantly a tea room!

 

Admission is free and there are plenty of tracks and green spaces to have a quiet saunter and while away an afternoon.

 

The park was created when a local Tynemouth Alderman called John Foster-Spence asked the Duke of Northumberland for some land for the park. The park was to help provide work for unemployed shipbuilders and also create a leisure area for the town. When the work started in 1884, the workmen uncovered the remains of St Leonard's medieval hospital, which was annexed to Tynemouth Priory during the 14th century.

 

The park was opened in August 1885 by the Duke of Northumberland and he planted a Turkey Oak tree which you can still see today.

 

North Shields is a town in the Borough of North Tyneside in Tyne and Wear, England. It is 8 miles (13 km) north-east of Newcastle upon Tyne and borders nearby Wallsend and Tynemouth.

 

Since 1974, it has been in the North Tyneside borough of Tyne and Wear: its historic administration was as part of the Castle ward in county of Northumberland. It was part of the Tynemouth County Borough; when abolished in 1974, the borough became an unparished area.

 

It is on the northern bank of the River Tyne, opposite to South Shields on the other bank. The name derives from Middle English schele meaning "temporary sheds or huts used by fishermen"

 

Earliest records

North Shields is first recorded in 1225, when the Prior of Tynemouth, Germanus, decided to create a fishing port to provide fish for the Priory which was situated on the headland at the mouth of the River Tyne.[5] He also supplied ships anchored near the priory. A number of rudimentary houses or 'shiels' were erected at the mouth of the Pow Burn where the stream enters the Tyne, as well as wooden quays which were used to unload the fishing boats. The quays were also used to ship coal from local collieries owned by the Priory. Soon the population of the new township numbered 1,000. The burgesses of Newcastle upon Tyne were determined to preserve the custom rights that they had enjoyed up till then, which covered the whole length of the river. They successfully petitioned the king in 1290 and managed to suspend trade from the new settlement. It was forbidden to victual ships or to load and unload cargoes at North Shields. The opposition of the Newcastle burgesses remained for a considerable time but despite this, North Shields continued to develop as a centre for fishing and exporting salt, produced at local saltpans. For a considerable period the Newcastle burgesses, known as the Hostmen, who controlled the export of coal from the Tyne, resisted the export of this commodity from North Shields.

 

Geographic development

The town was originated on a narrow strip of land alongside the river (around the present-day Clive Street) because of the steep bank which hemmed it in. Eventually becoming overcrowded, in the 18th century buildings began to be erected on the plateau 60 feet (20 m) above the old insanitary dwellings alongside the river. Prosperous businessmen and shipowners occupied the new town whereas working people remained in the lower part of town. The low, riverside part of the town was linked to the newer, higher part of the town by a series of stairs. These stairs were initially surrounded by slum dwellings, and although the houses have since been cleared the stairs remain.

 

One of the first developments of the new town was Dockwray Square, built in 1763, a set of elegant town houses that was populated by wealthy families. Due to the poor provision of water and drainage facilities, however, the wealthy families soon moved to the more central part of the new town, and particularly the new Northumberland Square. Dockwray Square eventually deteriorated into slums. In the early twentieth century Stan Laurel lived at a house in Dockwray Square for a few years, before he became famous. The square has since been re-developed, initially in the 1960s, and again in the 1990s. A statue of Laurel stands in the middle to commemorate his stay there.

 

The land on which the new town was built was largely owned by the Earl of Carlisle. In 1796, John Wright produced plans that included a grand processional way, now Howard Street, leading to the Georgian Northumberland Square. A railway tunnel, built in the 1840s, left the west and south sides of the square largely unfinished, until a 1960s library building was constructed, somewhat out of keeping with the rest of the architecture. In 1844–45, John Dobson built the town hall, on the corner of Howard and Saville Streets.

 

Geography

The town is bounded to the north by Whitley Bay and to the south by the River Tyne. The town of Tynemouth is to its east and the A19 road marks the boundary between North Shields and Wallsend to the west of the town. It is part of the North Tyneside conurbation.

 

Over the years, North Shields has grown from a small fishing village to incorporate the nearby areas of Chirton, Preston, Billy Mill, Percy Main, East Howdon and Marden estate.

 

The 2011 definition of the town of Tynemouth includes North Shields, which means a population figure can only be given as a combination of wards rather than as a USD.

 

Town Centre

In September 2020, the North Tyneside Council published prospective plans for regeneration of the town centre, which include developing a distinctive route to the Fish Quay, pedestrianisation of key streets, consolidation of retail units, creation of a town square, renovation of Northumberland Square and the establishment of a transport hub. At the time of publication, the plan was not financed and the council sought the views of local residents and business owners.

 

In summer 2020, work was being completed on the refurbishment of the terraced row to the north of Northumberland Square, as well as the development of a newly built row of homes on nearby Albion Road. The newly restored Wooden Dolly was also returned to the Square.

 

A new square, adjacent to Bedford Street, was completed as part of the Transport Hub development in September 2023.

 

Meadow Well

A large council estate, Meadow Well (alternatively spelt Meadowell or Meadowwell on local signs) to the west of the town, was constructed in the 1930s to house residents displaced by the clearance of the Dockwray Square and Low Town slum areas. These flats were replaced with better quality homes in the 1960s and 70s. Meadow Well was formerly known as the Ridges[17] Estate – a name occasionally used today – since it was built on the site of the Ridges farm. Its present name is derived from a well situated in a meadow upon which the estate was built.

 

On Monday, 9 September 1991, Meadow Well was featured heavily in the news across the UK as riots broke out which continued for three days. Many properties were damaged, cars burned out and the local community centre burned down. As a result of the riots, the local housing was gradually improved by the council over the next three years through demolition and rebuilding, as well as renovation. A number of community development organisations, including the Cedarwood Trust, Meadow Well Connected and the Phoenix Detached Youth Project, have worked in the area for many years.

 

The film Dream On (1991) is set on the estate.

 

Following the Meadow Well riots, in July 1992 the Government granted £37.5 million over five years to regenerate that area of the town, as part of the City Challenge scheme.

 

Royal Quays

An extensive regeneration programme costing £16 million saw the revitalisation of the redundant Albert Edward docks. Across an 80 hectare area, the former Tyne and Wear Development Corporation partnered with North Tyneside Council and the private sector to provide a mix of housing, leisure facilities, office space and industrial sites. The Wet N Wild indoor water park, an outlet shopping centre, a bowling alley, a soccer dome and a marina form the centrepiece to the Royal Quays development to the west of the town. Mark di Suvero's Tyne Anew (1999), his only large-scale public artwork in the UK, can be seen at Albert Edward Dock.

 

Fish Quay

Similarly, major regeneration of the Fish Quay, on the riverside to the south-east of the town centre, has included the construction of luxury apartments and the conversion of existing buildings into restaurants and bars alongside the working quay. In November 2018, North Tyneside Council announced plans for further development to enhance the area as a food and drink destination.

 

Smith's Docks

The site of the former Smith's Docks was acquired by the developer Places For People in 2007. In January 2015 they sought planning permission for the construction of homes on the site. The first of those homes, including some designed by George Clarke, was sold in 2017 and as of April 2018, work continues on the site. The second phase, the Smokehouses, was completed in autumn 2018.

 

Heritage Action Zone

Having been awarded £900,000 through the High Street Heritage Action Zone programme, North Tyneside Council plans to add £1 million additional funding to revive the conservation area around Howard Street and Northumberland Square. It will also see work done on the streetscape connecting to the main shopping thoroughfare of Bedford Street in order to better link the areas and decrease the dominance of motor vehicles.

 

Collingwood Grange

In 2017, North Tyneside Council granted planning permission for up to 400 new homes on formerly industrial land to the west of Norham Road. In April 2020, the developer, Miller Homes, announced that work had been halted by the Covid-19 pandemic and that plans may be altered as a result. Work on the development recommenced in January 2021.

 

Industry

Former

In 1887, the town's businesses were listed as a marine engine, chain cable and anchor manufacturer, shipbuilding yards, roperies, salt-works, and an earthenware and stained glass manufacturer. Fishing was also a major industry of employment. The Smith's Dock Company was another major employer for many years, eventually closing in 1987.

 

Shipyards

Shipyards have been in existence in North Shields since near its founding. The smaller yards built the Northumbrian coble, a small inshore fishing vessel with a lug sail, well known in the North East. Larger yards built wooden sailing collier brigs, used to transport local coal to London. Eventually these small yards were replaced by larger yards such as the Tyne Dock and Engineering Company and the Smith's Dock Company. These yards produced iron vessels for various uses, including fishing and the coal trade. In later years the North Shields yards were used for ship repair work, with Smith's dock surviving until the 1990s. None of these yards remain.

 

Oil terminal

Esso formerly had an oil terminal on the banks of the Tyne, off Howdon Road. In April 1994, a bomb planted by the IRA exploded tearing a 3-foot square hole in one of the tanks. A second device, which did not detonate, was later found nearby. Six hundred gallons of crude oil leaked from the tank, but was caught in a channel designed to prevent leakages. A second explosion occurred in June 1994, perpetrated by the same bombers.

 

Maritime

With its fishing industry and shipbuilding history, a number of maritime related companies remain in the town. John Lilley and Gillie Ltd, a marine equipment manufacturer is headquartered there.

 

Mining

Collieries in the town were located at three of the outlying villages since incorporated into the town, at Preston, at the location of the present cemetery gates, Percy Main and New York.

 

Office and business parks

Following the demise of coal mining and shipbuilding in the area, several business parks, industrial estates and trading estates were established providing alternative employment. The biggest of these are The Silverlink and Cobalt Park, the UK's largest office park. Atmel had a plant located at Silverlink, previously occupied by Siemens but the plant is now demolished apart from the office building, now home to Cobalt Business Exchange. Cobalt is home to an Orange call centre. The town's association with the early days of the railways is recognised at the Stephenson Railway Museum on Middle Engine Lane near The Silverlink.

 

Other industries

Potts Print, based in Cramlington since 2006, was originally founded in North Shields in 1875. They occupied various sites in the town over the years.

 

Spicers has a large factory in the town, producing tea. It bought the site from Twinings in 2012.

 

Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7, which crashed during a water speed record attempt on Coniston Water, was restored in a workshop in the town by local engineer Bill Smith.

 

Transport

The Newcastle and North Shields Railway opened in 1839. In 1847, the railway was extended to Tynemouth when a railway station was built in Oxford Street, off Tynemouth Road. Eventually, it was replaced by a new station further away from the river after new rail lines were developed. The riverside tracks were removed for the creation of Hadrian's Way, part of the national cycle network, but the remaining tracks were absorbed in the Tyne and Wear Metro system in 1982. The town centre station, originally constructed for the Newcastle and North Shields Railway, was redeveloped between 1980 and 1982 for the Metro. It was subsequently refurbished in 2012. The Tyne and Wear Metro links North Shields to Newcastle city centre, and to other destinations in Tyne and Wear including Whitley Bay, Newcastle Airport and Sunderland. The town is also served by stations in Percy Main and Meadow Well.

 

The Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company also operated an electric tramway service in the town.

 

Shipping

Local ferry

A half-hourly ferry service connects North Shields to the town of South Shields on the opposite bank of the Tyne. The present Shields Ferry was established in 1972. Its first female skipper was appointed in 2016. Shieldsman, a former ferry retired in 2007, has since been moved to Shoreham, West Sussex, and transformed into a houseboat.

 

From June to October, river trips by ferry operate.

 

In November 2018, the local council announced plans to consider the feasibility of moving the ferry landing. In July 2021 it was announced that the planned relocation was delayed until 2023.

 

International ferry

From the International Ferry Terminal, based at Royal Quays, the Danish company DFDS Seaways operates a daily service to IJmuiden.

 

The ferry service to Gothenburg, Sweden (run by DFDS Seaways), ceased operation at the end of October 2006. DFDS Seaways' sister company, DFDS Tor Line, continues to run scheduled freight ships between Gothenburg and several English ports, including Newcastle, but these have limited capacity for passengers and do not carry private vehicles.

 

Port of Tyne International Passenger Terminal

The passenger terminal regularly welcomes tourists travelling on cruises that call at North Shields as an access point for Newcastle upon Tyne and the wider North East of England. In 2017, 52 ships docked, bringing 120,000 visitors to the region. A number of "dudes" - red and blue powder coated figures designed by artist Perminder Kaur - can be seen on a grassy mound at the entrance to the terminal.

 

Culture

In 2009, seating inspired by Plasticine, the inventor of which was born in North Shields, was installed on Bedford Street in the town centre. The seats proved unpopular as their shape prevented rainwater draining off, so they were replaced by more traditional metal benches and moved to the Royal Quays Marina in 2011.

 

YMCA

YMCA North Tyneside was founded in 1870 and was originally known as The Borough of Tynemouth YMCA. After an inaugural meeting on 7 June 1879, weekly meetings followed in the Sons of Temperance Hall, Norfolk Street, North Shields. The YMCA grew in popularity. Within a year, larger premises were needed. Meetings moved to 53 Tyne Street, North Shields and in 1879 to Camden Street, North Shields. In 1920 the YMCA moved to a building in Bedford Street (which is still owned by the YMCA and now occupied by the Citizens Advice Bureau) where it remained until 1938, when it moved to the present building and the current registered office at Church Way, North Shields.

 

Fish Quay Festival

Between 1987 and 2001, a community festival was organised on the fish quay, during which the fleet of fishing boats would be blessed and various local talents would entertain the crowds. At its peak, the festival attracted 600,000 visitors. A smaller-scale family festival, in order to save costs, was held annually between 2002 and 2006, before it too was scrapped as a money-saving measure.

 

Retail

Town Centre

A significant part of the town centre is pedestrianised and it is dominated by the Beacon, a partly-covered shopping mall which was constructed in the late 1970s and originally named The Bedford Centre.

 

As with many British high streets, a number of large chains have closed their branches in the town in recent years, including Littlewoods, Woolworths and McDonald's. As of 2019, Wilko has a large store in the Beacon, alongside high street regulars such as Specsavers, Superdrug and Boots. A number of discount retailers including B & M, Home Bargains, Peacocks and Heron Foods have branches in the town centre, as well as numerous charity stores.

 

Greggs, Cooplands, and Costa Coffee have outlets. Charities YMCA North Tyneside, Age UK and Operation Veteran both have independent coffee shops. Barista Boho, opened in 2022 in the former Alnwick Castle public house, also serves local coffee blends and hosts musicians. There are numerous independent butchers in the town centre, as well as a local independent bakery, Canatrice, located nearby.

 

Asda acquired a former Netto store in the town centre in 2011. The Co-op has a number of branches in the town, including convenience stores in Tynemouth and Preston. Morrisons also has a large store in Preston.

 

Other shopping centres

There are three further shopping centres in the town, as well as parades of shops in Balkwell, Preston and Chirton.

 

The Royal Quays Outlet Centre is home to a number of discount stores including outlets for Next, Clarks and Mountain Warehouse, as well as independent retailers such as a photographic studio and pet shop. The closures of a Marks & Spencer Outlet and, in late 2019, the Nike store have somewhat diminished the centre. In January 2020, Thorntons posted notices announcing the closure of their shop and coffee shop. Costa Coffee, The Body Shop, Cotton Traders, Dreams, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Moss, Tog 24, Trespass and Poundland also had branches in early 2020. In April 2023, it was reported that the centre's owners had appointed receivers who were advertising it for sale as a going concern. It remains open as usual.

 

The Coast Road Retail Park is adjacent to a large Tesco supermarket and, as of 2020, home to Dunelm, B & M, Pets at Home, Carpetright and The Food Warehouse stores.

 

The Silverlink Shopping Park, as of 2020, includes branches of Boots, Next, H&M, Halfords, Marks and Spencer and River Island. In September 2016, a large expansion of the retail park opened. Odeon also has a multi-screen cinema at the park, alongside restaurants.

 

Business

Over 100 businesses in the town are members of The North Shields Chamber of Trade and Commerce.

 

The Mercantile Building Society, established in the town and formerly headquartered at the Silverlink Business Park, merged with the Leeds Building Society in 2006.

 

Recreation

In 2000, the local authority established more than 30 miles (48 km) of walking routes, primarily following the paths of 19th-century waggonways. A Tynemouth walk begins from the Metro station in the town centre and drops down on to the fish quay before following a route to Tynemouth, while the Royal Quays walk begins from the Meadowell Metro station and completes a route around the redeveloped riverside area including the marina, before ending at Percy Main Metro station.

 

Sport

The town is home to the non-League football club North Shields F.C. Founded in 1896, the team competes in Northern Football League and plays home games at Daren Persson Stadium (formerly Ralph Gardner Park). The team has twice played at Wembley Stadium, winning 2–1 on both occasions: against Sutton United on 12 April 1969 at the old Wembley to win the FA Amateur Cup and against Glossop North End at the new stadium on 9 May 2015 to win the FA Vase, the Amateur Cup's successor. The stadium is presently named as such because of a sponsorship by a local funeral director.

 

Leisure facilities

The Parks Sports Centre was opened in 1998, after the construction of the Royal Quays. It has a large sports hall, gym, multi-sensory room, outdoor football pitches, indoor and outdoor bowls facilities and a cafe.

 

Royal Quays facilities

The Wet'n'Wild indoor water park was constructed in 1992 and opened in summer 1993 as part of the Royal Quays development. It was originally designed with rides: six speed slides, five conventional flumes and one "lazy river" ride. The "Twister", a speed slide, was 85 metres (279 ft) long, and started from a height of 12.5 metres (41 ft). It closed in 2013 after its owner entered administration, but was reopened in 2014, having been bought by another company. In 2020, the owner announced that it would not reopen after the winter, citing financial losses due to poor visitor numbers.

 

A bowling alley, originally Star Bowl, also forms part of the development. In 2019, having been closed for some time, it was reopened as Gutterball.

 

A trampoline park, Xtreme Bounce, was opened in 2017 in an air-locked dome in the outlet centre's car park. In 2019, the Inflatanation chain took over the site and reopened the venue with inflatables replacing the trampolines.

 

In 2019, a leisure hub housed in the health and fitness section of the former JJB Soccerdome adjacent to the outlet centre, was announced. Everyone Entertained was to feature climbing walls, soft play, laser tag and adventure golf, and employ 100 people. As of May 2020, the venue remains unopened. The pitches and bar were reopened as The Evolution Football Centre in autumn 2018. In early 2020, it was announced that the centre was to close having proved financially nonviable.

 

Parks

There are a number of parks and play areas in the town.

Northumberland Park lies on the border of North Shields and Tynemouth and was set out around 1885, in an area formerly known as Spittal Dene. In 2015, North Tyneside Council completed a major project to revive and restore parts of the park. The multi-million pound scheme saw archaeological investigations carried out around the medieval St Leonard's Hospital and the restoration historical features that had been lost over the years. Iron railings, park furniture, fountains were installed amid historic planting schemes. A pavilion housing a cafe and toilet facilities as well as offices and storage for the park staff was also opened.

 

There is a children's play area at the south end of the park, bowling greens on the western border and a historical pet cemetery to the north. A number of trees along a pathway in the northern half feature plaques commemorating their planting by various local dignitaries.

 

West End Park and Linear Park, Chirton Dene

West End Park lies adjacent to The Parks sports centre and was laid out prior to the 1940s. To its south, Linear Park runs down to the Royal Quays Marina and was created as part of the Royal Quays development in the mid-1990s.

 

Redburn Dene

As with Linear Park, Redburn Dene was created as part of the 1990s redevelopment of former industrial and dockland areas, following a natural water course. It features sculptures made from reclaimed staithes. The park was given a Green Flag award in 2020.

 

Culture

Art

Fiddler's Green, a steel sculpture that serves as a memorial to fishermen lost at sea, was unveiled in 2017.

 

A number of pieces were installed as part of the Royal Quays development. Located in Chirton Dene, Redburn Dene, by the marina, and near the shopping outlet, they include works by Richard Broderick, Graham Robinson, Linda France, Alec Peever, Gilly Rogers, Mark di Suvero, Perminder Kaur and Andy Plant.

 

In film

Dream On (1991) was produced by Amber Films and filmed on location in Meadow Well. Its original release was around the time of the Meadow Well riots.

 

On television

The BBC series When the Boat Comes In, though set in the fictional Gallowshield, was essentially set in North Shields and filmed on location around the town. Various episodes of the series Spender, which starred Jimmy Nail, and Vera, with Brenda Blethyn, were also filmed there.

 

In songs

Sweden's foremost troubadour of the 20th century, Evert Taube, wrote the song "Mary Strand", which is set in North Shields in 1909. Mary Strand is the proprietress of the cigar shop Tiger Brand on Dock Street and hides a young sailor from the police. The song is based on Taube's own experience, when he ran away from the steamship Australic in Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Twin town

In 2017, the town was twinned with Merthyr Tydfil, in Wales, as part of the Carnegie Twin Towns Project. The project aimed to pair towns that had similar characteristics, and socio-economic challenges, in order to consider how they might make positive changes to their communities.

 

Landmarks

Lights of North Shields

Because of the difficulty of navigating ships into the mouth of the river past the dangerous Black Midden rocks, buildings were erected in the 16th century with permanent lights burning to be used as a guide by the mariners. High and Low lights are pictured on a 1655 map of the river Tyne: a pair of square castellated towers. Both lights were rebuilt in 1727, and these buildings still stand today (albeit the Old Low Light was remodelled in 1830 to serve as an almshouse). In 1810, the Old Lights were replaced by new High and Low Lights, placed respectively at the top and bottom of the steep bank alongside the river. All these lights were owned and operated by Trinity House of Newcastle-upon-Tyne until they ceased operation. Today, the Old High Beacon, as well as the High and Low Lights, are private residences; they remain prominent landmarks. In 2014 the black-painted Old Low Light was opened to the public following a substantial refurbishment; it contains a café, shop, museum, viewing platform and event space.

 

Fish Quay

In 1806, a market place was opened on New Quay. In 1870, work began on constructing a fish quay to provide shelter for the docked fishing boats. This quay is still in use today. In 2017, a sculpture by artist Ray Lonsdale of a lone fisherman – made of corten steel and weighing over 2 tonnes – was installed on the quay.

 

Clifford's Fort

Clifford's Fort, located on the Fish Quay, was built in the 17th century as a coastal defence against the Dutch. The Fort was active during the Napoleonic Wars and played a significant role during World War I, being the birthplace of the Tyne Electrical Engineers. The fort was officially evacuated by the military in May 1928, sold to the Tynemouth Corporation, and redeveloped as new fish processing facilities.[161] Very little now remains of the original fort buildings, though the walls are intact. The area has undergone considerable restoration, with most of the fish processing units demolished. The remaining excellent modern retail units are very popular. During restoration work, part of the foundations of the 18th century Master Gunner's House (demolished in 1973) were found below the concrete floor of a fish processing unit. Elsewhere on the site, part of the stone edging of Cable Tanks belonging to the Submarine Mining Depot, established at the fort in 1888, was uncovered. The gun embrasures have been revealed, the ground resurfaced, and there are some traffic restrictions. The Old Low Light, built in 1735 and Grade II-listed, within Clifford’s Fort, has been restored and operates as a Heritage Centre, café, and community space.

 

Wooden Dolly

One of North Shields' oldest landmarks is the "Wooden Dolly" statue. In 1814, the female figurehead of a collier brig was placed at the entrance to Custom House Quay, on Liddell Street, and stood there until 1850, when it was vandalised. A second figurehead was placed on the same spot. The "Wooden Dolly", as the figurehead was known, was used by seafarers as a source of good-luck charms, by cutting pieces of wood from her to be taken with them on voyages. Eventually the figurehead was defaced beyond repair and after 14 years was replaced by Wooden Dolly No. 3. This remained until 1901 when it was replaced with Wooden Dolly No. 4 in the shape of a fishwife. A fifth Wooden Dolly, also a fishwife, was placed in Northumberland Square in 1958 and was removed for restoration in December 2019. Once restoration has been completed it will be placed in the Library and a replacement figure installed in the square. In 1992, a sixth Wooden Dolly was placed where the first four had been, at the entrance to Custom House Quay, and can still be seen there, next to the Prince of Wales public house.

This features three hornets currently found in western Europe: Vespa orientalis on the left (queen above, worker below), Vespa crabro on the right (queen above, worker below) and the recently introduced Vespa velutina (worker in middle - a Nepal specimen which has a paler head capsule than the European/Chinese ones).

St Andrew, Westhall, Suffolk

 

I'm currently preparing a new page for Westhall at suffolkchurches.co.uk - I'm parking the old one here so it doesn't get lost forever.

 

Listen: come with me. We’ll set off from the Queen’s Head at Blyford, a fine and welcoming pub across the road from that village’s little church. Perhaps we’ll have just had lunch, and we’ll be sitting outside with a couple of pints of Adnams. You’d like to stay there in the sunshine for the rest of the afternoon, but I’m going to take you somewhere special, so stir yourself. You are probably thinking it is Holy Trinity at Blythburgh, Suffolk’s finest church a couple of miles away on the main A12. But it isn’t.

 

Nor is it St Andrew at Wenhaston, a mile away across the bridge, and home of the Doom, one of Suffolk’s greatest medieval art treasures. You’ve already seen that.

 

No. Within a few miles of the pub sign (notice that it features St Etheldreda, whose father King Anna was killed in battle on the Blyth marshes) there is a third of Suffolk’s finest churches. It is the least known of the three, partly because it is so carefully hidden, so secreted away, and partly because Simon Jenkins, inconceivably, unforgivably, missed it out of his book England’s Thousand Best Churches.This may yet have serious consequences, as we shall see.

 

Blyford is on the main road between Halesworth and Dunwich, but we are going to take a narrow lane that you might almost miss if you weren’t with me. It leads northwards, and is quickly enveloped by oak-buttressed hedgerows, beyond which thin fields spread. Pheasants scuttle across the road in front of us; a hare watches warily for a moment before kicking sulkily back into the ditch (we are on foot perhaps, or bicycle). Occasional lanes thread off towards the woods and the sea.

 

After a couple of miles, we reach the obscenity of a main road, and cross it quickly, leaving it behind us. Now, the lane narrows severely, the banks steepening, trees arching above us. They guard the silence, until our tunnel doglegs suddenly, and an obscure stream appears beyond the hedgerow. Once, on a late winter afternoon, my dream was disturbed here by a startled heron rising up, its bony legs clacking dryly as it took flight over my head. I felt the rush of its wings.

 

This road was not designed for cars. Instead, it traces the ancient field pattern, cutting across the ends of strips and then along the sides, connecting long-vanished settlements. The lane splits (we take the right fork) and splits again (the left) and suddenly we are descending steeply into a secret glade shrouded in ancient tree canopies. The lane curves, narrows and opens – and here we are. Still, you might not notice it, because the church is still camouflaged by the trees, and the absurdity of the neighbouring bungalow with its kitschy garden may distract you; but to your right, in a silent velvet graveyard sits St Andrew, Westhall. It has been described in one book as Suffolk’s best kept secret.

 

I hope that I can convey to you something of why this place is so special. Firstly, notice the unusual layout of the building as you walk around it. That fine late 13th century tower, not too high despite its post-Reformation bell-stage, organic and at one with the trees; the breathtaking little Norman church that spreads to the east of it. And then, to the north, a large 13th century nave, thatched and rustic. It was designed for this graveyard, for this glade. Neither has changed much. Beyond it, the grand 14th century chancel, rudely filling almost the entire east end of the graveyard. Perhaps as we step around to the north side the same thing will happen as happened to me one muggy Saturday afternoon in July 2003 – a tawny owl sat watching me on a headstone, and then threw itself furiously into the air and away.

 

Your first thought may be that here we have two churches joined together – and this is almost exactly right. You can see the same thing on a similar timescale at Ufford, although the development there is rather more subtle than it is here.

 

Here at Westhall, there was a Norman church – an early one. Several hundred years later a tower was built to the west of it, and then the vast new nave to the north. A hundred years later came the chancel. Perhaps the east end of the Norman church was rebuilt at this time. Mortlock thinks that there was once a Norman chancel, and this may be so. The old church became a south aisle, the particular preserve perhaps of the Bohun family. They married into the famous Coke family, who we have already met at nearby Bramfield.

 

And so, we step inside. We may do so through the fine north porch; it is a wide, open one, clearly intended for the carrying out of parish business. It was probably the last substantial part of the church to be built, on the eve of the Reformation. The door appears contemporary. Or, I might send you round to step in through the Norman doorway on the south side, into the body of the original church.

 

You expect dust and decay, perhaps, in such a remote place. But this is a well-kept church, lovingly maintained and well-used. Although there are a couple of old benches scattered about, most of the seating is early 19th century, with that delightful cinema curve to the western row which was fashionable immediately before the Oxford Movement and the Camden Society sent out their great resacramentalising waves, and English churches were never the same again.

 

If you step in from the south, then you are immediately confronted with something so stunning, so utterly wonderful, that we are going to pretend you cannot believe your eyes, and you pass it by. Instead, draw back the curtain, and step into the space beneath the tower. Walk to the western wall, and turn back.

 

You are confronted with the main entrance of a grand post-conquest church, probably about 1100. Surviving faces in the unfinished ranges look like something out of Wallace and Grommit. Above, an arcade of windows, the central one open. Almost a thousand years ago, it would have thrown summer evening light on the altar.

 

As you step back into the aisle, it is now easy to see it as the nave it once was. The northern wall has now gone, replaced by a low arcade, and you step through into the wideness of the modern (it is only 600 years old!) nave.

 

Here, then, let us at last allow ourselves an exploration of Suffolk’s other great medieval art survival. This is Westhall’s famous font, one of the seven sacrament series, but more haunting than all the others because it still retains almost all its original colour.

 

The Mass panel is the most familiar, because it is the cover of Eamonn Duffy’s majestic The Stripping of the Altars. The other panels, anti-clockwise from this, are Last Rites, Reconciliation, Matrimony, Confirmation, Baptism, Ordination, and the odd panel out, the Baptism of Christ.

 

The font asks more questions than it answers. How did it survive? Suffolk has 13 Seven Sacrament fonts in various states of repair. Those nearby at Blythburgh, Wenhaston and Southwold are clearly from the same group as this one, but have been completely effaced. Other good ones survive nearby at Weston and Great Glemham, at Monk Soham, at neighbours Woodbridge and Melton, neighbours Cratfield and Laxfield, at Denston in the south west and at Badingham. We don’t know how many others there might have been; probably not many, for most East Anglian churches have a surviving medieval font of another design. The surviving panels were probably plastered over during the long puritan night (the damage to the figures is probably a result of making the faces flush rather than any attempt at iconoclasm) but they were also all probably once coloured. So why has only this one survived in that state?

 

The other feature of the font that is quite, quite extraordinary is the application of gessowork for the tabernacled figures between the faces. This is plaster of Paris which is moulded on and allowed to dry – it can then be carved. It is sometimes used on wood to achieve fine details, but rarely on stone. Was it once found widely elsewhere? How has it survived here?

 

If it was just for the font, then St Andrew would still be an essential destination for anyone interested in medieval churches. But there are several other features that, in any other church, would be considered equally essential.

 

There is the screen. It is a bit of a curiosity. Firstly, the two painted ranges are clearly the work of different artists. On the south side are female Saints, very similar in style to those on the screen at Ufford. The artists helpfully labelled them, and they are St Etheldreda (the panel bearing her left half has been lost) St Sitha, St Agnes, St Bridget, St Catherine, St Dorothy, St Margaret of Aleppo and finally one of the most essential Saints in the medieval economy of grace, St Apollonia - she it was who could be asked to intercede against toothache. With the possible exception of St Margaret, modern Anglicans would think of all of these as peculiarly Catholic Saints, a reminder that St Andrew was built, after all, as a Catholic church.

 

The depictions on the northern part of the screen are much simpler (Pevsner thought them crude) and are probably painted by a local artist. Note the dedicatory inscription along the top on this side; it is barely legible, but the names Margarete and Tome Felton and Richard Lore and Margaret Alen are still discernible. I think the figures on this screen are equally fascinating, if not more so. They are all easily recognisable, and are fondly rendered. With one remarkable exception, they are familiar to us from many popular images.

 

The first is Saint James in his pilgrim's garb, as if about to set out for Santiago de Compostella. The power of such an image to medieval people in a backwater like north-east Suffolk should not be underestimated. Next comes St Leonard, associated with the Christian duty of visiting prisoners - perhaps this had a local resonance. Thirdly, there is a triumphant St Michael, one of the major Saints of the late medieval panoply, and then St Clement, the patron Saint of seafarers. This is interesting, because although Westhall is a good six miles from the sea, it is much closer to the Blyth river, which was probably much wider and faster in medieval times. It seems strange to think of Westhall as having a relationship with the sea, but it probably did.

 

Next comes the remarkable exception. The next three panels represent between them the Transfiguration; Christ on a mountain top between the two figures of Moses and Elijah. It is the only surviving medieval screen representation of the Transfiguration in England. Eamonn Duffy, in The Stripping of the Altars, argues that here at Westhall is priceless evidence of the emergence of a new cult on the eve of the Reformation, which would snuff it out. Another representation survived in a wall painting at Hawkedon, but has faded away during the last half century.

 

The last panel is St Anthony of Egypt, recognisable from the dear little pig at his feet. I wonder if it was painted from the life.

 

There is a fascinating wall painting against the north wall. It shows St Christopher, as you might expect. St Christopher was a special devotion in the hearts of medieval churchgoers, and usually sits opposite the main entrance so that they could look in at the start of the day and receive his blessing. As a surviving inscription at Creeting St Peter reminds us, anyone who looks on the image in the morning would be spared a sudden death that day. It is the other figures in the illustration that are remarkable, though, for one of them is clearly Moses, wearing his ‘horns of light’ (an early medieval mistranslation of ‘halo’).

 

There are a couple of other wall-paintings, including a beautiful flower-surrounded consecration cross beside the south door, and a painted image niche alcove in the eastern splay of a window in the south wall. This is odd; it should have a figure in it, but none appears to have been painted there. Perhaps it was intended to have a statue placed in front of it, but the window sill is very steep, and it is hard to see how a statue could have been positioned there. DD surmised that there had once been a stand, the base of which was canted in some manner, and that the sill had once been less steep (the base of the painting seems to suggest this). Whatever, it is very odd.

 

Between the painted niche and consecration cross there are surviving traces of a large painting; it seems to consist of the leafy surrounds of seven large roundels. Mortlock wondered if it might have been a sequence of the Seven Works of Mercy as at Trotton in Sussex, but there is insufficient remaining to tell.

 

Nicholas Bohun's tomb, in very poor repair, sits in the south-east corner; an associated brass gives you rather more information than you might think you need. A George III royal arms hangs above.

 

If you haven't lost your appetite for the extraordinary, come back up into the apparently completely Victorianised chancel. Chalice brasses are incredibly rare, because of their Catholic imagery. Westhall had two of them, although unfortunately only the matrices survive. Then, look up; on one of the roof beams is an image of the Holy Trinity, with God the Father holding the Crucified Christ between his knees. There is probably a dove as well, although that is not visible from the ground. Indeed, the whole thing is too small, as if the artist hadn't really thought about the scale needed for it to be seen from the chancel floor.

 

So there we are, I've let you in on Suffolk's best-kept secret. But I said earlier that I was afraid Simon Jenkins’s omission of this church might have serious consequences. Here is why: there is an ongoing programme of essential repairs, and the church has had to raise tens of thousands of pounds at fairly short notice. The parish has less than a hundred people living in it, and the congregation is barely in double figures. The church is clearly a national treasure, and its continued survival is essential; but it is difficult to convince people of this, because it has been missed out of what is increasingly being treated as a heritage wish-list. It was bad enough that Pevsner’s books were used as arbiters of what should survive when redundancies loomed in the 1970s; it would be appalling if the Jenkins book was used in the same way now.

2015 Hearst Castle-Ceiling in Casa del Monte (House B) guest house is handpainted and decorated with 22 carat gold leaf. It features Classical design elements, but also includes a few local references: the words “San Simeon” and eucalyptes leaves

Features visible include The Glen shopping centre top centre, neighboring housing and petrol station through to High Street Road (now all part of The Glen), the Mountain View Hotel, left and down from centre.

 

See locale on Google Maps.

 

PMS 130 39

Monash City archives via City of Waverley.

Collection:

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM)

 

Author(s):

Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August, 1834-1919, author

 

Publication:

Berlin: Reimer, 1870

 

Language(s):

German

 

Format:

Still image

 

Genre(s):

Book Illustrations

 

Abstract:

A series of heads that progressively develop anthropomorphic features.

 

Related Title(s):

Is part of: Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, pl. XIII.; See related catalog record: 60830080R

 

Extent:

1 print

 

Technique:

lithograph

 

NLM Unique ID: 101449208

 

NLM Image ID: A030210

 

Permanent Link:

resource.nlm.nih.gov/101449208

Designed in post-war Art Deco style by stained glass artist Napier Waller, Saint Alban is the second of three windows installed in the porch of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England, to the left of the narthex. Created in vibrant blues, green, red orange and golden yellow, the Saint Alban window features the name of the saint in a scroll to the left of his haloed head and an inscription across the bottom which comes from Psalm 76:8 "The earth trembled and was still". Saint Alban is depicted as a soldier with a sword and a Latin cross. St Alban is venerated as the first recorded British Christian martyr. He is traditionally believed to have been beheaded in the Roman city of Verulamium (modern St Albans) sometime during the 3rd or 4th century, and his cult has been celebrated there since ancient times. The subject of Saint Alban, England's first martyr saint, may have been chosen to commemorate the fallen's service to their country.

 

Built on Burke Road on a rise between the busy shopping strips that make up the Camberwell Junction and the grand catholic Our Lady of Victories Basilica, stands the striking Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England.

 

Almost since the beginning of 1863, Church of England Services have taken place on the site where Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England stands. In 1863, Camberwell was not the affluent and well established inner city Melbournian suburb that it is today; rather it was a small rural outpost of Melbourne. Therefore the first church, known simply as the Church of England at Camberwell, was little more than a small Victorian Gothic church of brick and stone. However Camberwell, like most of Melbourne, grew as a result of the Gold Rushes and by 1869 an additional chancel had been completed to make allowances for a congregation of around 200 people. As Camberwell's citizenry swelled in number and wealth, so too did their places of worship, and by 1887 Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England was enlarged and added to. There was no shortage of money, as by this time Camberwell was the home of wealthy industrialists, businessmen and pastoralists as well as a backbone of respectable middle class white collar workers, so the church's windows were filled with elegant and costly stained glass from companies like Mathieson and Gibson, Brooks, Robinson and Company and artists like William Montgomery. Further additions were made on the cusp of the Great War in 1914, and finally a towering spire was added after the War in 1924. In 1930 three stained glass windows by Australian husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller featuring the Apotheosis of David were added.

 

By the outbreak of the Second World War, Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England was an enormous brick an sandstone Victorian Gothic edifice, recognised as a local landmark, and a source of great pride for its wealthy and respectable congregation. Seating over 800 people, it continued to be a place of worship and many happy occasions until the night of the 18th of March 1955, when as a result of an arson attack, the grand building was destroyed by fire. Only the bell tower and spire survived, standing defiantly against the odds, pointing to the heavens.

 

Devastated by the arson attack, the congregation of the church rallied and engaged successful ecclesiastical architect Louis Williams to design a new Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England. The foundation stone for the new church was laid by the then Archbishop of Melbourne, The Most Reverend J. J. Booth on the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels on the 29th of September 1956. Rising like a phoenix from the ashes, the new Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England was completed within two years, finished in November 1957. Sadly, it was discovered several years after its completion, that the belfry and tower of the old Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England were seriously damaged by the heat of the 1955 fire. Constructionally compromised and therefore a danger not only to the congregation, but any passerby on busy Burke Road should the tower and spire fall into the thoroughfare, the remnants of the old church had to be demolished.

 

The current Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England building is architecturally very striking. The vast red brick facade rises vertically towards the sky with very little external decoration and is a fine example of Post-War Ecclesiastical architecture. In the wake of the Second World War, faced with austerity and building material shortages as well as the decimation of a workforce skilled enough to architecturally enhance revivalist buildings, architects had to re-think their designs to please their conservative clients who did not want the flat-roofed, glass encrusted boxes that were in vogue in architecturally avant-garde post-war America. Their answer was that between 1940 and 1960, they designed simplified versions of medieval churches. This link back to the more peaceful past, whilst managing the current difficulties of labour and building supplies worked beautifully. Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England is an ultra-stripped back, simplified version of a Romanesque church. It maintains a traditional rectangular shape, features a traditional pyramidal roof and has aisles that flank the central nave. Its front facade has a post-war Art Deco feel, particularly around the front porch which has elegant brick detailing and a very stylised Art Deco sandstone eagle - an attribute of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist - above the door. This link to the past is enhanced by the two Old English Gothic style wrought iron lamps that flank the portico's outer doors. A traditional Gothic window with simplified sandstone tracery appears on the facade and is imbedded into a rounded arch which is more shallow than pre-war examples. The church's slender lancet windows have semicircular heads and feature for the most part, latticed plain glass. This allows the church's interior to be flooded with natural light even on a cloudy afternoon, such as the one when I visited Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England. Some describe the building as elegant, others austere, but the general consensus is that it is one of Louis William's finest architectural works from his very large output of work.

 

Inside the light filled church, the use of stained glass is at a minimum, yet there are three examples which are a throwback to Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England's glorious stained glass past. When the arsonist attack in 1955 raised the church, so many magnificent, historical and valuable stained glass windows were lost to the conflagration including the three stained glass windows by Australian husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller of the Apotheosis of David (shepherd, king and builder) installed in 1930. As part of the church's re-building, Napier Waller (Christian had died by 1955) was commissioned to create three new stained glass windows in memory of those from Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist Church of England who served in the two World Wars. Saint Columba, Saint Alban and Saint Aidan were unveiled in 1961. Installed to the left of the narthex, the three windows are set into their own bay with Saint Columbia on the left, Saint Alban in the middle and Saint Aidan on the right. Designed in post-war Art Deco style, Saint Columbia has an inscription which comes from Psalm 107:23 "They do business in the great waters", Saint Alban has an inscription from Psalm 76:8 "The earth trembled and was still" and Saint Aidan has an inscription from Psalm 18:10 "He did fly upon the wings of the wind".

 

Louis Reginald Williams (1890 – 1980) was born in Hobart, Tasmania and attended school at Queen’s College. His father was a furniture manufacturer, and the family was very religious. Louis’ interest in churches guided him into choosing a career in architecture. He was trained by architect Alexander North, with whom Louis eventually formed a joint partnership when they moved to mainland Australia and set up an architectural firm, Williams and North, in Little Collins Street in Melbourne. Although Louis was commissioned to design commercial buildings and houses, it is for his ecclesiastical buildings that he is best known. He worked mostly in either traditional Gothic or Arts and Crafts styles. Not only was he concerned about the exteriors of his churches, but the interiors as well, and he maintained a group of skilled craftsmen whom he trusted to create his designs for furniture and fittings to harmonise with the buildings he created. He also advised on stained glass, lighting and even mosaic tiling, and no detail was too small for Louis. He designed churches throughout Australia for the Church of England, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists and the Christian Scientists. His career lasted for nearly sixty-five years until he was in his mid eighties.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 01: Hwang "Kingen" Seong-hoon of DRX poses at the League of Legends World Championship Finals Features Day on November 1, 2022 in San Francisco, CA. (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)

Summit goers arrive at the International Transport Forum's 2023 Summit on "Transport Enabling Sustainable Economies" in Leipzig, Germany on 24 May 2023.

Alnwick Garden is a complex of formal gardens adjacent to Alnwick Castle in the town of Alnwick, Northumberland, England. The gardens have a long history under the dukes of Northumberland, but fell into disrepair until revived at the turn of the 21st century. The garden now features various themed plantings designed around a central water cascade. The revival of the gardens led to several public disputes between the Duchess of Northumberland and various garden experts concerning preservation and the use of public funds. The garden now belongs to a charitable trust, which is separate from Northumberland Estates, although the 12th Duke of Northumberland donated the 42-acre (17 ha) site and contributed £9 million towards redevelopment costs.

 

History

The first garden was laid down in 1750 by the 1st Duke of Northumberland, who employed Capability Brown, the celebrated Northumberland gardener, to landscape the parkland adjoining Alnwick Museum.

 

The 3rd Duke was a plant collector, and led a century of development at Alnwick – he brought seeds from over the world, and pineapples were raised in hothouses. In the middle of the 19th century, the 4th Duke created an Italianate garden featuring a large conservatory, and at the end of the century, the gardens were at their grandest, with yew topiary, avenues of limes and acres of flowers.

 

During the Second World War's "Dig for Victory" campaign, the garden was turned over and provided food, and soon afterwards the austerity of the 20th century saw the garden fall into disrepair. It was closed as a working garden in 1950.

 

Redevelopment

Redevelopment of the garden was instigated by Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland in 1997, and has been led by Belgian landscape designers Jacques and Peter Wirtz. It is the most ambitious new garden created in the United Kingdom since the Second World War, with a reported total development cost of £42 million.

 

The first phase of redevelopment, opened in October 2001, involved the creation of the cascade and initial planting of the gardens. On 22 December 2004 a large 6,000 sq ft (560 m2) tree house complex, including a cafe, was opened. A pavilion and visitor centre designed by Sir Michael Hopkins and Buro Happold opened in May 2006, with capacity for 1,000 people. The pavilion and visitor centre feature a barrel-vaulted gridshell roof. The gardens include several water features as well as architectural landscaping, topiary and decorative gates.

 

Poison Garden

A garden featuring intoxicating and poisonous plants was added in February 2005. The garden was thought of by the duchess herself, who wanted the garden to have something that was different from other gardens. Species of the Poison Garden include Strychnos nux-vomica (source of strychnine), hemlock, Ricinus communis (source of harmless castor oil but also deadly ricin), foxglove, Atropa belladonna (commonly called Deadly Nightshade), Brugmansia and Laburnum. The mission of the Poison Garden also includes drug education, with featured plantings of cannabis, coca and the opium poppy Papaver somniferum. The Poison Garden is now one of the main reasons that people visit the gardens.

The main geographic features of Rajasthan are the Thar Desert and the Aravalli Range, which runs through the state from southwest to northeast, almost from one end to the other, for more than 850 km. Mount Abu is at the southwestern end of the range, separated from the main ranges by the West Banas River, although a series of broken ridges continues into Haryana in the direction of Delhi where it can be seen as outcrops in the form of the Raisina Hill and the ridges farther north. About three-fifths of Rajasthan lies northwest of the Aravallis, leaving two-fifths on the east and south.

 

The northwestern portion of Rajasthan is generally sandy and dry. Most of the region is covered by the Thar Desert, which extends into adjoining portions of Pakistan. The Aravalli Range does not intercept the moisture-giving southwest monsoon winds off the Arabian Sea, as it lies in a direction parallel to that of the coming monsoon winds, leaving the northwestern region in a rain shadow. The Thar Desert is thinly populated; the town of Bikaner is the largest city in the desert. The Northwestern thorn scrub forests lie in a band around the Thar Desert, between the desert and the Aravallis. This region receives less than 400 mm of rain in an average year. Temperatures can exceed 45 °C in the summer months and drop below freezing in the winter. The Godwar, Marwar, and Shekhawati regions lie in the thorn scrub forest zone, along with the city of Jodhpur. The Luni River and its tributaries are the major river system of Godwar and Marwar regions, draining the western slopes of the Aravallis and emptying southwest into the great Rann of Kutch wetland in neighboring Gujarat. This river is saline in the lower reaches and remains potable only up to Balotara in Barmer district. The Ghaggar River, which originates in Haryana, is an intermittent stream that disappears into the sands of the Thar Desert in the northern corner of the state and is seen as a remnant of the primitive Saraswati river.

 

The Aravalli Range and the lands to the east and southeast of the range are generally more fertile and better watered. This region is home to the Kathiarbar-Gir dry deciduous forests ecoregion, with tropical dry broadleaf forests that include teak, Acacia, and other trees. The hilly Vagad region lies in southernmost Rajasthan, on the border with Gujarat. With the exception of Mount Abu, Vagad is the wettest region in Rajasthan, and the most heavily forested. North of Vagad lies the Mewar region, home to the cities of Udaipur and Chittaurgarh. The Hadoti region lies to the southeast, on the border with Madhya Pradesh. North of Hadoti and Mewar is the Dhundhar region, home to the state capital of Jaipur. Mewat, the easternmost region of Rajasthan, borders Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Eastern and southeastern Rajasthan is drained by the Banas and Chambal rivers, tributaries of the Ganges.

 

The Aravali Range runs across the state from the southwest peak Guru Shikhar (Mount Abu), which is 1,722 m in height, to Khetri in the northeast. This divides the state into 60% in the northwest of the range and 40% in the southeast. The northwest tract is sandy and unproductive with little water but improves gradually from desert land in the far west and northwest to comparatively fertile and habitable land towards the east. The area includes the Thar Desert. The south-eastern area, higher in elevation (100 to 350 m above sea level) and more fertile, has a very diversified topography. in the south lies the hilly tract of Mewar. In the southeast, a large area within the districts of Kota and Bundi forms a tableland. To the northeast of these districts is a rugged region (badlands) following the line of the

 

Musée Marmottan Monet features over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, including his 1872 Impression, Sunrise.

Marmottan Museum's fame is the result of a donation in 1966 by Michel Monet, Claude's second son and only heir.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_Marmottan_Monet

The facial features are moldmade. There is a single vertical handle on the side opposite the face.

Found at Alba loc. S. Cassiano, Complesso D1, Tomb 3 (dated ca. 40-70 CE)

Museo di Antichità di Torino (alias Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Piemonte), Italy

Superkilen Park features street furniture from all over the world. It's a breath of fresh air in a down-at-heel district of Copenhagen.

Freddy is an old US Postal Service delivery truck that has been re-purposed as a Belgian Waffle Truck by my good friends at "Belgian Waffle Crafters". Their truck is serving original Belgian Liège Waffles around the Raleigh/Durham area in North Carolina.

Check out his full story here:

belgianwafflecrafters.com/meet-freddy/

 

This LEGO model features 2 sliding doors, an opening boot and hood with engine detailing. The engine can be accessed from the hood or from inside the truck by opening an access cover - just like in the real truck (I believe this was done to make the engine easier to access and service). The food truck equipment includes 3 waffle casts, 2 sinks and an opening fridge... and of course the side hatch that can opened/closed.

 

See the full album here.

For this portrait the idea was to lit the scoprionfish in a way that would emphasize the interesting strucutre of its skin.

Pour ce portrait, l'idée était d'éclairer ce chapon de façon à faire ressortir la strucutre de sa peau, très particulière.

GRAND PRISMATIC SPRING - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

 

The diverse landscapes one finds in Yellowstone is, for the uninitiated, an overwhelming experience. It was for me. The geothermal features at the Midway Geyser Basin are just one of the subjects a photographer is challenged to capture. I would have loved to have been at this location before sunrise to get that much coveted gold light but mid morning was when my four brothers and I arrived.

The harsh conditions were going to be a challenge. I chose to bracket three exposures with the exposure compensation set to -2/3 of a stop for a darker set. That method usually produces the best results for me when faced with full sun conditions. I'd rather deal with dark images than blown out highlights. :) Anyway the colors you see in the steam rising from the spring are reflections of the different colors under the waters surface.

I hadn't processed this till today thinking the results weren't going to yield an acceptable result. I've changed my view on that now. :)

  

I got the following information off of Yellowstone National Park's official website:

Grand Prismatic is the largest(250x380 feet) hot spring in Yellowstone, and is considered to be the third largest in the world (New Zealand has the two largest springs). Grand Prismatic sits upon a wide, spreading mound where water flows evenly on all sides forming a series of small, stair-step terraces. The Hayden Expedition in 1871 named this spring because of its beautiful coloration, and artist Thomas Moran made water-color sketches depicting its rainbow-like colors. The sketches seemed exaggerations and geologist A.C. Peale returned in 1878 to verify the colors. The colors begin with a deep blue center followed by pale blue. Green algae forms beyond the shallow edge. Outside the scalloped rim a band of yellow fades into orange. Red then marks the outer border. Steam often shrouds the spring which reflects the brilliant colors. Grand Prismatic discharges an estimated 560 gallons per minute at temperatures between 147-188°F.

Rudyard Kipling, who visited Yellowstone in 1889, immortalized this basin by referring to it as "Hell's Half Acre."

 

Please do take a moment to look at this on black and then at "original size" to get a better feel for this magnificent natural feature. Thanks.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 17: XXX poses at the League of Legends World Championship Quarterfinals Features Day on October 17, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)

Originally dating to around 1320, the building is important because it has most of its original features; successive owners effected relatively few changes to the main structure, after the completion of the quadrangle with a new chapel in the 16th century. Pevsner described it as "the most complete small medieval manor house in the county", and it remains an example that shows how such houses would have looked in the Middle Ages. Unlike most courtyard houses of its type, which have had a range demolished, so that the house looks outward, Nicholas Cooper observes that Ightham Mote wholly surrounds its courtyard and looks inward, into it, offering little information externally.[9] The construction is of "Kentish ragstone and dull red brick,"[10] the buildings of the courtyard having originally been built of timber and subsequently rebuilt in stone.[11]

  

The moat of Ightham Mote

The house has more than 70 rooms, all arranged around a central courtyard, "the confines circumscribed by the moat."[10] The house is surrounded on all sides by a square moat, crossed by three bridges. The earliest surviving evidence is for a house of the early 14th century, with the great hall, to which were attached, at the high, or dais end, the chapel, crypt and two solars. The courtyard was completely enclosed by increments on its restricted moated site, and the battlemented tower was constructed in the 15th century. Very little of the 14th century survives on the exterior behind rebuilding and refacing of the 15th and 16th centuries.

 

The structures include unusual and distinctive elements, such as the porter's squint, a narrow slit in the wall designed to enable a gatekeeper to examine a visitor's credentials before opening the gate. An open loggia with a fifteenth-century gallery above, connects the main accommodations with the gatehouse range. The courtyard contains a large, 19th century dog kennel.[12] The house contains two chapels; the New Chapel, of c.1520, having a barrel roof decorated with Tudor roses. [13] Parts of the interior were remodelled by Richard Norman Shaw.[14] wikipedia

 

16th century-late 19th century

The house remained in the Selby family for nearly 300 years.[3] Sir William was succeeded by his nephew, also Sir William, who is notable for handing over the keys of Berwick-upon-Tweed to James I on his way south to succeed to the throne.[4] He married Dorothy Bonham of West Malling but had no children. The Selbys continued until the mid-19th century when the line faltered with Elizabeth Selby, the widow of a Thomas who disinherited his only son.[5] During her reclusive tenure, Joseph Nash drew the house for his multi-volume illustrated history Mansions of England in the Olden Time, published in the 1840s.[6] The house passed to a cousin, Prideaux John Selby, a distinguished naturalist, sportsman and scientist. On his death in 1867, he left Ightham Mote to a daughter, Mrs Lewis Marianne Bigge. Her second husband, Robert Luard, changed his name to Luard-Selby. Ightham Mote was rented-out in 1887 to American Railroad magnate William Jackson Palmer and his family. For three years Ightham Mote became a centre for the artists and writers of the Aesthetic Movement with visitors including John Singer Sargent, Henry James, and Ellen Terry. When Mrs Bigge died in 1889, the executors of her son Charles Selby-Bigge, a Shropshire land agent, put the house up for sale in July 1889.[6]

 

Late 19th century-21st century

The Mote was purchased by Thomas Colyer-Fergusson.[6] He and his wife brought up their six children at the Mote. In 1890-1891, he carried out much repair and restoration, which allowed the survival of the house after centuries of neglect.[7] Ightham Mote was opened to the public one afternoon a week in the early 20th century.[7]

 

Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson's third son, Riversdale, died aged 21 in 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres, and won a posthumous Victoria Cross. A wooden cross in the New Chapel is in his memory. The oldest brother, Max, was killed at the age of 49 in a bombing raid on an army driving school near Tidworth in 1940 during World War II. One of the three daughters, Mary (called Polly) married Walter Monckton.

 

On Sir Thomas's death in 1951, the property and the baronetcy passed to Max's son, James. The high costs of upkeep and repair of the house led him to sell the house and auction most of the contents. The sale took place in October 1951 and lasted three days. It was suggested that the house be demolished to harvest the lead on the roofs, or that it be divided into flats. Three local men purchased the house: William Durling, John Goodwin and John Baldock. They paid £5,500 for the freehold, in the hope of being able to secure the future of the house.[8]

 

In 1953, Ightham Mote was purchased by Charles Henry Robinson, an American of Portland, Maine, United States. He had known the property when stationed nearby during the Second World War. He lived there for only fourteen weeks a year for tax reasons. He made many urgent repairs, and partly refurnished the house with 17th-century English pieces. In 1965, he announced that he would give Ightham Mote and its contents to the National Trust. He died in 1985 and his ashes were immured just outside the crypt. The National Trust took possession in that year.[8]

 

In 1989, the National Trust began an ambitious conservation project that involved dismantling much of the building and recording its construction methods before rebuilding it. During this process, the effects of centuries of ageing, weathering, and the destructive effect of the deathwatch beetle were highlighted. The project ended in 2004 after revealing numerous examples of structural and ornamental features which had been covered up by later additions.[1]

BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA - MAY 18: T1 poses at the League of Legends - Mid-Season Invitational Rumble Features Day on May 18, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games)

This postcard features a reproduction of the unique triangular 1985 Dutch "Kinderpostzegel" (Children's Welfare Stamp). The design shows a young girl's portrait on a keychain with the Dutch text "Denk aan mij" (Think of me), part of a campaign for child road safety titled "Kind en Verkeer".

Country: Netherlands (Nederland)

Year of Stamp Issue: 1985

Theme: Child Welfare / Road Safety

Catalog No: NVPH 1343

Value: 50c + 25c surcharge for children's charities.

She makes small parathas in her toy plate...and a moment of greatest happiness can be felt around her...the moment she could get one..done:)special moment of wonderful kids....are not to be missed..Mar 2010

This grave, found in the Old Ballaarat Cemetery, features a female mourner draped in a shift with a veil across her head; her eyes cast down, always there to mourn those in the grave, long after their names and faces have been forgotten.

 

Built across an area of 7 hectares (18 acres), the historical Old Ballaarat Cemetery is located about one and a half kilometres from Ballarat's heart with its boundaries on Macarthur Street, Creswick Road, Lexton Street and Pigah Street.

 

Ballarat's first public cemetery was recorded in 1856, when the first official cemetery burial took place on the 20th May. Local records indicate that whilst this was the first official burial, ceremonies took place in the area of the Old Ballaarat Cemetery in the late 1840's and thereafter, which was even before the discovery of gold in Ballarat and the subsequent Gold Rushes that drew people to the city from around the world.

 

Allow the elegant and ornate Victorian gates on the corner of Macarthur Street and Creswick Road to usher you into a world of grand and simple monuments to the dead, and to a slice of Ballarat's fantastic history. The Old Ballaarat Cemetery is filled with historical figures from Ballarat's past as many burials were early settlers who were looking to make their fortune on the goldfields. People mentioned in my own photostream are amongst those buried here; Richard Henry Sutton of Sutton's Music Store in Sturt Street; George and Clara Crocker who dedicated windows in St Peter's Church of England to their sons who died during the Great War; Thomas Stoddart who made Ballarat a city of marble statues; and Henry Richards Caselli who designed so many beautiful and iconic Ballarat buildings. Two important monuments in not just Ballarat's, but Australia's, history were erected in the cemetery following from the armed insurrection of 1854 - the Eureka uprising; the Eureka Diggers' Monument in 1856 and the Officers and Soldiers Monument in 1879.

 

Situated in the centre of the cemetery, is the original Victorian rotunda built in 1892 to the designs of James and Piper and J. C. Smith. The Rotunda has recently been restored to its original splendour.

 

Cemetery records show 35,000 interments have taken place since 1856, with 18,000 prior to 1884.

 

Appropriately for a city, once the wealthiest in the world, because of the Gold Rushes, in 1907 gold was discovered in the Old Ballaarat Cemetery when grave diggers were preparing a grave for a Mr. T. C. Thomas.

 

The 1920 gatehouse building was restored in 1997.

The water features at the Far East Organisation Children's Garden, Gardens by the Bay.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 17: Choi "Doran" Hyeon-joon of Gen.G poses at the League of Legends World Championship Quarterfinals Features Day on October 17, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)

TAIL FEATURES : BLBR VS CACG

very similar with differing emphasis

 

BLBR

Rump :Black is more pointed (wedge angle more acute)

White mid stripe :have a thicker white band

Tail : band of black shows less on tail

  

CACG

Rump :Black is more blunt (wedge angle more obtuse)

White mid stripe :have a thinner white band

Tail : band of black shows more on tail

 

STUDY SHOT

DSCN4291 heavily cropped

I'm always in my element when faced with all kinds of rocky features to point a lens at. There's no shortage of great rocks in Pembrokeshire.

If you own the popular Panasonic AG-AC90 and are eager to upgrade it, or if you’re just looking for a camcorder that gives you great value for money, you won’t go wrong with choosing the Panasonic AG-AC30. This new camcorder might be classified as “entry-level”, but it’s act...

 

epfilms.tv/panasonic-ag-ac30-entry-level-camcorder-thats-...

The city of Vaison-la-Romaine was, unsurprisingly, built by the Romans, but only in part. In fact, it features two very different built-up areas: one leisurely laid out on flat land, and the other holding on tight to a tall and dominating rocky outcrop, on the other bank of River Ouvèze, which is spanned by a Roman bridge. And the history of Vaison is largely that of a going back and forth between those two areas.

 

The very first inhabitants of Vaison, pre-Roman conquest, prudently settled on the mountain. Traces of Neolithic occupation were found on its steep slopes. Confident in the Pax Romana they were bringing with them, the Romans settled comfortably in the plain, by the banks of the Ouvèze, and began building a lovely and remarkable city, of which many famous ruins remain. Then the invasions of Barbarians from the East, and Saracens from the South, drove the people back onto the mountain, where they took many of the Roman cut stones of the lower city to fortify, defend and build ramparts, homes and churches. It is not really until the 19th century that they deemed safe to go back down again and re-settle the Antique part of the city, building frenetically over Roman ruins. This being before the time of “pre-emptive archæological digs”, many such ruins are undoubtedly forever buried under the elegant homes of the 1800s Vaison.

 

The Château comtal (i.e., “Castle of the Counts”) we are visiting is a symbol of the centuries-long feud between the sacred and the secular —the former, we must admit, being largely the main culprit: while it is true that secular powers oftentimes tried to encroach upon the religious (for example by trying to usurp and appropriate the right to appoint bishops, abbots or abbesses), the clerical powers-that-be were equally, if not more often liable to try and meddle in, and establish their rule over, profane affairs and management of what we would call today “civilian” life.

 

In Vaison, bishop Bertrand de Mornas was guilty of such an appropriation and was consequently driven away by force in 1160 by Raymond V of Toulouse, the Toulouse family being the local overlords at the time. The next bishop, Bertrand de Lambesc, re-took the town in 1178 but let Raymond’s troops station on the mountaintop. There, true to form, they built a wooden fort in 1183 to symbolize their domination; it is the ancestor of the castle we still see today. In 1185, the then-bishop, Bérenger de Reillanne, burned that fort. Count Raymond sent his troops back right away, once again driving the bishop away. Between 1190 and 1193, they built a stone castle impervious to fire. :o)

 

The castle is not open to the public, as there are some spaces that are dangerous. The municipality, which owns the monument, has been working for quite a while in the perspective of opening it one day. Securing the ways to access is also a big challenge, as the whole mountaintop, including the bedrock, is listed as a Historic Landmark. Therefore, nothing can be touched unless declassified —an administrative nightmare— and I verified for myself that getting there can be very tricky, slippery and risky. The way cannot be publicly endorsed as is, oit would bring a slew of law suits against the town. I was permitted access inside in my capacity as pro bono photographer for the Fondation du Patrimoine.

 

The Renaissance window, with a view over the courtyard.

Taen around 2004 on a Minolta DimargeX compact camera.

Red Rock Canyon State Park features scenic desert cliffs, buttes and spectacular rock formations. The park is located where the southernmost tip of the Sierra Nevada converge with the El Paso Range. Each tributary canyon is unique, with dramatic shapes and vivid colors.

 

Historically, the area was once home to the Kawaiisu Indians, who left petroglyphs in the El Paso mountains and other evidence of their inhabitation. The spectacular gash situated at the western edge of the El Paso mountain range was on the Native American trade route for thousands of years. During the early 1870s, the colorful rock formations in the park served as landmarks for 20-mule team freight wagons that stopped for water. About 1850, it was used by the footsore survivors of the famous Death Valley trek including members of the Arcane and Bennett families along with some of the Illinois Jayhawkers. The park now protects significant paleontology sites and the remains of 1890s-era mining operations, and has been the site for a number of movies.

 

After wet winters, the park's floral displays are stunning. The beauty of the desert, combined with the geologic features make this park a camper's favorite destination. Wildlife you may encounter includes roadrunners, hawks, lizards, mice and squirrels.

 

www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=631

 

Bolam Lake Country Park is a country park in Northumberland, England, near the village of Bolam and about 9 miles (14 km) west of Morpeth. It is signposted off the A696 road from Belsay.

 

History

The lake and woodlands were laid out by John Dobson for Reverend John Beresford, Baron Decies, the owner of the Bolam estate, who wanted to provide work for local people during a period of economic decline. The project, started in 1816, took three years to complete. The site was landscaped, and designed to provide picturesque views of nearby features in the countryside. The lake was created from a swampy area known as Bolam Bog.

 

By 1945 the grounds had grown wild; in 1972 the estate was purchased by Northumberland County Council in order to create a country park. In 2016 the lake and landscaped surroundings celebrated their 200th anniversary.

Description

 

The park, area 26.48 hectares (65.4 acres); has a lake, woodlands and open grassland. There are walks throughout the park, including a fully accessible path around the lake.

 

Wildlife in the park includes roe deer and red squirrels; there are swans and other waterfowl on the lake. Woodland birds to be seen include great spotted woodpecker, bullfinch, nuthatch and treecreeper.

 

There is a visitor centre and café next to the Boathouse Wood Car Park, to the north of the lake.

 

Bolam is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Belsay in the county of Northumberland, England. The village is about 20 miles (32 km) north-west of Newcastle upon Tyne, near Bolam West Houses. In 1951 the civil parish had a population of 60. On 1 April 1955 the parish was abolished and merged with Belsay.

History

 

The Church of England parish church of St Andrew has a late Saxon west tower and is a Grade I listed building.[3]

 

Shortflatt Tower, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south-west of the village, is a late 15th or early 16th century pele tower, with a 17th-century house attached, and is also Grade I listed.

 

Bolam is the burial place of Robert de Reymes, a wealthy Suffolk merchant, who in 1296 began the building of Aydon Castle, near Corbridge.

Landmarks

 

Bolam Lake Country Park is next to the village.

 

Three archaeological sites are nearby: Huckhoe Settlement, an iron Age and Romano-British defended settlement; Slate Hill Settlement, an Iron Age defended settlement; and The Poind and his Man, a Neolithic site.

 

Northumberland is a ceremonial county in North East England, bordering Scotland. It is bordered by the Scottish Borders to the north, the North Sea to the east, Tyne and Wear and County Durham to the south, and Cumbria to the west. The town of Blyth is the largest settlement.

 

The county has an area of 5,013 km2 (1,936 sq mi) and a population of 320,274, making it the least-densely populated county in England. The south-east contains the largest towns: Blyth (37,339), Cramlington (27,683), Ashington (27,670), and Morpeth (14,304), which is the administrative centre. The remainder of the county is rural, and the largest towns are Berwick-upon-Tweed (12,043) in the far north and Hexham (13,097) in the west. For local government purposes the county is a unitary authority area. The county historically included the parts of Tyne and Wear north of the River Tyne.

 

The west of Northumberland contains part of the Cheviot Hills and North Pennines, while to the east the land becomes flatter before reaching the coast. The Cheviot (815 m (2,674 ft)), after which the range of hills is named, is the county's highest point. The county contains the source of the River North Tyne and much of the South Tyne; near Hexham they combine to form the Tyne, which exits into Tyne and Wear shortly downstream. The other major rivers in Northumberland are, from south to north, the Blyth, Coquet, Aln, Wansbeck and Tweed, the last of which forms part of the Scottish border. The county contains Northumberland National Park and two national landscapes: the Northumberland Coast and part of the North Pennines.

 

Much of the county's history has been defined by its position on a border. In the Roman era most of the county lay north of Hadrian's Wall, and the region was contested between England and Scotland into the Early Modern era, leading to the construction of many castles, peel towers and bastle houses, and the early modern fortifications at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Northumberland is also associated with Celtic Christianity, particularly the tidal island of Lindisfarne. During the Industrial Revolution the area had significant coal mining, shipbuilding, and armaments industries.

 

Northumberland, England's northernmost county, is a land where Roman occupiers once guarded a walled frontier, Anglian invaders fought with Celtic natives, and Norman lords built castles to suppress rebellion and defend a contested border with Scotland. The present-day county is a vestige of an independent kingdom that once stretched from Edinburgh to the Humber, hence its name, meaning literally 'north of the Humber'.[1] Reflecting its tumultuous past, Northumberland has more castles than any other county in England, and the greatest number of recognised battle sites. Once an economically important region that supplied much of the coal that powered the industrial revolution, Northumberland is now a primarily rural county with a small and gradually shrinking population.

 

Prehistory

As attested by many instances of rock art, the Northumberland region has a rich prehistory. Archeologists have studied a Mesolithic structure at Howick, which dates to 7500 BC and was identified as Britain's oldest house until it lost this title in 2010 when the discovery of the even older Star Carr house in North Yorkshire was announced, which dates to 8770 BC. They have also found tools, ornaments, building structures and cairns dating to the bronze and iron ages, when the area was occupied by Brythonic Celtic peoples who had migrated from continental Europe, most likely the Votadini whose territory stretched from Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth to Northumberland. It is not clear where the boundary between the Votadini and the other large tribe, the Brigantes, was, although it probably frequently shifted as a result of wars and as smaller tribes and communities changed allegiances. Unlike neighbouring tribes, Votadini farms were surrounded by large walls, banks and ditches and the people made offerings of fine metal objects, but never wore massive armlets. There are also at least three very large hillforts in their territory (Yeavering Bell, Eildon Hill and Traprain Law, the latter two now in Scotland), each was located on the top of a prominent hill or mountain. The hillforts may have been used for over a thousand years by this time as places of refuge and as places for meetings for political and religious ceremonies. Duddo Five Stones in North Northumberland and the Goatstones near Hadrian's Wall are stone circles dating from the Bronze Age.

 

Roman occupation

When Gnaeus Julius Agricola was appointed Roman governor of Britain in 78 AD, most of northern Britain was still controlled by native British tribes. During his governorship Agricola extended Roman control north of Eboracum (York) and into what is now Scotland. Roman settlements, garrisons and roads were established throughout the Northumberland region.

 

The northern frontier of the Roman occupation fluctuated between Pons Aelius (now Newcastle) and the Forth. Hadrian's Wall was completed by about 130 AD, to define and defend the northern boundary of Roman Britain. By 142, the Romans had completed the Antonine Wall, a more northerly defensive border lying between the Forth and Clyde. However, by 164 they abandoned the Antonine Wall to consolidate defences at Hadrian's Wall.

 

Two important Roman roads in the region were the Stanegate and Dere Street, the latter extending through the Cheviot Hills to locations well north of the Tweed. Located at the intersection of these two roads, Coria (Corbridge), a Roman supply-base, was the most northerly large town in the Roman Empire. The Roman forts of Vercovicium (Housesteads) on Hadrian's Wall, and Vindolanda (Chesterholm) built to guard the Stanegate, had extensive civil settlements surrounding them.

 

The Celtic peoples living in the region between the Tyne and the Forth were known to the Romans as the Votadini. When not under direct Roman rule, they functioned as a friendly client kingdom, a somewhat porous buffer against the more warlike Picts to the north.

 

The gradual Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century led to a poorly documented age of conflict and chaos as different peoples contested territories in northern Britain.

 

Archaeology

Nearly 2000-year-old Roman boxing gloves were uncovered at Vindolanda in 2017 by the Vidolanda Trust experts led by Dr Andrew Birley. According to the Guardian, being similar in style and function to the full-hand modern boxing gloves, these two gloves found at Vindolanda look like leather bands date back to 120 AD. It is suggested that based on their difference from gladiator gloves warriors using this type of gloves had no purpose to kill each other. These gloves were probably used in a sport for promoting fighting skills. The gloves are currently displayed at Vindolanda's museum.

 

Anglian Kingdoms of Deira, Bernicia and Northumbria

Conquests by Anglian invaders led to the establishment of the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia. The first Anglian settlement was effected in 547 by Ida, who, accompanied by his six sons, pushed through the narrow strip of territory between the Cheviots and the sea, and set up a fortress at Bamburgh, which became the royal seat of the Bernician kings. About the end of the 6th century Bernicia was first united with the rival kingdom of Deira under the rule of Æthelfrith of Northumbria, and the district between the Humber and the Forth became known as the kingdom of Northumbria.

 

After Æthelfrith was killed in battle around 616, Edwin of Deira became king of Northumbria. Æthelfrith's son Oswald fled northwest to the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata where he was converted to Christianity by the monks of Iona. Meanwhile, Paulinus, the first bishop of York, converted King Edwin to Roman Christianity and began an extensive program of conversion and baptism. By his time the kingdom must have reached the west coast, as Edwin is said to have conquered the islands of Anglesey and Man. Under Edwin the Northumbrian kingdom became the chief power in Britain. However, when Cadwallon ap Cadfan defeated Edwin at Hatfield Chase in 633, Northumbria was divided into the former kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira and Christianity suffered a temporary decline.

 

In 634, Oswald defeated Cadwallon ap Cadfan at the Battle of Heavenfield, resulting in the re-unification of Northumbria. Oswald re-established Christianity in the kingdom and assigned a bishopric at Hexham, where Wilfrid erected a famous early English church. Reunification was followed by a period of Northumbrian expansion into Pictish territory and growing dominance over the Celtic kingdoms of Dál Riata and Strathclyde to the west. Northumbrian encroachments were abruptly curtailed in 685, when Ecgfrith suffered complete defeat by a Pictish force at the Battle of Nechtansmere.

 

Monastic culture

When Saint Aidan came at the request of Oswald to preach to the Northumbrians he chose the island of Lindisfarne as the site of his church and monastery, and made it the head of the diocese which he founded in 635. For some years the see continued in peace, numbering among its bishops Saint Cuthbert, but in 793 Vikings landed on the island and burnt the settlement, killing many of the monks. The survivors, however, rebuilt the church and continued to live there until 883, when, through fear of a second invasion of the Danes, they fled inland, taking with them the body of Cuthbert and other holy relics.

 

Against this background, the monasteries of Northumbria developed some remarkably influential cultural products. Cædmon, a monk at Whitby Abbey, authored one of the earliest surviving examples of Old English poetry some time before 680. The Lindisfarne Gospels, an early example of insular art, is attributed to Eadfrith, the bishop of Lindisfarne from 698 to 721. Stenton (1971, p. 191) describes the book as follows.

 

In mere script it is no more than an admirable example of a noble style, and the figure drawing of its illustrations, though probably based on classical models, has more than a touch of naïveté. Its unique importance is due to the beauty and astonishing intricacy of its decoration. The nature of its ornament connects it very closely with a group of Irish manuscripts of which the Book of Kells is the most famous.

 

Bede's writing, at the Northumbrian monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow, gained him a reputation as the most learned scholar of his age. His work is notable for both its breadth (encompassing history, theology, science and literature) and quality, exemplified by the rigorous use of citation. Bede's most famous work is Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which is regarded as a highly influential early model of historical scholarship.

 

Earldom of Northumbria

Main article: Earl of Northumbria

The kingdom of Northumbria ceased to exist in 927, when it was incorporated into England as an earldom by Athelstan, the first king of a united England[citation needed].. In 937, Athelstan's victory over a combined Norse-Celtic force in the battle of Brunanburh secured England's control of its northern territory.

 

The Scottish king Indulf captured Edinburgh in 954, which thenceforth remained in possession of the Scots. His successors made repeated attempts to extend their territory southwards. Malcolm II was finally successful, when, in 1018, he annihilated the Northumbrian army at Carham on the Tweed, and Eadulf the earl of Northumbria ceded all his territory to the north of that river as the price of peace. Henceforth Lothian, consisting of the former region of Northumbria between the Forth and the Tweed, remained in possession of the Scottish kings.

 

The term Northumberland was first recorded in its contracted modern sense in 1065 in an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relating to a rebellion against Tostig Godwinson.

 

Norman Conquest

The vigorous resistance of Northumbria to William the Conqueror was punished by ruthless harrying, mostly south of the River Tees. As recounted by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

 

A.D. 1068. This year King William gave Earl Robert the earldom over Northumberland; but the landsmen attacked him in the town of Durham, and slew him, and nine hundred men with him. Soon afterwards Edgar Etheling came with all the Northumbrians to York; and the townsmen made a treaty with him: but King William came from the South unawares on them with a large army, and put them to flight, and slew on the spot those who could not escape; which were many hundred men; and plundered the town. St. Peter's minster he made a profanation, and all other places also he despoiled and trampled upon; and the ethelling went back again to Scotland.

 

The Normans rebuilt the Anglian monasteries of Lindisfarne, Hexham and Tynemouth, and founded Norman abbeys at Newminster (1139), Alnwick (1147), Brinkburn (1180), Hulne, and Blanchland. Castles were built at Newcastle (1080), Alnwick (1096), Bamburgh (1131), Harbottle (1157), Prudhoe (1172), Warkworth (1205), Chillingham, Ford (1287), Dunstanburgh (1313), Morpeth, Langley (1350), Wark on Tweed and Norham (1121), the latter an enclave of the palatine bishops of Durham.

 

Northumberland county is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey, but the account of the issues of the county, as rendered by Odard the sheriff, is entered in the Great Roll of the Exchequer for 1131.

 

In 1237, Scotland renounced claims to Northumberland county in the Treaty of York.

 

During the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), the county of Northumberland was the district between the Tees and the Tweed, and had within it several scattered liberties subject to other powers: Durham, Sadberge, Bedlingtonshire, and Norhamshire belonging to the bishop of Durham; Hexhamshire to the archbishop of York; Tynedale to the king of Scotland; Emildon to the earl of Lancaster; and Redesdale to Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus. These franchises were exempt from the ordinary jurisdiction of the shire. Over time, some were incorporated within the county: Tynedale in 1495; Hexhamshire in 1572; and Norhamshire, Islandshire and Bedlingtonshire by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.

 

Council of the North

The county court for Northumberland was held at different times at Newcastle, Alnwick and Morpeth, until by statute of 1549 it was ordered that the court should thenceforth be held in the town and castle of Alnwick. Under the same statute the sheriffs of Northumberland, who had been in the habit of appropriating the issues of the county to their private use, were required thereafter to deliver in their accounts to the Exchequer in the same manner as the sheriffs of other counties.

 

Border wars, reivers and rebels

From the Norman Conquest until the union of England and Scotland under James I and VI, Northumberland was the scene of perpetual inroads and devastations by the Scots. Norham, Alnwick and Wark were captured by David I of Scotland in the wars of Stephen's reign. In 1174, during his invasion of Northumbria, William I of Scotland, also known as William the Lion, was captured by a party of about four hundred mounted knights, led by Ranulf de Glanvill.[citation needed] This incident became known as the Battle of Alnwick. In 1295, Robert de Ros and the earls of Athol and Menteith ravaged Redesdale, Coquetdale and Tynedale. In 1314 the county was ravaged by king Robert Bruce. And so dire was the Scottish threat in 1382, that by special enactment the earl of Northumberland was ordered to remain on his estates to protect the border. In 1388, Henry Percy was taken prisoner and 1500 of his men slain at the battle of Otterburn, immortalised in the ballad of Chevy Chase.

 

Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh were garrisoned for the Lancastrian cause in 1462, but after the Yorkist victories of Hexham and Hedgley Moor in 1464, Alnwick and Dunstanburgh surrendered, and Bamburgh was taken by storm.

 

In September 1513, King James IV of Scotland was killed at the Battle of Flodden on Branxton Moor.

 

Roman Catholic support in Northumberland for Mary, Queen of Scots, led to the Rising of the North in 1569.

 

Harbottle

Border Reivers

Peel tower

Union and Civil War

After uniting the English and Scottish thrones, James VI and I sharply curbed the lawlessness of the border reivers and brought relative peace to the region. There were Church of Scotland congregations in Northumberland in the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

During the Civil War of the 17th century, Newcastle was garrisoned for the king by the earl of Newcastle, but in 1644 it was captured by the Scots under the earl of Leven, and in 1646 Charles I was led there a captive under the charge of David Leslie.

 

Many of the chief Northumberland families were ruined in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715.

 

Industrialisation

The mineral resources of the area appear to have been exploited to some extent from remote times. It is certain that coal was used by the Romans in Northumberland, and some coal ornaments found at Angerton have been attributed to the 7th century. In a 13th-century grant to Newminster Abbey a road for the conveyance of sea coal from the shore about Blyth is mentioned, and the Blyth coal field was worked throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The coal trade on the Tyne did not exist to any extent before the 13th century, but from that period it developed rapidly, and Newcastle acquired the monopoly of the river shipping and coal trade. Lead was exported from Newcastle in the 12th century, probably from Hexhamshire, the lead mines of which were very prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. In a charter from Richard I to Hugh de Puiset creating him earl of Northumberland, mines of silver and iron are mentioned. A salt pan is mentioned at Warkworth in the 12th century; in the 13th century the salt industry flourished at the mouth of the river Blyth, and in the 15th century formed the principal occupation of the inhabitants of North and South Shields. In the reign of Elizabeth I, glass factories were set up at Newcastle by foreign refugees, and the industry spread rapidly along the Tyne. Tanning, both of leather and of nets, was largely practised in the 13th century, and the salmon fisheries in the Tyne were famous in the reign of Henry I.

 

John Smeaton designed the Coldstream Bridge and a bridge at Hexham.

Stephenson's Rocket

Invention of the steam turbine by Charles Algernon Parsons

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL - FEBRUARY 19: Zhang "Smoggy" Zhao of EDward Gaming poses during the VALORANT Champions Tour 2023: LOCK//IN features day on February 19, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)

Warner Bros Studio Tour London: The Making of Harry Potter

Warner Bros Studio, Aerodrome Way, Leavesden, Watford, Herts, WD25 7LS

 

A great day out for every fan of the boy wizard.

 

The Making of Harry Potter studio tour, covering 150,000 square foot, on two soundstages opened on the 31st March 2012, with stars galore at the red carpet launch at the Leavesden Studios where all eight movies were produced.

 

The home for many film productions, including several James Bond features, before a relatively new production company arrived there to make a film about a young boy who on his 11th birthday discovers he is a wizard.

 

Over the next ten years, the cast and crew of over 4,000 in total used more and more of the studios as the popularity of the books and films grew. The three young stars lived, grew up, went to school and turned into adults there on those stages.

 

Your tour begins in the foyer, with a flying Ford Anglia hanging from the ceiling and the walls adorned with huge photos of the cast, along with a few props.

 

Passing by the set of the cupboard under the stairs, you enter a room with a number of vertical TV screens showing Potter movie posters from around the world, followed by a short video sequence showing the rise of Harry’s popularity, the production teams discovery of the stories and the enormous worldwide success of the books and films.

 

Moving into the cinema, a short film introduced by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, talking about their experiences growing up on a film set for ten years, with clips from all eight films. The film ends with them standing in front of the main doors to the Great Hall and they walk in through the doors and invite you to follow them.

 

The screen at this point slowly rises to reveal the actual main doors to the Great Hall, surrounded with stone statues and carvings. What a wizard way to start the tour.

 

Walking through into the Great Hall we are told that we were now walking on the actual stone floor used in the films and seeing the actual tables where the actors ate their feasts. Dummies down each side of the hall wear the actual costumes used in the films. At the far end of the hall is the teachers’ table area, with more amazing costumes worn by Professors Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall, Moody, Trelawney and Flitwick, as well as Hagrid and Filch too.

 

Leaving the Great Hall you enter the first of two vast sound stages. This includes sets for the Gryffindor Common Room and Dormitory, Dumbledore’s Office, Potions Classroom, Hagrid’s Hut, Burrow’s Kitchen and parts of the Ministry of Magic, also Umbridge’s gaudy pink, feline office. Each filled to the brim with props and costumes.

 

Props can be seen everywhere, with a massive cage in the centre, chock-a-block with goblets, chandeliers, wands and armour. A huge glass case contains the wands of 24 of the major characters – less than 1 percent of the total number of wands made for the films. The ornate doors to a Gringott’s vault and to the Chamber of Secrets are seen after passing a wall dedicated to the paintings produced to decorate the walls of Hogwarts.

 

Below the giant swinging pendulum of the Hogwarts castle clock there are several huge touch screens containing an interactive Marauders Map.

 

There are sections of the soundstage dedicated to various movie-making crafts. The hair and makeup section, costumes section, animal department, graphic design and production.

The final section in this first soundstage is dedicated to the Special Effects department with three huge video screens showing all the tricks and techniques, including greenscreen footage and CGI. Props attached to their motion rigs, include the Gringott’s Vault Cart and Mad-Eye Moody’s Recumbent Broomstick.

 

In separate room you can have a go on a broomstick or drive the Ford Anglia yourself, using the greenscreen technology.

 

The Backlot about half way round the tour is an open air section between the two soundstages where refreshments are available, including Butterbeer the popular wizarding beverage.

 

Also featured on the backlot are the Knight Bus, another Ford Anglia, Hagrid’s motorbike/sidecar, the Riddle family tombstone, a section of the rickety wooden Hogwarts Bridge, Potter’s burnt out cottage from Godric’s Hollow and Number 4 Privet Drive.

 

Entering the second soundstage you pass some of the giant chess pieces from the first movie. A number of video screens here progressively show what it was like to work in the creature shop, cleverly leading you from one screen to the next, past models of Fawkes, a snapping Monster Book of Monsters and a giant animatronic head of Hagrid. The next room has the life size (i.e., ENORMOUS!) model of Aragog the spider and one of three animatronic Buckbeak models.

 

Walking around the corner (WOW) you are transported into another world entirely. The dark lighting and cobbled street can only mean one thing – you have entered Diagon Alley. The shops using the original sets have been rebuilt– Flourish & Blotts, Eeylops Owl Emporium, Potage’s Cauldron Shop and of course Ollivander’s Wand Shop, each and every one them is crammed full of detail. At the other end of the street is Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, with the bright orange shopfront standing out from the crowd of blackness and featuring a moving model of one of the red-haired twins doffing his hat.

 

At the end of Diagon Alley you move onto the Art and Design department with walls covered with architectural drawings and detailed plans, accurate down to the millimetre, for many of the props and sets already seen. A draftsman’s table serves as a projection screen for another video about the work of the art department.

 

Moving on, up the ascending path are walls full of concept paintings and artwork, also intricate cardboard models of Hogsmead and the Hogwarts.

 

You are only looking at a model of the model though, as entering the next room, there, spread over at least 15 square metres is the most amazing, complex and elaborate model built to a 1:24 scale. It has a bigger footprint than the average house.

 

The last part of the tour is a fitting tribute to the crew and cast of the most popular film franchise of all time. A much tidier recreation of the interior of Ollivander’s Wand shop, with over 4,000 wand boxes lining its shelves – one for every single person who worked on the films.

 

Exit through the Gift Shop.

Features:

Railgun

Opening roof hatch

Retractable communications mast

360-degree rotating turret

90-degree lifting railgun

Dimensions:

7x3x2.5 studs

 

Built for the 2012 LMABC.

Features a photo essay by D. L. A. Turner on Steam Incorporated's Double Thunder excursion featuring Ja1271 and Ab608 that took place on 18.7.2015.

The Stables.

 

The stable block at Chatsworth is prominently situated on the rising ground to the north-east of the house. Its entrance gate features four Doric columns with rusticated banding, a pediment containing a huge carving of the family coat of arms, two life-size stags in embellished with real antlers, and a clock tower topped by a cupola. The building was designed by James Paine for the 4th Duke and was built in around 1760. It is approximately 190 feet (60 m) square and is two storeys tall. There are low towers in the corners in addition to the one over the entrance gate. The stables originally had stalls for 80 horses, and all necessary equine facilities including a blacksmiths shop. The first floor was occupied by granaries and accommodation for the many stable staff. According to the Dowager Duchess in her book, Chatsworth: The House, one room still has "Third Postillion" painted on the door. The 6th Duke added a carriage house behind the stables in the 1830s.

 

The last horses left the stables in 1939 and the building was then used as a store and garage. The grooms' accommodation was converted into flats for Chatsworth employees and pensioners and their families. When the house reopened to the public after the war, "catering" was limited to an outdoor tap, which has since been relabelled "water for dogs". In 1975 a tea bar was established with an investment of £120. The first attempt at a café opened in 1979. It seated 90 in some old horse stalls in the stables and was not satisfactory; either to the customers or from a commercial point of view. In 1987 the Duke and Duchess's private chef, a Frenchman named Jean-Pierre Béraud who was also a leading light in the success of the Chatsworth Farm Shop and Chatsworth Foods, took charge of the catering. After a failed attempt to obtain planning permission for a new building incorporating the old ice house in the park, a 250-seat restaurant was created in the carriage house. The nineteenth-century coach used by the Dowager Duchess and the late Duke at the Queen's Coronation is on display there. Other facilities include The Cavendish Rooms, which also serves refreshments, a shop and three rooms available for hire. The stables cater for thirty thousand people a month during the visitor season.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatsworth_House