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After a discussion about ball heads and tripods with Cassidy Photography this week, I recalled that I was missing a small travel 'pod' for hiking/biking, air travel. So, I got a killer deal on a new Zomei F678. (now replaced by the Q/Z 669 models)
Similar to the MeFoto offerings, but 1/4 the price. It has excellent build quality and features. 14.5" folded, 60.5" extended. It has one shortcoming, it can't get any lower than this without inverting the column. But I don't want to invert. I've been spoiled by my favorite Manfrotto 190D, which comes with a short center column attachment. I discovered that a very similar K&F Concepts version does include a 100mm stubby column to attach the ball head to, but wasn't included with the Zomei.
Hmmm, what to do? To the drawing board.
13/365
-4 degrees Celsius.
Over four weeks since our first snow fall
Snow banks made by the Burnaby City snow plough create parking problems and make roads virtually one way
2016 Toyota Corolla
2001 GMC Sonoma
Labourer walking towards oncoming traffic as he takes market produce across the street. Bacolod City, Philippines.
I have always had problems photographing this because there are usually children playing in the area. Today I thought that my luck had changed but when I entered into the park-playground area I encountered a number of homeless people and as it would have been impossible not to include them in my photographs I decided that I should leave it until another day.
The Old Church of St. George, commonly called "Little George's" in Hill Street (formerly Temple Street Lower) Parish of St. Mary, Dublin was built in 1668 by the Eccles family for their workmen and also as a chapel-of-ease to the nearby St. Mary's Church. However, that St. Mary's Church was not St. Mary's Church, Dublin as its foundation stone was laid in 1700, and it was not St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin as it was dissolved in 1539. Therefore St George's church, Hill Street, may have been a Chapel-of-Ease to St. Michan's Church in Church Street.
The Tower of the old church is now in the Dublin City area, but in the past it was probably said to be in the Drumcondra area, the same as the New Church. The tower of the church is now classed as a "Protected Structure". The entrance was below an old square steeple or tower, about 40 feet in height. The interior of the tower is small and was adorned with a few monuments. The communion-table was in a recess at the eastern end lit by a large circular-headed window, with a monument to the memory of Lady Galbraith on its south side. In the west over the entrance was a small, badly lit gallery.
Richard Kirwan died in June 1812 aged 79 years and was buried in Old St George Church, where Mr. Pope, his butler, was buried a few years later in the same grave. Francis Tempest Brady, the father of the Lord Chancellor, and was also buried in the grave-yard.
Hill Street Family Resource Centre opened in 1999 and serves families living in North East Inner City of Dublin.
Hill Street FRC works from the definition of Family as ”a set of close personal relationships which connect people together, especially, but not exclusively parents and children”. Services focus on supporting families and individuals in reaching their life role potential and offer a programme of activities that include support groups, training programmes, parent & child groups and a counselling service. The Centre is funded by Government agencies: Family Support Agency, HSE, Pobal, and supported through local resources which include Dublin City Council, the CDVEC Adult Education, Catholic Youth Council and The Irish Youth Foundation. Hill Street has a Voluntary Board of Management comprising of local and professional people providing leadership, support and guidance to the work of the Centre and the staff team.
Crested tit at my large pine cone set up in the Highlands. These birds are fantastic to photograph and hopefully get some very soon again.
There is a problem with her earrings, it seems too loose.
Ash how is your Nikki earrings?
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Update: Ok Nikki earrings are supposed to be like this! I am keeping this pic in case other people are wondering about it.
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Problems with resin on placemat two. Try to peal it off (works on smaller pieces of polymer) but fail.
Been having some focus problems with my 500mm f/8, but it seems there's life in it yet! Changed the focus setting from continuous to single with each push and it seems to have made all the difference. This's @ 750mm & noise reduction on! alw
* you have no way to make world feel, you have no time to make it betta, do it by yours heart, from all yours mind, i promise you be make a history.
* Retouch got a little to much right ? ><
* 10 favorite i will post new, thanks for visit - Please comment what you see and how you feel/think about this picture, and the problem too ^_^ thanks, Favorite for me ^_^
The train pulls ahead and comes to a stop, the conductor is walking back to check a problem (air brakes?) The crew standing by is the bridge repair crew finished their project and packing up to leave town.
The one problem with spotting down here is that the tourists flock down here and make far-back nearside shots really rather difficult - such as in this case. A lack of room to back out means that the photos come out horribly glared, too, so I'm forced to put up with whatever I can get over style and substance. Prepare for some dodgily-framed shots!
I've ran out of interesting descriptors again - seen here coming rather unexpectedly up the High Street, Stagecoach Oxford Tube's 50432, a 2020 Volvo B11RET Plaxton Panorama, heads out for another run on the Tube to London Victoria coach station.
I tried to ignore him and talk to the lord
Pray for him, cause some fools just love to perform
You know the type loud as a motor bike
But wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight
The only thing that's gonna happen is i'mma get to clapping
He and his boys gon' be yapping to the captain
And there I go trapped in the kit kat again
Back through the system with the riff raff again
Fiends on the floor scratching again
Paparazzi's with they cameras snapping them
D.A. tried to give the nigga the shaft again
Half-a-mil for bail cause I'm African
All because this fool was harrassin them
Trying to play the boy like hes saccharin
But ain't nothing sweet 'bout how I hold my gun
I got 99 problems but being a bitch ain't one
Hit Men
photo: godzilla7
I will accept my Nobel Prize with grace and humility for solving this age old problem. Thank you all :-)
Door problemen met de bovenleiding voormiddag in Diest,was de lijn 35 enkele uren verstoord.
Dan is het altijd handig dat de diesellijn 15 nog bestaat!
Zo kunnen ze altijd dieseltreinen van Montzen naar Antwerpen omleiden langs deze lijn.
Zoals vandaag deze Crossrail Bertschi-shuttle!
Doorrit op de grens van Leopoldsburg met Balen op 18 juli 2014 om 1325hr,na kruising in het station van Leopoldsburg met de IR naar Hasselt.
Een wat ongewone opname,maar ik had door mijn verplaatsing naar hier geen tijd meer om mijn camera vast op te stellen!
Het was spijtig genoeg de enigste omgeleide vandaag!
Dank Andy en Dennis voor de tip.
Me: "Where did you get that?!"
Danbo: "... Um, internet?"
I guess slicing the muffin in half made it easier to carry.. I still don't know for sure how she got that samurai sword.
Lothian 656 having a few issues with the rear rollerblind with it only showing what blind this is. 30th June 2015.
Motorists wait at the road crossing outside Civic as 3642 hurries through with a shuttle service to Cockle Creek.
Just wanted to catch up on uploading a few more online jigsaw puzzles to my Flickr album.
My daughter and I had planned to go for a drive today, 8 April 2025, but the forecast was for a rainy day, so we cancelled. So fed up of lousy forecasts for when we hope to go out. As it turned out, the sun did come out for a brief period this afternoon, but we are now back to overcast.
"Whether it's a crossword, jigsaw, trivia, word searches, brain teasers or Sudoku, puzzles put our minds to work. Studies have found that when we work on a jigsaw puzzle, we use both sides of the brain. And spending time daily working on puzzles improves memory, cognitive function, and problem-solving skills." From the National Holiday Calendar website.
Ships unloading their cargo into carts on the beach at St Aubin were vulnerable to attack by pirates coming into the bay. This was a particular problem in the 16th century when pirate vessels from Brittany and Belgium roamed the Channel and sailed into island waters looking for easy prey. A bulwark (earth work) with two guns was constructed on shore, giving the area the name, Bulwarks, it still has today, and then a tower was constructed on the offshore rocky islet to house four more gunners.
A century later in the Civil War the Parliamentarians turned it into a stronger fortress, by building a bulwark on it, and when the Royalists regained possession they replaced this with granite ramparts and added a storey to the tower. In the 18th century, and again in the 19th, the fort was rebuilt twice, but in peaceful Victorian times it was let as a summer residence. In the Second World War the Germans strengthened the fort with turret guns and concrete casemates.
Jetty built
As trade grew at St Aubin the demand grew for better harbour facilities and King Charles II ordered a pier to be built, paid for by import dues. The States wanted it to run out from the shore to the south of where today's southern pier lies, but time slipped by without work starting and the Governor, Sir Thomas Morgan, decided to take charge and ordered a pier to be built out from the fort in 1675.
Who was St Aubin?
When the Société Jersiaise visited Saint Aubin's Fort on 14 August 1934, and were generously entertained there by the tenant, Mr Lionel Cox, I had to confess when addressing our members that I knew nothing of the Saint whose name was attached to the Fort, to the bay in which the fort stands and to the haven and village which the fort protects.
I could find no mention of Saint Aubin in the Cartulaire des Iles Anglo-Normandes; nor, as far as I knew, did our society possess any records showing that an ecclesiastical building or establishment, bearing Saint Aubin's name, had ever existed in Jersey before the year 1737, when Mr Peter Meade made his survey.
Our Honorary Librarian, the Rev G R Balleine, however, has recently found a reasonable solution of the mystery.
Writing in The Pilot for November 1946, he dealt with the question "Who was Saint Aubin?" and came to the conclusion that our Saint Aubin must have been the Saint Aubin, Bishop of Angers, who had died in the year 550.
This holy man acquired such merit during his lifetime, as well as during his miraculous reappearance at a critical moment some four centuries later, that his patronage is still claimed by no fewer than 60 villages in France - six of which lie within the diocese of Coutances.
In the face of this, we may rule out Saint Alban of England as a rival claimant to the patronage of our fort, bay, port and village.
Islet
The islet of Saint Aubin is a flattish reef composed of very ancient indurated shale or mudstone which, though easily smashed, is useless for building purposes. At low tide this reef lies high-and-dry on the sands when it resembles in plan an indented oblong measuring about three hundred yards from east to west and about two hundred yards from north to south.
A thin sandy soil supporting a sparse and hardy vegetation probably covered much of the upper parts of the reef when its only inhabitants were gulls, terns, oyster-catchers and pipits.
Its importance to man, however, lies in the fact that it forms a natural breakwater to a strand, and it is from this fact, which must have been early appreciated, that Saint Aubin's village gradually developed from a mere huddle of poor fishermen's huts into a small but thriving town of solid buildings.
From a 1545 map of Jersey in the British Museum
1542-1643
To enquire fully into the causes which led to the reformation of the defences of Jersey and the setting up of our small tower would necessitate the making of a survey of the military situation in western Europe covering the period in which the development of the firearm was revolutionising the art of war.
In the never-ending contest of projectile versus protection, the projectile, for the time being, was obtaining the mastery. Mediaeval castles were crumbling under the shock of its blows, and the knight who, trusting in the impenetrability of his armour, had heretofore waded cheerfully into the thick of the fray, was now beginning to loiter without intent on its outskirts.
Though Henry VIII relied on the bow, the bill and the lance to win his land battles, he early realised that ordnance had its uses in certain circumstances; and seeing that the coasts of his southern counties so frequently suffered from French descents, he decided to protect their most vulnerable ports by erecting a number of small round forts armed with cannon.
These forts were not devised to withstand sieges. They were intended merely to delay or hold up an enemy while the local forces were concentrating. Here then was the raison d'être of Saint Aubin's Tower.
Like its English brethren, our tower was one storey high and provided with embrasures for ordnance. Its roof parapet, however, may not have been crenellated for the use of arquebusiers.
Unlike them, moreover, only its southern side was rounded for the deflection of projectiles, possibly in the belief that it was only from that direction that cannon-shot would strike it. It differed also in its masonry.
Here in Jersey was no limestone that could be sawn into neat and convenient blocks. Local produce in the shape of sea-stones, or rough angular fragments of red granite, had to be carted out from the shore along the sandbank formed by the tide-meet, or floated out in boats and barges at high water and delivered to the masons at work on the reef.
The ancient masonry, mellowed by age, still forms the lower half of the present tower. That of the upper half, which was added in later centuries, is colder in tone and composed mostly of grey Mont Mado granite, cut and fitted with mathematical accuracy.
Edward Seymour
It was during the governorship (1537-50) of Sir Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, later Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of the Realm, that a determined effort was made to render Jersey immune from invasion by strengthening the defences and organising its manpower for war.
As a preliminary move towards the attainment of this object, the Earl, who had ever in mind the prosperity and safety of his island, wrote a letter on 23 December 1541 to the Jurats and inhabitants of Jersey and directed his Lieutenant, Henry Cornish, to deliver it to the States.
As the King's Majesty had been pleased to summon his High Court of Parliament to assemble at Westminster on 10 January 1542, the Earl willed and required the inhabitants of Jersey to elect and send over two of their most discreet and experienced persons to represent the island as burgesses in this Parliament.
The letter, however, was not delivered to the States until 16 January, the very day on which Parliament was due to assemble.
Though the action, if any, taken by the States on this occasion is not recorded, it is evident from the records of their three ensuing meetings that defence measures, including the purchase by each parish of 20 francs worth of gunpowder, occupied the attention of the members.
Parish committees
At their last meeting during the year 1542, they directed each parish to appoint a committee of three or four delegates to advise them as to what should be done for the common weal and safety of the island.
The Lieutenant of the Castle, the Bailiff, the Jurats and the States of Jersey then issued orders, with the advice and approval of the members of the parish committees; firstly, that the completion of the building of St Aubin's Tower should be accomplished with all diligence; secondly that each parish should raise voluntary subscriptions to cover all expenses; and thirdly that an account of the moneys so raised, or promised, should be rendered to the Royal Court within the next few days.
Governor's letter
Thus we gather that by the end of 1542, not only was St Aubin's Tower said to be approaching completion; but also that the people of Jersey were beginning to realise that the English government expected them to pay the whole or most of the cost arising from the reorganisation of the defences of their island. Some of them in fact, were already refusing or withholding payment, with a result that the exasperated governor eventually saw fit to despatch the following extraordinary letter:
"To my loving friends the Bailiff, Jurats and Curates of the Isle of Jersey and to every of them. After my hearty commendations. Whereas I am informed that divers of the inhabitants of the Isle there, neither regarding their duties of allegiance nor yet their own wealth, commodities, nor safeguard, do show themselves rather like brute beasts than men in refusing to be contributors, according to their rates and abilities, to such sums of money and other charges as from time to time have been thought requisite by the grave and discreet persons of the same, to be levied and employed for the defence of the whole country.
”I, not a little marvelling at the same, their folly and obstinacy for reformation: and due punishment from henceforth to be had on like offenders: have thought good to will and require you and nevertheless to charge and command you that ye, condescending together, not only devise what is to be done for the safeguard thereof and for the encounter and repulse of the enemies, if they should attempt to annoy the same; but also according to your former orders do establish, at the charge of the whole country, four sufficient and able men to be and remain continually at St Aubin's Tower, being appointed with ordnance and munition for the preservation thereof and the better defence of the said country.
”And you, together with my Lieutenant, are to tax and rate what and how much every parish shall bear from time to time, according to their abilities, as well for the payment of wages to the said four men as all other necessary charges. Willing and charging you also that after such taxation and order taken by you (in case any person do obstinately refuse and withstand the accomplishment thereof) that upon probation and conviction of the same misdemeanour by sufficient testimony before you, the Bailiff and Jurats, then to convict him or them, so offending, to straight ward; there to remain till he shall have contented and paid the same taxation and also received such further punishment as may be a terror to others that perchance might show themselves like offenders.
”Also that you forthwith consult together, and dividing the Isle into sundry quarters for the better preservation thereof, Appointing to every quarter one special man to be Captain of the same: and all the inhabitants within the precinct thereof to resort to such place as ye shall, by beacons or other tokens, perceive the enemy approach. And so joining together under his and their leadings, to set forth in their best array as the said Captain and Captains shall appoint them to withstand the malice of the enemies from time to time as occasion shall require; for I have given my said Lieutenant in commandment, as to his duty doth appertain, not upon any such occasion to depart from his charge, but continually to remain in and upon the same that he may render a good accompt thereof."
The Earl then continues in the same circumlocutionary manner to state his instructions for the purchase and distribution of powder and munitions.
"And thus; not doubting your conformities in all the premises, and the rather for that the same doth and shall redound chiefly to your own wealth, benefits and surety, I bid you heartily farewell.
Your loving friend
Edward Hertford
At London, the xxxth of January 1546.
Other fortifications
Lest it should appear from statements already made that St Aubin's Tower was the only or most important fortification which had engaged the attention of the Tudor military reformers, I must make it clear that such was not the case. The great stronghold in the east of the island, Gorey Castle, was still "the King's Castle in the island of Jersey" and still retained the prestige and glamour it had acquired during the preceeding three and a half centuries.
Its towers and battlements, however, had not been designed to accommodate cannons and moreover, and as usual, were badly in need of repair. Further, and what was now more serious, they were dominated by Le Mont Saint Nicolas opposite.
The conversion of Mont Orgueil Castle into an uptodate fortress proved to be a very slow and very expensive business. Being also of doubtful tactical advantage, it was very nearly abandoned before it was completed. In fact it was only through the good offices of Sir Walter Ralegh, Governor of Jersey from 1600 to 1603, that it was saved from demolition.
Meanwhile engineer Paul Ivy, on the Islet of Saint Helier, had perfected the work which became known to the people of Jersey as Le Chateau de l'Islet or Le Neuf Chateau. Ralegh for his part "ventured to christen it Fort Isabella bellissima", Elizabeth being then in her 71st year.
Growth in trade
The expansion of sea-borne trade brought ships in increasing numbers to St Aubin's Bay, either for commercial purposes or for temporary refuge in foul weather. Vessels which came to trade floated into the havens of St Helier or St Aubin on the flood and lay aground on the sands when the tide ebbed. Their cargoes were then discharged into carts,
Weather-bound ships, or those awaiting cargoes, anchored in the roads midway between Elizabeth Castle and Noirmont promontory.
Of the two ports in St Aubin's Bay, that of St Aubin, during the 16th and 17th centuries, was undoubtedly the busier and consequently the maintenance of the garrison and armament of the Tower should not have been neglected.
Three of the "four sufficient and able men" who, in conformity with the Govcrnor's letter of 30 January 1546, had evidently been chosen to garrison St Aubin’s Tower, were withdrawn by an order of the Lieut-Governor and the States, dated 30 June of the same year. The fourth man, William Howell, was to be left in charge of the place and receive the same pay as he had formerly been given.
The artillery, powder and other gear appertaining to the tower, were to be listed and removed to Edouard Dumaresq's house, now known as La Haule Manor. No reasons were given for this move; but it is possible that the tower was unfit for human habitation and that exposure to the sea air was detrimental alike to the guns and their ammunition.
Financial worries
The raising of money for the maintenance of guns and gunners was a source of continual trouble to the parish Constables who, though backed by the authority of the States, often found it exceedingly difficult to prise from the pockets of their parishioners the sums due from them for this purpose. The behaviour of these tax-dodgers was described by the Constables as "pernicious contumacy”.
If the Constables entirely failed to effect an extraction, things went hard with them, as the following record shows:-
"March the 8th, 1550. With regard to matters connected with St Aubin's Tower and the payment of its gunners, the States authorise Jurats Edward Dumaresq and Laurens Hamptonne to supervise the business and imprison in the Castle any Constable who fails to produce the sums that are due."
In 1553 the States ordered the parishes to subscribe £12, (English), to put the artillery of the island in a serviceable condition and to build a house in Saint Aubin where the guns of that district could be stored.
Nine years later it was recorded that a house of this nature had been built on the property of one Francois Becquet at the village wharf or ‘’Docque’’. Becquet had orders to hand over the key of the house to "the gunners of the Castle and island if in wartime they were sent to St Aubin's haven for the defence of the country".
Parish commitment
In 1573 the States required each parish to maintain at its own charges two men daily at St Aubin’s haven to look after the guns, their pay being fixed at six 'sterlings' a day. At the outbreak of war, or on an emergency, two extra men were to be entertained at the same rate; but it had to be understood that in times of profound peace these men would not be required. It must not be supposed that military activities were confined solely to the gunners during this period; for the recently formed parish companies were also being stung into action from time time to time by the States. The men of these companies, who were known as companions, were ordered, weather permitting to discharge their hackbuts, bows and arbalists every Sunday. The careless companion who failed to participate in this martial exercise, however, was liable to be fined five sous by his constable.
In spite of threats and penalties it is evident that the officials who were responsible for carrying out the numerous orders issued by the States from 1540 onwards, preferred evasion to obedience. They too, without a doubt, believed in the old army adage : "It is better to incur a slight reprimand than to perform an arduous duty".
As the century grew older, war clouds began to gather, and by 1587 it was an open secret that Spain had determined on the conquest of England and was mobilising "the richest spoils of Mexico and the stoutest hearts in Spain" to attain that object. The spirited action of Sir Francis Drake along the Spanish coasts delayed the departure of the Armada but did not prevent it; and the States of Jersey, assembling on 22 January 1588, announced that "on account of the rumours of preparations for war which are taking place on all sides, it is found expedient and necessary to repair all the fortifications round the coast and to establish others at threatened spots. On each of the islets of Saint Helier and Saint Aubin a platform or battery was to be sited to bear upon the anchorages."
Special arrangements were made to raise money for the wages of the workers and the cost of the work and if this did not suffice, the States were to raise more.
In addition, the States were of opinion that muskets, demi-culverins or sakers should be provided and the work was to be accomplished at top speed.
Invasion fears
Though the Armada, hounded along by the English fleet, had passed up-Channel to its doom towards the end of July 1588; the States still felt that it was beyond their powers to cope with the dangers of the situation and at their meeting of 24 March 1590, passed the following resolution :-
"On account of the wars, commotions and rebellions which exist in the towns and provinces of neighbouring nations and give rise to infinite dangers, plunderings and pillages, the States of this Island have found it expedient and necessary to represent to Her Majesty, our Sovereign Lady the Queen, and to her noble and discreet Council, our lack of armament and defences, and to implore her aid, so that a suitable remedy may be found alike for the benefit of Her Majesty's service, and the safety, welfare and advantage of this Island."
Sir Philippe de Carteret, Seigneur of St Ouen, and Hugh Lempriere were deputed to deliver this petition to the Council.
Probably aware that years would pass - actually seven years passed - before their petition was answered, the States determined that their order of 22 January 1588 should be carried out, at any rate in so far as St Aubin's Tower was concerned.
"As to the reparations on St Aubin's islet", they said, "six parishes in the first instance will assist. One day's labour under the direction and command of the Seigneur de Saint Ouen will be required of every person in the parishes of St Ouen, St Brelade, St Lawrence, St Peter, St Mary and St John. And because the delivery of stone to that place is difficult, the States order that each of the boats belonging to St Aubin's haven shall carry one load of stone thereto. Every foreign vessel which arrives will also have to transport one boat-load to the Islet, or in default shall suffer either the loss of their goods and apparel, or such other punishment as the Seigneur de Saint Ouen shall inflict. Carters who absent themselves will be fined three groats, and labourers one groat."
Though the nature of the work performed at the tower under these trying conditions is not known, planks formed part of it, "as per" Adrian Valpy's bill, paid by the States on 12 May 1591.
Attack warnings
Between 1597 and 1603 no less than eight official warnings of possible attacks by roving fleets of Spanish, Dunkirk, or Italian galleys reached our harassed States from London, and on each of these alarming occasions the grave and discreet persons who composed that busy body issued new orders for the defence of their never-ready island.
When Sir Walter Raleigh, the Governor, announced that he was about to visit Jersey and enquire into the manpower and armament of the island, the States on the eve of his arrival, decided that as St Aubin's Tower was a place of importance in wartime and an outpost fronting the enemy, it should not be without a good guard. They therefore appointed four men of the parish of Saint Peter and four of Saint Brelade to keep watch and ward there, under the gunner, until further orders. Two of the men from each parish were to be arquebusiers.
Panic at the approach of a General's Inspection is evidently no new thing and sometimes resembles a panic produced by the threat of invasion. For example, the invasion scare of 30 August 1600 resulted in the sudden despatch to our tower of six men each from St Brelade and St Peter and two from St Ouen.
Captain Rainsford
Rumours of invasion, especially during the unsuccessful wars with France and Spain between the years 1625 and 1628, continued to alarm the island, worry the States and supply the tower with temporary garrisons. Nevertheless, obstruction on the part of the Constables, reminiscent of that vilified by Hertford in January 1546, continucd - as is shown by the following abstract taken from "The Calendar of State Papers. Domestic. Charles 1. Addenda.":
"8 July 1630, Jersey. Captain Francis Rainsford to the Privy Council. Losses experienced by the inhabitants of Jersey from the Biscay men-of-war infesting the coast. Measures adopted for their protection. The difficulties which have arisen to prevent their execution. Regulations for the setting of the watches. Upon this disobedience of the inhabitants to my instructions, and their neglect of His Majesty's service and their own security, I sent a warrant for the constables and called the constable of St Lawrence to give an account why he neglected the service and slighted my commands, but I could receive no other satisfaction from him but that he was bound to maintain the privileges of his parish, and contested with me that they were not bound to do any duty at the tower, neither would they now begin.
Upon this stubborn and mutinous reply I committed him to the Castle as an example to deter others. But ... upon his confinement, most of his parish, with all the constables and some of the justices, came to visit him as a martyr and one who had unjustly suffered for the maintenance of their privileges and liberty."
Rainsford was Lieut-Governor of Jersey until 1633.
Summary of defences
Before passing on to the next chapter, it will be as well to offer a summary of the reformation of the island’s defences carried out during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, and under the successive governorships of Edward Seymour (1537-1550), Sir Anthony Paulet (1550-1571), Sir Hugh Paulet (1571-1588), Sir Amyas Paulet (1590-1600), Sir Walter Ralegh (1600-1603), and Sir John Peyton (1603-1630):
Gorey Castle: Transformed unsatisfactorily from an ancient bow-and-arrow stronghold into a fire-arm fortress. Insufficiently garrisoned.
Elizabeth Castle. An entirely new fort. Insufficiently garrisoned.
Saint Aubin's Tower. Inadequately armed and garrisoned and deficient in magazines, stores and water supply.
Coast defence Bulwarks or redoubts. One at Bouley Bay. One at Saint Ouen's Bay. One at Saint Aubin and one at Bel Royal. Each, except the last, armed with one saker which generally lay on the ground owing to the decay of its carriage.
Regular Garrison from England. About 50 men distributed between the two castles and of no great military value.
Local Troops consisting of 12 Parish Companies of about one hundred men each. Indifferently armed and trained. Later organised into groups of four parishes. Each parish possessed two light field guns, the last survivor of which stands neglected on German cart wheels at the foot of Beaumont Hill.
Alarm precautions : Beacons and tocsin, and the firing of cannon.
1643-1651
During the first eight months of the Civil War in Jersey the Parliamentary party had the upper hand and were blockading their opponents in Elizabeth and Gorey Castles.
Saint Aubin's Tower, now 100 years old, made its first acquaintance with war when two Parliamentary frigates chased a Royalist privateer into St Aubin's Bay. The crew of the privateer, after seizing the tower, overset its three small guns and having smashed their carriages, sailed across to Elizabeth Castle, where they lay safely at anchor under the protection of the castle ordnance.
A few days later, Sir Philip de Carteret, the Royalist commander, having satisfied himself that the Parliamentary frigates had gone for good, caused the broken carriages and one of the guns to be brought over to his Castle lest they should be removed by his enemies ashore.
For the next four months the tower, being of no tactical use to either side, remained unoccupied and unarmed. In the meanwhile the local Parliamentary party, finding themselves unequal to the task of capturing the castles, sought aid from London.
Military commander wanted
Their delegate to Westminster, Jean Herault, had instructions to tell Parliament that though they required no English troops to help them, their own being of excellent quality, they did need a military Lieut-Governor to direct operations. If, moreover, he brought with him some cannon, small arms and ammunition, they would raise no objections.
The answer to this request arrived at St Aubin on 26 August 1643, in the persons of Major Leonard Lydcott, his bride, his mother-in-law, his father, his brother, three captains, three lieutenants, half-a-dozen soldiers and some male and female servants.
"And there", writes Jean Chevalier, "you have the train which came with Lydcott to conquer the Castles of Jersey". "If he had brought three hundred men with him", he adds, "they would have had the island under their thumbs and would have kept possession of it - as Lydcott was shortly to discover for himself."
The new Lieut-Governor was in command of the island for nearly three months and many events of importance in the history of Jersey took place during that period. As far, however, as our tower is directly concerned, we can only claim one of them which was thus and tersely recorded by Jean Chevalier:-
"About now, (9 October 1643), St Aubin's Tower was repaired and surrounded with bulwarks. The watch-house also was repaired and the two cannons remounted. A lieutenant named Brand was placed in command by the Lieut-Governor and a garrison of local soldiers was installed to defend it for the Parliament in case it should be attacked. It was intended also to use it as a prison for "refractories" , otherwise, Royalists.
Conversion to fort
By the building of this outer line of defence, the place became a fort, and a fort it has remained ever since. The watch-house was presumably the small building on the roof of the Tower shown in the drawing.
"Barely a month after St Aubin's Tower had been promoted to the status of fort, the Parliamentary front in Jersey began to crack. Lydcott, now fully aware of the unreliability of the local troops and of the mischievous influence exercised by their bigoted spiritual leaders, had despatched his brother to seek reinforcements from England, and none had arrived.
It was the desertion of four of his English officers and the arrival at the castles of men and supplies sent from Saint Malo by Captain George Carteret, that finally convinced Lydcott and his civilian colleagues that the game was up. And so, when the news of the capture of St Aubin's Fort reached them they emulated the action of the Boojum and "softly and suddenly vanished away ".
The capture of the fort was accomplished by a number of Saint Breladais royalists who, on the afternoon of 21 November, drifted in to the tower by ones and twos to gossip with the garrison while Brand was dining ashore. At a given signal tbese men pounced upon and mastered their unwary hosts and then mounting to the roof of the tower, discharged their matchlocks into the air to let Elizabeth Castle and their friends on land know that their ruse had succeeded.
Brand, at his dinner, had barely time to draw his sword, when an inrush of men overwhelmed and disarmed him. He was then led back, a prisoner, to the post from which he had so improperly absented himself; after which, he and his captured garrison were transferred to Elizabeth Castle, where they were detained for a time and then set free.
Royalist rule
The short-lived ascendancy of the Parliamentary party was succeeded by eight years of Royalist rule under the vigorous Sir George Carteret, Bailiff and Lieut-Governor, who, aware that one day he would have to face the might of Republican England, did all he could while time permitted, to make the island impregnable.
By parochial musters and inspections; by watch and ward duties round the coastline; and by occasional sham fights and grand reviews, he tried to instill into his unwilling fellow-countrymen some elementary knowledge of a subject which Chevalier politely calls "the Military Art".
The backbone of Sir George's little army, however, was composed of regular troops, horse and foot, of many nationalIties. These men remained faithful to him after the disaster in St Ouen's Bay and formed the garrison of Elizabeth Castle which eventually was forced to surrender on 15 December 1651. Meanwhile, to balance his budget and pay for his regulars, Sir George resorted to many irregular expedients, among the most lucrative of which figured his fleet of piratical frigates, based on the haven of Saint Aubin.
To ensure the safety of the ships as well as that of their prizes and the loot stored inthe village cellars, the strengthening and rearming of Saint Aubin's Fort should have become a matter of prime importance. As early as February 1645 the States had made an official visit to the place and decided that something ought to be done.
Thirteen months later, as nothing had been done, Sir George reintroduced the subject and stated that the tower must be repaired and new batteries built round about it. In agreeing to this demand, the States decreed that the island should bear the cost of the work and that each parish "tresor" should contribute ten ecus thereto, the ecu being half-a-crown.
Charles II
On the evening of 16 April 1646, the Proud Black Eagle and two other ships from the Scilly Isles sailed quietly into Saint Aubin’s Bay, bearing the 16-year-old Prince Charles and some 300 of his nobles, gentry and followers. If ever it were necessary for Sir George to complete the long neglected defences of Jersey, this was the moment; for in addition to being responsible for the safety of His Sacred Majesty’s island he was now also responsible for the safety of His Sacred Majesty's Sacred Son.
Once again therefore, it was decided to do something at Saint Aubin's Fort; and with the encouragement of the Prince, who subscribed fifty pistoles and promised more, work recommenced.
Moreover the Prince and his Council, unwilling that the island should bear the cost, ordered that the money raised from the parishes should be refunded, if it had been received.
Chevalier's journal
On 12 May 1646 the Prince with his lords and captains paid a visit to the place and after that, says Chevalier,
"Many men, at ten sous a day, were set to work there. The tower was repaired and the rock on its eastern side was scarped for the insertion of a new door. The old door, which was on its western side and, in wartime would have been exposed to cannon fire from the shore, was blocked up. Other work was done inside. The bulwarks round about were repaired and cannons were mounted in them. The tower was heightened and its lower embrasures closed, so that a storeroom and magazine might be constructed within. Other embrasures for guns were made higher up. A mass of earth was carted to the works and stones were collected on the spot. Lime also was provided for the building of the tower. The Prince's fifty pistoles were expended ere the work was scarce commenced, nevertheless much material had been carried there."
In 1647, Chevalier refers back to this work and to the Act of 15 March 1645, which had authorized it:
"In virtue of the Act" he writes, "labourers, carts and wagons were sent to Saint Aubin's Tower to make bulwarks there. The carts fetched earth from Saint Lawrence's marsh, and stone was quarried on the spot. In this manner the making of a strong structure was intended. All the old buildings which had been set up there in Mr Lydcott's time were dismantled."
In and after May, however, those parishes which were subject to the ‘’Douvres du Chateau’’ were ordered to work there, seeing that they had not performed this obligation in 1643, when Sir Philip de Carteret was blockaded in Elizabeth Castle by the islanders.
In spite of the building operations recorded off and on since 1643, it would be rash to assume that Saint Aubin's Fort was really completed in 1647.
Workers criticised
To believe that, indeed, would be to believe that the islanders' will to work had changed for the better since 1636, when Sir Philip de Carteret, directing the work in Elizabeth Castle, wrote the following memorable words: "The slothfulness of the workmen and the backwardness of the labourers doth impose upon me an intolerable pains and trouble."
Continuing with Chevalier s account of the works in progress during 1647. we note
The height of the Tower was increased by two brace and that a stone pillar was built within it to support the roof
John Dean was appointed Captain of the Fort and went to live in the tower in a room specially prepared for him
Another room in the tower was specially fitted to serve as a magazine
The garrison was increased and more cannons mounted, planks having been supplied for their platforms.
Sir George also had procured from Granville an alarm bell, weighing 47 pounds, to hang in the watch-house on the top of the tower.
Chevalier then remarks that though the tower was strongly situated, it would not be able to withstand a long siege. "Sea water in plenty was there, it is true", he says, "but for those who preferred fresh drinking water, there was none, other than that stored in barrels. And if an enemy held the land, the tower would have to be succoured by sea from Elizabeth Castle, under cover of darkness, an operation fraught with danger because boats, launched by the enemy, would most surely interfere with it."
In view of all this it seems hard to accept Chevalier's statement, under date of 24 July 1650, that "in this year also Sir George commenced to enclose within walls of masonry the area in which Saint Aubin's Tower stands. The work was supervised by Captain Sausmarez of Guernsey, who was in command of the said Tower".
English and Irish garrison
The garrison of the tower during that summer, and while the masons were still at work, was composed of English and Irish troops. When news came of Cromwell's victory at Dunbar, however, the strength of the garrison was increased by a dozen local soldiers - one being furnished by each parish and paid at the rate of fifty sous a week.
As time went on the news from England worsened and on 25 July 1651 Sir George informed the States that he had received a despatch from the Duke of York and Lord Jermyn, in Paris, that an expeditionary force was being assembled in England for the invasion of Jersey. The Duke offered to raise a body of 300 French and Swiss troops and send them over to reinforce the garrison of the island. The States, scenting more taxation, rejected this offer. They had enough young men of their own. All they now needed was a number of regular officers to train them.
In August, two precautionary measures were taken against the corning storm. Five ships were ordered to bring supplies and munitions from Saint Malo and a day of fast, prayer and intercession was appointed for Sunday the tenth. Everyone was to be present in church that day from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon singing psalms, praying and listening to sermons.
As if distrustful of the efficacy of this latter performance, Sir George also ordered his sea-scouts to patrol the coasts of Sark and Guernsey to watch for the approach of the enemy. Out again on 3 October, they again reported "no enemy in sight". Meanwhile the works at Saint Aubin's Fort had been completed and armed with twelve guns. Its garrison remained at full strength.
States declaration
On 10 October Sir George took yet another precaution. He ordered every member of the States to sign a declaration that they would defend the island on the King's behalf to the last drop of their blood. He also requested every well-to-do person in Jersey to bake biscuits, so that when the invasion carne, rich and poor would share and share alike.
In the night of 20/21 October 1651 the Parliamentary forces landed in Saint Ouen's Bay. The Militia, who had long been tired of the whole business, disbanded themselves, while Sir George and his regulars, after fighting a short rearguard action, withdrew to Elizabeth Castle.
A few hours later Saint Aubin's Fort was abandoned to the enemy, for its local men had mutinied saying that the place was untenable through lack of food and water. Its regulars then took to their boats and made for Elizabeth Castle.
Sir George’s privateers
As the chief object of the Fort was to protect the vessels which lay in the haven, some reference to the ships and their crews which made Saint Aubin their base, must be made.
It was during the years 1643 to 1651 that the port rose from poverty to affluence mainly through the nefarious operations of Sir George Carteret's privateers, which were known to some as ships of the Royal Navy and to others as "The Jersey Pyrates ".
The doings of this flotilla provided Sir George and other adventurers with much wealth, and Jean Chevalier with a great deal of copy for his Journal. They also inspired our godly journalist frequently to quote the Jewish scriptures and moralise on the iniquities committed by his fellow men and the calamitous nature of the times.
The fortunes of the flotilla fluctuated, of course, from time to time; but by following a policy of attacking the weak and avoiding the strong, the pirates succeeded in bringing many a valuable prize in to Saint Aubin, where Sir George's Court of Admiralty adjudged them to be lawful prizes, or otherwise.
It is from the existence of this Court that a house in Saint Aubin still bears the name of The Old Court House - - which has given rise to the belief that the village was once the seat of the Royal Court and therefore the capital of the island.
When a ship and her cargo bad been judged a lawful prize, an auction sale - after being advertised with tap of drum in Saint Helier - would be held in Saint Aubin, and thither would congregate on the appointed day many a local merchant and foreign speculator.
One of the most valuable prizes ever taken appears to have been a Parliamentary supply ship on her way from Loudon to Londonderry in February, 1647.
Though only of 90 tons burden, she was reckoned to be worth £15,000. Here is a list of her cargo:
30 barrels of gunpowder: 500 muskets, 500 pistols, 500 carbines, 500 swords and shoulder belts: 500 ready-made suits of clothes, 36 bales of cloth, saddles, boots, bridles and spurs, two small bronze cannons, 450 pairs of shoes, 500 linen shirts, socks, a quantity of red coats, five cases of surgical instruments, musket cases, wheat, a good quantity of peas, sacks of rice, barrels of butter, cheese, sun-dried raisins, chestnuts and other commodities.
As a rule, only one or two privateers at a time sallied forth in search of prey, but on 18 July 1650, no less than six, convoying two supply boats, set off to provision Castle Cornet. As these six small vessels bore names which were famous or infamous in those days, I give them herewith:
The Raceboat of 14 guns: The Francois of 18: the Patrice of 14 : the Pierre of 19: the Marie of 10 and the Lady of four. It is interesting to note that the Lady was adventured or financed by Sir George's lady and her friends.
Jersey pirates?
Turning now to the officers and crews of the privateers, I take the opportunity of pointing out that the phrase "Jersey pirates" is misleading, seeing that there were very few Jerseymen amongst them. It would, in fact, be more accurate to call them Royalist pirates operating from Jersey.
Of the score of captains mentioned by Chevalier, about a dozen were Englishmen who bore typical English names. The rest were Flemings, Ostenders, Dunkirkers and the like.
The crews were a rough lot of rascals of many nationalities, who were merciless and cruel in their treatment of prisoners, and never failed to squander in riotous living the shares they received when their prizes were sold. The excessive intake of strong liquor by men such as these led to many a breach of the public peace in the taverns of Saint Aubin and the occasional shedding of blood in its streets.
Manual Clement
The Royalist Lieutenant who succeeded the unwary Brand in the command of Saint Aubin’s Fort was a genltleman most inappropriately named Manuel Clement. This officer had distinguished himself in Sir Philip de Carteret's first sortie from Elizabeth Castle and had also been a member of the party which had captured Saint Aubin's Tower in November 1643.
On the afternoon of 7 December 1646, this Manuel Clement and one Michael Jenkinson, the master mriner of Sir George's galley, sat carousing in a tavern, and being well primed with strong drink, very naturally fell into a dispute over the bill.
Jenkinson, in his anger, flung his money on the table and made for the door saying he would pay no more. Clement, drawing his sword, rushed after him and shouted "Come back. Come back !” But dusk was falling and Jenkinson, having far to go, took no notice of this invitation, whereon Clement ran him through without more ado and left him dead in the gutter.
As there were no witnesses of this brutal deed, Clement would have been wise to hold his tongue; but he needs must return to the tavern and blab.
And so, on his own confession, the Constable and his centeniers seized him for murder and led him away to the prison criminal in Gorey Castle, there to await his trial. Chevalier states that Clement, in spite of his good record, would certainly have paid the penalty; but the ways of the law in those days were somewhat slow and by 6 March of the following year, Clement still awaited trial. The night of 6 March 1647 was a very dark one, and into it Clement the murderer privily withdrew. Nor, though all the ports were watched, was he ever seen again.
Janson Garet
The Clement-Jenkinson affair, however, was not the first of its kind; for one of an even more gruesome nature had already taken place some six weeks earlier. This was a stabbing affray between a big powerful Fleming named Janson Garet and a half-breed Portuguese named Andre Laurens.
I shall spare the reader the horrible details of this business and merely state that the Fleming was killed by the half-breed who, however, received such terrible injuries that three months elapsed before he could be brought to trial. The jury of 24 then found that he had acted in self-defence and he was acquitted. Later he was expelled from the island.
1680 military report
This sumptuously-bound and attractive report, which is preserved in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum, is entitled :
"The present state of Guernsey with a short accompt of Jersey, and the forts belonging to the said islands. By Colonell George Legge, Lieutennant Generall of His Majesty's Ordnance. Anno Domini MDCLXXX.
Although Legge, as senior officer, takes the credit for this achievement, Master Gunner Thomas Phillips supplied the plans and illustrations, and Captain Richard Leake was responsible for details of armaments and criticisms of their state and efficacy.
Of Phillips' illustrations it may be said that their artistic merit is more to be admired than their military accuracy, especially in regard to his plans, from which he omits the references so carefully prepared by Leake.
Phillips' largest drawing in the Jersey series is a panorama of Saint Aubin's bay which measures 54 by 20 inches. His illustration of Saint Aubin's Fort, measures 11½ by 19 inches.
The English of the report also has its attractions, as the following three examples show:
”Some short observations upon the Island of Jersey for ye better intelligence of the Mapp of the said Island and more particulerly about the landing places. For the landing of an enemy there is a shoare about the middle of the said bay called St Laurence Bulworks where there might be something done towards the preventing It is in that Bay of St Aubins that Sir Thomas Morgan did undertake to build a Peere adjoining to the Tower of St Aubins which is almost finished, where vessells that drawes about 8 foot comes in a little more than halfe flood ".
The second deals with Saint Aubin's Fort itself, introducing the subject thus:
”An Accompt of the Ordnance and Carriages of St Alban's Fort in His Majesty's Island of Jersey taken by "Captain Richard Leake Master Gunner of England, by Order of the Honoble Colonell George Legge with ye Opinion of ye said Capt Leake what Alteration or Addition may be at the same".
The Accompt ends with these words:
"St Albans Fort is in indifferent repaire the walls being built with Stone and Loome and Pointed with Lime and Sand Mortar is of no great Strength but is only for defending ye vessells in the New Peere under the said Forts Command. Without the Fort upon the Rocks there is required a Battery to be made for the Command of the Bay between Elizabeth Castle and the said St Alban's Fort."
(This Battery was later known as the Eastward Battery).
In Leake's description of the Fort's armament, the type, length, weight, and position of each piece is given together with the nature and condition of its carriage (stand carriage or ship's carriage).
In a separate column, Leake recommends certain alterations in the armament of each platform or battery, but as Phillips omitted to note on his plan the positions of these platforms, I must leave the reader to place them for himself.
Here is a list of them:
Facing the Towne. Flanking the Peere. Flanking the Road comeing in to the Peere. Faceing the Gate. Flanking the Gate coming in. Faceing the Road. Flanking the Peere and the Towne. Flanking the Point coming into the Road."
The Towne is Saint Aubin's village, and the Road the anchorage.
The Fort's ordnance was all of iron, and consisted of the following pieces:
Four demi-culverins averaging 9 feet in length and rather over a ton in weight. Seven sakers 7 feet long and 15 cwt in weight. One falcon of 14 cwt and of 4 feet in length, and one three-pounder, 7 feet long and 11 cwt in weight. Total 13 guns.
Leake states that two of the demi-culverins and nine carriages were unserviceable. An account of Phillips' services and death will be found in ‘’The Dictionary of National Biography’’.
Fort pier
The construction of a pier at Saint Aubin's Fort had been under consideration for quite half a century before any active work was begun.
By 1680 its core or foundation had been made, thanks to the energy and initiative of Sir Thomas Morgan, Governor of Jersey from 1665 to 1679. Morgan had arranged for the financing and planning of the undertaking in 1673 and for the prosecution of the work in case of his death.
Though small jetties may have existed previously elsewhere along the coasts, no building on such a huge scale had ever before been attempted in Jersey.
I quote Lieut-Bailiff Jean Poingdcstre on the subject:
"I should here alsoe mention ye Peere which is making at ye Fort of St Albins, a peece for Eternity; if you consider ye breadth materialls and workemanshipp. It will be time enough to give an accompt of it, when by God's favour it shall be finished."
As Poingdestre died in 1691, nine years before the pier was finished, his accompt was never written.
Dumaresq survey
Jurat Philip Dumaresq in his A Survey of the Island of Jersey 1685, writes:
"There is a Peere almost finished adjoining to the North-East point of this small Island; which will be about thirty feet high at the head, some three hundred feet long and above thirty broad: Here all the shipping of the Island resort, it being the principal Harbour: the conveniency whereof has occasioned a small Town, called St Aubin to be built (consisting of about four-score houses) that daily increases, and would much more, but that the same high hill that commands the said fort, hinders it."
The line of wharfs or quays along the north edge of the islet had been partly built by 1742 and was completed by the end of the century.
It is interesting to compare the rough masonry of the pier with the well-cut blocks of later date at the head of the slipway.
The east screen wall had been built, therefore, before 1680. The west screen wall was erected early in the eighteenth century.
These walls served to protect the shipping in the fort harbour from the weather, as well as to screen it from an enemy in the roads.
Georgian fort
During the Georgian period, England and France were embroiled in no less than five major wars, each of which had some indirect effect on the efficiency of the Militia, the growth of the fortifications and the strength of the regular garrison of the island.
First there was the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741 to 1748. Then the Seven Years War, 1756 to 1763. Then the War of 1778 to 1783, in which France helped the revolting American Colonies to gain their independence; and lastly the great French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which raged, with occasional breathers, from 1793 to 1815.
As if aware that trouble was brewing, the Board of Ordnance decided in 1730 to repair, and if necessary rebuild, the fortifications of Jersey. The record of the reception given by the States to the board's engineer on 25 August 1730, runs as follows:
”John Henry Bastide, Gentleman officer and engineer engaged for the reparation of this Island’ s fortresses by the Lords Commissioner of the ordnance of our Sovereign Lord the King of Great Britain, etc., has this day read to the States certain directions given him by the Lords Commissioner concerning the repairing of the Bulwarks and Guard Houses round this Island and the mounting in them of the Cannons and their carriages, etc, which the Lords Commissioner intend to send over when Mr Bastide certifies that the reparations have been completed.
” The States having considered the matter, resolved to issue the necessary orders immediately. At the same time, they desired Mr Bastide to convey to Milords their gratitude and thanks. They also desired Mr Bastide to inform Milords that they were about to give effect to their resolution."
Bastide must have been on duty in the archipelago for a dozen years or more. The chief memorial of his skill and industry is his work in Elizabeth Castle which, though altered in parts by the reformers of 1838, and savaged here and there by the Germans, still survives in some of the bastions and curtain walls of the Lower Ward.
The western sally port with its fine brick arch (1734) is his, as is also the east sally port of 173I, which leads downward from the north-cast corner of the Barrack Square.
The work carried out by him in Saint Aubin's Fort is, with the exception of King George II's Gateway, not so conspicuous owing to the reconstructions and alterations made between 1837 and 1840. It may, however, be detected in the southern defences, notably in the truncated sentry turret at the tip of the central bastion. Three of these turrets have survived intact in Elizabeth Castle.
1742 plan
The 1742 plan represents the fort as it was when Bastide had finished his work there. If compared with Phillips 1680 plan, it will be seen that the enclosure marked "Gardens" is now (1742) occupied by a Suttling House or Canteen.
The building west of the guard house, meanwhile, has disappeared. The 13 gun embrasures along the walls probably occupy the same positions that they occupied in 1680. The Barracks in the 1742 plan is another name for the ancient Tower.
Between 1737 and 1739 Bastide made plans of Castle Cornet and Alderney. He also made a series of panoramic sketches which eventually, as copper engravings, was published by J Tinney at the Golden Lion in Fleet Street, under the title of ‘’A General and Particular Prospectus of the Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Arm and Jethou, drawn on the spot by J Bastide and finished by C Lempriere’’.
At the moment the most interesting of these to us is the engraving described as the"Prospect of the Fort. Harbour and Town of St Aubins in Jersey". As in the case of all the others, it is signed “J Bastide, Delin: C Lernpriere, Perfecit and W H Toms, Sculp".
The engraving bears the following note:
"St Aubin's Fort and Peer where a 6th Rate just floats at a dead neep and 200 Tun Ships at all times."
While acknowledging the skill of the perfecter and engraver, I cannot but wonder if all the details of the original sketch were faithfully reproduced by them. The question is raised in connection with the fort's tower, the top of which appears in the engraving to project as if resting on corbels. I can fmd no proof that an architectural feature of this kind ever existed there.
Saint Aubin's Fort, in spite of the warlike nature of the times, now drops out of the news. Its garrisons no doubt grumbled from time to time at the inadequate water supply and want of accommodation but, on the other hand, they must have found consolation and relaxation in observing the movements of the ships which crowded the harbour, or in sharing with the matelots some of the simple pleasures in which 'Jack ashore' has ever delighted.
The armament of the Fort in 1801 was stated to be six 24-pounders; seven 6-pounders and one 8-inch howitzer.
1838 to 1940
Extract from the Inspector General of Fortifications' observations upon Lt-Colonel Oldfield’s plans and Sections for the Repair and Reform of St Aubyn's Fort, Jersey :-
"The position of St Aubyn's Fort is a favorable point in the defence of the Bay of St Heliers, both on account of its bearing on the most sheltered part of the anchorage and the collateral aid it affords for the defence of the shore where landing might be attempted. It moreover effectually covers the little Harbor of St Aubyns from desultory attack. The existing work is, however, of a very imperfect construction, small capacity and low Profile, which defects could not be wholly remedied but at a considerable expense. - 1 January 1838.”
The application of steam power to shipping had a profound effect on the tactical situation of Jersey; for whereas formerly the fate of an invasion hung on the state of the wind and tides, an invader could now act, within reason, independently of the forces of nature. To meet these changed conditions, the coastal defence of the island was strengthened in the third decade of the 19th century by modifying or perfecting the already existing fortifications, and by creating entirely new ones.
Among those in the first category were Elizabeth Castle, Saint Aubin's Fort, and the old Martello towers; whilst in the second was the chain of small forts which extends along the north coast from Rozel in the east to Plemont in the west.
The chief features of the new constructions, with the exception of those inserted in the Martellos, was the mounting of guns on traversing platforms, designed to command sea approaches and anchorages; and the provision of loopholed curtain walls, designed to dominate by musketry fire the immediate land and shore approaches to the forts themselves.
The changes carried out in Saint Aubin's Fort may therefore be summed up under those two heads: the mounting of guns on traversing platforms mainly to command the anchorage or roads in Saint Aubin's Bay; and the provision of loopholes from which a concentrated flanking musketry fire could be directed agamst all attempted coup-de-main and escalade.
The new system, as applied to our fort, demanded a stronger garrison; and a stronger garrison, in turn, demanded more barrack accommodation and extra water tanks and magazines.
Structural changes
Many of these structural changes may easily be detected by anyone who visits the fort today; for the newer masonry, which consists largely of neatly fitted blocks of grey Mont Mado granite, contrasts sharply with the ancient rubble of the Tudors, the irregular stonework of the Stuarts and the red granite courses of George II's engineers.
In spite of German alterations, the 1838-1840 work is still specially noticeable in the three gun positions which form the southern front of the fort and in the two gun positions in the north-west and north-east angles, the last named being directly above the fort's gateway.
It will also be seen in the upper part of the tower and in the four surviving machicoulis galleries, which project from its parapet. Originally there were seven of them, but later, when it was decided to place a heavy traversing gun on the roof of the tower, three of them were destroyed. The stumps of their corbels are still visible in the surface of the wall.
Another very important reform was the reconstruction of all the interior arrangements in the Tower. A massive central pillar of Mont Mado granite was made to support the new floors and roof. In the basement, which was excavated to hold a tank for 14 hogsheads of water and a magazine for 90 barrels of powder, it is four and a half feet thick.
In the room above it is four feet thick, and in the top room three feet six inches. Ladders and trap-doors provide means of communication from basement to roof. From base to top the pillar measures about 23 feet. The tower walls were cased with brick nine inches thick - an addition which gave to the eastern wall of the tower an average thickness of six feet three inches, and to the western wall a thickness of five feet.
The south wall or apse of the tower now became six feet thick, while the north wall became seven. Each loophole in these walls was provided with a glazed oaken frame. Other improvements in the tower were the provision of a reconstructed entrance door and the installation of a fireplace.
It was estimated that under war conditions the tower would be able to accommodate 30 men, a number which might suffice "to work the six guns proposed to be mounted in the lower emplacements, but would form a very inadequate garrison for a post having such a large contour to defend."
Extra accommodation
Extra accommodation for a garrison on a war footing had therefore to be provided within the area of the lower work, as distinct from the tower. As, however, the fort was abandoned as obsolete long before any war occurred, this accommodation was never required.
One of the chief disabilities from which the old contour, or enceinte, suffered was its want of elevation and this, of course, exposed it to the danger of escalade. To remedy this, the height of the parapets had to be raised where possible and the rock at the foot of the walls subjected to further escarpment.
The officers responsible for the repair and partial reform of Saint Aubin's Fort during the years 1838-1840 were:
F W Mulcaster, Inspector General of Fortifications.
J. Oldfield. Lt-Col CRE Jersey, and his successor
H G Jones, Major CRE Jersey.
A record of their work will be found on the keystone of the interior arch of the fort gateway. The stone bears the words: "The defences of this Fort reformed in the year 1839."
840 report
I close this part with a copy of the report by Lt-Col F English, RE, dated 9 November, 1840.
Present state
In good repair. The reform of its defence was completed m March 1840. The Keep and Lower Platform are in a state to receive the Armament. The former is loopholed and has Machicoulis.
Situation
About 500 yards from the beach at the Town of St Aubin and 1450 yards from Tower No 3 (Beaumont). The Fort is constructed on a rock 22 feet above high water mark, isolated at half tide. It is exposed to the high ground westward above St Aubin, and towards Le Boue at the distance of 700 to 1,000 yards.
Object of the work
One of the fortified posts for the protection of the shipping taking shelter in the Great Roads, or St Aubin's Bay. It commands the entrance, pier, harbour and the west shore from St Aubin's Town to Point Le Boue, and to within 7 or 800 yards of Noirmont Tower.
Armament
Five 24 Prs, and three 8-inch Mortars have been proposed as the Armament. They are not on the spot.
Bomb-proof cover
In the keep for one officer and 30 men, and in the old magazine of the lower works for ten men if not required for Ammunition.
Magazine
Dry: one in the keep for 90 Barrels and that in the lower work will contain 160 Barrels.
Water
The tank in the tower will contain 4476 gallons.
Proposed additions
The parapets require to be strengthened at some points. The breastwork for two guns to the eastward to be converted into a battery for two heavy guns, on traversing platforms, well scarped and flanked, and enclosed in the rear by a loopholed wall. The wall in the rear of the battery (proposed to be loopholed), belongs to the States.
The main entrance is somewhat exposed to the sea side. It is proposed to enclose it in front by a strong loopholed wall in the form of a demi-bastion, which will contribute to the defence of the gateway, give a flank to the shore, where the landing from boats is perfectly easy and protect the communication with the eastern battery.
Barracks
Bombproof, for three officers and 100 men. The expense of this addition will be £368 and £840 for the new Barrack.
1840-1940
The story of our fort during this period is easily told, for within 40 years of its great reform its armament had been withdrawn and its garrison had dwindled to a caretaker. When the caretaker in turn was relieved of his duties, a succession of private individuals leased the place from the War Office and finally it was acquired by the States of Jersey.
Its last tenant before the outbreak of the Second World War was Mr Lionel Cox who, during the course of many years, converted it into a summer 'plaisance' of real charm.
1940-1948
In their five years tenure, the Herrenvolk transformed Jersey into a fortress of enormous strength. They not only constructed their defence works in positions never before occupied by exponents of "The Military Art", but they also made use of all the tactical sites which in times past had played their part in the war story of the island.
Saint Aubin's Fort, of course, was one of these, and here the Germans moved in with their concrete, guns, ammunition, barbed wire, mines, telephones, electrical plant and the thousand and one other appliances which soldiers now consider necessary for the proper conduct and prosecution of their profession.
Being unable to describe in suitable terms the work executed by the Germans in our fort, I applied to Major J C M Manley, RA for help, and the very next day received the welcome and valuable information which now follow :
Fig 1 on the 1948 plan - Ferro-concrete strong point containing air-conditioned barracks for a mortar detachment. The position of the mortar is a concrete emplacement at the western end of the building and is reached by a short flight of steps which gives access from the men's quarters. Passages also lead out onto the quay area as well as through the wall of the north-west bastion into the interior of the fort. Exits and quarters are protected by steel blast-pr
yesterday was a really windy day but i decided to find some poppies to capture them... and i solved this windy problem with series-shots... i made more then 800 exposure, and cca. 200 left...:)
La salvación de Dios | Sin la salvación de Dios, yo no estaría aquí hoy
Soy una hermana anciana con las piernas dañadas. Incluso cuando el clima es bueno, tengo algunos problemas al andar, pero cuando las aguas estuvieron a punto de tragarme, Dios permitió que escapara milagrosamente del peligro.
Fue el 21 de julio de 2012. Ese día cayó una lluvia torrencial, y resulta que yo estaba fuera desempeñando mi deber. Después de las 4 de la tarde, la lluvia no había parado aún. Cuando terminó nuestra reunión, desafié a la lluvia y tomé un autobús a casa. Durante el trayecto, llovía con más y más fuerza, y cuando el autobús llegó a la parada anterior a la mía, el conductor nos dijo a todos los pasajeros: “Este autobús no puede llegar más lejos; la carretera se ha colapsado más adelante”. No se podía hacer nada, así que no tuve otra elección que bajarme del autobús e ir a pie el resto del camino. No me atrevía a dejar a Dios y oraba continuamente en mi corazón. A causa de la fuerza del diluvio, el agua se había tragado completamente la carretera. Traté de seguir agarrándome a las columnas de cemento que bordeaban la carretera, y fui avanzando paso a paso. Justo entonces, oí a alguien gritar detrás de mí: “¡No siga avanzando! ¡Rápido; gírese y vuelva! No puede pasar; esa agua es profunda y la corriente demasiado rápida. ¡Si la arrastra, no podré salvarla!”. En ese momento, sin embargo, yo no podía avanzar ni retroceder porque el agua ya me llegaba al pecho. No me atrevía a seguir avanzando, así que todo lo que podía hacer era orar a Dios e implorarle que me abriera una salida: “¡Dios! Tú has permitido que este entorno me sobrevenga, y si vivo o muero está en Tus manos ahora. Si el nivel del agua bajara sólo 15 centímetros, yo podría seguir caminando. Dios, haz Tu voluntad; ¡yo estoy dispuesta a confiarte mi vida!”. Después de esta oración, me sentí muy tranquila y serena. Recordé una de las declaraciones de Dios: “Los cielos y la tierra y todas las cosas son establecidos y hechos completos por las palabras de Mi boca y conmigo todo puede lograrse” (“Declaraciones y testimonios de Cristo en el principio”). Las palabras de Dios me dieron fe y valentía. Como los cielos y la tierra y todas las cosas están en las manos de Dios, yo sabía que por muy implacable que fuera ese diluvio, no podía escapar de la orquestación de Dios. Nadie podía apoyarse más en nadie; mi hijo, mi hija… nadie podía cuidar del otro. Yo creía que mientras confiara en Dios, no existía dificultad que no pudiera superar. Justo en ese momento, se produjo un milagro. La corriente fue yendo cada vez más lenta hasta que dejó de ser tan violenta como lo había sido poco antes, y las columnas de cemento que bordeaban la carretera aparecieron gradualmente. En efecto, el nivel del agua descendió 15 centímetros del nivel de mi pecho. Y justo así, salí de allí, paso a paso, bajo la dirección de Dios. De no haber sido por Su benevolencia y protección, no sé dónde me habría llevado la inundación. Desde lo profundo de mi corazón, expresé mi gratitud y alabanza, y di gracias a Dios Todopoderoso por haberme dado una segunda oportunidad en la vida.
Más tarde, oí la descripción de las lluvias por parte de mi hijo: Ese día, después de llegar a casa tras cumplir con su deber, fue primero al baño.
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Fuente: es.easternlightning.org/testimonies/without-God-s-salvati...
Recomendación: Palabras de Dios
My nephew Marian (4) has a problem. The beer cap is too tough for him. You can guess from his expression how hard is he pushing to open the bottle of Budweiser. But since he is rather stubborn he finally made it. Yes, "if you want you can". Taken with Zuiko OM 50/1,8, aperture either 1,8 or 2, ambient light, cropped in photoshop.