In many ways Sergei found it inconvenient being a bird within a bird within a bird within a bird.

 

For instance the application of his contact lenses.

The Queen Alexandra Bridge is a road traffic, pedestrian and former railway bridge spanning the River Wear in North East England, linking the Deptford and Southwick areas of Sunderland. The steel truss bridge was designed by Charles A. Harrison (a nephew of Robert Stephenson's assistant). It was built by Sir William Arrol between 1907 and 1909 and officially opened by The Earl of Durham, on behalf of Queen Alexandra on 10 June 1909.

 

In 1899 the North Eastern Railway and the Sunderland Corporation agreed to build the bridge to improve communications across the river and to connect the coalfields of Annfield Plain and Washington with Sunderland's south docks. Before the completion of the bridge, road traffic crossing the river had to use one of two ferries which crossed below near to where the bridge is today. As the bridge was due to be built near to the successful shipyards of the Wear, a clause in the North Eastern Railway Act 1900 required that only one arch span be built over the river to give a clearance of 85 ft (26 m) above high water level.

 

The approaches to the bridge were completed in 1907 by the Mitchell Brothers of Glasgow. The steel bridge comprises three 200-foot (61 m) spans (weighing 1,000 tonnes each), plus a 300-foot (91 m) main span across the river (weighing 2,600 tonnes), and was the heaviest bridge in the United Kingdom at the time. The bridge was built from each side of the river and the two halves came together at noon on 15 October 1908. In all, a total of 8,500 tonnes of steel, 4,500 tonnes of granite, 60,000 tonnes of red sandstone from Dumfries, and 350,000 bricks were used. The total cost was £450,000 (equivalent to £45.5 million in 2016). The bridge also housed gas and water mains and in later years, high voltage electricity cables and a pumped rising-main for sewage.

 

About six million tonnes of coal passed over the upper-deck annually for export, but the trade rapidly declined at the end of the 1910s. For the last few years only one train per day passed over the bridge. The last goods train ran over in 1921, but the lower-deck continues as a valuable road link. In the Second World War, the upper-deck was used as a searchlight and anti-aircraft platform. The railway and decking at each end of the bridge were finally removed near to the end of the 20th century. A large free standing brick and stone viaduct fragment remains on the north side of the Bridge.

 

From 21 March 2005, the bridge was temporarily restricted to southbound traffic whilst repainting and repair work was carried out on the 96-year-old structure, which was due to take almost a year to complete. It reopened for both lanes of traffic on 12 October 2006, having been partly closed for 18 months and costing £6.3m in repairs.

 

Previously classified as part of the A1231, the road across the bridge was reclassified as the B1539 when the Northern Spire Bridge was opened to traffic on 29 August 2018.

 

The River Wear in Northern England rises in the Pennines and flows eastwards, mostly through County Durham, to the North Sea in the City of Sunderland. At 60 mi (97 km) long, it is one of the region's longest rivers. The Wear wends in a steep valley through the cathedral city of Durham and gives its name to Weardale in its upper reach and Wearside by its mouth.

 

The origin behind the hydronym Wear is uncertain but is generally understood to be Celtic. The River Vedra on the Roman Map of Britain may very well be the River Wear. The name may be derived from Brittonic *wejr (<*wẹ:drā), which meant "a bend" (cf. Welsh -gwair-). An alternative but very problematic etymology might involve *wẹ:d-r-, from a lengthened form of the Indo-European root *wed- "water". Also suggested is a possible derivation from the Brittonic root *wei-, which is thought to have meant "to flow". The name Wear has also been explained as being an ancient Celtic name meaning "river of blood".

 

It is possible that the Wear has the same etymology as the River Wyre in Lancashire,[1] the Quair Water in Scotland, the Weser in Germany and the Vistula in Poland.

 

The Wear rises in the east Pennines, high on the moors of the Alston Block, an upland area raised up during the Caledonian orogeny. The Devonian age Weardale Granite underlies the headwaters of the Wear and the whole Alston Block, but does not appear at outcrop but was surmised by early geologists, and subsequently proven to exist as seen in the Rookhope borehole. It is the presence of this granite that has retained the high upland elevations of this area (less through its relative hardness, and more due to isostatic equilibrium) and accounts for heavy local mineralisation, although it is considered that most of the mineralisation occurred during the Carboniferous period.

 

It is thought that the course of the River Wear, prior to the last Ice Age, was much as it is now as far as Chester-le-Street. This can be established as a result of boreholes, of which there have been many in the Wear valley due to coal mining. However, northwards from Chester-le-Street, the Wear may have originally followed the current route of the lower River Team. The last glaciation reached its peak about 18,500 years ago, from which time it also began a progressive retreat, leaving a wide variety of glacial deposits in its wake, filling existing river valleys with silt, sand and other glacial till. At about 14,000 years ago, retreat of the ice paused for maybe 500 years at the city of Durham. This can be established by the types of glacial deposits in the vicinity of Durham City. The confluence of the River Browney was pushed from Gilesgate (the abandoned river valley still exists in Pelaw Woods), several miles south to Sunderland Bridge (Croxdale). At Chester-le-Street, when glacial boulder clay was deposited blocking its northerly course, the River Wear was diverted eastwards towards Sunderland where it was forced to cut a new, shallower valley. The gorge cut by the river through the Permian Magnesian Limestone (Zechstein limestone) can be seen most clearly at Ford Quarry. In the 17th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1990), reference is made to a pre-Ice Age course of the River Wear outfalling at Hartlepool.

 

The upland area of Upper Weardale retains a flora that relates, almost uniquely in England, to the end of the last Ice Age, although it almost or entirely lacks the particular rarities that make up the unique "Teesdale Assemblage" of post-glacial plants. This may, in part, be due to the Pennine areas of Upper Weardale and Upper Teesdale being the site of the shrinking ice cap, or to the difference in the surface geology, with none of the 'sugar limestone' outcrops which in Teesdale are the home of many of those plants. The glaciation left behind many indications of its presence, including lateral moraines and material from the Lake District and Northumberland, although surprisingly few drumlins. After the Ice Age, the Wear valley became thickly forested, however during the Neolithic period and increasingly in the Bronze Age, were largely deforested for agriculture.

 

Much of the River Wear is associated with the history of the Industrial Revolution. Its upper end runs through lead mining country, until this gives way to coal seams of the Durham coalfield for the rest of its length. As a result of limestone quarrying, lead mining and coal mining, the Wear valley was amongst the first places to see the development of railways. The Weardale Railway continues to run occasional services between Stanhope and Wolsingham.

 

Mining of lead ore has been known in the area of the headwaters of the Wear since the Roman occupation and continued into the nineteenth century. Spoil heaps from the abandoned lead mines can still be seen, and since the last quarter of the twentieth century have been the focus of attention for the recovery of gangue minerals in present mining, such as fluorspar for the smelting of aluminium. However, abandoned mines and their spoil heaps continue to contribute to heavy metal mineral pollution of the river and its tributaries. This has significance to fishing in times of low flow and infrastructure costs as the River Wear is an important source of drinking water for many of the inhabitants along its course.

 

Fluorspar is another mineral sporadically co-present with Weardale Granite and became important in the manufacture of steel from the late 19th century into the 20th century. In many cases the steel industries were able to take fluorspar from old excavation heaps.[citation needed] Fluorspar explains why iron and steel manufacture flourished in the Wear valley, Consett and Teesside during the nineteenth century. Overlying are three Carboniferous minerals: limestone, Coal Measures as raw materials for iron and steel manufacture, and sandstone, useful as a refractory material. The last remaining fluorspar mine closed in 1999 following legislation re water quality. A mine at Rogerley Quarry, Frosterley, is operated by an American consortium who occasionally work it for specimen minerals.

 

Minco are currently exploring the North Pennines and the upper Wear catchment for potential reserves of zinc at lower levels.

 

Ironstone which was important as the ore was won from around Consett and Tow Law, then around Rookhope, while greater quantities were imported from just south of the southerly Tees in North Yorkshire. These sources were in due course depleted or became uneconomic.

 

The former cement works at Eastgate, until recently run by Lafarge, was based on an inlier of limestone. The site recently gained planning permission to form a visitor complex showcasing an eco-village using alternative technology, including a "hot rocks" water heating system. The underlying granite has been drilled and reports confirm their presence. Bardon Aggregates continue to quarry at Heights near Westgate and operate a tarmac "blacktop" plant on site.

 

Mineral extraction has also occurred above St John's Chapel with the extraction of ganister which was used in the steel process at Consett. Around Frosterley, limestone, sand (crushed sandstone) and Frosterley Marble have been worked and the Broadwood Quarry recently expanded into ground held on an old licence. The crushing plant continues to operate. A quarry at Bollihope was also mooted on a similar basis but plans seem to have been discontinued. Frosterley Marble was used extensively in church architecture, there are local examples in St Michael's church Frosterley and Durham Cathedral.

 

Rising in the east Pennines, its head waters consist of several streams draining from the hills between Killhope Law and Burnhope Seat. The source of the river is traditionally held to be at Wearhead, County Durham at the confluence of Burnhope Burn and Killhope Burn. The Wear is a spate river and has been heavily influenced by previous government funded drainage schemes (gripping) with a view to improving marginal agricultural land. The river rises very quickly and has experienced much heavy flooding resulting in enhanced river bank erosion.

 

The river flows eastwards through Weardale, one of the larger valleys of west County Durham, subsequently turning south-east, and then north-east, meandering its way through the Wear Valley still in County Durham to the North Sea where it outfalls at Wearmouth in the main locality of Monkwearmouth on Wearside in the City of Sunderland. Prior to the creation of Tyne and Wear, the Wear had been the longest river in England with a course entirely within one county. The Weardale Way, a long-distance public footpath, roughly follows the entire route, including the length of Killhope Burn.

 

There are several towns, sights and tourist places along the length of the river. The market town of Stanhope is known in part for the ford across the river. From here the river is followed by the line of the Weardale Railway, which crosses the river several times, through Frosterley, Wolsingham, and Witton-le-Wear to Bishop Auckland.

 

On the edge of Bishop Auckland the Wear passes below Auckland Park and Auckland Castle, the official residence of the Bishop of Durham and its deer park. A mile or so downstream from here, the Wear passes Binchester Roman Fort, Vinovia, having been crossed by Dere Street, the Roman road running from Eboracum (now York) to Coria (now Corbridge) close to Hadrian's Wall. From Bishop Auckland the River Wear meanders in a general northeasterly direction, demonstrating many fluvial features of a mature river, including wide valley walls, fertile flood plains and ox-bow lakes. Bridges over the river become more substantial, such as those at Sunderland Bridge (near Croxdale), and Shincliffe. At Sunderland Bridge the River Browney joins the Wear.

 

When it reaches the city of Durham the River Wear passes through a deep, wooded gorge, from which several springs emerge, historically used as sources of potable water. A few coal seams are visible in the banks. Twisting sinuously in an incised meander, the river has cut deeply into the "Cathedral Sandstone" bedrock. The high ground (bluffs) enclosed by this meander is known as the Peninsula, forming a defensive enclosure, at whose heart lies Durham Castle and Durham Cathedral and which developed around the Bailey into Durham city. That area is now a UN World Heritage Site. Beneath Elvet Bridge are Brown's Boats (rowing boats for hire) and the mooring for the Prince Bishop, a pleasure cruiser.

 

The River Wear at Durham was featured on a television programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of Northern England.

 

In June each year, the Durham Regatta, which predates that at Henley, attracts rowing crews from around the region for races along the river's course through the city. Seven smaller regattas and head races are held throughout the rest of the year, which attract a lower number of competitors. There are 14 boathouses and 20 boat clubs based on the Wear in Durham.

 

Two weirs impede the flow of the river at Durham, both originally created for industrial activities. The Old Fulling Mill was an archaeological museum. The museum moved to Palace Green in July 2014. The second weir, beneath Milburngate Bridge, now includes a salmon leap and fish counter, monitoring sea trout and salmon, and is on the site of a former ford. Considering that 138,000 fish have been counted migrating upriver since 1994, it may not be surprising that cormorants frequent the weir.

 

The river's banks also lend their name to a hymn tune Elvet Banks in the 2006 hymnbook of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, used (appropriately) for a hymn for baptism.

 

Between Durham City and Chester-le-Street, 6 miles (10 km) due north, the River Wear changes direction repeatedly, flowing south westwards several miles downstream having passed the medieval site of Finchale Priory, a former chapel and later a satellite monastery depending on the abbey church of Durham Cathedral. Two miles downstream, the river is flowing south eastwards. The only road bridge over the Wear between Durham and Chester-le-Street is Cocken Bridge. As it passes Chester-le-Street, where the river is overlooked by Lumley Castle, its flood plain has been developed into The Riverside, the home pitch of Durham County Cricket Club. Passing through the Lambton Estate and near Lambton Castle the river becomes tidal, and navigable.

 

On exiting the Lambton estate the river leaves County Durham and enters the City of Sunderland, specifically the southern/south-eastern edge of the new town of Washington. At Fatfield the river passes beneath Worm Hill, around which the Lambton Worm is reputed to have curled its tail.

 

Already the riverbanks are showing evidence of past industrialisation, with former collieries and chemical works. A little further downstream the river passes beneath the Victoria Viaduct, (formally called the Victoria Bridge). Named after the newly crowned queen, the railway viaduct opened in 1838, was the crowning achievement of the Leamside Line, then carrying what was to become the East Coast Main Line. A mile to the east is Penshaw Monument, a local iconic landmark. As the river leaves the environs of Washington, it forms the eastern boundary of Washington Wildfowl Trust.

 

Having flowed beneath the A19 trunk road, the river enters the suburbs of Sunderland. The riverbanks show further evidence of past industrialisation, with former collieries, engineering works and dozens of shipyards. In their time, Wearside shipbuilders were some of the most famous and productive shipyards in the world. The artist L. S. Lowry visited Sunderland repeatedly and painted pictures of the industrial landscape around the river. Four bridges cross the Wear in Sunderland: the Northern Spire Bridge to the west, the Queen Alexandra Bridge, and the Wearmouth rail and road bridges in the city centre.

 

On both banks at this point there are a number of modern developments, notably Sunderland A.F.C.'s Stadium of Light and others belonging to the University of Sunderland (St. Peter's Campus; Scotia Quay residences) and to the National Glass Centre. A riverside sculpture trail runs alongside this final section of its north bank. The St Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project was created by Colin Wilbourn, with crime novelist and ex-poet Chaz Brenchley. They worked closely with community groups, residents and schools.

 

As the river approaches the sea, the north bank at Roker has a substantial residential development and marina. A dolphin nicknamed Freddie was a frequent visitor to the marina, attracting much local publicity. However, concern was expressed that acclimatising the dolphin to human presence might put at risk the safety of the dolphin regarding the propellers of marine craft. The south bank of the river is occupied by the Port of Sunderland.

 

The River Wear flows out of Sunderland between Roker Pier and South Pier, and into the North Sea.

 

An engraving of a painting by William Andrews Nesfield showing a fisherman in the river was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838, along with a poetical illustration by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

 

Southwick is a former village and now a suburb on the north banks of the River Wear in the city of Sunderland in the county of Tyne and Wear, historically in County Durham. From 1894 to 1928, Southwick was administered by the Southwick-on-Wear Urban District Council, before being absorbed by Sunderland.

 

Southwick borders with Castletown and Hylton Red House to the west, Monkwearmouth to the east, greenbelt farmland and the suburb of Carley Hill to the north, and the Wear to the south although the Queen Alexandra Bridge links Southwick to Pallion and central Sunderland.

 

It is home to a police station that services the north of Sunderland. There is a primary school, but no secondary school. Sunderland A.F.C.'s Stadium of Light is visible to the east on the Monkwearmouth side.

 

Southwick is centered on its village green, a commercial area containing three listed buildings; a World War II war memorial, The Tramcar Inn a public house built in 1906, and a memorial lamp-post built in 1912.

 

According to Indices of Deprivation published by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in 2000, Southwick is the most deprived of the 25 wards in Sunderland, the fifth most deprived in Tyne and Wear, and the fifty-fifth in England.

 

Quarrying has taken place in the area for many centuries but it was not until the 17th century that large quarries were built and production substantially increased. Wagonways were built to transport limestone from the quarries.

 

1698 saw the establishment of glassmaking in Southwick with the opening of Suddick Glasshouse. This was followed by Wearmouth Crown Glassworks in 1786. Southwick Bottleworks was a significant employer from 1846 to 1917.

 

Although it is likely that shipbuilding had taken place earlier the first registered shipbuilder was Henry Debord who was in business from 1785 to 1797. William Pickersgill & Sons Ltd opened a shipyard in Southwick in 1845. At the time of a company merger with Austin's in 1954 the yard was redeveloped at a cost of £3 million. It closed in 1988.

 

The name Southwick was recorded in the early 12th century as Suthewick in the 16th century as Suddick. It appears to mean "south dwelling/specialised farm" and thus derived from Old English suþ ("south, southern") + wic ("dwelling, specialised farm").

 

Sunderland is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The city has a population of 347000, making it the largest settlement in the North East of England. It is the administrative centre of the metropolitan borough of the same name.

 

The centre of the modern city is an amalgamation of three settlements founded in the Anglo-Saxon era: Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the Wear, and Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth on the south bank. Monkwearmouth contains St Peter's Church, which was founded in 674 and formed part of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, a significant centre of learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Sunderland was a fishing settlement and later a port, being granted a town charter in 1179. The city traded in coal and salt, also developing shipbuilding industry in the fourteenth century and glassmaking industry in the seventeenth century. Following the decline of its traditional industries in the late 20th century, the area became an automotive building centre. In 1992, the borough of Sunderland was granted city status. It is historically part of County Durham.

 

Locals from the city are sometimes known as Mackems, a term which came into common use in the 1970s. ; its use and acceptance by residents, particularly among the older generations, is not universal. The term is also applied to the Sunderland dialect, which shares similarities with the other North East England dialects.

 

In 685, King Ecgfrith granted Benedict Biscop a "sunder-land". Also in 685 The Venerable Bede moved to the newly founded Jarrow monastery. He had started his monastic career at Monkwearmouth monastery and later wrote that he was "ácenned on sundorlande þæs ylcan mynstres" (born in a separate land of this same monastery). This can be taken as "sundorlande" (being Old English for "separate land") or the settlement of Sunderland. Alternatively, it is possible that Sunderland was later named in honour of Bede's connections to the area by people familiar with this statement of his.

 

The earliest inhabitants of the Sunderland area were Stone Age hunter-gatherers and artifacts from this era have been discovered, including microliths found during excavations at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth. During the final phase of the Stone Age, the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – c. 2000 BC), Hastings Hill, on the western outskirts of Sunderland, was a focal point of activity and a place of burial and ritual significance. Evidence includes the former presence of a cursus monument.

 

It is believed the Brigantes inhabited the area around the River Wear in the pre- and post-Roman era. There is a long-standing local legend that there was a Roman settlement on the south bank of the River Wear on what is the site of the former Vaux Brewery, although no archaeological investigation has taken place.

 

In March 2021, a "trove" of Roman artefacts were recovered in the River Wear at North Hylton, including four stone anchors, a discovery of huge significance that may affirm a persistent theory of a Roman Dam or Port existing at the River Wear.

 

Recorded settlements at the mouth of the Wear date to 674, when an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop, granted land by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, founded the Wearmouth–Jarrow (St Peter's) monastery on the north bank of the river—an area that became known as Monkwearmouth. Biscop's monastery was the first built of stone in Northumbria. He employed glaziers from France and in doing he re-established glass making in Britain. In 686 the community was taken over by Ceolfrid, and Wearmouth–Jarrow became a major centre of learning and knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England with a library of around 300 volumes.

 

The Codex Amiatinus, described by White as the 'finest book in the world', was created at the monastery and was likely worked on by Bede, who was born at Wearmouth in 673. This is one of the oldest monasteries still standing in England. While at the monastery, Bede completed the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) in 731, a feat which earned him the title The father of English history.

 

In the late 8th century the Vikings raided the coast, and by the middle of the 9th century the monastery had been abandoned. Lands on the south side of the river were granted to the Bishop of Durham by Athelstan of England in 930; these became known as Bishopwearmouth and included settlements such as Ryhope which fall within the modern boundary of Sunderland.

 

Medieval developments after the Norman conquest

In 1100, Bishopwearmouth parish included a fishing village at the southern mouth of the river (now the East End) known as 'Soender-land' (which evolved into 'Sunderland'). This settlement was granted a charter in 1179 by Hugh Pudsey, then the Bishop of Durham (who had quasi-monarchical power within the County Palatine); the charter gave its merchants the same rights as those of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it nevertheless took time for Sunderland to develop as a port. Fishing was the main commercial activity at the time: mainly herring in the 13th century, then salmon in the 14th and 15th centuries. From 1346 ships were being built at Wearmouth, by a merchant named Thomas Menville, and by 1396 a small amount of coal was being exported.

 

Rapid growth of the port was initially prompted by the salt trade. Salt exports from Sunderland are recorded from as early as the 13th century, but in 1589 salt pans were laid at Bishopwearmouth Panns (the modern-day name of the area the pans occupied is Pann's Bank, on the river bank between the city centre and the East End). Large vats of seawater were heated using coal; as the water evaporated, the salt remained. As coal was required to heat the salt pans, a coal mining community began to emerge. Only poor-quality coal was used in salt panning; better-quality coal was traded via the port, which subsequently began to grow.

 

Both salt and coal continued to be exported through the 17th century, but the coal trade grew significantly (2–3,000 tons of coal were exported from Sunderland in the year 1600; by 1680 this had increased to 180,000 tons).[18] Because of the difficulty for colliers trying to navigate the shallow waters of the Wear, coal mined further inland was loaded onto keels (large, flat-bottomed boats) and taken downriver to the waiting colliers. The keels were manned by a close-knit group of workers known as 'keelmen'.

 

In 1634 a charter was granted by Bishop Thomas Morton, which incorporated the inhabitants of the 'antient borough' of Sunderland as the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality' of the Borough and granted the privilege of a market and an annual fair. While as a consequence a mayor and twelve aldermen were appointed and a common council established, their establishment does not seem to have survived the ensuing Civil War.

 

Before the 1st English civil war the North, with the exclusion of Kingston upon Hull, declared for the King. In 1644 the North was captured by parliament. The villages that later become Sunderland, were taken in March 1644. One artifact of the English civil war near this area was the long trench; a tactic of later warfare. In the village of Offerton roughly three miles inland from the area, skirmishes occurred. Parliament also blockaded the River Tyne, crippling the Newcastle coal trade which allowed the coal trade of the area to flourish for a short period. There was intense rivalry between the ports of Sunderland and Newcastle when the two towns took opposing sides in the Civil War.

 

In 1669, after the Restoration, King Charles II granted letters patent to one Edward Andrew, Esq. to 'build a pier and erect a lighthouse or lighthouses and cleanse the harbour of Sunderland', and authorised the levying of a tonnage duty on shipping in order to raise the necessary funds; however it took time before these improvements were realized.

 

There is evidence of a growing number of shipbuilders or boatbuilders being active on the River Wear in the late 17th century: among others, the banking family Goodchilds opened a building yard in 1672 (it eventually closed when the bank went out of business in 1821); and in 1691 one Thomas Burn aged 17 is recorded as having taken over the running of a yard from his mother.

 

The River Wear Commission was formed in 1717 in response to the growing prosperity of Sunderland as a port. Under the Board of Commissioners (a committee of local land owners, ship owners, colliery owners and merchants) a succession of civil engineers adapted the natural riverscape to meet the needs of maritime trade and shipbuilding. Their first major harbour work was the construction in stone of the South Pier (later known as the Old South Pier), begun in 1723 with the aim of diverting the river channel away from sandbanks; the building of the South Pier continued until 1759. By 1748 the river was being manually dredged. A northern counterpart to the South Pier was not yet in place; instead, a temporary breakwater was formed at around this time, consisting of a row of piles driven into the seabed interspersed with old keelboats. From 1786 work began on a more permanent North Pier (which was later known as the Old North Pier): it was formed from a wooden frame, filled with stones and faced with masonry, and eventually extended 1,500 ft (460 m) into the sea. The work was initially overseen by Robert Stout (the Wear Commissioners' Engineer from 1781 to 1795). In 1794 a lighthouse was built at the seaward end, by which time around half the pier had been enclosed in masonry; it was completed in 1802.

 

By the start of the 18th century the banks of the Wear were described as being studded with small shipyards, as far as the tide flowed. After 1717, measures having been taken to increase the depth of the river, Sunderland's shipbuilding trade grew substantially (in parallel with its coal exports). A number of warships were built, alongside many commercial sailing ships. By the middle of the century the town was probably the premier shipbuilding centre in Britain. By 1788 Sunderland was Britain's fourth largest port (by measure of tonnage) after London, Newcastle and Liverpool; among these it was the leading coal exporter (though it did not rival Newcastle in terms of home coal trade). Still further growth was driven across the region, towards the end of the century, by London's insatiable demand for coal during the French Revolutionary Wars.

 

Sunderland's third-biggest export, after coal and salt, was glass. The town's first modern glassworks were established in the 1690s and the industry grew through the 17th century. Its flourishing was aided by trading ships bringing good-quality sand (as ballast) from the Baltic and elsewhere which, together with locally available limestone (and coal to fire the furnaces) was a key ingredient in the glassmaking process. Other industries that developed alongside the river included lime burning and pottery making (the town's first commercial pottery manufactory, the Garrison Pottery, had opened in old Sunderland in 1750).

 

The world's first steam dredger was built in Sunderland in 1796-7 and put to work on the river the following year. Designed by Stout's successor as Engineer, Jonathan Pickernell jr (in post from 1795 to 1804), it consisted of a set of 'bag and spoon' dredgers driven by a tailor-made 4-horsepower Boulton & Watt beam engine. It was designed to dredge to a maximum depth of 10 ft (3.0 m) below the waterline and remained in operation until 1804, when its constituent parts were sold as separate lots. Onshore, numerous small industries supported the business of the burgeoning port. In 1797 the world's first patent ropery (producing machine-made rope, rather than using a ropewalk) was built in Sunderland, using a steam-powered hemp-spinning machine which had been devised by a local schoolmaster, Richard Fothergill, in 1793; the ropery building still stands, in the Deptford area of the city.

 

In 1719, the parish of Sunderland was carved from the densely populated east end of Bishopwearmouth by the establishment of a new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland (today also known as Sunderland Old Parish Church). Later, in 1769, St John's Church was built as a chapel of ease within Holy Trinity parish; built by a local coal fitter, John Thornhill, it stood in Prospect Row to the north-east of the parish church. (St John's was demolished in 1972.) By 1720 the port area was completely built up, with large houses and gardens facing the Town Moor and the sea, and labourers' dwellings vying with manufactories alongside the river. The three original settlements of Wearmouth (Bishopwearmouth, Monkwearmouth and Sunderland) had begun to combine, driven by the success of the port of Sunderland and salt panning and shipbuilding along the banks of the river. Around this time, Sunderland was known as 'Sunderland-near-the-Sea'.

 

By 1770 Sunderland had spread westwards along its High Street to join up with Bishopwearmouth. In 1796 Bishopwearmouth in turn gained a physical link with Monkwearmouth following the construction of a bridge, the Wearmouth Bridge, which was the world's second iron bridge (after the famous span at Ironbridge). It was built at the instigation of Rowland Burdon, the Member of Parliament (MP) for County Durham, and described by Nikolaus Pevsner as being 'a triumph of the new metallurgy and engineering ingenuity [...] of superb elegance'. Spanning the river in a single sweep of 236 feet (72 m), it was over twice the length of the earlier bridge at Ironbridge but only three-quarters the weight. At the time of building, it was the biggest single-span bridge in the world; and because Sunderland had developed on a plateau above the river, it never suffered from the problem of interrupting the passage of high-masted vessels.

 

During the War of Jenkins' Ear a pair of gun batteries were built (in 1742 and 1745) on the shoreline to the south of the South Pier, to defend the river from attack (a further battery was built on the cliff top in Roker, ten years later). One of the pair was washed away by the sea in 1780, but the other was expanded during the French Revolutionary Wars and became known as the Black Cat Battery. In 1794 Sunderland Barracks were built, behind the battery, close to what was then the tip of the headland.

 

In 1802 a new, 72 ft (22 m) high octagonal stone lighthouse was built on the end of the newly finished North Pier, designed by the chief Engineer Jonathan Pickernell. At the same time he built a lighthouse on the South Pier, which showed a red light (or by day a red flag) when the tide was high enough for ships to pass into the river. From 1820 Pickernell's lighthouse was lit by gas from its own gasometer. In 1840 work began to extend the North Pier to 1,770 ft (540 m) and the following year its lighthouse was moved in one piece, on a wooden cradle, to its new seaward end, remaining lit each night throughout the process.

 

In 1809 an Act of Parliament was passed creating an Improvement Commission, for 'paving, lighting, cleansing, watching and otherwise improving the town of Sunderland'; this provided the beginnings of a structure of local government for the township as a whole. Commissioners were appointed, with the power to levy contributions towards the works detailed in the Act, and in 1812–14 the Exchange Building was built, funded by public subscription, to serve as a combined Town Hall, Watch House, Market Hall, Magistrate's Court, Post Office and News Room. It became a regular gathering place for merchants conducting business, and the public rooms on the first floor were available for public functions when not being used for meetings of the Commissioners. By 1830 the Commissioners had made a number of improvements, ranging from the establishment of a police force to installing gas lighting across much of the town.

 

In other aspects, however, Local government was still divided between the three parishes (Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland, St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth, and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth) and when cholera broke out in 1831 their select vestrymen were unable to cope with the epidemic. Sunderland, a main trading port at the time, was the first British town to be struck with the 'Indian cholera' epidemic. The first victim, William Sproat, died on 23 October 1831. Sunderland was put into quarantine, and the port was blockaded, but in December of that year the disease spread to Gateshead and from there, it rapidly made its way across the country, killing an estimated 32,000 people; among those to die was Sunderland's Naval hero Jack Crawford. (The novel The Dress Lodger by American author Sheri Holman is set in Sunderland during the epidemic.)

 

Demands for democracy and organised town government saw the three parishes incorporated as the Borough of Sunderland in 1835. Later, the Sunderland Borough Act of 1851 abolished the Improvement Commission and vested its powers in the new Corporation.

 

In the early nineteenth century 'the three great proprietors of collieries upon the Wear Lord Durham, the Marquis of Londonderry and the Hetton Company'. In 1822 the Hetton colliery railway was opened, linking the company's collieries with staiths ('Hetton Staiths') on the riverside at Bishopwearmouth, where coal drops delivered the coal directly into waiting ships. Engineered by George Stephenson, it was the first railway in the world to be operated without animal power, and at the time (albeit briefly) was the longest railway in the world. At the same time Lord Durham began establishing rail links to an adjacent set of staiths ('Lambton Staiths'). Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, continued conveying his coal downriver on keels; but he was working on establishing his own separate port down the coast at Seaham Harbour.

 

Although the volume of coal exports were increasing, there was a growing concern that without the establishment of a purpose-built dock Sunderland would start losing trade to Newcastle and Hartlepool. The colliery rail links were on the south side of the river, but Sir Hedworth Williamson, who owned much of the land on the north bank, seized the initiative. He formed the Wearmouth Dock Company in 1832, obtained a Royal Charter for establishing a dock at Monkwearmouth riverside, and engaged no less a figure than Isambard Kingdom Brunel to provide designs (not only for docks but also for a double-deck suspension bridge to provide a rail link to the opposite side of the river). Building of the dock went ahead (albeit the smallest of Brunel's proposals) but not of the bridge; the resulting North Dock, opened in 1837, soon proved too small at 6 acres (2.4 ha), and it suffered through lack of a direct rail link to the colliery lines south of the Wear (instead, it would be linked, by way of the Brandling Junction Railway from 1839, to collieries in the Gateshead area).

 

Also in Monkwearmouth, further upstream, work began in 1826 on sinking a pit in the hope of reaching the seams of coal (even though, at this location, they were deep underground). Seven years later, coal was struck at 180 fathoms; digging deeper, the Bensham seam was found the following year at 267 fathoms and in 1835 Wearmouth Colliery, which was then the deepest mine in the world, began producing coal. When the superior Hutton seam was reached, at a still greater depth in 1846, the mine (which had begun as a speculative enterprise by Messrs Pemberton and Thompson) began to be profitable.

 

Meanwhile, south of the river, the Durham & Sunderland Railway Co. built a railway line across the Town Moor and established a passenger terminus there in 1836. In 1847 the line was bought by George Hudson's York and Newcastle Railway. Hudson, nicknamed 'The Railway King', was Member of Parliament for Sunderland and was already involved in a scheme to build a dock in the area. In 1846 he had formed the Sunderland Dock Company, which received parliamentary approval for the construction of a dock between the South Pier and Hendon Bay. The engineer overseeing the project was John Murray; the foundation stone for the entrance basin was laid in February 1848, and by the end of the year excavation of the new dock was largely complete, the spoil being used in the associated land reclamation works. Lined with limestone and entered from the river by way of a half tide basin, the dock (later named Hudson Dock) was formally opened by Hudson on 20 June 1850. Most of the dockside to the west was occupied with coal staiths linked to the railway line, but there was also a warehouse and granary built at the northern end by John Dobson in 1856 (this, along with a second warehouse dating from the 1860s, was demolished in 1992).

 

In 1850–56 a half-tidal sea-entrance was constructed at the south-east corner of the dock, protected by a pair of breakwaters, to allow larger ships to enter the dock direct from the North Sea. At the same time (1853–55) Hudson Dock itself was extended southwards and deepened, and, alongside the entrance basin to the north, the first of a pair of public graving docks was built. In 1854 the Londonderry, Seaham & Sunderland Railway opened, linking the Londonderry and South Hetton collieries to a separate set of staiths at Hudson Dock South. It also provided a passenger service from Sunderland to Seaham Harbour.

 

In 1859 the docks were purchased by the River Wear Commissioners. Under Thomas Meik as engineer the docks were further extended with the construction of Hendon Dock to the south (1864–67). (Hendon Dock was entered via Hudson Dock South, but in 1870 it too was provided with a half-tidal sea-entrance providing direct access from the North Sea.) Under Meik's successor, Henry Hay Wake, Hudson Dock was further enlarged and the entrances were improved: in 1875 lock gates were installed (along with a swing bridge) at the river entrance, to allow entry at all states of the tide; they were powered by hydraulic machinery, installed by Sir William Armstrong in the adjacent dock office building. Similarly, a new sea lock was constructed at the south-east entrance in 1877–80. The breakwater (known as the 'Northeast Pier') which protected the sea entrance to the docks was provided with a lighthouse (29 ft (8.8 m) high and of lattice construction, since demolished) which Chance Brothers equipped with a fifth-order optic and clockwork occulting mechanism in 1888; it displayed a sector light: white indicating the fairway and red indicating submerged hazards.

 

By 1889 two million tons of coal per year was passing through the dock. The eastern wharves, opposite the coal staiths, were mainly occupied by saw mills and timber yards, with large open spaces given over to the storage of pit props for use in the mines; while to the south of Hendon Dock, the Wear Fuel Works distilled coal tar to produce pitch, oil and other products.

 

After completion of the dock works, H. H. Wake embarked on the construction of Roker Pier (part of a scheme to protect the river approach by creating an outer harbour). Protection of a different kind was provided by the Wave Basin Battery, armed with four RML 80 pounder 5 ton guns, constructed just inside the Old South Pier in 1874.

 

Increasing industrialisation had prompted affluent residents to move away from the old port area, with several settling in the suburban terraces of the Fawcett Estate and Mowbray Park. The area around Fawcett Street itself increasingly functioned as the civic and commercial town centre. In 1848 George Hudson's York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway built a passenger terminus, Monkwearmouth Station, just north of Wearmouth Bridge; and south of the river another passenger terminus, in Fawcett Street, in 1853. Later, Thomas Elliot Harrison (chief engineer to the North Eastern Railway) made plans to carry the railway across the river; the Wearmouth Railway Bridge (reputedly 'the largest Hog-Back iron girder bridge in the world') opened in 1879. In 1886–90 Sunderland Town Hall was built in Fawcett Street, just to the east of the railway station, to a design by Brightwen Binyon.

 

Sunderland's shipbuilding industry continued to grow through most of the 19th century, becoming the town's dominant industry and a defining part of its identity. By 1815 it was 'the leading shipbuilding port for wooden trading vessels' with 600 ships constructed that year across 31 different yards. By 1840 the town had 76 shipyards and between 1820 and 1850 the number of ships being built on the Wear increased fivefold. From 1846 to 1854 almost a third of the UK's ships were built in Sunderland, and in 1850 the Sunderland Herald proclaimed the town to be the greatest shipbuilding port in the world.

 

During the century the size of ships being built increased and technologies evolved: in 1852 the first iron ship was launched on Wearside, built by marine engineer George Clark in partnership with shipbuilder John Barkes. Thirty years later Sunderland's ships were being built in steel (the last wooden ship having been launched in 1880). As the century progressed, the shipyards on the Wear decreased in number on the one hand, but increased in size on the other, so as to accommodate the increasing scale and complexity of ships being built.

 

Shipyards founded in the 19th century, and still operational in the 20th, included:

Sir James Laing & Sons (established by Philip Laing at Deptford in 1818, renamed Sir James Laing & sons in 1898)

S. P. Austin (established in 1826 at Monkwearmouth, moving across the river to a site alongside Wearmouth Bridge in 1866)

Bartram & Sons (established at Hylton in 1837, moved to South Dock in 1871)

William Doxford & Sons (established at Cox Green in 1840, moved to Pallion in 1857)

William Pickersgill's (established at Southwick in 1845)

J. L. Thompson & Sons (yard established at North Sands by Robert Thompson in 1846, taken over by his son Joseph in 1860, another son (also Robert) having established his own yard at Southwick in 1854)

John Crown & Sons (yard established at Monkwearmouth by Luke Crown (or Crone) by 1807, taken over by his grandson Jackie in 1854)

Short Brothers (established by George Short in 1850, moved to Pallion in 1866)

Sir J Priestman (established at Southwick in 1882)

Alongside the shipyards, marine engineering works were established from the 1820s onwards, initially providing engines for paddle steamers; in 1845 a ship named Experiment was the first of many to be converted to steam screw propulsion. Demand for steam-powered vessels increased during the Crimean War; nonetheless, sailing ships continued to be built, including fast fully-rigged composite-built clippers, including the City of Adelaide in 1864 and Torrens (the last such vessel ever built), in 1875.

 

By the middle of the century glassmaking was at its height on Wearside. James Hartley & Co., established in Sunderland in 1836, grew to be the largest glassworks in the country and (having patented an innovative production technique for rolled plate glass) produced much of the glass used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851. A third of all UK-manufactured plate glass was produced at Hartley's by this time. Other manufacturers included the Cornhill Flint Glassworks (established at Southwick in 1865), which went on to specialise in pressed glass, as did the Wear Flint Glassworks (which had originally been established in 1697). In addition to the plate glass and pressed glass manufacturers there were 16 bottle works on the Wear in the 1850s, with the capacity to produce between 60 and 70,000 bottles a day.

 

Local potteries also flourished in the mid-19th century, again making use of raw materials (white clay and stone) being brought into Sunderland as ballast on ships. Sunderland pottery was exported across Europe, with Sunderland Lustreware proving particularly popular in the home market; however the industry sharply declined later in the century due to foreign competition, and the largest remaining manufacturer (Southwick Pottery) closed in 1897.

 

Victoria Hall was a large concert hall on Toward Road facing Mowbray Park. The hall was the scene of a tragedy on 16 June 1883 when 183 children died. During a variety show, children rushed towards a staircase for treats. At the bottom of the staircase, the door had been opened inward and bolted in such a way as to leave only a gap wide enough for one child to pass at a time. The children surged down the stairs and those at the front were trapped and crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

 

The asphyxiation of 183 children aged between three and 14 is the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The memorial, a grieving mother holding a dead child, is located in Mowbray Park inside a protective canopy. Newspaper reports triggered a mood of national outrage and an inquiry recommended that public venues be fitted with a minimum number of outward opening emergency exits, which led to the invention of 'push bar' emergency doors. This law remains in force. Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German bomb.

 

The Lyceum was a public building on Lambton Street, opened August 1852, whose many rooms included a Mechanics' Institute and a hall 90 by 40 feet (27 m × 12 m) which Edward D. Davis converted into a theatre, opened September 1854, then was gutted by fire in December the following year. It was refurbished and reopened in September 1856 as the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and is notable as the venue of Henry Irving's first successes. The building was destroyed by fire in 1880 and demolished. The site was later developed for the Salvation Army.

 

The public transport network was enhanced in 1900 – 1919 with an electric tram system. The trams were gradually replaced by buses during the 1940s before being completely axed in 1954. In 1909 the Queen Alexandra Bridge was built, linking Deptford and Southwick.

 

The First World War led to a notable increase in shipbuilding but also resulted in the town being targeted by a Zeppelin raid in 1916. The Monkwearmouth area was struck on 1 April 1916 and 22 lives were lost. Many citizens also served in the armed forces during this period, over 25,000 men from a population of 151,000.

 

In the wake of the First World War, and on through the Great Depression of the 1930s, shipbuilding dramatically declined: the number of shipyards on the Wear went from fifteen in 1921 to six in 1937. The small yards of J. Blumer & Son (at North Dock) and the Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (at Hudson Dock) both closed in the 1920s, and other yards were closed down by National Shipbuilders Securities in the 1930s (including Osbourne, Graham & Co., way upriver at North Hylton, Robert Thompson & Sons at Southwick, and the 'overflow' yards operated by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson and William Gray & Co.).

 

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Sunderland was a key target of the German Luftwaffe, who claimed the lives of 267 people in the town, caused damage or destruction to 4,000 homes, and devastated local industry. After the war, more housing was developed. The town's boundaries expanded in 1967 when neighbouring Ryhope, Silksworth, Herrington, South Hylton and Castletown were incorporated into Sunderland.

 

During the second half of the 20th century shipbuilding and coalmining declined; shipbuilding ended in 1988 and coalmining in 1993. At the worst of the unemployment crisis up to 20 per cent of the local workforce were unemployed in the mid-1980s.

 

As the former heavy industries declined, new industries were developed (including electronic, chemical, paper and motor manufacture) and the service sector expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1986 Japanese car manufacturer Nissan opened its Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK factory in Washington, which has since become the UK's largest car factory.

 

From 1990, the banks of the Wear were regenerated with the creation of housing, retail parks and business centres on former shipbuilding sites. Alongside the creation of the National Glass Centre the University of Sunderland has built a new campus on the St Peter's site. The clearance of the Vaux Breweries site on the north west fringe of the city centre created a further opportunity for development in the city centre.

 

Sunderland received city status in 1992. Like many cities, Sunderland comprises a number of areas with their own distinct histories, Fulwell, Monkwearmouth, Roker, and Southwick on the northern side of the Wear, and Bishopwearmouth and Hendon to the south. On 24 March 2004, the city adopted Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.

 

The 20th century saw Sunderland A.F.C. established as the Wearside area's greatest claim to sporting fame. Founded in 1879 as Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C. by schoolmaster James Allan, Sunderland joined The Football League for the 1890–91 season. By 1936 the club had been league champions on five occasions. They won their first FA Cup in 1937, but their only post-World War II major honour came in 1973 when they won a second FA Cup. They have had a checkered history and dropped into the old third division for a season and been relegated thrice from the Premier League, twice with the lowest points ever, earning the club a reputation as a yo-yo club. After 99 years at the historic Roker Park stadium, the club moved to the 42,000-seat Stadium of Light on the banks of the River Wear in 1997. At the time, it was the largest stadium built by an English football club since the 1920s, and has since been expanded to hold nearly 50,000 seated spectators.

 

In 2018 Sunderland was ranked as the best city to live and work in the UK by the finance firm OneFamily. In the same year, Sunderland was ranked as one of the top 10 safest cities in the UK.

 

Many fine old buildings remain despite the bombing that occurred during World War II. Religious buildings include Holy Trinity Church, built in 1719 for an independent Sunderland, St Michael's Church, built as Bishopwearmouth Parish Church and now known as Sunderland Minster and St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth, part of which dates from AD 674, and was the original monastery. St Andrew's Church, Roker, known as the "Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", contains work by William Morris, Ernest Gimson and Eric Gill. St Mary's Catholic Church is the earliest surviving Gothic revival church in the city.

 

Sunderland Civic Centre was designed by Spence Bonnington & Collins and was officially opened by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1970. It closed in November 2021, following the opening of a new City Hall on the former Vaux Brewery redevelopment site.

 

Information supplied by: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Ignore the blurry picture, please, the lights were out in the living room & autofocus grabbed the pile of DVDs.

 

That brass thing Roo is scaling is the brass ex-pen set up to keep animals away from the wood stove. Clearly I am going to have issues this winter.

I spent an evening capturing the Shell petrochemical facility in Beaver, PA. Once open (probably this summer) it will emit over 2 million tons of CO2 to make 1.5+ million tons of plastic from fracked gas EVERY YEAR. I see this as deeply problematic. Learn more at nopetropa.com/ . You can also join the local "Eyes On Shell" group monitoring pollution from the facility: www.marcellusawareness.org/eyesonshell .

   

Join the growing numbers of women who have reported experiencing lasting relief from irregular/ problematic menstrual cycles through The Trivedi Effect®.

After a chaotic and problematic week with work I decided to have saturday off.

 

Leaving the hotel early in Delft I stepped on a train, off the train and onto another and found myself in Alkmaar. When I last visited in was under ice and snow.

 

In 2015 the station was expanded to cope with traffic growth (Alkmaar is an expansion city within the national plan). Between 2014 and 2016 the north side of the station area was altered significantly. A 3,000 space multi-level bike park was added. A new bridge utilising large expanses of glass plate has been built over the tracks and it is from this that I took these photos helped by a wonderfully clear spring sky. The bridge gives great views of the Victorian parts of the town and the newer parts.

 

Alkmaar Station opened on 20 December 1865 when the railway opened between Alkmaar and Den Helder. This was the second railway opened by the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij after the Amsterdam–Rotterdam railway. The line through Alkmaar was on the Staatslijn K railway, built by the Dutch state between 1865 and 1878, designed by Karel Hendrik van Brederode.

  

Hatched in June or July 2016

somewhere north of 73 degrees,

visited Flint, Michigan,

where it took its last breath,

on 13 March 2017,

being an untimely,

if not,

a problematic death.

 

Poor Ivory Gull,

no more cold coastal cliffs,

no more fierce sea spray,

no more sea ice,

no more leftover seal meat,

no more midnight daylight,

no more almost-zenith North Star.

 

Copyright ©2017

Alan Ryff

 

A photo requiem follows:

www.flickr.com/photos/snow-shadow/albums/72157679701211242

 

All these finders are not designed to have the optical axis (crosshair) parallel to the tube. Makes use as polar alignment scope problematic. I checked these, 1/2 to 1° off.

 

Got lucky using Celestron finder for polar alignment, it was off in the right direction www.flickr.com/photos/edhiker/3654462866/

 

Conclusion: sight tube is better than maladjusted optics for quick polar alignment.

------

When polar alignment scopes come from the factory, wherever that is, their

reticles are usually not centered. This makes polar alignment of the mount

more difficult. tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ap-gto/message/5173

----

You need to be able to point the polar axis of the mount at something

terestrial, like the top of a telephone pole, water tower, etc. that isn't

going to move and is at a 'down the street' distance. This means building a

simple wood gig to tilt the telescope so the polar axis is more

horizontal. Use just the mount, no payload and no counterweight shaft or

weights.

 

Put the Polar alignment scope in the mount until tight. Then get comfortable

and sight through the scope until the object (top of t-pole, etc.) is in the

center of the PAL scope field. Now rotate the mount around the polar axis by

hand and watch the object in the PAL scope. If the object stays centered when

you rotate the polar axis all the way around, the PAL scope is properly

aligned. More than likely, the object will wander or wobble around as the

polar axis is rotated. Using the three small set screws on the PAL scope,

gently loosen one and tighten another until you've moved the center of the

reticle to where the center of rotation appears to be. Rotate the polar axis

again to see if the wobble is less or more. This is a trial and error

approach, but should take only a few cycles. When the polar axis is rotated

and the object stays centered, the PAL scope is now centered.

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ap-gto/message/5176

.

More at www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number...

Celestron's take: www.celestron.com/c3/support3/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&...

Spaceref.com article: www.spaceref.com/telescopes/Polar-Alignment.html

Yet another: www.astrosurf.com/letelescope/images/club/documents/Docum... Astro/Viseur polaire - montage.pdf

Internal Pole Finder views at: www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number...

 

IMG_1483_Finders_CrS.jpg

   

...

This species correct name is proving problematic... it was long known and accepted under the name Cattleya eldorado Linden (ex van Houtte) since around 1869. Then, by the mid 1980's, some authors, based on a G. Braem proposal, started claiming that the correct name should be that given by Barbosa Rodrigues in 1877, Cattleya tricopiliochila, based on the fact that the name 'eldorado' was illegitimate under the ICBN rules. By the turn of the 2000, van den Berg published a paper showing that the correct name for this species was Cattleya wallisii not 'eldorado', nor 'trichopiliochila', based on a 1865 publication by Linden, where he called this species Laelia wallisii. Van den Berg also points out a comment of Reichenbach f., published in the Gardeners’ Chronicle (1882) where the botanist would implicitly have transferred it from the genus Laelia to Cattleya, thus coining Cattleya wallisii, this being the correct name to be used. Kew (Monocot Checklist) doesn’t accept that Mr. Reichenbach has made the transfer, preferring to state that it would have been done in a Rollison Nursery catalog of 1876. To make stuff a little more interesting, the flower Linden ‘described’ as Laelia wallisii, the type of the species so, was entirely white, except for the yellow in the throat and part of the lip, which means that, according to van den Berg’s proposal and Kew Monocot Checklist, if you accept the name Cattleya wallisii, then you’ll have to also accept that the type of the species formerly known as eldorado is white, the flower you see in this picture, and all other color forms are varietas of this type, including the ordinary lavender color.

After a chaotic and problematic week with work I decided to have saturday off.

 

Leaving the hotel early in Delft I stepped on a train, off the train and onto another and found myself here....

 

Zaandam.

 

Zaandam Station and Inntel Hotel . The hotel opened in 2010 in Zaandam . It is a striking building because the exterior consists entirely of a stack of almost seventy loose Zaanse houses, executed in four colors Zaans groen. The building was designed by Wilfried van Winden. The area of the station, hotel and Gedempte Gracht was redeveloped into a multi level modern complex but harking back in its design to the Netherlands of the past.

This sister Babe, just when you least expected it... will freak-out people. Blunt & problematic.

Tentaculite fossils in limestone (the reddish brown areas are from iron oxide staining)

 

Tentaculites are problematic fossils - their high-level taxonomic placement is uncertain, but they may be molluscs. Tentaculite fossils consist of small to very small calcitic shells. The shells are straight to slightly curving and are slightly tapering tubes. The pointed end of the shell is closed. In some forms, the pointed end is slightly bulbous, with an apical spine (usually broken off). Externally, tentaculite shells usually have ringed ornament and thin, delicate, longitudinal striations.

 

The tip of the shell is the embryonic part. After that is the juvenile portion of the shell, which consists of internal septa, or walls that divide the shell into chambers. Septa have no external expression and number 5 to 20 in one specimen. The adult portion of the shell is nonseptate - it is referred to as the living chamber, which occupies more than half the entire length of the shell. No aperture-like structure has ever been found at the distal end of the shell.

 

The soft-part morphology of tentaculites is poorly known. X-ray images of specimens from the Lower Devonian of Germany seem to show multiple "tentacles" protruding from the large end of the shell. Muscle impressions on the interior have been reported in some tentaculites.

 

Tentaculites are entirely extinct - their geologic range depends on how inclusive the term "tentaculite" is. Tentaculites first definitely appear in Ordovician rocks. Their maximum abundance and diversity was during the Devonian.

 

Tentaculites were entirely marine. They are known from shallow and deep-water deposits. Larger, thick-shelled forms are local in their distribution, and so appear to have been benthic. Smaller, thin-shelled forms have world-wide distributions, and so appear to have been planktonic. Planktonic forms, such as the styliolinids, may not be tentaculites at all. Sometimes, encrusters are found on tentaculite shells. The distribution of encrusting organisms suggests that benthic tentaculites had the apex of the shell pointed downward and the aperture was upward during life. Almost all tentaculite fossils are found parallel to bedding. Very few have been found with the pointed end of the shell vertically inserted into the sediments.

 

Classification: Animalia incertae sedis, Tentaculita, Tentaculitida

 

Age: possibly Devonian

 

Locality: unrecorded

 

Another lovely terracotta station, which is unfortunately wider than it is tall (which is problematic for map cards).

On Tuesday 15 July 2025, officers and partners across the City of Manchester came together to patrol the city’s most problematic areas in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB).

 

As part of the recently launched Home Office Safe4Summer initiative, which seeks to identify hotspot areas for ASB and tackle them with high-visibility and problem-solving policing, GMP officers and partners from Manchester City Council took to Piccadilly Gardens.  

 

The newly formed Piccadilly Gardens Team, made up of eight police constables and Sergeant Jon Wyatt, was formed to front a multi-agency response designed to tackle ASB, and make Piccadilly Gardens hostile to criminality and a safer space for people to live, work and socialise.

 

During their patrol, specialist officers acted on intelligence and within minutes, uncovered two concealed bladed articles from the area. Police dog Kylo, was also on hand, aiding officers in the search for drugs and weapons.

 

A total of eight arrests were made within the gardens over the course of the day, for a range of offences including immigration offences, public order, robbery, and breach of Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO). Partners including Manchester City Council, CityCo, TfGM and Travelsafe joined GMP officers and staff on the ground alongside councillors Joan Davies and Pat Karney.

  

Councillor Garry Bridges, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: "As a council we work hard to ensure a positive experience for residents, visitors and businesses in Piccadilly Gardens, which is a much used and important gateway at the heart of the city centre.

 

“Together with our Neighbourhood Team, Licensing and Out of Hours Team, Anti-Social Behaviour Action Team and Cleansing Team we joined our colleagues at GMP to engage with businesses, residents and visitors in Piccadilly Gardens.

 

“We're really pleased to support these partnership action days with GMP, which demonstrate our joint commitment to making Piccadilly Gardens a safe and welcoming public space."

 

Chief Inspector Michael Tachauer co-ordinated the operation, deploying specialist officers to conduct sweeps with multiple weapons found hidden on roofs and in planters.

 

Chief Inspector Tachauer said: “Maintaining a good relationship with local businesses and our partners is key, as they are our eyes and ears on a daily basis. We meet and discuss issues once a week, seeking to problem-solve and focus on where we can make the biggest difference across the city.

 

“This day of action is just one example of the ongoing work our officers are carrying out every day, as part of our commitment to make Piccadilly Gardens a safer place for everyone who lives, works or visits the area”.

Bee In the Loop is your direct line to your neighbourhood policing team and will keep you in the loop about what is happening on your street and in your local community. Sign up now to receive free text or email alerts – www.beeintheloop.co.uk

 

To contact Greater Manchester Police for a less urgent matter or make a report online please visit www.gmp.police.uk.

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give evidence.

 

Some species of moss are problematic on orchid mounts, but I am fond of this species. It is easy to manage and generally doesn't smother plants as some others do. In addition it slows down the drying of roots ever so slightly, instead of keeping them soggy.

The long series of films, videos, engaged interventions in public space, performances, and object installations provide a consistent testimony to the power of the themes reflected. For many years, Vladimír Turner has persistently pointed out problematic, and often strongly cautionary, moments of Anthropocene civilisation in various places around the world. The enchanted mechanism of consumption-production, the deceitfulness of marketing strategies, the extraction of non-renewable resources, the brutal devastation of the landscape, mass tourism, the misconception of the possibility of shackling the organism of a big city to a structure of order, gentrification, homelessness, inhumane methods of political systems. In fact, the theme of the essence of pure humanity, personal and social responsibility towards the landscape, nature, and a sustainable way of life based on local self-sufficiency is recalled again and again. He points out the themes through matter-of-factly simple acts. This makes the awareness of the necessity of individual engagement all the more intense. Although his conceptual works have an activist character, often dealing with the subversion of paradox, the expressive power of the pure artistry cannot be ignored. Through his installation for the Veleslavín station, Vladimír Turner verbalises the sculptural situation with the themes of sustainable mobility, fossil fuels, international trade, the relationship of motoring vs. train transport, and exodus and nomadism as consequences of climate change. He chooses the form of a specifically modified Volvo car, with an appeal to the constant presence of the potential of a natural human resource. The ideas of the installation are directly related to the genesis of the artist’s intended film, in which he finds himself in the role of an aborigine, the last survivor on planet Earth, who begins to build everything necessary to live from the garbage all around him. “System Change! Not Climate Change!” (VT)

 

IMG_1958

Goal: Create a small, pretty much stud legal triangle.

 

As I was trying to figure out how close this was to legal, counting studs and doing math, the numbers were close, but they weren't quite lining up with what I saw in ABS. The problem with counting the studs is that there is an excess of a half stud's length from the vertices of the triangle on each piece. In the example above, the lower left and upper right aren't actually part of the mathematical triangle. By counting the stud spans, I was able to estimate that the legs were less than 0.3 mm long compared to the hypotenuse, which seemed much more in line.

 

(a^2 = b^2+c^2, using 40mm for the hypotenuse span and a decimal approximation of sqrt2/2, equals about 28.284mm per leg. If the lengths were perfect, they'd measure an even 28mm. Still, I think this may be within fault tolerances for Lego elements.) (And apologies to every math teacher I've had, I probably butchered that explanation.)

Watering could prove problematic.....!

New hand molds. Unfortunately, these still are problematic with air bubbles.

On Tuesday 15 July 2025, officers and partners across the City of Manchester came together to patrol the city’s most problematic areas in a bid to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB).

 

As part of the recently launched Home Office Safe4Summer initiative, which seeks to identify hotspot areas for ASB and tackle them with high-visibility and problem-solving policing, GMP officers and partners from Manchester City Council took to Piccadilly Gardens.  

 

The newly formed Piccadilly Gardens Team, made up of eight police constables and Sergeant Jon Wyatt, was formed to front a multi-agency response designed to tackle ASB, and make Piccadilly Gardens hostile to criminality and a safer space for people to live, work and socialise.

 

During their patrol, specialist officers acted on intelligence and within minutes, uncovered two concealed bladed articles from the area. Police dog Kylo, was also on hand, aiding officers in the search for drugs and weapons.

 

A total of eight arrests were made within the gardens over the course of the day, for a range of offences including immigration offences, public order, robbery, and breach of Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO). Partners including Manchester City Council, CityCo, TfGM and Travelsafe joined GMP officers and staff on the ground alongside councillors Joan Davies and Pat Karney.

  

Councillor Garry Bridges, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, said: "As a council we work hard to ensure a positive experience for residents, visitors and businesses in Piccadilly Gardens, which is a much used and important gateway at the heart of the city centre.

 

“Together with our Neighbourhood Team, Licensing and Out of Hours Team, Anti-Social Behaviour Action Team and Cleansing Team we joined our colleagues at GMP to engage with businesses, residents and visitors in Piccadilly Gardens.

 

“We're really pleased to support these partnership action days with GMP, which demonstrate our joint commitment to making Piccadilly Gardens a safe and welcoming public space."

 

Chief Inspector Michael Tachauer co-ordinated the operation, deploying specialist officers to conduct sweeps with multiple weapons found hidden on roofs and in planters.

 

Chief Inspector Tachauer said: “Maintaining a good relationship with local businesses and our partners is key, as they are our eyes and ears on a daily basis. We meet and discuss issues once a week, seeking to problem-solve and focus on where we can make the biggest difference across the city.

 

“This day of action is just one example of the ongoing work our officers are carrying out every day, as part of our commitment to make Piccadilly Gardens a safer place for everyone who lives, works or visits the area”.

Bee In the Loop is your direct line to your neighbourhood policing team and will keep you in the loop about what is happening on your street and in your local community. Sign up now to receive free text or email alerts – www.beeintheloop.co.uk

 

To contact Greater Manchester Police for a less urgent matter or make a report online please visit www.gmp.police.uk.

 

You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give evidence.

 

I am the last advocate for reducing texts, scriptures and languages to mere graphic forms. The whole dimension of the text's meaning, histories, combinations, connotations, sound and craft is disregarded. What is more problematic is that I am ignoring the power of words to move and persuade people.

 

After first year and my first internship, I felt slightly disillusioned and confused by what Architecture meant to me. I took a trip to Myanmar and the trip recalibrated a lot things. I found it particularly grounding and inspiring for some of the things that I want to achieve in the future.

 

The spatial and formal organisation of the Burmese language in signage was something I found very compelling. At least with the handwritten texts, so much thought and effort was put into crafting every character. You see pencil marks, underlays, brush strokes and outlines. There is a combination of type faces and textures to create visual impact in different programmatic contexts that I find fascinating.

 

The Burmese name for the round script is "ca-lonh", literally translating to "round text". There are 33 main characters in the Myanmar language. Instead of words that are formed by a combination of alphabets (like in English), this language makes use of additional vowel shift symbols, tonal change symbols and consonant modification symbols. The rounded form of the characters is a result of the use of palm laves a the traditional writing material. Straight lines and forms would tear the leaves.

 

By compiling this, I am exposing my status as alien and an outsider. However, the focus on the visuals may have the inverse effect of celebrating the text, for text's sake, specifically, it is celebrated as visual form and not just a sign that says "eggs", or something.

 

Regardless, I tried to interpret the scope of "text" in a broad but focused way - text, in its literal form, text in prayer, text in recitation, text in architectural program (the stupas of Kuthodaw Pagoda). Photos are arranged in chronological order. The journey started in Yangon, then upstream along the Ayarwaddy river, to Mandalay and Bagan, then back again to Yangon.

 

These photos aren't really anything special in terms of photography, and I am not going to attempt to make sweeping claims about directing a new visual order, but as a composite they attempt to represent my yearning to celebrate a culture of appreciation for the process driven intensity in text making and in the creation of form.

Tentaculites gyracanthus (Eaton, 1832) - tentaculites (= the small, ridged, conical shells) in fossiliferous limestone from the Devonian of New York State, USA.

 

Tentaculites are problematic fossils - their high-level taxonomic placement is uncertain, but they may be molluscs. Tentaculite fossils consist of small to very small calcitic shells. The shells are straight to slightly curving and are slightly tapering tubes. The pointed end of the shell is closed. In some forms, the pointed end is slightly bulbous, with an apical spine (usually broken off). Externally, tentaculite shells usually have ringed ornament and thin, delicate, longitudinal striations.

 

The tip of the shell is the embryonic part. After that is the juvenile portion of the shell, which consists of internal septa, or walls that divide the shell into chambers. Septa have no external expression and number 5 to 20 in one specimen. The adult portion of the shell is nonseptate - it is referred to as the living chamber, which occupies more than half the entire length of the shell. No aperture-like structure has ever been found at the distal end of the shell.

 

The soft-part morphology of tentaculites is poorly known. X-ray images of specimens from the Lower Devonian of Germany seem to show multiple "tentacles" protruding from the large end of the shell. Muscle impressions on the interior have been reported in some tentaculites.

 

Tentaculites are entirely extinct - their geologic range depends on how inclusive the term "tentaculite" is. Tentaculites first definitely appear in Ordovician rocks. Their maximum abundance and diversity was during the Devonian.

 

Tentaculites were entirely marine. They are known from shallow and deep-water deposits. Larger, thick-shelled forms are local in their distribution, and so appear to have been benthic. Smaller, thin-shelled forms have world-wide distributions, and so appear to have been planktonic. Planktonic forms, such as the styliolinids, may not be tentaculites at all. Sometimes, encrusters are found on tentaculite shells. The distribution of encrusting organisms suggests that benthic tentaculites had the apex of the shell pointed downward and the aperture was upward during life. Almost all tentaculite fossils are found parallel to bedding. Very few have been found with the pointed end of the shell vertically inserted into the sediments.

 

The examples seen here are Tentaculites gyracanthus, the first-named tentaculite species in America - it was originally misperceived as a fossil sea urchin spine. This rock specimen comes from New York State's Manlius Limestone, from which another tentaculite species is also known - Tentaculites simmondsi.

 

Classification: Animalia incertae sedis, Tentaculita, Tentaculitida, Tentaculitidae

 

Stratigraphy: Manlius Limestone, lower Helderberg Group, Lower Devonian

 

Locality: unrecorded / undisclosed site near the town of Ravena, eastern New York State, USA

------------------------------------

Some site-specific info. from:

 

Lindemann & Melycher (1997) - Tentaculites (Tentaculitoidea) from the Manlius Limestone (Lower Devonian) at Schoharie, New York. Journal of Paleontology 71: 360-368.

 

A History of the Puerto Rican People, in Three Panels

 

As Elizabeth Garcia Gonzalez, the Executive Director of Centro de la Comunidad conducted me on the grand tour, she showed me this triptych (a work of art which is divided into three sections) currently in the area of the former altar. Painted in the late 1970s, it depicts some of the history of the Puerto Rican people. It is a little problematic, now, as it relates almost exclusively to the Borincano people of that one island, showing the subjugation of the Taino/Arawakan people by the Spanishconquistadores, and the later development of their culture. Today, the Centro de la Comunidad provides support to all the Spanish-speaking people of the Americas, so perhaps some additional art might be appropriate.

 

Unfortunately, the full name of the artist is lost, with only what appears to be a surname in the signature. It looks like 'Marple' or 'Maaple', the latter a little less likely, since it is a Hindi surname, and we should probably be looking for someone closer to the West Indian area. The painting dates to 1978, so it's quite possible the artist is still active. Any help would be appreciated.