Feed train 48T "crosses over" from the old NS track alignment to the north to the new NS alignment over the Laurel Street, Ash Street, and 5th/6th Street bridges to the south.

 

Eventually, NS' new double track mainline will be shifted east to the graded area on the far right side of this photo. This is needed to make room for UP's new double track mainline along the 10th Street Corridor.

 

Lot's of work has been completed, but much, much more will be needed to finish this massive project by late 2025.

 

BNSF 6151 - ES44AC

BNSF 7849 - ES44DC

BNSF 5115 - C44-9W

 

Laurel Street - Springfield, Illinois

November 6, 2022

Now relocated to RAF Lossiemouth, this 6 Squadron Typhoon is captured on a missed approach into the Sun to RAF Leuchars on 15.05.14.

 

Canon EOS 7D + 300mm f2.8

**Cleveland, Robert, Log House** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 72001003, date listed 1972-02-01

 

(relocated to Wilkesboro)

 

Wilkesboro, NC (Wilkes County)

 

About 1775 Robert Cleveland moved from Virginia to what is now Wilkes County, North Carolina, and settled on a tract he had been granted near the Yadkin River. During the Revolution Robert Cleveland and his brother, Benjamin, who lived nearby, took an active part in reprisals against local Tories who were often accused of various crimes. Benjamin in particular was known for pursuing and hanging without delay a number of Tories. In the Battle of Kings Mountain, Benjamin served as a colonel in the militia and led one of the four columns which successfully assaulted the British position. Robert Cleveland was captain of a company in his brother's regiment. This victory of the colonial militia over the British was a significant one in that it forced General Cornwallis to withdraw into South Carolina and gave much-needed encouragement to revolutionary forces throughout the colonies.

 

It was probably around 1780 that Captain Robert Cleveland, as he was called, built the present log house located on the "north fork of Lewis's Fork of the Yadkin River." The census of 1790 shows the Cleveland household consisted of twenty-four persons, including ten slaves. At least part of the activity of the farm was devoted to the making of whiskey as is evident from Cleveland's will. (1)

 

References (1) NRHP Nomination Form files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/WK0001.pdf

Batavia, NY. June 2020.

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Kmart has been here since 1991, relocating from a store in Blacksburg.

The Richard Randall Art Studio was purpose-built in 1900 as a two-storey timber studio and residence for Queensland artist Richard John Randall. While located at its original address at 72 Cordelia Street, South Brisbane, it served as the artist's residence, art studio, classroom and gallery for the last 6 years of his life, before his untimely death in 1906 at the age of 37. Subsequently used as a residence, the upper floor of the studio was saved from demolition in 1988 when it was purchased by the Brisbane City Council and moved to a site in Musgrave Park. In 2007 the studio was relocated for a second time to its current location within the grounds of Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coot-tha, Toowong.

 

Richard John Randall was born in Brisbane in 1869, the first son of George and Naomi Randall, former domestic servants who had recently emigrated from England to Brisbane. Growing up in South Brisbane, where his parents owned an increasingly successful retail business, Richard and his younger brother George (born in 1871) were both educated at the Brisbane Normal School. Richard went on to attend art classes at the Brisbane Technical College, which had been formed in 1882, operating under the control of the Brisbane School of Arts. While studying there he won awards for drawing and modelling. Watercolours and drawings by Richard were also included in the fine arts section of Queensland National Association exhibitions in the late 1880s.

 

Queensland's art scene was still in its infancy in the late 19th century. The first art society was formed in 1887, the primary aims of which were to promote the fine arts and to establish annual exhibitions in Brisbane at a time when artists had almost no venues for exhibiting and selling their works. The Society was also seen as an important step towards forming a gallery for Queensland, such as had already been established in Sydney and Melbourne. The first exhibition held by the Society took place in the Masonic Hall in Alice Street, Brisbane, on 14 August 1888.

 

In 1881 Richard's father George Randall was appointed Queensland Emigration Agent to Britain, a position that required him to take extended tours to England. There, he would travel around the various counties encouraging emigration to Queensland, engaging particularly with agricultural labourers. Between 1881 and 1902, George Randall travelled to England 4 times in the position of Emigration Agent, his longest trip lasting 5 years. In the meantime, the profits from the Randall family's South Brisbane business allowed the family to invest extensively in real estate and establish a large farming property at Birkdale, known as Somersby Grange.

 

In April 1891, at the age of 22, Richard departed Brisbane with his mother and brother to accompany George Randall on his third tour to England. While there, Richard furthered his art studies and applied to enter a well known art school run by Professor Hubert von Herkomer at Bushey, Hertfordshire. In December 1892 he was accepted into the Herkomer School and spent the next few years there, eventually earning a free scholarship and life membership. In 1895 Richard Randall attained his highest commendation, when one of his watercolour paintings, entitled 'The Old Mill', was accepted and exhibited by the Royal Academy of Arts.

 

After leaving the Herkomer School, Richard Randall spent 18 months working in London, occupying a studio in Queensborough Terrace, Bayswater. During his time there he painted portraits of many eminent gentlemen, as well as making excursions to picturesque spots around England and to Paris.

 

In 1899 Richard Randall returned to Queensland, the purpose of which (according to some sources) was 'to carry out his father's patriotic wish, that now he had received some training and experience he should go back and use this and his talent to help lift art matters in his native city and country.' Richard continued to pursue his career as an artist in Brisbane, becoming involved in exhibitions and competitions. In November 1899 he exhibited 50 of his water-colours for sale in Messrs Isles, Love and Co.'s auction mart, in relation to which he was described as a 'daring colourist'. The influence of Randall's style upon other artists was soon observed in local exhibitions.

 

Richard Randall set about establishing his own residence and studio in Brisbane soon after his return. The site chosen was a block of land owned by his father at 72 Cordelia Street in South Brisbane, opposite St Andrew's Church of England. Purchased in May 1884, a residence (known as 'Hatfield') was built on the site 1896 and early photographs show this residence and the later studio standing close together on the site. Some sources state that the studio was built for Richard Randall by his father, however as George Randall was in England at the time of its construction in 1900, the level of his involvement in the project (beyond providing the land) is unclear. A 1914 account of Richard Randall's life states that Richard personally superintended the erection of the studio.

 

As a purpose-built studio, rather than an adaptation of an existing building, it is likely that the building's design was based upon the type of artists' studios constructed in parts of London in the late 19th and early 20th century. Favouring the Queen Anne Revival style, these artists' studios were either part of or attached to a single house, or constructed as groups of units. In studio houses, the domestic function of the house was separate from and secondary to its studio use, with the studio itself usually located on the upper floor. Common features of artists' studios included a substantially sized painting room (that served as both a working and entertaining space), and large windows and skylights for adequate natural light, controlled by blinds. In particular, a window joined to an inclined skylight was very popular as it provided both top and side light. Careful consideration was also given to circulation, with an entrance located close to the painting room so that models and visitors would not have to pass through other areas of the house. Purpose-built artists' studios, whether grand or modest, were a reflection of the improved social and professional status of artists working in London in the late Victorian period.

 

While modest in size and incorporating local materials and construction techniques, the Randall studio's design reflects many of the aspects of a typical London artist's studio, which Richard Randall would have been familiar with, having lived and worked there for some time. Its style, described in a Brisbane newspaper article as resembling a 'Swiss chalet', incorporates characteristics of Australian 'Queen Anne' style, such as an asymmetrical façade, steeply pitched Marseilles tile-clad roof, terracotta roof apex ornaments, a street-facing gable, and projecting bay window with multi-paned top lights. Built on steeply sloping ground, the studio occupied the upper floor at street level and the residence below was accessed by an external staircase at the rear. The residential level consisted of at least four rooms connected by a side verandah, however its exact layout is unknown. The studio itself was a single volume lit by a large bay window and skylight in the centre of the main elevation, with blinds to control light levels. A part-height timber partition wall created an entrance passageway, with a curtain hung across it to shield views into the studio from the front door. The high walls (painted a 'cool green') had few windows, providing ample hanging space for pictures, and the room contained a 'model’s throne.' A contemporary description called it 'a fine commodious studio (said to be one of the best-equipped private studios in Australia).'

 

Richard Randall's studio was not the first artist's studio to be constructed in Queensland, however free-standing, purpose-built studio buildings remained rare, constructed only by those able to afford it. Of the many practicing artists and photographers working in Brisbane at the time, most operated from existing commercial premises. One known exception was the English-born artist Godfrey Rivers, appointed second art master at the Brisbane Technical College in 1890, who built a wooden studio building in the grounds of the Brisbane School of Arts in 1891 to a design by George Henry Male (GHM) Addison. His studio was described as 'a wooden building of one room, lofty, sufficiently spacious, and admirably lighted by a single fine south window'

 

Once settled into his new studio residence, Richard Randall began advertising for pupils in 'The Brisbane Courier', offering drawing and painting lessons in a variety of mediums, including oils, water-colours and pastels. On Wednesday afternoons he was 'at home' to visitors, providing an opportunity for socialising and displaying his latest works. Richard worked, exhibited and taught at the studio, establishing a reputation as a popular and successful Brisbane artist and teacher, and providing a focus for a coterie of local artists influenced by the Randall style.

 

When he was not teaching, Richard travelled around south-east Queensland in search of new subjects and scenes to paint. He also took an active role in many artistic clubs and societies, including the Brisbane Sketching Club and the Queensland Art Society, of which he was vice-president from December 1903. A breakaway art society, calling itself the New Society of Artists, formed in 1904, as a result of dissatisfaction with some policies of the more elite Queensland Art Society. In August 1906, the engagement of Richard Randall to Miss Minna Wirth, daughter of one of the founders of the Queensland Art Society, artist Lewis Wirth, was announced in a local paper.

 

Some time after his return to Australia, Richard received overtures from various London art galleries, and subsequently collections of his works were sent back to England and displayed for purchase. His watercolours and paintings of Australian landscapes and scenery were particularly admired, as they conveyed 'a more pleasing and favourable impression of the Australian bush and scenery than had hitherto been entertained.'

 

Tragedy struck in October 1906 when Richard Randall died unexpectedly, of what is believed to have been a brain tumour, at Somersby Grange, aged 37. The funeral held on 16 October was well attended by members of Brisbane's artistic circles, including representatives of the Queensland Art Society and the New Society of Artists, who, in a rare moment of unity between the two groups, acted as pall bearers.

 

Richard's death came as a great shock to his father, who spent much of his time after 1906 promoting the life and works of his son. In 1907 he compiled and published an elaborate memorial brochure, featuring photographs of Richard, his studio and some of his paintings. The studio and its contents were kept intact until 1913, and opened for viewing by the public and eminent guests, such as Governor and Lady Chelmsford, who visited in December 1906 and purchased several watercolour sketches.

 

In 1909 the South Brisbane Council was persuaded to accept 600 of Richard's works in perpetual trust. A quarter-acre of vacant land adjoining the studio was offered by George Randall as a location for a gallery to house the collection, however it was eventually housed on the upper floor of the South Brisbane Technical College, which had been converted from a library space into the Randall Art Gallery. The Randall Collection contained everything from early and incomplete works and sketches to his most prized paintings. After 1922 the collection was added to by George Randall upon his return from a visit to England, where he had purchased a number of his son's paintings from a London art gallery.

 

When the City Council of Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925 it took over the assets of the South Brisbane Council, including the Randall Collection, which was moved to Brisbane City Hall. Some paintings were hung in reception rooms, while the majority were displayed in a large, well lit room on the fifth floor. The collection's continuous occupation of the foremost gallery space in Brisbane caused friction between the Council, representatives of the Randall family and the Royal Queensland Art Society, who requested to use the gallery for other purposes. In 1943, after being closed for a year due to lack of staff, the collection was removed from the gallery and stored in the City Hall basement. After the end of World War II, the collection was not reinstated to the gallery and the majority of works remained in poor storage conditions in the basement, or were loaned out or taken without any record being kept of where they went. A 1953 newspaper article claimed that the paintings were being eaten by rats and falling into disrepair, however it was not until the mid-1980s that a concerted effort was made to track down and restore the collection, which had dwindled to 154 pieces. In 2013 the Richard Randall collection remains part of the Brisbane City Council owned Museum of Brisbane art collection.

 

Members of the Randall family retained ownership of the Cordelia Street property until 1981. From late 1913 the studio was rented out as a residence, and at some point the upper floor was partitioned. In a 1926 sewerage plan the studio is named 'Brindisi' and is fenced off from two other residences on the property.

 

In 1987, Richard Randall's Studio was listed by the National Trust of Queensland, who described it as 'a unique example of a purpose-built artist's studio and reception rooms.'

 

In 1988 the building was threatened with demolition due to redevelopment of the site; however it was purchased in time by Brisbane City Council in recognition of its historical significance. Only the upper floor (the former studio) was saved and relocated approximately 300 metres along Cordelia Street to Musgrave Park, while the remainder of the building was demolished. In 1989 the studio was stumped and re-orientated to a north-west aspect to face an avenue through the park. Internal partitions and a lowered ceiling were removed and the building was repaired and renovated, with facilities such as a small kitchenette installed in a rear corner. In front of the studio a timber picket fence, similar to one which had existed at the original location, was constructed.

 

The studio was officially opened by the Lord Mayor, Ald. Sallyanne Atkinson, in December 1990 as the Richard Randall Studio, part of the Jagera Arts Centre in Musgrave Park. The Richard Randall Artist's Studio Award, established by the Council the same year, provided rent-free use of the building to selected local artists for set periods as a studio and gallery. Artists were chosen by a panel of professional arts community representatives and were required to produce a quota of artwork for public use during their residency.

 

By the mid-2000s the studio was in need of repairs and had become vulnerable to damage by vandals. In 2007 it was relocated for the second time by Brisbane City Council to its present site in the Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, adjacent to the main visitor's car park. Officially opened on the 6th of October 2008 by the Lady Mayoress Mrs Lisa Newman, in the presence of descendants of the Randall family, the renovated studio is used as a function and exhibition venue available to the public and community groups for hire.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

© All rights reserved

 

Cow horses are bred with a desire to work cattle. This is my buckskin, Sam, aka "Scarface".

 

This is another picture that needed a little something to make it more interesting than how it came out of my camera. You can tell more if you enlarge it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel

 

Abu Simbel is a historic site comprising two massive rock-cut temples in the village of Abu Simbel (Arabic: أبو سمبل), Aswan Governorate, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan. It is situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 km (140 mi) southwest of Aswan (about 300 km (190 mi) by road). The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments", which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan), and include Amada, Wadi es-Sebua, and other Nubian sites. The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the 19th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. They serve as a lasting monument to the king Ramesses II. His wife Nefertari and children can be seen in smaller figures by his feet, considered to be of lesser importance and were not given the same position of scale. This commemorates his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Their huge external rock relief figures have become iconic.

 

The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968 as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, under the supervision of a Polish archaeologist, Kazimierz Michałowski, from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary or they would have been submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam on the River Nile. The project was carried out as part of the UNESCO Nubian Salvage Campaign.

 

During his reign, Ramesses II embarked on an extensive building program throughout Egypt and Nubia, which Egypt controlled. Nubia was very important to the Egyptians because it was a source of gold and many other precious trade goods. He, therefore, built several grand temples there in order to impress upon the Nubians Egypt's might and Egyptianize the people of Nubia. The most prominent temples are the rock-cut temples near the modern village of Abu Simbel, at the Second Nile Cataract, the border between Lower Nubia and Upper Nubia. There are two temples, the Great Temple, dedicated to Ramesses II himself, and the Small Temple, dedicated to his chief wife Queen Nefertari.

 

Construction of the temple complex started in approximately 1264 BC and lasted for about 20 years, until 1244 BC. It was known as the "Temple of Ramesses, beloved by Amun".

 

With the passage of time, the temples fell into disuse and eventually became covered by sand. By the 6th century BC, the sand already covered the statues of the main temple up to their knees. The temple was forgotten until 1813, when Swiss researcher Johann Ludwig Burckhardt found the top frieze of the main temple. Burckhardt talked about his discovery with Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni, who travelled to the site, but was unable to dig out an entry to the temple. Belzoni returned in 1817, this time succeeding in his attempt to enter the complex. A detailed early description of the temples, together with contemporaneous line drawings, can be found in Edward William Lane's Description of Egypt (1825–1828).

 

In 1959, an international donations campaign to save the monuments of Nubia began: the southernmost relics of this ancient human civilization were under threat from the rising waters of the Nile that were about to result from the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

 

One scheme to save the temples was based on an idea by William MacQuitty to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples, with the water inside kept at the same height as the Nile. There were to be underwater viewing chambers. In 1962 the idea was made into a proposal by architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry and civil engineer Ove Arup.[6] They considered that raising the temples ignored the effect of erosion of the sandstone by desert winds. However, the proposal, though acknowledged to be extremely elegant, was rejected.

 

The salvage of the Abu Simbel temples began in 1964 by a multinational team of archeologists, engineers and skilled heavy equipment operators working together under the UNESCO banner; it cost some US$40 million at the time (equal to $300 million in 2017 dollars). Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was carefully cut into large blocks (up to 30 tons, averaging 20 tons), dismantled, lifted and reassembled in a new location 65 metres higher and 200 metres back from the river, in one of the greatest challenges of archaeological engineering in history. Some structures were even saved from under the waters of Lake Nasser. Today, a few hundred tourists visit the temples daily. Most visitors arrive by road from Aswan, the nearest city. Others arrive by plane at an airfield that was specially constructed for the temple complex.

 

The complex consists of two temples. The larger one is dedicated to Ra-Horakhty, Ptah and Amun, Egypt's three state deities of the time, and features four large statues of Ramesses II in the facade. The smaller temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor, personified by Nefertari, Ramesses's most beloved of his many wives. The temple is now open to the public.

 

The Great Temple at Abu Simbel, which took about twenty years to build, was completed around year 24 of the reign of Ramesses the Great (which corresponds to 1265 BC). It was dedicated to the gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty, and Ptah, as well as to the deified Ramesses himself. It is generally considered the grandest and most beautiful of the temples commissioned during the reign of Ramesses II, and one of the most beautiful in Egypt.

 

The single entrance is flanked by four colossal, 20 m (66 ft) statues, each representing Ramesses II seated on a throne and wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The statue to the immediate left of the entrance was damaged in an earthquake, causing the head and torso to fall away; these fallen pieces were not restored to the statue during the relocation but placed at the statue's feet in the positions originally found. Next to Ramesses's legs are a number of other, smaller statues, none higher than the knees of the pharaoh, depicting: his chief wife, Nefertari Meritmut; his queen mother Mut-Tuy; his first two sons, Amun-her-khepeshef and Ramesses B; and his first six daughters: Bintanath, Baketmut, Nefertari, Meritamen, Nebettawy and Isetnofret.

The façade behind the colossi is 33 m (108 ft) high and 38 m (125 ft) wide. It carries a frieze depicting twenty-two baboons worshipping the rising sun with upraised arms and a stele recording the marriage of Ramesses to a daughter of king Ḫattušili III, which sealed the peace between Egypt and the Hittites.[10]

The entrance doorway itself is surmounted by bas-relief images of the king worshipping the falcon-headed Ra Horakhty, whose statue stands in a large niche. Ra holds the hieroglyph user and a feather in his right hand, with Maat (the goddess of truth and justice) in his left; this is a cryptogram for Ramesses II's throne name, User-Maat-Re.

 

The inner part of the temple has the same triangular layout that most ancient Egyptian temples follow, with rooms decreasing in size from the entrance to the sanctuary. The temple is complex in structure and quite unusual because of its many side chambers. The hypostyle hall (sometimes also called a pronaos) is 18 m (59 ft) long and 16.7 m (55 ft) wide and is supported by eight huge Osirid pillars depicting the deified Ramesses linked to the god Osiris, the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life and vegetation, to indicate the everlasting nature of the pharaoh. The colossal statues along the left-hand wall bear the white crown of Upper Egypt, while those on the opposite side are wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt (pschent). The bas-reliefs on the walls of the pronaos depict battle scenes in the military campaigns that Ramesses waged. Much of the sculpture is given to the Battle of Kadesh, on the Orontes river in present-day Syria, in which the Egyptian king fought against the Hittites. The most famous relief shows the king on his chariot shooting arrows against his fleeing enemies, who are being taken prisoner. Other scenes show Egyptian victories in Libya and Nubia.

 

From the hypostyle hall, one enters the second pillared hall, which has four pillars decorated with beautiful scenes of offerings to the gods. There are depictions of Ramesses and Nefertari with the sacred boats of Amun and Ra-Horakhty. This hall gives access to a transverse vestibule, in the middle of which is the entrance to the sanctuary. Here, on a black wall, are rock cut sculptures of four seated figures: Ra-Horakhty, the deified king Ramesses, and the gods Amun Ra and Ptah. Ra-Horakhty, Amun Ra and Ptah were the main divinities in that period and their cult centers were at Heliopolis, Thebes and Memphis respectively.

 

The temple of Hathor and Nefertari, also known as the Small Temple, was built about 100 m (330 ft) northeast of the temple of Ramesses II and was dedicated to the goddess Hathor and Ramesses II's chief consort, Nefertari. This was in fact the second time in ancient Egyptian history that a temple was dedicated to a queen. The first time, Akhenaten dedicated a temple to his great royal wife, Nefertiti. The rock-cut facade is decorated with two groups of colossi that are separated by the large gateway. The statues, slightly more than 10 m (33 ft) high, are of the king and his queen. On either side of the portal are two statues of the king, wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt (south colossus) and the double crown (north colossus); these are flanked by statues of the queen.

 

Remarkably, this is one of very few instances in Egyptian art where the statues of the king and his consort have equal size. Traditionally, the statues of the queens stood next to those of the pharaoh, but were never taller than his knees. Ramesses went to Abu Simbel with his wife in the 24th year of his reign. As the Great Temple of the king, there are small statues of princes and princesses next to their parents. In this case they are positioned symmetrically: on the south side (at left as one faces the gateway) are, from left to right, princes Meryatum and Meryre, princesses Meritamen and Henuttawy, and princes Pareherwenemef and Amun-her-khepeshef, while on the north side the same figures are in reverse order. The plan of the Small Temple is a simplified version of that of the Great Temple.

 

As in the larger temple dedicated to the king, the hypostyle hall in the smaller temple is supported by six pillars; in this case, however, they are not Osiris pillars depicting the king, but are decorated with scenes with the queen playing the sistrum (an instrument sacred to the goddess Hathor), together with the gods Horus, Khnum, Khonsu, and Thoth, and the goddesses Hathor, Isis, Maat, Mut of Asher, Satis and Taweret; in one scene Ramesses is presenting flowers or burning incense. The capitals of the pillars bear the face of the goddess Hathor; this type of column is known as Hathoric. The bas-reliefs in the pillared hall illustrate the deification of the king, the destruction of his enemies in the north and south (in these scenes the king is accompanied by his wife), and the queen making offerings to the goddesses Hathor and Mut. The hypostyle hall is followed by a vestibule, access to which is given by three large doors. On the south and the north walls of this chamber there are two graceful and poetic bas-reliefs of the king and his consort presenting papyrus plants to Hathor, who is depicted as a cow on a boat sailing in a thicket of papyri. On the west wall, Ramesses II and Nefertari are depicted making offerings to the god Horus and the divinities of the Cataracts—Satis, Anubis and Khnum.

 

The rock-cut sanctuary and the two side chambers are connected to the transverse vestibule and are aligned with the axis of the temple. The bas-reliefs on the side walls of the small sanctuary represent scenes of offerings to various gods made either by the pharaoh or the queen. On the back wall, which lies to the west along the axis of the temple, there is a niche in which Hathor, as a divine cow, seems to be coming out of the mountain: the goddess is depicted as the Mistress of the temple dedicated to her and to queen Nefertari, who is intimately linked to the goddess.

   

I hadn't seen them for almost 10 days.......but tonight I watched as

mom herded the two pups back to their first den (under my deck!)

This handsome pup has really grown!

Edited at snipshot.com. Yet another baby Western Rattlesnake is moved to a new location away from camp.

Relocated to the nearby former Toys R Us

 

Henrietta, NY. June 2021.

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iss065e081498 (May 28, 2021) --- NASA astronaut and Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei works to relocate the Multi-use Variable-g Platform (MVP) inside the Kibo laboratory module. The MVP is a space biology research platform that can produce up to 2 g of artificial gravity housing samples such as fruit flies, flatworms, plants, fish, cells, protein crystals and many others.

climbing up the old concrete walkway up the bluffs reveals the remains of the once proud McKinley Elementary School. The school was built in 1910 and served students till the late 1970's.It is now privately owned and decaying....

 

The school has a unique location along the wooded bluffs in East Moline,IL.

 

Happy (school) fence Friday...!

An element from a Leeds City Council show garden at Chelsea flower show. Now in Roundhay Park, Leeds.

 

tl;dr (up-front): If Burlington was to move elsewhere in Southaven, it’s no surprise that they chose South Lake Centre; Burlington photos begin this Saturday; many other local stores have made the same move; SLC is da bomb.

 

…Decided to go ahead and put that at the top for those of you who don’t care to stick around for the full description here, because I can already tell in advance that this is going to be a long one!

 

So… let’s get started. First, a shout-out is in order to both Albertsons Florida Blog and l_dawg2000 for guessing correctly this past Saturday that we’ll be headed to Burlington for my upcoming weekend photoset. (That served as our teaser for this week, so I’m sorry if you were hoping to get a guess of your own in!) In fact, this Burlington series will be my next extended feature on my photostream, and will last all the way into December, believe it or not (of course, there will be a couple of other stours interspersed in there, but at the tail end it will just be a few weeks of back-to-back-to-back Burlington due to the way the cookie crumbled as far as my scheduling goes). Before we get to their new Southaven store (the thing that spurred this set on, as you may recall), however, we’re going to poke around their now-former location first; that’s what you’ll begin seeing starting this Saturday. Plus, while I’ve been to the new store (it’s nice, bright, and shiny: three things that the old one frankly wasn’t, lol!), I actually haven’t gotten pictures there yet because I went on grand opening day and it was way too busy for that: so giving me ample time to go and take care of that is another good reason to stretch this series out some, haha!

 

Now, you’re probably wondering, what the heck does this graphic have to do with Burlington? Great question! What you’re looking at here is an aerial of South Lake Centre (within the red square with the rather obvious “South Lake Centre” lettering next to it :P ), which I’m no stranger to covering – see my blog posts here and here. I made this graphic all by myself, and tried to model it after similar graphics you’ll often see in commercial real estate lease listings. For example, see SLC’s developer’s own aerial here, complete with red square and obvious “South Lake Centre” lettering. But unlike Stonecrest Investment’s linked graphic, the goal of mine here is not to show you what stores surround SLC. And if that’s not it… what, then, is my goal?

 

Well, I’ll tell you! I’ve mentioned this (likely more than enough times) in my blog posts, but I’ll say it again here: South Lake Centre is arguably the premier shopping strip in Southaven. Sure, it has since been superseded by Southaven Towne Center to the immediate south, and more recently Tanger Outlets Southaven even further to the south of that. But South Lake Centre was first, and regardless is the only one of those three that calls the retail-iest interchange in DeSoto County – Goodman Road and I-55 – its home. Even ignoring its prominent location and its awesome architecture (again, check out my blog posts if you’re interested in more of the latter!), there’s no denying its significance. It’s a medium-range big-box power strip that has seen enviable stability in its tenant mix over the years since its opening in 2000. And in the off-chance that it does lose an anchor, that space has historically gotten filled super quickly; no lease has sat vacant here for too long.

 

On top of all of that, South Lake Centre has an extra bit of interestingness in that those vacancies I mentioned have all been filled not by retailers new to the area and/or opening their first Southaven/DeSoto County stores… but rather, in all cases since 2012, each and every empty storefront in the main drag of the shopping center has instead been re-leased out to stores relocating from elsewhere in the city/vicinity, aiming to take advantage of all the benefits associated with being in South Lake Centre as opposed to their previous, existing homes. Pretty cool, huh? That’s what I’m aiming to show with this graphic. Let me break it down for you…

 

First, let’s review the tenant mix. Rewind in time to 2000, when the center opened. From left to right on this graphic (assuming this is indeed the grand opening roster; if not, it at least was in place by the early 2000s, minus one retailer I’ll mention after the jump), you’ve got Office Depot, Waccamaw HomePlace, Petco, Dressbarn, Old Navy, Shoe Carnival, Hallmark Gold Crown, Marshalls, Fashion Bug, Sally Beauty Supply, and Hancock Fabrics. Waccamaw didn’t last long at all, and with that chain’s bankruptcy in 2001, was the first of the bunch to call it quits; Sports Authority quickly stepped in and assumed that space. Then, all was good for several years, until Hallmark decided to move out of the main row of stores and into one of the smaller bays in the parking lot of the center. A branch of the revived Dots chain picked up that lease in 2011, but disappeared a short time later, ceding the space to Rainbow. Besides those three cases, the remainder of all re-leasing here involved chains choosing to relocate from stores they already operated locally. Those are the ones pictured on the graphic, and we’ll look at them a little more closely.

 

Gap FactoryStore was the first to relocate into South Lake Centre. Fashion Bug announced in 2012 that it would be closing all of its stores, and as soon as the Southaven location became vacant, Gap snatched it up. Gap traveled the farthest distance to open in SLC; as you can see on the graphic, they came from a spot way out of view to the southwest, specifically the Casino Outlet Shoppes of Tunica in Robinsonville, MS. Accordingly, that store closed upon this one’s opening. I’ve noticed many shopping centers featuring both an Old Navy and a Gap FactoryStore, so it’s no surprise there that Gap would want to open in SLC considering its sister store was already here. And in fact, this may well have been more of a “de facto” relocation than a true one, since the Tunica Outlets also had an Old Navy store at the time. Gap was likely just interested in getting out of Tunica. I don’t blame them. That outlet mall has since lost every single national tenant it ever had (with one exception), and is struggling to stay alive these days with mom-and-pop retailers. However, that’s a story for another day. Specifically, for a future blog post ;)

 

OfficeMax was next to jump over from their existing store. This one also can’t exactly be considered a true relocation, considering that this took place in 2014 after the Office Depot/OfficeMax merger, and the OfficeMax across the interstate in Horn Lake was simply consolidating into the existing SLC Office Depot. But it nevertheless shows a conscious decision was made to keep the South Lake Centre store open instead of the DeSoto Crossing one. That would be thanks to the facts that the Office Depot in SLC is larger, owns its store (whereas the OfficeMax was leased), and enjoys all the added benefits of being part of a major power strip. So, while I chided its liquidation cover-up at the time, in this scenario I’m actually willing to take OfficeMax’s declaration that it was holding a “Moving Sale” at its face value! View my OfficeMax Closing album here, and my Office Depot album here.

 

The next closures and relocations all took place within the past two years. When Tanger Outlets opened in 2015, Dressbarn decided to pack everything up from South Lake Centre and move on down the road. (Indeed, if I had a counter-graphic for this, you could see that they weren’t the only ones. Rue21 similarly departed Southaven Towne Center for a space at Tanger, and Gap opened up its own FactoryStore in the complex, in addition to the one they already had at SLC literally just a mile and a half away. Both Gap stores continue to coexist for now, but time finally appears to be running out for the initial SLC location. Gap announced recently that they will soon be shutting 200 stores, and if two stores on the same block isn’t enough to make one a candidate, I don’t know what is. Plus, this new lease listing I found over the weekend [check out those sweet outdated pictures there, too – don’t be surprised if you see those in a blog post one day! :) ] has an 8,000 square foot opening for 95 Goodman Road W – Gap’s size and address – so that pretty much seals its fate, even if an official closing announcement hasn’t been confirmed yet. This isn’t unexpected, of course, but still sad because I like the SLC location better. But in all of this, I digress.)

 

Dressbarn’s loss became Tuesday Morning’s gain. They quickly snapped up the site, even though it was almost a good 2,000 square feet smaller than their existing space across the street at The Shops of Colonial Square. Not to worry, though: they subsequently tore out the back wall of the old Dressbarn and expanded the space! Now it’s a very respectable 11,000 square feet, which is about 2,000 square feet larger than their old store. The new and improved Southaven Tuesday Morning finally opened to the public in September 2016. View my Tuesday Morning Relocation album here.

 

In addition to Tuesday Morning’s grand opening, 2016 also brought two major losses to South Lake Centre. Both Hancock Fabrics and Sports Authority declared bankruptcy and closed all of their stores nationwide. Hancock gave up the ghost in April of that year. Being that its location was the prime corner space right along Airways Boulevard, I was a bit surprised to see it stay vacant for the remainder of 2016. Then, come December, I was also very surprised to see who had finally committed to moving in: none other than Books-a-Million, which chose to relocate from its existing store just a stone’s throw south! Work progressed quickly, and Southaven’s new BAM held its grand opening in February 2017. View my Hancock Fabrics Closing album here, and my Books-a-Million Relocation album here.

 

SLC’s last major victim of recent memory, Sports Authority, was gone by August 2016. That space, too, sat vacant for a while, but this wasn’t as surprising as duration of the Hancock vacancy; Sports Authority’s building is the largest square footage in the center, so it was expected for the real estate team to wait a little longer to find the proper new tenant. Lo and behold, that decision came soon enough – and what do you know, Burlington was the big-ticket buyer. Burlington’s existing Southaven store was located in 80,000 square feet of a former Super Kmart Center in the older, sleepier retail section of town one exit north on Stateline Road, so this new store would represent an improvement in both prototype (Burlington’s layout is now based on a 45,000 square foot design) and visibility for them. After several months of façade and interior construction, Burlington opened its doors in September 2017. View my Sports Authority Closing album here, and my Burlington Relocation album here. (Not too many pictures in that latter one just yet – again, that’s what I’ll begin adding to this Saturday and over the next couple of months!)

 

…Now you see why I put that tl;dr at the top, don’t you? :) Well, for those of you who did stick around and read this all, thank you. As you can tell, I really like South Lake Centre, and I enjoyed taking the time to put this graphic together as well. To come full-circle with the listing earlier in this description, here’s SLC’s current tenant mix: Office Depot, Burlington, Petco, Tuesday Morning, Old Navy, Shoe Carnival, Rainbow, Marshalls, Gap FactoryStore, Sally Beauty Supply, and Books-a-Million. But as I mentioned, that seems very likely to change again in the not-too-distant future, with Gap preparing to exit. Will we then see yet another relocation of an existing local retailer to South Lake Centre? Only time will tell…

 

So once again, I invite you to check out the start of my Burlington series this weekend. Until then, if you’re interested in even more information (!) as to what has taken over the stores that relocated to SLC… drop me a comment and I’ll be glad to share that, too. (I figured this description was lengthy enough not to include it here, haha!) And, to reward the patience of those of you who made it all the way to the end of this description, here are some music recommendations for you to listen to and enjoy :) (Although I will warn you: that last one’s got screaming in it, so if, like me, you’re not a big fan of that, I’d suggest skipping over approximately 1:56-2:26 in that song :P )

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

don't want him in the bathroom!

HTV during relocation.

 

HTV durante il riposizionamento.

 

Credit: ESA/NASA

 

(935_1349)

WEEK 1 – Memphis Kmart Closing, I

 

Prior to the liquidation, books occupied the former café space, but for the closing sale they had been consolidated out here in front of the former pharmacy. Something else I'm kicking myself for: if I had seen that copy of Jimmy Fallon's “Your Baby's First Word Will Be Dada,” I definitely would've bought it!

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Remodel, Week 16

 

(cont.) Welp, as of the following week, I got my answer: it was a temporary relocation of the pharmacy! l_dawg2000 (and/or my mom; can’t remember who got to me first XD ) actually informed me of this, as I wasn’t in town that weekend. (He’s also already posted his own picture of it, which you can see here.) But the next weekend, I made sure to get my own photo of the tiny structure, even if I had to do it very quickly while we were in the checkout line! (As a result, please pardon the person visible on the right of the photograph :P )

 

For being a temporary pharmacy, this setup looks very complex… as it should, I suppose, considering that those are dozens of customers’ prescriptions and records they have to keep protected within that cramped little space. If you zoom in through the windows, you can see that this mini-pharmacy box even has its own drop ceiling and lighting, which is even more impressive! (I’d bet that that also makes it even more claustrophobic in there for the poor employees, though…) The only downsides to this temporary setup (besides the aforementioned issue of space) are the facts that when it gets busy, customers waiting in line will now interfere with the flow of shoppers exiting the checkouts, and, as those yellow signs at the pickup counter read, they’re only able to do prescription checkouts right now (no other services).

 

And in the interim, what’s becoming of the old pharmacy, you ask? Well, I’ll show you! Stay tuned for Part 2 of this update tomorrow… :)

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

The Rochdale Canal in Sowerby Bridge, Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

 

The Rochdale is a broad canal because its locks are wide enough to allow vessels of 14 feet width. The canal runs for 32 miles (51 km) across the Pennines from the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield Basin in Manchester to join the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. As built, the canal had 92 locks. Whilst the traditional lock numbering has been retained on all restored locks, and on the relocated locks, the canal now has 91. Locks 3 and 4 have been replaced with a single deep lock, Tuel Lane Lock, which is numbered 3/4.

 

The Rochdale Canal was conceived in 1776, when a group of 48 men from Rochdale raised £237 and commissioned James Brindley to conduct a survey of possible routes between Sowerby Bridge and Manchester. Brindley proposed a route similar to the one built, and another more expensive route via Bury. Further progress was not made until 1791, when John Rennie was asked to make a new survey in June, and two months later to make surveys for branches to Rochdale, Oldham and to a limeworks near Todmorden. Rennie at the time had no experience of building canals.

 

The promoters, unsure as to whether to build a wide or a narrow canal, postponed the decision until an Act of Parliament had been obtained. The first attempt to obtain an act was made in 1792, but was opposed by mill owners, concerned about water supply. Rennie proposed using steam pumping engines, three in Yorkshire, eight in Lancashire, and one on the Burnley Branch, but the mill owners argued that 59 mills would be affected by the scheme, resulting in unemployment, and the bill was defeated. In September 1792, William Crosley and John Longbotham surveyed the area in an attempt to find locations for reservoirs which would not affect water supplies to the mills. A second bill was presented to Parliament, for a canal which would have a 3,000-yard (2,700 m) tunnel and 11 reservoirs. Again the bill was defeated, this time by one vote. The promoters, in an attempt to understand the mill owners' position, asked William Jessop to survey the parts of the proposed canal that were causing most concern. Jessop gave evidence to the Parliamentary committee, and on 4 April 1794 an act was obtained which created the Rochdale Canal Company and authorised construction.

 

Rennie's estimated cost in the second bill was £291,000, and the company was empowered to raise the money by issuing shares, with powers to raise a further £100,000 if required. The estimate was for a narrow canal, whereas the act authorised a broad canal, and so the capital was never going to be adequate. The summit tunnel was abandoned in favour of 14 additional locks saving £20,000. Jessop proposed constructing each lock with a drop of 10 feet (3.0 m), resulting in efficient use of water and the need to manufacture only one size of lock gate.

 

The canal opened in stages as sections were completed, with the Rochdale Branch the first in 1798 and further sections in 1799. The bottom nine locks opened in 1800 and boats using the Ashton Canal could reach Manchester. Officially, the canal opened in 1804, but construction work continued for more three years. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km) branch from Heywood to Castleton opened in 1834.

 

Apart from a short profitable section in Manchester linking the Bridgewater and Ashton Canals, most of the length was closed in 1952 when an act of parliament was obtained to ban public navigation. The last complete journey had taken place in 1937, and by the mid 1960s the remainder was almost unusable. Construction of the M62 motorway in the late 1960s took no account of the canal, cutting it in two.

 

When an Act of Parliament was sought in 1965, to authorise the abandonment of the canal, the Inland Waterways Association petitioned against it, and when it was finally passed, it contained a clause that ensured the owners would maintain it until the adjacent Ashton Canal was abandoned. Discussion of the relative merits of restoring the canal or the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in 1973 led the formation of societies to promote both schemes in 1974. The Rochdale Canal Society wanted to see the canal fully re-opened, as part of a proposed Pennine Park

 

The Rochdale Canal Society worked hard both to protect the line of the canal and to begin the process of refurbishing it. A new organisational structure was created in 1984, with the formation of the Rochdale Canal Trust Ltd, who leased the canal from the owning company. The MSC-funded restoration was approaching Sowerby Bridge, where planners were proposing a tunnel and deep lock to negotiate a difficult road junction at Tuel Lane, so that a connection could be made with the Calder and Hebble Navigation. The entire eastern section from Sowerby Bridge to the summit at Longlees was open by 1990, although it remained isolated from the canal network.

 

In 1997, the Rochdale Canal Trust was restructured, in response to announcements that there might be large grants available as part of the millennium celebrations. The canal was still at this point owned by a private company, and the Millennium Commission would not make grants to a scheme which was for private profit, rather than public benefit. The restructuring would allow the Trust to take over responsibility for the canal from the Rochdale Canal Company. However, the plan was rejected by the Commission, and in order to access the grant of £11.3 million, the Waterways Trust took over ownership of the canal. As restoration proceeded, boats could travel further and further west, and the restoration of the sections through Failsworth and Ancoats were a significant part of the re-development of the north Manchester districts. The restored sections joined up with the section in Manchester below the Ashton Canal junction, which had never been closed, and on 1 July 2002 the canal was open for navigation along its entire length.

 

The world has to be grateful to this man for most powerful mind opening substance - www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hofmann_albert/hofmann_...

Moving bees that had taken up residence in a neighbour's chimney to somewhere more suitable.

 

RAKE visningsrom, Trondheim - 31.10.-9.11.14

WEEK 45 – Southaven Burlington Relocation: Old Store, Set II

 

One last shot of the interior of the old store, as we prepare to exit. I told you I had a much better shot of the red feature wall along the front end! :) I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, too, in that it captured both the Burlington logo and the “Welcome to Southaven” message without cutting either of them off. I was not able to manage a similar shot of the new (identical) feature wall at the relocated store for my upcoming photoset from there, but maybe one day in the future I will!

 

Note how the checkout setup here is a queue, very similar to TJMaxx... I can't remember if that was in place before, or added in with, the installation of this feature wall. Queue checkouts aren't really my favorite (honestly, I like the “self” variety! :P ), but I must admit they do seem to do the job well. What's your take?

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

This no parking sign seems to have been relocated by Hurricane Ian as it passed well to the north of Indian River County.

Sowerby Bridge Lock on the Rochdale Canal in Sowerby Bridge, Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

 

The Rochdale is a broad canal because its locks are wide enough to allow vessels of 14 feet width. The canal runs for 32 miles (51 km) across the Pennines from the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield Basin in Manchester to join the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. As built, the canal had 92 locks. Whilst the traditional lock numbering has been retained on all restored locks, and on the relocated locks, the canal now has 91. Locks 3 and 4 have been replaced with a single deep lock, Tuel Lane Lock, which is numbered 3/4.

 

The Rochdale Canal was conceived in 1776, when a group of 48 men from Rochdale raised £237 and commissioned James Brindley to conduct a survey of possible routes between Sowerby Bridge and Manchester. Brindley proposed a route similar to the one built, and another more expensive route via Bury. Further progress was not made until 1791, when John Rennie was asked to make a new survey in June, and two months later to make surveys for branches to Rochdale, Oldham and to a limeworks near Todmorden. Rennie at the time had no experience of building canals.

 

The promoters, unsure as to whether to build a wide or a narrow canal, postponed the decision until an Act of Parliament had been obtained. The first attempt to obtain an act was made in 1792, but was opposed by mill owners, concerned about water supply. Rennie proposed using steam pumping engines, three in Yorkshire, eight in Lancashire, and one on the Burnley Branch, but the mill owners argued that 59 mills would be affected by the scheme, resulting in unemployment, and the bill was defeated. In September 1792, William Crosley and John Longbotham surveyed the area in an attempt to find locations for reservoirs which would not affect water supplies to the mills. A second bill was presented to Parliament, for a canal which would have a 3,000-yard (2,700 m) tunnel and 11 reservoirs. Again the bill was defeated, this time by one vote. The promoters, in an attempt to understand the mill owners' position, asked William Jessop to survey the parts of the proposed canal that were causing most concern. Jessop gave evidence to the Parliamentary committee, and on 4 April 1794 an act was obtained which created the Rochdale Canal Company and authorised construction.

 

Rennie's estimated cost in the second bill was £291,000, and the company was empowered to raise the money by issuing shares, with powers to raise a further £100,000 if required. The estimate was for a narrow canal, whereas the act authorised a broad canal, and so the capital was never going to be adequate. The summit tunnel was abandoned in favour of 14 additional locks saving £20,000. Jessop proposed constructing each lock with a drop of 10 feet (3.0 m), resulting in efficient use of water and the need to manufacture only one size of lock gate.

 

The canal opened in stages as sections were completed, with the Rochdale Branch the first in 1798 and further sections in 1799. The bottom nine locks opened in 1800 and boats using the Ashton Canal could reach Manchester. Officially, the canal opened in 1804, but construction work continued for more three years. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km) branch from Heywood to Castleton opened in 1834.

 

Apart from a short profitable section in Manchester linking the Bridgewater and Ashton Canals, most of the length was closed in 1952 when an act of parliament was obtained to ban public navigation. The last complete journey had taken place in 1937, and by the mid 1960s the remainder was almost unusable. Construction of the M62 motorway in the late 1960s took no account of the canal, cutting it in two.

 

When an Act of Parliament was sought in 1965, to authorise the abandonment of the canal, the Inland Waterways Association petitioned against it, and when it was finally passed, it contained a clause that ensured the owners would maintain it until the adjacent Ashton Canal was abandoned. Discussion of the relative merits of restoring the canal or the Huddersfield Narrow Canal in 1973 led the formation of societies to promote both schemes in 1974. The Rochdale Canal Society wanted to see the canal fully re-opened, as part of a proposed Pennine Park

 

The Rochdale Canal Society worked hard both to protect the line of the canal and to begin the process of refurbishing it. A new organisational structure was created in 1984, with the formation of the Rochdale Canal Trust Ltd, who leased the canal from the owning company. The MSC-funded restoration was approaching Sowerby Bridge, where planners were proposing a tunnel and deep lock to negotiate a difficult road junction at Tuel Lane, so that a connection could be made with the Calder and Hebble Navigation. The entire eastern section from Sowerby Bridge to the summit at Longlees was open by 1990, although it remained isolated from the canal network.

 

In 1997, the Rochdale Canal Trust was restructured, in response to announcements that there might be large grants available as part of the millennium celebrations. The canal was still at this point owned by a private company, and the Millennium Commission would not make grants to a scheme which was for private profit, rather than public benefit. The restructuring would allow the Trust to take over responsibility for the canal from the Rochdale Canal Company. However, the plan was rejected by the Commission, and in order to access the grant of £11.3 million, the Waterways Trust took over ownership of the canal. As restoration proceeded, boats could travel further and further west, and the restoration of the sections through Failsworth and Ancoats were a significant part of the re-development of the north Manchester districts. The restored sections joined up with the section in Manchester below the Ashton Canal junction, which had never been closed, and on 1 July 2002 the canal was open for navigation along its entire length.

 

: to locate again : establish or lay out in a new place

 

They're not by any means under the Federal witness protection program but the floral MOCs have been moved to a much safer spot on the wall at the top of the stairs together with other sets built on display. Wasn't even looking for them when I got in the store but one of the staff who recognized me pointed out their new location. They'll remain on display as long as the original Flower Box remains on display at the LEGO House.

Cunard - White Star Line. Arrived at SMM 7th March 2024.

 

Built by Bassett Lowke, Northampton for Cunard - White Star, for their New York office, as per 1946 post war refit.

 

First displayed London Then New York 1948 - 1970. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass, 1970 - 2017.

Part of the travelling exhibition “Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style” - PEM May - Oct 2017, London V & A Feb - June 2018, and Dundee V & A Sept 2018 -Feb 2019.

 

Scale 1:64. Size 115 x 490 x 45 cm

 

Many of the Nubians you’ll find living at either Nubian village were relocated here during the latter half of the twentieth century as construction of the High Dam in Aswan neared completion. The construction of the dam essentially meant that the Nubian communities had no option but to move

 

Taken @Aswan, Egypt

Great Blue Heron, Wildwood Lake, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Up at the front of the store, another change that took place was the relocation of the recycling bins from a spot along the front end itself to this new alcove right beside the restrooms. Previously, this space had been home to three community display boards that, evidently, the store decided to remove.

 

Personally, I like this location for the recycling bins better, both in that they're closer to the doors and in that their previous location was, in my opinion, kinda awkward (even more so now, given that the manager's office they were up against is now a family restroom). Too bad I didn't get to make much use of their new spot, seeing as how we had finally received curbside recycling service by this time! :P

 

(c) 2018 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Remodel, Week 5

 

(cont.) ...and on that note, a fair amount of the merchandise that used to be housed over near the bakery has already found itself relocated to make room for the produce walk-in cooler. As you can see here, prepackaged bread, as well as (on the other side of this shelving) prepackaged muffins, bagels, and tortillas, have all been temporarily placed between the meat department's coffin coolers and the beer aisle, which runs perpendicular to said coolers. In the background of this photo, you can get a better, more zoomed-out indication of just how large the produce cooler will be. Also, for reference, here's a shot taken from over at the bakery, looking toward the spot where I was standing for this pic.

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

NS H53 emerges from Enola Yard on their way back to Northumberland, PA with SD40E trio 6311, 6303 and 6327 for power.

Relocated road speed advisory sign from Casuarina Drive

WEEK 51 – Barnes & Noble Ole Miss Relocation Revisited (I)

 

I have this strange tendency to upload photos from Oxford anytime EXCEPT when I’m actually in town. Which, you know, is a majority of the year, so it’s pretty talented that I do this. I did the same thing this exact time last year, as a matter of fact (you might recall my Oxford Walmart album update). This time we’re doing another album update, as Albertsons Florida Blog correctly guessed on Tuesday, and as is clear from the photo you’re looking at above this spiel: the next chapter in the Ole Miss Barnes & Noble campus bookstore saga. (cont.)

 

Barnes & Noble at Ole Miss (inside the University of Mississippi's Jackson Avenue Center/former Oxford Mall; now closed) // 1111 Jackson Avenue W, Oxford, MS 38655

 

(c) 2019 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

On October 25 two historic street cars switched places at the workshop owned by Stichting De Nieuwe Blauwe Tram.

Amsterdam trailer 754, that was restored the past few years, returned to Amsterdam. Its place was taken by Amsterdam open trailer 606, that will be restored the next few years. Both historic cars are owned by the Amsterdam Museum Tram (EMA in Dutch).

Work on the NZH A619/A620 is progressing rapidly.

I don't normally handle wildlife but this fella seemed pretty vulnerable hanging out at a busy park. So a fter a few quick shots we tried to discretely relocate him to a safer spot.

For once I'm at something of a loss for this one. It started life as one thing and by the end had morphed into something quite different. It started life as a simple piece of A4 paper but by the time it was done was this concoction of cardboard, glue, stencils, spraypaint, stamped lettering and something of a dark heart vibe.

 

The gentleman in the piece is clearly something of a vagabond as it would appear he has cleared out all the bank accounts and made a hasty international departure to an uncertain destination. And all he left behind was a short note. The no-good piece of dirt. If I ever get my hands on him...

 

Cheers

 

id-iom

Stockton-on-Tees is a market town in County Durham, England, with a population of 84,815 at the 2021 UK census. It gives its name to and is the largest settlement in the wider Borough of Stockton-on-Tees. It is part of Teesside and the Tees Valley, on the northern bank of the River Tees.

 

The Tees was straightened in the early 19th century for larger ships to access the town. The ports have since relocated closer to the North Sea and ships are no longer able to sail from the sea to the town due to the Tees Barrage, which was installed to manage tidal flooding. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, on which coal was ferried to the town for shipment, served the port during early part of the Industrial Revolution. The railway was also the world's first permanent steam-locomotive-powered passenger railway.

 

Stockton is an Anglo-Saxon place name with the common ending ton, meaning farm, or homestead. Stock is thought by some to derive from the Anglo-Saxon Stocc, meaning log, tree trunk, or wooden post. Stockton could therefore mean a farm built of logs. This is disputed because when Stocc forms the first part of a place name, it usually indicates a derivation from the similar word Stoc, meaning cell, monastery, or place. Stoc in place name such as Stoke or Stow usually indicates farms which belonged to a manor or religious house. It is thought that Stockton fell into this category, and perhaps the name is an indication that Stockton was an outpost of Durham or Norton which were both important Anglo-Saxon centres. Stockton was a township in the ancient parish of Norton until 1713, when it became an independent parish in its own right. Norton and Stockton's historic roles were reversed in 1913 when Norton was absorbed into the borough of Stockton.

 

Stockton is reportedly the home of the fossilised remains of the most northerly hippopotamus ever discovered. In 1958, an archeological dig four miles (6 km) north-west of the town uncovered a 125,000-year-old hippo's molar tooth. However, no one knows exactly where the tooth was discovered, who discovered it, or why the dig took place. The tooth was sent to the borough's librarian and curator, G. F. Leighton, who then sent it to the Natural History Museum in London. Since then, the tooth has been missing despite efforts to locate it.

 

Stockton began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement on high ground close to the northern bank of the River Tees.

 

Stockton was described as a manor by 1138, and was purchased by Bishop Pudsey of Durham in 1189. During the 13th century, the bishop changed the village of Stockton into a borough; the exact date the borough was founded is unknown, but it was being described as a borough by 1283. When the bishop freed Stockton's serfs, craftsmen moved to the new town. The bishop had a residence in Stockton Castle, which was a fortified manor house, the first recorded reference to which was in 1376.

 

Stockton's market traces its history to 1310, when Bishop Bek of Durham granted a market charter to our town of Stockton a market upon every Wednesday for ever. The town grew into a small but busy port, exporting wool and importing wine, which was in demand by the upper class. However, even by the standards of the time, medieval Stockton-on-Tees was a small town, with a population of only approximately 1,000, and the town did not grow for centuries.

 

Scotland captured Stockton Castle in 1644, and occupied it until 1646. The castle was destroyed at the order of Oliver Cromwell at the end of the Civil War. A shopping centre, the Castlegate Centre, now occupies the castle area, and this is scheduled for demolition in 2022.[needs update] No known accurate depictions of the castle exist.

 

The Town House (now called the Town Hall) was built in 1735, and Stockton's first theatre opened in 1766. In 1771, a five-arch stone bridge was built, replacing the nearby Bishop's Ferry. Until the opening of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge in 1911, this was the Tees's most downstream bridging point. From the end of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed Stockton from a small and quiet market town into a flourishing centre of heavy industry.

 

In 1833 the then Bishop of Durham, William Van Mildert (1765 - 1836) gifted five acres and the land of an existing burial site called "The Monument" (originally a mass grave from a prior cholera outbreak) to the town of Stockton. Upon this land, the process of building of and designing the gothic style Holy Trinity Church began, using funds originally allocated for church building in the Commissioners' church Act of 1818. It was designed by John and Benjamin Green, and construction began in 1834. It was consecrated as an Anglican church on December 22, 1835.

 

Shipbuilding, which had started in the 15th century, prospered in the town through the 17th and 18th centuries, with smaller-scale industries also developing. These included brick, sail, and rope making, the latter now reflected in road names such as Ropery Street in the town centre. Stockton became the major port for County Durham, the North Riding of Yorkshire, and Westmorland during this period, exporting mainly rope, agricultural produce and lead from the Yorkshire Dales. Iron making and engineering entered the local economy in the 18th century

 

The town grew rapidly as the Industrial Revolution started, the population grew from 10,000 in 1851 to over 50,000 in 1901 as workers moved in. The discovery of iron ore in the Eston Hills resulted in blast furnaces lining the River Tees from Stockton to the river's mouth. In 1820, an Act set up the Commissioners, a body with responsibility for lighting and cleaning the streets, and from 1822, Stockton-on-Tees was lit by gas.

 

In 1822, Stockton witnessed an event which changed the face of the world forever, and which heralded the dawn of a new era in trade, industry and travel. The first rail of George Stephenson's Stockton and Darlington Railway was laid near St. John's crossing on Bridge Road. Hauled by Locomotion No 1, Stephenson himself manned the engine on its first journey on 27 September 1825. Fellow engineer and friend Timothy Hackworth acted as guard. This was the world's first passenger railway,[citation needed] connecting Stockton with Shildon. The opening of the railway greatly boosted Stockton's economy, making it easier to bring coal to the factories; however, the port declined as business moved downstream to Middlesbrough.

 

Stockton witnessed another development in 1827. Local chemist John Walker invented the friction match in his shop at 59 High Street. The first sale of these matches was recorded in his sales-book on 7 April 1827, to a Mr. Hixon, a solicitor in the town. Since he did not obtain a patent, Walker received neither fame nor wealth for his invention, but he was able to retire some years before his death. He died in 1859 at the age of 78, and is buried in the parish churchyard in Norton village.

 

The first bell for Big Ben was cast by John Warner and Sons in Norton on 6 August 1856, but it was damaged beyond repair while being tested on site, and it had to be replaced by a foundry closer to Westminster, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

 

To cater to the increased population, a hospital opened in Stockton in 1862, and a public library opened in 1877. Public transport also became important. Steam trams began running in the streets in 1881, and these were replaced by electric trams in 1897.

 

Stockton was still dominated by the engineering industry in the 1930s, and there was also a chemicals industry in the town. Buses replaced the trams in 1931. Public housing also became necessary, and in the 1930s, slums were cleared, and the first council houses were built.

 

On 10 September 1933, the Battle of Stockton took place, in which between 200 and 300 supporters of the British Union of Fascists were taken to Stockton to hold a rally, but they were driven out of town by up to 2,000 anti-fascist demonstrators.

 

In the late 20th century, manufacturing severely declined, with the service industries developed into the town's primary employers.

 

The Ragworth district near the town centre was the scene of rioting in July 1992, when local youths threw stones at buildings, set cars alight, and threw missiles at police and fire crews. The area later saw a £12 million regeneration which involved mass demolition and refurbishment of existing properties, and construction of new housing and community facilities.

 

Stockton lies on the north bank of the River Tees. The town's northern and western extremities are on slightly higher ground than the town centre, which is directly on the Tees. Stockton experiences occasional earth tremors. For example, it was the epicentre of a tremor measuring 2.8 on the Richter scale on 23 January 2020. The town has many areas outside of the town centre; Fairfield, Portrack, Hardwick, Hartburn, Elm Tree Farm, Norton, Roseworth, Newtown, Bishopsgarth and Oxbridge. Norton is the second largest centre in the town.

 

Stockton-on-Tees has an oceanic climate typical of the United Kingdom. Being sheltered by the Lake District and Pennines to the west, Stockton is relatively dry for the U.K., with on average 25 inches (643 mm) of rain a year. Its climate is more continental climate than other parts of the U.K., with above average summer temperatures, and below average winter temperatures. Summer highs typically reach approximately 20 °C (68 °F), while winter lows can fall to several degrees below 0 °C (32 °F). The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate).

 

Stockton town centre is the heart of the borough. The High Street—the widest in the UK—heads north through the town centre from the junction of Bridge Road and Yarm Lane, to Maxwell's Corner, where Norton Road and Bishopton Lane begin. Dovecot Street runs west from the High Street's midway point, and further north, Church Road extends east toward Northshore and the River Tees. At the centre of the High Street stands Stockton-on-Tees Town Hall, dating from 1735, and the Georgian-style Shambles Market Hall. Around the town hall, the largest outdoor market in North East England, which has been in existence since the 1300s, continues to be held every Wednesday and Saturday.

 

Much of the town centre has a Georgian and late medieval influence, with a number of listed buildings and a variety of architectural types, which help to define the town's identity. The shops predominantly have narrow frontages stretching back to gain floorspace. This burgage plot style is particularly evident around the marketplace and on side streets such as Silver Street, Finkle Street and Ramsgate. There is also the surviving ruins of the gothic style church in Trinity Green, which dates back to 1834.

 

Before 2022, the town centre retail was largely concentrated within two shopping centres, Castlegate and Wellington Square. Wellington Square has open shops on pedestrian-only paths whereas the Castlegate, opened in 1972 and currently undergoing demolition, was a building which incorporated a multi-storey car park and an indoor market. Its façade was a dominant feature along the south east of the High Street, its site bounded by Finkle Street, Bridge Road and Tower Street. The Riverside dual carriageway and the River Tees run almost parallel to the rear of the centre. The Teesquay Millennium Footbridge links the Castlegate Quay on the north side of the river to Teesdale Business Park and Durham University's Queen's Campus on the south side in the ceremonial county of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Situated at the north west end of the town centre is Wellington Square shopping centre, built on the old Wellington Street. Opened in 2001 at a cost of £43 million, it houses 46 shop units.

 

The town centre has retained a number of original yards such as Wasp Nest Yard, Hambletonian Yard, and Ship Inn Yard. Most notable is Green Dragon Yard, a courtyard of restored historic warehouses within a series of alleyways. Considered the cultural quarter of the town, this houses the Green Dragon public house, the Green Dragon Studios (recording studios) and Britain's oldest surviving Georgian Theatre.

 

Alongside retail outlets, Stockton town centre also has a variety of services including national banks and building societies, travel agents, a post office, hairdressers, beauticians, cafés, and restaurants. The refurbishment of some period buildings has provided space for small firms including solicitors, recruitment agencies, and accountants.

 

Since the construction of the Tees Barrage in 1995, the level of the River Tees through the town has permanently been held at high tide, creating a backdrop for riverside events and facilitating watersports activities such as rowing, canoeing, jet skiing, and dragon boat racing. Stockton town centre is elevated above the river, and is separated from the riverside by the A1305 Riverside Road, a dual carriageway which runs parallel to the river from Northshore to Chandlers Wharf.

 

From the town centre, Bishop Street, Silver Street, Calvert's Lane, and Thistle Green offer views of the river where it meanders around Teesdale Business Park. Durham University Queen's Campus can be seen on the opposite side, alongside the skyline of Middlesbrough in the middle distance and Roseberry Topping in the Cleveland Hills, approximately fifteen miles (24 km) south east.

 

Chandlers Wharf is situated on the north side of the river where Bridge Road approaches Victoria Bridge. The area is characterised by a mixture of office and residential accommodation, including the colourful twelve-storey Mezzino student apartments at Rialto Court, a Mecca Bingo hall, Burger King and the two-storey Grosvenor Casino, which opened in September 2011. Adjacent to the wharf is Castlegate Quay, which was once the town's main dock. The quayside is still occupied by Georgian warehouses which have been converted into a number of business units, restaurants, and a gym. A full-size replica of Captain James Cook's ship HM Bark Endeavour was once moored at the quayside, but was sold and moved after refurbishment to a mooring in Whitby. The Teesside Princess, a two-deck river boat, is docked alongside, and offers river cruises all year to Yarm via Preston Park.

 

Both the north and south banks of the Tees are retained by steel sheet pile walls, and have footpaths along the river edge. The Tees Walkway on the north bank of the river can be accessed from the town centre by the Teesquay Millennium Footbridge or the Riverside Footbridge, and incorporates a cycle path which forms part of the National Cycle Network.

 

The 11-metre Aeolian Motion wind sculpture stands on a grassy slope overlooking the riverside, which becomes an amphitheatre during large events. From Castlegate Quay, the tree-lined path along the waterfront toward the Princess of Wales Bridge opens into green space and a car park for events. Beyond the Princess of Wales Bridge, the slipway at the River Tees Watersports Centre is situated at the western area of Northshore, which is currently under development, and which leads to the Tees Barrage.

 

The town is served by two main arterial roads: the transpennine A66 (east/west) and the A19 (north/south). The A19 connects Stockton with York in the south, and extends to Peterlee and Sunderland, to the north. East of the town centre is the A1046, a mostly dual carriageway which runs through Portrack as Portrack Lane, a major retail zone, particularly for home furnishings and DIY. From Portrack, the A1046 continues to its northern terminus at Port Clarence. The A139 connects the town centre with the northern suburb of Norton. This was the original route for the A19 before a bypass was built to the east of the town.

 

The A177 runs from Stockton town centre to Durham. Known as Durham Road, it passes Sedgefield en route, and is a major route in to and out of Stockton.

 

The A66 connects Stockton directly to Middlesbrough (8 miles (13 km) to the east) and Darlington (10 miles (16 km) to the west). Beyond Darlington lies the A1(M). The A66 is connected to Stockton centre by the A135. The old A135 was renumbered A1027, and this continues through the town to Billingham. The A135 is named '1825 Way' to commemorate the former Stockton and Darlington Railway's opening; the 1825 Way's northern end is St John's Crossing, adjacent to the old Stockton Railway Station buildings.

 

A number of bus services operate in Stockton, and most services pass through the High Street. The services cover large areas of the region including Middlesbrough, Teesside Park, Thornaby-on-Tees, Billingham, Sedgefield, Durham, Sunderland, Peterlee, and Newcastle upon Tyne. Stagecoach on Teesside and Arriva North East are the major service providers, while six smaller companies also operate in the area.

 

Stockton station, located above the High Street, serves the town; however, more regular and long-distance trains run from nearby Thornaby.

 

Northern routinely serves both stations with local and regional services, whereas at Thornaby TransPennine Express runs an hourly service between Saltburn-by-the-Sea and Manchester Airport via York and LNER stops once both ways every weekday between Middlesbrough and London King's Cross.

 

Teesside International Airport is partially located within the borough, several miles west of the town. The airport offers domestic flights and services international festival destinations, especially in the EU.

 

Stockton is famous as the home of the friction match and the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which operated the world's first steam-hauled passenger train in 1825. The town also has the world's oldest passenger railway station building. Industry and engineering remained central to Stockton's economy over many years, and major industries have included shipbuilding and repair, heavy engineering, steel, and chemicals manufacturing. However, during the twentieth century, Teesside's heavy industry declined dramatically.

 

Since the 1980s, Stockton has seen an increase in service industries. The development of Teesdale Business Park on the south bank of the River Tees has created commercial space with many large service providers opening call centres and offices in the area. Durham University's Queen's Campus is also situated within the Teesdale development, which is linked to the town centre by the Teesquay Millennium Footbridge, Princess of Wales Bridge, and Infinity Bridge.

 

In 1995, after four years' construction, the Tees Barrage was commissioned, permanently holding the upstream river waters at the level of an average high tide.

 

In 2007, funding from the European Regional Development Fund and English Heritage secured the ruins of the Holy Trinity Church, and renovated the site into Trinity Green, removing the site from Historic England's 'Heritage At Risk register'.

 

Work is under way to develop the north bank of the River Tees in Stockton with the £300 million Northshore scheme, which will include new offices, leisure facilities, housing, a 150-bedroom hotel, and a new campus for Durham University.

 

In 2012, a long-term scheme aimed at transforming the town centre area was announced, with investment of approximately £38 million, just over £20 million being contributed by Stockton Borough Council, and the remainder coming from the private sector and grants. The investment programme aimed to attract more retailers, businesses, and shoppers to the town by opening up new spaces and links to the River Tees, providing easier access and parking, and capitalising on the town's heritage and cultural assets.

 

Plans include the introduction of an expansive plaza area 'Infinity View' that will open up the pedestrian area to dramatic views of the award-winning Infinity Bridge. Under the scheme, the banks of the River Tees will be transformed with a series of impressive light installations which will stretch along the waterfront, from the Princess of Wales Bridge to the Millennium Bridge. This permanent colourful illumination is intended to add value to the riverside businesses and restaurants and play an important part in the council's events programme throughout the year.

 

Stockton is one of 12 towns in England to share in £1.2 million of funding, support from retail guru Mary Portas and her own team, as part of the Portas Pilot scheme. Selected from over 370 applications, Stockton's Town Team Consortium, comprising Stockton Council, Tees Music Alliance, Durham University Queen's Campus, town centre retailers, A Way Out and Stockton Heritage in Partnership, will have the opportunity to share in expert advice and guidance from a range of retail experts.

 

The Stockton-Middlesbrough Initiative is a 20-year vision for regenerating the urban core of the Tees Valley, the main focus being the 30 km2 (12 sq mi) area along the banks of the River Tees between the two centres of Stockton and Middlesbrough. The master plan has been drawn up by environmental design specialists Gillespies, the eventual aim being to bring distinctive high-quality city-scale assets to the centre of the Tees Valley, including the town centres of Stockton and Middlesbrough. The project will include the existing developments at North Shore, Stockton and Middlesbrough, with many others over a 15- to 20-year period.

 

In February 2020 it was announced that the Castlegate Shopping Centre is set to be demolished in 2022.

 

The mean weekly income for Stockton residents was £522.70 in 2017. This is below the U.K. mean of £538.70. In some parts of Stockton, most households' income is below the poverty threshold. The mean privately rented house in Stockton cost £525 per month in 2017, compared with a mean of £480 across North East England.

 

The town recorded 125 crimes for every 1,000 people in 2020, higher than similarly sized Darlington and Hartlepool and 29% higher than ceremonial County Durham's 89 out of 1,000 average. The most common crimes in 2020 were "violence and sexual offences"; 4,445 of this type were recorded in 2020. Eight out of 14 crime trends improved compared to 2019. The Eastbourne and Newham Grange Ward recorded the worst crime statistics in the town. The borough came out lower than the four other Tees Valley boroughs in 2017.

 

Stockton comes under Cleveland Police's jurisdiction. There are two police stations in town, town centre main and Newton neighbourhood. Teesside combined courts are located in Middlesbrough.

 

HMP Holme House, in Portrack, is a 1211-capacity Category B prison for male adult prisoners who are either remanded in custody or convicted. It also accommodates a small number of young offenders aged 18–21 years. The prison opened in May 1992 and mainly serves south of county Durham as well as north of North Yorkshire.

 

In the 2021 census, the borough was recorded as having a population of 196,595 with 50.9% being female.

 

For religion, 51.1% identified themselves as Christian, 39.1% having no religion, 3.4% Muslim, 0.4% Hindu, 0.4% Sikh, 0.3% Buddhist, and 0.3% answering 'Other' as well as 5% not answering.

 

For ethnicity, those who identified as White were 92.0%, Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh were 4.6%, Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African were 1.1%, Mixed or 'Multiple ethnic groups' were 1.4%, and the 'Other' ethnic group category recorded 0.8%.

 

For sexuality, those who identified as Straight or Heterosexual were 91.6%, Gay or Lesbian were 1.4%, Bisexual was 0.9%, Pansexual was 0.2%, Asexual was 0.0%, Queer was 0.0%, 'All other sexual orientations' were 0.0% and those who did not answer were 5.9%.

 

Stockton centre also has a number of restaurants, amusement arcades, a bingo hall, a snooker club, and health and fitness facilities.

 

Stockton Calling is an Easter Sunday music festival which has taken place across several of Stockton's music venues annually since 2010. In 2019, it celebrated its 11th year, and was headlined by Sophie and the Giants.

 

The Stockton International Riverside Festival (SIRF), one of Europe's largest open air festivals, has taken over the town once a year since 1988. Spread over a long weekend, for either four or five days, it attracts over 250,000 visitors, and features a variety of acts such as circus, comedy, music, dance and street theatre.

 

The annual riverside firework display happens on the first Sunday closest to 5 November, and is typically attended by up to 100,000 spectators from the wider region. The year's events always conclude with the Stockton Sparkles Christmas festival and associated markets.

 

The ARC Theatre & Arts Centre on Dovecot Street was built in 1999, and comprises a multi-purpose arts centre for cinema, theatre, dance, and music. It has three floors including four venues: a 260-seat theatre, a 100-seat studio theatre, a point/music area accommodating 550 standing, and a 130-seat cinema. It also has exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, a café, and two bars.

 

The Georgian Theatre at Green Dragon Yard is Grade II listed, and is the oldest Georgian theatre in the country. Originally opened in 1766, it fell into disrepair during the 19th century, but later functioned as a sweet factory and then a community building. Between 2007 and 2008, the building was given a full makeover along with the neighbouring Green Dragon Studios, and now serves as an intimate venue for live entertainment with a capacity of 200.

 

The Grade-II listed Globe Theatre built in 1936 is at the north western end of the High Street, the theatre reopened in 2021 following extensive restoration. It was built on the same site as two previous theatres, and has hosted many famous acts such as Buddy Holly, the Platters, Guy Mitchell, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Cilla Black, Carl Perkins, Cliff Richard, the Shadows and Chuck Berry. The Beatles famously played the Globe on Friday 22 November 1963, the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

 

On 12 June 2016, Stockton Council launched The Stockton Flyer, a stylised model of a flying steam locomotive in a plinth on Stockton High Street. The Flyer was unveiled to mark Queen Elizabeth II's official 90th birthday on 12 June 2016. The Stockton Flyer appears from the plinth every day at 1 p.m., and often draws a crowd of people watching the rising and lowering of the structure.

 

Designed by Phil Johnson of Ratho Forge, the wind sculpture Aeolian Motion was constructed at the end of Silver Street in March and April 2001. The design is said to impart a unique identity to the seating area, reflecting the character of Stockton, and creating a sense of place.

 

Public services provided in Stockton include a general hospital, health advice centres, dental and medical surgeries, a library, churches, employment advice centres, youth projects, energy advice centres and an international family centre. A cluster of municipal buildings is concentrated primarily along Church Road. The police headquarters is the only emergency service station located within the centre, next to Stockton Central Library.

 

The University Hospital of North Tees is located in the town and serves south east County Durham. It is part of the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust.

 

Stockton has a number of public parks and nature reserves. Most notable is Ropner Park, a Victorian-style park on the outskirts of the town, near Hartburn village. Opened in 1893 and renovated in 2007, the park has tree-lined avenues approaching an ornate water fountain, surrounded by rockeries and floral displays. Overlooking a lake, a bandstand features live band music on Sunday afternoons in the summer. Seasonal fairs and occasional organised events are staged at the park throughout the year. Close by, there is also the smaller park housing the ruins of the Holy Trinity Church, now called Trinity Green.

 

Further upstream is Preston Park, a 100 acres (40 ha) public park by the River Tees. The park hosts many events each year that attract people from across Teesside and further afield. Preston Hall, once the home of Sir Robert Ropner, is situated within the grounds, and is now a museum. The park also houses 'Butterfly World', an artificial tropical environment housing various species of exotic butterflies and reptiles.

 

Downstream is Portrack Marsh Nature Reserve, a 50 acres (20 ha) nature reserve by the northern bank of the river between the Tees Barrage and the Tees Viaduct near Portrack housing estate. It is the last remaining wetland on the lower Tees. Ownership of the reserve is divided between the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust and Northumbrian Water, but the reserve is managed by the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust. The western and northern parts of the reserve are mature marsh, while there are a series of man–made ponds in the south east.

 

The town's main leisure facility is 'Splash', a large wet and dry facility on Church Road which includes a 25m pool with a wave machine and flumes, a learner pool, a spa pool, a two-storey fitness facility, dry multi-activity spaces, a café and Sportwall & dance facilities. The Castlegate Quay Watersports Centre also offers opportunities for sailing and paddling on the River Tees.

 

Stockton Central Library on Church Road is the largest public library serving the borough of Stockton-on-Tees. Built in 1967, it was fully refurbished in 2011 at a cost of £1.9m. It occupies two floors: the ground floor incorporates Stockton Borough Council's Customer Services Centre, an adult lending library, and a children's library, while the first floor houses the reference library (the central reference department for the borough), a family history suite, a computer suite with free internet access, and the 'Starbooks' café. The library also has conference facilities and an exhibition area.

 

Stockton is a Church of England deanery of the Archdeaconry of Auckland, in the Diocese of Durham. The churches of St Peter, Stockton Parish Church (St Thomas'), and St Paul are in the town. Holy Trinity Church was built as an Anglican church, later became Greek Orthodox, and was then destroyed by fire in 1991. The ruins remain on site.

 

Stockton is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, and is home to the parishes of St Bede, St Cuthbert, English Martyrs and SS Peter and Paul, St Joseph, St Mary, and St Patrick.

 

Stockton also has a sizable Muslim population (6,675), with mosques such as Farooq E Azam Mosque and Islamic Centre serving this community. The Farooq E Azam mosque is especially of note, due to the recent council decision to allow the call to prayer, or Adhan, to be played once at week at an agreed volume, the first mosque in the north-east of England to do so.

 

Stockton Cricket Club was established in 1816, and has been located at the Grangefield Cricket Ground since 1891. The club currently fields three senior teams at weekends in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions of the Dukes North East Premier League.

 

Stockton Football Club existed from 1882 until it folded in 1975. They played at the Victoria Ground which also held greyhound racing (one of two venues in the town to do so along with Belle Vue Park). The club's assets were transferred to Norton Cricket Club, who subsequently founded the Norton & Stockton Ancients Football Club. There are two other football clubs in the town. Stockton Town F.C. play in the Northern Premier League Division One East after consecutive promotions winning the Wearside League in 2016 and Northern League Division 2 in 2017. Meanwhile, Stockton West End currently play in the North Riding Football League Premier Division.

 

Stockton Rugby Club, established in 1873, is the local Rugby Union team. Home games are now played at the Grangefield Ground following a community partnership agreement with Stockton Cricket club and Grangefield Academy in 2015.

 

People born in Stockton include:

Francis Arthur Bainbridge, physiologist

Matthew Bates, footballer

Jamie Bell, actor

Neal Bishop, footballer

C. J. Bolland, electronic music producer in Belgium

Daniel Casey, actor

Lee Cattermole, footballer

Ivy Close, actress

Edward Cooper, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross.

Brass Crosby, Lord Mayor of London

Freddie Dixon, motorcycle and car racing driver

Lesley Duncan, pop singer-songwriter

Maurice Elvey, film director

Charles Foulkes, Canadian Army officer who served in the Second World War and became a four-star general

Jonathan Franks, footballer

James Gaddas, actor

Martin Gray, footballer

Will Hay, comic actor

Frank Hawley, Japanologist (1906–1961).

Richard Anthony Hewson, jazz-funk music producer

Thomas Hornby, cricketer

Peter Howells, cricketer

Robert Icke, director and writer

David Ingman, engineer, Chairman of the British Waterways Board 1987–1993

Heather Ingman, Professor of English, novelist and journalist

Jimmy James, comedian

Richard Kilty, sprinter

Macaulay Langstaff, footballer

Jordan Nobbs, footballer

Geoff Parling, England and British and Irish Lions rugby player

Luke Pearson, cartoonist

Colin Renfrew, archaeologist

Joseph Ritson, literary critic and editor

Franc Roddam, film director/producer

Graham Rowntree, England rugby player

Thomas Sheraton, furniture designer

Michael Short, Professor of Engineering and author

Paul Smith, singer in rock band Maxïmo Park

Peter Smithson, architect

Calvert Spensley, American politician

Bill Steer, co-founder and lead guitarist of extreme metal band Carcass

Jeremy Swift, actor

Bruce Thomas, new wave bass guitar backing musician

Denis Thwaites, footballer murdered in the 2015 Sousse attacks

Stephen Tompkinson, actor

Lee Turnbull, footballer

John Walker, inventor of the friction match

Eric Young, footballer

 

Other notable residents include:

Duncan Bannatyne, entrepreneur, moved to Stockton when he was 30, before he made his fortune.

William Christopher, Hudson's Bay Company captain and explorer

Alan Davey, former civil servant, council administrator and BBC Radio 3 controller

Elizabeth Estensen, actress

Don Heath, footballer, winner of the 1968–69 League Cup

Harold Macmillan, MP for Stockton (1924–29, 1931–45), later Prime Minister (1957–63), invested as Earl of Stockton (1984)

Michael Marks, founder of Marks & Spencer, started his business career in Stockton in 1883.

George Orwell, author, resided for a year (1944–45) in Greystones, near Carlton, a village in the borough.

Bill Rodgers, Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank, MP for the town (1962–83), co-founder of the SDP

Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, film directors, both lived in Stockton during their youth.

Said to have been erected in 1649 by John Budd, who later gave it to his daughter as a wedding present, this house is notable as one of the most distinguished surviving examples of English domestic architecture in America, according to the home’s application in the National Register of Historic Places.

 

The house was then moved from its original location and re-erected at a cost of twenty pounds "Boston Money," according to the application. “At the time of the move, the Old House was relocated on the northern outskirts of the Broadfields, a 240 acre tract of arable land which the local Indians had been cultivating for years. To the north of the house ran the King's Highway, now State Route 25."

 

The house was restored in 1940.

 

According to a 2018 Suffolk Times article, tests of the wood from the home revealed that it might have been constructed closer to 1699, 50 years after it was originally thought to have been built.

  

www.longisland.com/news/10-29-20/history-photos-of-old-ho...

  

This house, which notably commemorates English settlement on Long Island, is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished but least known examples of English domestic architecture in the United States. It was erected in 1649 by John Budd at Southold, some 10 miles northeast of its present site. A decade later, Budd built a more imposing home and gave his original house as a wedding gift to his daughter, Anna, bride of Benjamin Horton, who moved it to its present location and re-erected it. It subsequently passed into the hands of Joseph Wickham, a master tanner, who lived in it until his death, in 1734. Later, in 1784, it was confiscated from Parker Wickham, who had been a Loyalist during the War for Independence, after which its owners in turn were Jared Landon and William Harrison Case. The Case heirs donated it to the Congregational Society of Cutchogue.

 

Present Appearance. The house has two floors and an attic. On the first floor are the kitchen and "hall," and on the second floor are two bedrooms. The great brick chimney, whose top is pilastered, lies to the left of the center of the house. A steep winding stair leads to the second story. The stair from the second floor branches to give access to the attic, which is split in two by the great chimney.

 

The kitchen, on the left of the entrance, features a huge fireplace. The fireplace in the "hall," on the right of the entrance, is the same size. Both fireplaces have been somewhat reduced by the construction of smaller fireplaces inside the originals. The smaller fireplaces were added around the middle of the 18th century, probably when paneling was placed over the original walls.

 

The original random-width wallboards were removed and used on the exterior to replace the original hand-rived oak boards. The exterior was then lathed and plastered. Construction details throughout the house are unusually fine and reflect the work of a master builder. The three-part casement window frames on the north wall of the second floor are especially notable. Traces have also been found of the casement windows that were originally on the first floor.

 

The house was restored in 1940 in connection with the Southampton Old Town Tercentenary Celebration, through the efforts of the Tercentenary Committee, the Case family, and the Independent Congregational Church of Cutchogue. The church purchased the land and the Case family donated the building. Church funds and private contributions made the restoration possible. When the house was restored, the plastered walls and a saltbox roof were removed. The gunstock posts on the second floor and all interior framework were left exposed. Furnishings are of the 17th and 18th century. Among the historic items displayed is the original confiscation deed of 1784. The structure is in very good condition and is open to visitors on a regular schedule. [54]

  

www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/explorers/sitec46.htm

  

According to the results of a 2003 dendrochronology study, the house was built ca. 1699.[4] Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, the owner of the house, commissioned a second dendrochronology study in July 2017 to verify the build date, with the same results.[5][6]

 

Prior to 2017 The Old House was thought to have been built by John Budd on land east of town near a pond that became known as Budd Pond. John Budd's daughter Anna and her husband Benjamin Horton were deeded a house in 1658 as a wedding present. They moved it to a location in the village of Cutchogue. Benjamin's brother John inherited the house and sold it to Joseph Wickham in 1699. These events and transactions are well documented.[7]

 

Post 17th century

Edit

Parker Wickham (February 28, 1727 – May 22, 1785), famous for being a Loyalist politician during the American Revolution and who was banished from the state of New York under dubious circumstances, owned and lived in the house.[3] It was damaged by the Hurricane of 1938 which swept away surrounding trees, leaving it visible from the street and coming to public attention,[6] restored in 1940, and restored again in 1968.[3]

 

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.[2] The house is located on the Cutchogue Village Green, along with the 1840 Old Schoolhouse, the 1704 Wickham Farmhouse, a barn, the Cutchogue New Suffolk Free Library, a 19th-century carriage house, and the Old Burying Ground dating from 1717. The buildings are owned and maintained by the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, which gives guided tours in the summer.

  

"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.

^ Jump up to: a b c "The Old House (Cutchogue)". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. September 18, 2007. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.

^ Jump up to: a b c d Greenwood, Richard (July 14, 1975). National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: The Old House (pdf). National Park Service. and Accompanying 5 photos, exterior, from 1975. (1.53 MB)

^ "New York". Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory. Retrieved May 16, 2022.

^ Wick, Steve (April 12, 2018). "North Fork History Project: When was Cutchogue's Old House built?". The Suffolk Times. Retrieved April 12, 2018.

^ Jump up to: a b Siford, Rachel (June 22, 2017). "Cutchogue's Old House losing distinction as oldest English-style home in NYS". The Suffolk Times. Retrieved April 1, 2018.

^ Hall, Warren (1975). Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold. Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council. ASIN B0006CJTLS.

  

I am writing, not to argue “who came first” to Southold and Southampton, as debated in your article “So, who was really here first?” (Feb. 22), but to challenge the new assumption about Cutchogue’s venerable Old House, a National Historic Landmark, made by Zach Studenroth, director of the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, who was featured in the article. Although I disagree with the current “reinterpreting” he is directing at the Old House that involves replacing longtime antique furnishings from local families with reproductions, I disagree even more strongly with the proposed renaming and redating of this National Historic Landmark based on inconclusive evidence from dendrochronology studies.

 

He now maintains, based on a dendrochronology study, that the Old House was not built in 1649 by John Budd, but in 1699 by Joseph Wickham when he came to Cutchogue 50 years later from Southampton. Mr. Studenroth and the recently hired curator now propose the landmark be renamed and redated the “1699 Joseph Wickham House.” Nor do I agree that some early local history was “little more than cheerleading” as stated in The Suffolk Times’ North Fork History Project article.

 

Mr. Studenroth’s assumption based wholly on dendrochronology is faulty. I believe the local historians, who have written that the Old House, built ca. 1649 in Southold by first settler John Budd, moved to its present site on the Cutchogue Village Green by Benjamin and Anna Budd Horton in 1660, and restored for the tercentenary celebration of Southold Town in 1940, are basically correct.

 

Although I’ve worked with Mr. Studenroth and respect his past work for the council, I believe strongly that he is incorrect in his new assumption about the Old House. How can he totally ignore the 50 years of documented residence of the Budds and Hortons, who lived there from 1649 to 1699, and just sweep them under the proverbial rug?

  

I have re-researched several local documents and histories, especially the transcription of the deed of sale of the property from John Horton (Benjamin’s brother and heir) to Joseph Wickham (1698-’99); “John Budd and Some of His Descendents,” by Lily Wright Budd; and “Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold,” by Warren Hall. Both of the latter books by respected historians confirm the long-accepted history and dates of the Old House. I firmly believe the Old House was not built and first occupied by Joseph Wickham when he came to Cutchogue from Southampton in 1699.

 

Regrettably, Mr. Studenroth is basing his new assumption on a dendrochronology study, first conducted in 2007 when I was chair of the Old House Society, before we merged with the Historical Council. I basically ignored the study for reasons I’ll explain later. A more recent study supposedly was done under Mr. Studenroth’s direction.

 

Dendrochronology in its simplest form is a matter of counting tree rings — one ring, one year — on wood slivers or borings from timbers used in Colonial house framing. But it’s not always that simple. In fact, Dr. Ron Towner, associate professor of dendrochronology at the world-famous Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, states “Only about 40 percent of tree samples are successfully dated by dendrochronology. Natural variations, sudden climate changes, or if a tree is planted near a creek or river, for example, it may get so much water that the rings no longer equate to each year elapsed.”

 

However, in a recent phone conversation with Dr. Towner, he explained that counting rings alone does not tell dendrochronologists what time period the tree is from. To find that out, scientists must focus on the pattern of rings rather than the number of them. I can’t see how a small boring can show a pattern, but a slice of the tree could. The slice would have to have been taken before the timber was installed in the building.

 

Also, in the case of the Old House, there is some speculation that it was built on John Budd’s land near Budd’s Pond in Hashamomuck, where much of the land is near water and marshes, not on his home lot in the village of Southold. If so, the timbers may have gotten so much water that the rings no longer equated to each year elapsed, as Dr. Towner speculated.

  

The Old House, venerated by not only the residents of Cutchogue in particular but the North Fork in general, as well as by visitors and historians from all over the world, must not be incorrectly re-interpreted and re-named based on inconclusive, most likely incorrect, research.

 

Since there is no definite proof for changing the name and date of the Old House, they must not be tampered with. It should keep the honor and distinction of “the oldest English house in the state” built in 1649. I am confident that the trustees of the Historical Council will understand and appreciate my research and will direct Mr. Studenroth not to change the date and name of the Old House, our National Historic

  

suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2018/03/equal-time-theres-mo...

  

In May 1637, a ship called the “Hector” sailed out of London, bound for Boston in England’s newly established American colonies. Aboard this ship was a wealthy British shipping merchant, John Budd, his wife Katherine Browne (1606 – 1674, a woman possibly of royal ancestry), and their children. Together, they were among my earliest ancestors to sail to America.

In August 1637, an exploring party of English settlers sailed out of Boston Harbor, went down the coast several miles, and landed at a place that the Native Americans called “Quinnipiac” (or “Long Water Place”). The explorers liked what they saw and left seven of their men to prepare the area for occupation by Puritan colonizers. On March 30, 1638, a large company of settlers sailed out of Boston for the new site. Among them were the Budds. On April 16, 1638, they landed at the new site to found New Haven Colony. Other ships followed, bringing more settlers. The settlers quickly began their new colony. In late 1638, they purchased the land from the area’s Native Americans. John Budd was assigned lot no. 56. On October 25, 1639, the settlers elected their community government. John Budd was among the men signing a Fundamentalist Agreement formally establishing New Haven Colony.

Most of the first settlers at New Haven were Puritans — a strict religious group that later formed the basis for the Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in the United States. John Budd, however, was a member of the Church of England, which became the Episcopal Church in America. Because he was not Puritan, Budd lived in some tension with his neighbors. At one point, he was fined by the New Haven magistrates for hiding and protecting Quakers, a Christian group that the Puritans opposed and were trying to keep out of New Haven. In September 1640, John Budd left New Haven with his and some other New Haven families on a ship bound for the northeastern edge of Long Island to establish a settlement there, which they named Southold. Once again, Budd was an Anglican adherent amid Puritans set on establishing a new community structured around their specific religious and moral beliefs. Most of the other Southold founders had originally sailed under the leadership of the Puritan cleric Christopher Youngs, first from England to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1637 and then from Salem to New Haven. In New

Haven, Puritan leaders intent on establishing new religious communities in New England persuaded Rev. Youngs to sail across Long Island Sound with his followers to settle land on the island’s North Fork that they had acquired from the island’s Corchaug natives.

John Budd, who was beyond doubt the wealthiest man in the new settlement, quickly established himself as one of the leaders of the new community. Because Southold was included in the United Colonies of New England, its residents were expected to select Deputies to attend the colonies’ General Court in Hartford, Connecticut. Budd was the first deputy appointed to the court by the people of Southold. Budd was also the town’s first authorized officer to train the local home guard, a responsibility which earned him the title of Lieutenant. Budd was apparently so highly respected and successful in this responsibility that, when he made a trip overseas in 1654, colonial records in New Haven recorded that “By reason of Budd’s absence Southold is left destitute of a fitt man to exercise the military company there since Lt. Budd went to England.”

In 1649, Budd built his family a home east of town near a pond which became known as Budd’s Pond. In 1658, he deeded the house to his daughter and son-in-law, Anna and Benjamin Horton, as a wedding gift. They moved the house 10 miles away to the village of Cutchogue.

By some point in the early 1660s, either Budd or his son, John Budd, Jr., had bought a plot of land just west of the Barnabas Horton home plot in Southold as a new home site. The Southold Historical Society’s manual, Guide to Historic Markers, described this house as “probably the most pretentious of the early settler homes.”

Despite his civic leadership, Budd’s tenure in Southold apparently was one of controversy as well. He was a major landholder in Southold. As such, he was legally accountable to the local general court (composed solely of church members) who were required to review and approve or deny any settler’s request to sell his home or land. Budd clearly possessed a strong independent spirit, and in 1657 he sold some of his land without asking “permission.” As a result, he was sued by three other Southold settlers; the final disposition of this case is not clear.

Budd clearly grew restless during his tenure at Southold. As in New Haven, Southold’s general court governed the town in accord with strict Puritan standards, and Budd was still an Anglican. He apparently explored the predominantly Anglican settlements in Virginia, but decided against settling there. Budd’s true desire seems to have been, in essence, to establish his own colony, where he would have been answerable to no one, and he was willing to use his wealth to create this personal domain. In 1661, he decided to leave Long Island and move to an area that was at the time on the very southwestern edge of the Connecticut Colony.

In January 1660, three residents of Greenwich, Connecticut — Peter Disbrow, John Coe, and Thomas Stedwell — negotiated and purchased from the area’s Mohegan natives a tract of land southwest of Greenwich known as Peningo Neck. The land stretched on the west from a stream known as Blind Brook east to Long Island Sound. The sale apparently did not include Manussing Island in the Sound, just off the shore, so in June 1660, the three men purchased this land as well. In May 1661, they purchased additional land on the north edge of Peningo Neck.

Disbrow and the others in his party were more interested in securing title to land than in settling it immediately. This created an opportunity for someone else to take the lead in establishing a new community, and as a

A abandoned centuries-old house found in the woods near Cutchogue in the early 1900s was long thought to be the house built by John Budd and given to his daughter and son-in-law. Known as “The Old House,” it was was listed on the Register of National Historic Sites in 1962 and is still maintained by the Cutchogue -New Suffolk Historical Council. However, two dendrochronology studies done on the house in 2008 and 2017 each confirmed that it was built from trees felled in 1698 and could not possibly have been built until 1699, when Budd’s house and the land it stood on had long passed out of Budd and Horton family ownership.

 

successful and wealthy businessman, John Budd was quick to take advantage of the opportunity. On November 8, 1661, Budd concluded his separate negotiation with a Mohegan chief to buy a large (4,800-acre) piece of land immediately across Blind Brook from the Disbrow company’s landholdings. This land became known as Budd’s Neck. On November 12, 1661, Budd added to his landholdings by purchasing from the area’s natives some islands in the immediate vicinity. In June 1662, Budd then acted with Disbrow, Coe, and Stedwell jointly to purchase yet more land directly north of Budd’s Neck.

One of the first buildings constructed in this new community was Budd’s Mill, at the mouth of Blind Brook. He operated the grist mill, which proved to be very successful with the new inhabitants of Peningo Neck.

Disbrow selected the name of Hastings for his new holdings. He apparently also considered Budd’s lands to be part of the new Hastings town, whose settlement he intended to oversee. Budd obviously had other ideas. He was determined that his personal landholdings would be a separately governed jurisdiction. By the fall of 1664, he had assigned to his lands the name of Rye, perhaps because of his family’s close connections with the town of Rye in his native England. Disbrow regarded this behavior as a threat to the future of “his” colony. For the next several years, Budd and Disbrow battled in court over whose approach was to predominate. In the course of that legal action, it was agreed that the name Rye would be assigned to the entire Peningo Neck settlement area. The more substantial issues, however, were still unresolved in 1669, when John Budd turned over his landholdings in both Southold and Rye to his son, John Budd, Jr., and retired from public life.

Despite his contentiousness with Disbrow and resulting legal conflicts, Budd quickly established himself as a political leader across the entire Hastings/Rye area (again, much as he

had in Southold). Biographer Lily Wright Budd describes his responsibilities:

... John Budd was elected as the first representative when Hastings [formally] submitted to the jurisdiction of Connecticut on 26 January 1662 and he was elected as Hastings’ first Deputy to the General Court in Hartford on 26 March 1663.... At the session of the General Court in Hartford on the 8th of October 1663, “Lnt John Bud” makes his appearance, and “is appointed Commisioner for the Town of Hastings, and is invested with Magistraticall power within the limits of that Town.”

As magistrate, Budd was “commis- sioned to grant warrants” and “to marry persons,” and he had clear authority to arrest “such as are ouer- taken with drinke, swearing, Sabboath breaking, slighting of the ordinances, lying, vagrant persons, or any other that shall offend in any of these.”

As noted above, John Budd retired from public life in 1669. He died in Rye in 1670 and is presumed to have been buried in a private family plot a short distance north of Budd’s Mill.

The Budd family estate in Budd’s Neck was passed down through the generations to John Budd, Jr., then to Joseph Budd, then to his son John Budd

 

TO LEARN MORE

(1696–1757), my great-great-great- great-great-grandfather. In 1745, this latter John Budd sold the land — the bulk of it (over 250 acres) to a local merchant, Peter Jay, who named it “The Locusts.” The estate then became the childhood home to Peter’s son, John (1745–1827) — who was President of the Continental Congress (1778–1779), U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1784– 1789), the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–1795), and Governor of New York (1795–1801). Thus, much of the original Budd family estate in Rye, New York, is now a National Historic Landmark as the Jay Heritage Center.

Baird, Charles W. History of Rye, Westchester County, New York, 1660– 1870. Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1994 reprint.

Bayles, Donald M. Southold’s Founders and Their Home Lots. Southold, NY: Southold Historical Society, 2000.

Budd, Lily Wright. John Budd, 1599- 1670, and Some of His Descendants. Franktown, CO: 1992. Chapter 1, “John Budd and Katherine Browne”; “Katherine’s Legend: The Story of the Brownes and the Fitzalans.”

Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council. “The Old House.” ( www.cutchoguenewsuffolkhistory.org /timeline/the-old-house-2/)

Frost, Josephine C. The Frost Genealogy: Descendants of William Frost of Oyster Bay, New York. New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1912.

Hall, Warren. Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold. Cutchogue, NY: Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, 1975.

Jay Heritage Center. Web page — “Biographical Sketches: Residents and Succession of Ownership of the Jay Estate in Rye” ( www.jaycenter.org/bio.html).

Rymph, Levi Budd. Come In and Sit a Spell! Wichita, KS: 1973. Basic genealogy of the ancestors of Levi Budd Rymph and Jessie Mae Hershey.

Siford, Rachel. “Cutchogue’s Old House Losing Distinction as Oldest English- style Home in NYS.” The Suffolk Times. June 22, 2017 (suffolktimes. timesreview.com/2018/04/north-fork -history-project-cutchogues-old- house-built/)

Southold Historical Society. Guide to Historic Markers: First List of Historic Markers Placed in Southold, Peconic, and Arshamomaque. Southold, NY: Southold Historical Society.

Wick, Steve. “North Fork History Project: When Was Cutchogue’s Old House Built?” The Suffolk Times. April 12, 2018 (suffolktimes. timesreview.com/2018/04/north-fork -history-project-cutchogues-old- house-built/)

  

bradleyrymph.com/genealogy_budd-john.pdf

  

Parker Wickham was born in Southold Town on eastern Long Island, New York on February 28, 1727. One of nine children, he was the son of Joseph Wickham and Abigail Parker. His father was a large landholder and area native who lived from 1701 to 1749, serving as a justice, town assessor, and commissioner of roads. Parker's grandfather, another Joseph Wickham, was a well-to-do master tanner who had moved from Connecticut to Southampton, Long Island before finally settling in the village of Cutchogue in Southold Town in 1699. Parker's great grandfather Thomas Wickham, a Puritan settler, emigrated to Wethersfield, Connecticut in about 1648 from England. One of Parker's brothers, Daniel Hull, was a New York City merchant, while his brother John was an Anglican minister. His sister Abigail was married to Rev. Thomas Paine, a son of Ruth Adams and a third cousin of President John Adams. Parker had a distinguished cousin in William Wickham, who belonged to an elite society called the Moot, of which Patriot leader John Jay was also a member. A Yale '53 graduate, William worked as an attorney in New York City and Orange County, where his son, George Duncan Wickham, later became a prominent businessman. Like Parker, William was a Loyalist during the American Revolution, but he emerged unscathed because he did not take an active role. His associate John Jay, who became President of the Continental Congress and first Chief Justice of the United States, was active after the war in working to repeal repressive anti-Loyalist laws that affected the Wickhams. Parker had another notable family member in Noyes Wickham, a second cousin who lived in Mattituck, a village about three miles from Parker's home that was also part of the Town of Southold. After the American Revolution, Noyes moved to Ridgebury in Orange County, New York, where he owned a 1,000 acre farm and was the head of a very large family with many descendants, as profiled in the book The Descendants of Noyes Wickham, Senior of Ridgebury, Orange Co., NY by Evelyn Wornham Wickham. Notable kin on Parker's mother's side includes Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States, who was a descendant of Parker's great grandparents Deliverance King and John Tuthill.

Parker resided in what was by then the ancestral home, a famous structure today known as the Old House (see picture), which is currently part of a museum complex on the village green of Cutchogue. Open to the public during the summer, it is considered one of the finest American examples of domestic 17th century English architecture, and was a mansion in its day when it was built in 1649 (see historic marker). One of the oldest houses in New York State, it had been constructed by prosperous shipping merchant John Budd, great grandson of the 16th Earl of Warwick, and given to his daughter Anna and son-in-law Benjamin Horton as a wedding present. The house was originally erected in the village of Southold, but in June of 1660 it was moved six miles to Cutchogue, then a wilderness area with no European settlers nearer than two days' journey to the west. The Hortons had no children, so Parker's grandfather purchased the house in 1699 and in 1749 it was inherited by Parker. As detailed below, the house was confiscated at the end of the American Revolution, and auctioned off in 1784 to Parker's nemesis Jared Landon, who because of Parker's efforts, had previously been imprisoned for guiding Patriot raids against Long Islanders. However, the Wickham family regained possession of the property in 1867, when it was purchased from Landon's grandnephew by William Harrison Case and his wife Hannah "Nancy" Wickham, Parker's great-granddaughter. They were the last family to live in the house, and by the early 1900's, the house was showing its age and became a storage facility for farm machinery. Eventually, its great historical value was recognized, and it was acquired from the Case family by the Independent Congregational Society of Cutchogue in 1939. With the help of many groups, it was restored and dedicated as part of the Tercentenary Celebration of Southold Town in 1940, became a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October, 1966. In 1999, the 350th anniversary of the construction of the Old House was celebrated, with descendants from the Budd, Horton, Wickham, Landon and Case families attending. The rectangular house, which features clapboard siding and a spectacular English-style chimney, measures 20 x 40 feet, and has two floors and an attic, but no cellar. The first floor contains a kitchen and parlor, each with large fireplaces, while the second floor contains two bedrooms. Of utmost significance are the three-part casement window frames on the north wall of the second floor, considered the most outstanding examples of this architecture in the country (see picture).

 

Parker's father died in only his 47th year, so at age 22, Parker inherited a sizable amount of property including 590 acres of farmland in Cutchogue, 900 acres of additional property in nearby Riverhead, and the storied 445 acre Robins Island, situated in the center of Long Island's Peconic Bay. Parker's grandfather Joseph Wickham had purchased the Cutchogue property in 1699 and Robins Island in 1715. The Riverhead property had been given to Parker's parents in 1727 by his maternal grandfather John Parker. As the eldest son, Parker received all of the ancestral landholdings because his family believed in the English aristocratic concept of primogeniture. On December 14, 1752, Parker married Mary Goldsmith and they eventually had six children: Joseph Parker, John, Thomas, Parnel, Hellen and Sarah. Parker had already begun a slow but relentless climb in local area politics, first being elected to the position of Fence Viewer and Prisor of Damage in 1751, responsible for establishing property boundaries. In the years 1754 and 1755, he was elected Overseer of the Poor, charged with providing for the area's paupers. He was appointed justice for the County of Suffolk in 1763. After being elected town assessor in 1765 and 1766, he was elected town supervisor of Southold Town for the first time in 1767, the highest post of the local government, and held the position for an impressive nine one-year terms. At the time, the Town of Southold included what is today the Town of Riverhead, so Parker oversaw an area stretching approximately 35 miles along the north-east coast of Long Island, a district of about 121 square miles of land. In his capacity as a public servant, Parker was active in working to improve the living conditions of Long Island's few remaining Native Americans. Working with a legal representative of New York's colonial governor, he took statements from local citizens about Indian properties and the documentation bearing his signature still survives. Parker was also commissioned a major in the local militia, after he and seven other townsmen petitioned the lieutenant governor of New York to form themselves into "a compleat organized company of Troopers" for the Town of Southold.

 

Just 19 days before the start of the American Revolution, Parker left elected office for two crucial years, from April 1775 to March 1777, although it was clear he at least tacitly supported the Loyalist cause, as did many other family members, including his nephew John Wickham, the prominent Federalist, who enlisted in a Loyalist regiment. In August of 1776, Washington was routed by the British in the Battle of Long Island, so the Town of Southold came under firm British control. Many die-hard Patriots moved to Connecticut, which was used as a staging ground to launch raids into Long Island. While some of these raids were directed against British military posts, often times the raiders would pillage the farms of suspected Loyalists and even kidnap the owners. This caused economic hardship for the affected families and created an atmosphere of public fear. In April of 1777, Parker came out of political retirement and was elected to his ninth term as town supervisor, during a time when British military fortunes were at their peak, shortly before the crushing British defeat in upstate New York at Saratoga in October of that year, an event which proved to be the turning point of the war. With a clear mandate to improve public security and proclaiming that "I will not raise my hand against my king," Parker, in his role as an elected government official, denounced those he suspected of guiding the raids against Long Islanders, causing some to be jailed and earning him considerable enmity from certain neighbors, especially the Landons, a politically active family committed to the Patriot cause who had publicly quarreled with Parker before. However, Southold at the time had a majority of Loyalist citizens and Parker enjoyed wide, though hardly universal, support in his efforts to protect citizens from what he saw to be a fringe minority breaking the law. But on December 13, 1777, a Patriot force from Connecticut raided Southold and kidnapped Parker, who was still serving out his term as town supervisor. He was taken back to Connecticut, where he has held captive in a house under armed guard. When Washington learned of the raid, which included additional objectives besides Parker's abduction, he was quick to express his concerns that these operations did more harm than good, writing to a subordinate that he has "ever been averse to these small excursions, especially when they divert our attention from more material Objects."

 

Parker was paroled later in the war, so he returned to Long Island, which remained under British control, but on October 22, 1779, New York's legislature passed a bill of attainder which named Parker as one of 59 English sympathizers (and one of three in Suffolk County), stripping him of his property and banishing him from the state. Bills of attainder were outlawed by Article I of the Constitution of the United States in 1789, but previous to that time they were frequently used by lawmakers to destroy the careers of political rivals by declaring them guilty of some crime, but without any burden of proof. With Long Island still under British control, Parker had little to fear of being attainted, but after the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781, it was clear what the future held. Meanwhile, Parker's wife Mary died on April 4, 1783 at age 49 and was buried in Cutchogue. After the British evacuation of eastern Long Island on November 22, 1783, New York State was finally able to enforce its bill and Parker's property was appraised and sold at auction in the late summer of 1784 by the commissioners of forfeiture. Political opponent Jared Landon moved into Parker's home, while Robins Island, after being purchased at auction by two of Washington's top spies, went to Ezra L'Hommedieu, a Southold native who had prepared the confiscation bill while in the state assembly. Parker's estate in Riverhead was turned into the downtown district of that growing village. An ailing Parker had already been forced to move to New London County, Connecticut, due to the banishment provision of the act of attainder, which reads: "Persons herein before particularly named, shall be, and hereby are declared to be forever banished from this State; and each and every of them, who shall at any time Time hereafter be found in any Part of this State, shall be, and are hereby adjudged and declared guilty of Felony, and shall suffer Death as in Cases of Felony, without Benefit of Clergy." Broken by the experience, Parker soon died in Connecticut on May 22, 1785 and was buried there in Waterford (see gravestone). Just before his death, he wrote a family member that "I have acted consistently and consciously throughout my whole conduct, with a firm belief there is a future existence, and defy the state to produce one instance wherein I have acted rigidly, defrauded, or abused one member of it, although it was in my power." His son Joseph, who had already sailed to Antigua to engage in trade, was clearly embittered by these events, writing from Dublin in October of 1790 that "I never more expect to see my Native Country. In short the suffering of our family have been so Great in it that I don't want to see it. I am a Single Man and the World is before me." But a year later he returned to Cutchogue and eventually purchased a farm there.

 

Ironically, the timing of Parker's death just after the close of the American Revolution helped enable the Wickham family to remain on Long Island, rather than moving to Nova Scotia or England, since only Parker had been named as a Loyalist. Furthermore, the British government agreed in December of 1789 to partially compensate Parker's son Joseph for the loss of property, paying him 2,800 pounds sterling, a modest fortune that was about half of his total losses. Before his death in 1785, Parker considered seeking additional relief from the State of New York, but decided it was unethical, writing: "As application is already made for redress of grievances to another quarter, I think it scandalous and hypocritical to apply for redress of grievances to two opposite parties for the same thing." Financially aided by the payment from the British government, members of the Wickham family, such as Parker's great-grandson William Wickham, a four-term district attorney, continued to be prominent in the Cutchogue area, somewhat to the surprise of Parker's political enemies. (Other descendants such as healthcare pioneer William Hull Wickham, farmer James Parker Wickham and banker spouse Matilda Briggs Wickham would also prosper in New York State.) Yet the confiscation of Parker's property has remained controversial over the centuries for a number of reasons, including that it occurred in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution. In addition, Parker's guilt was determined by a legislature rather than a court and there was no chance to appeal. No evidence or witnesses were ever presented and Parker's accusers were never identified. While at least one historian has chosen to label Parker as "notorious," this is an inappropriate characterization of a man who spent almost his entire career helping to improve the lot of fellow citizens and who, more than anything else, was simply opposed to violence against government officials. While many of those targeted by the attainder bill were royal appointees who were later shunned by society, Parker continued to command considerable local respect because he was a fourth-generation American who had achieved his positions by winning open elections. In recent years, Parker's iconic stature has grown, with a book about Parker's career and legacy, The Wickham Claim by legal scholar Dwight Holbrook, being published in 1984 which questions Parker's "guilt" and postulates that Parker was the victim of a machiavellian scheme hatched by covetous political rivals. Parker will always remain a complicated figure: a proper, ethical and democratic man advocating change through peaceful means who believed in a fundamentally undemocratic system, who was then persecuted for those beliefs and deprived of his civil liberties by those professing to be bringing liberty to all.

 

Not all of Parker's family shared his political views. His daughter Parnel was regarded as a staunch Patriot and married James Reeve, who served in the Third Regiment of Minute Men in Suffolk County. Perhaps more seriously, Parker's brother Thomas, a Yale graduate and formidable political figure in his own right, took an active role in the conflict on behalf of the Patriots. Prior to the American defeat at the Battle of Long Island, he was in charge of nearby Gardiners Island and the stock there, and served in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Provincial Congresses. Relocating to the safety of Stonington, Connecticut in September 1776, he was appointed Auditor of Refugees’ Claims, and became the captain of a privateer sloop called the Hampton Packet, which carried eight guns and a crew of thirty. During one raid, he seized Parker's cattle that were grazing on Robins Island. On another occasion, he captured the Peggy, a 50-ton schooner carrying flax-seed and oysters, off Fire Island Inlet. In his most audacious operation, he helped to lead a surprise boat attack on the Long Island port of Sag Harbor, which was guarded by Hessian troops. The other vessels were driven ashore, leading to the capture of their crews, but Thomas bravely succeeded in recapturing the lost vessels and rescuing all but one of the prisoners. Thomas was also appointed to a committee that advised General Washington on management of military supplies on Long Island and Staten Island. As a trophy, he kept a weight at his front gate made from grape shot fired by the British during their attack on Stonington. After the American Revolution, he served as a member of the New York Assembly in 1791.

 

In 1989, several of Parker's descendants filed a widely publicized claim in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, arguing that Robins Island, (see picture), then under the threat of development, was unlawfully seized from Parker and that it should be returned to his heirs, who remain numerous on Long Island. Considered one of the most valuable undeveloped islands in the United States, Robins Island occupies a unique place in eastern Long Island folklore, with those competing to own it over the years including Prince Moulay Abdullah of Morocco and John Jacob Astor, whose plans were cut short when he perished aboard the Titanic. Prior to 1850, Robins Island was mainly used for farming, cattle grazing and lumbering, as well as brick making, but in later years it was turned into a hunting preserve for wealthy sportsmen. But by the 1970's, rising property taxes made the shoots uneconomical and plans were made to build a few hundred houses there. To combat this, a non-profit corporation called Robins Island Preservation Fund, dedicated to the preservation of Robins Island in its natural state, was established as successor-in-interest to Parker. The group claimed that New York's Act of Attainder, under which the island was confiscated and sold, was invalid because New York had no sovereignty over Robins Island at the time, which was then under British control. They further argued that by the time New York did achieve sovereignty over Robins Island, the Treaty of Peace of 1783 between Great Britain and the United States had already been enacted, which prohibited future confiscations of British and Loyalist property. The group alternatively argued that the seizure was illegal because Parker had inherited the property as an estate tail, a form of ownership no longer allowed in the United States which was used by wealthy British settlers to keep ancestral lands in one family by having property without exception pass to the heirs. This would mean that even if Parker's property loss was lawful, his son Joseph would continue to maintain a future interest. Although he married twice, Joseph had no children and made no mention of Robins Island in his will, so presumably descendants of his siblings inherited any ownership interest. Because of the enormous lapse of time and the different legal standards of the day, the claim was found to be without merit, even though such a confiscation would be illegal today. However, the owner of Robins Island at the time of the trial, Southold Development Corporation, was battered by the protracted legal struggle and abandoned its plans to develop the island after collapsing into bankruptcy. Under new ownership, most of the island has since been reserved for open space conservation in perpetuity under an easement to The Nature Conservancy.

 

freepages.rootsweb.com/~jwickham/genealogy/parker.htm

WEEK 51 – Barnes & Noble Ole Miss Relocation Revisited (I)

 

Hope y’all got all that, haha! And as if that wasn’t enough backstory, I probably should fill you in quickly on the mall situation again, too. The Oxford Mall used to be a two-anchor deal, with JCPenney and Wal-Mart… except when Wal-Mart built a new Supercenter down the road, well, that was the beginning of the end for the mall. Some plans to renovate it were thrown out there, and in an attempt to bring those to life the middle of the mall was demolished and turned into a new Malco Theatre, but ultimately the mall stayed in a stasis and Ole Miss purchased the property to use for extra square footage and – most importantly – parking. Currently, only the right half of the mall has been converted into offshoot campus space, but with JCPenney's departure in July 2017, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the left half of the mall is touched, too.

 

The only retail space that Ole Miss has left intact at the mall – now christened the “Jackson Avenue Center” – is this space at the very front of the right-side mall entry corridor, originally home to Ole South Cafeteria and, more notably, Campus Book Mart, which opened here in 1995 and lasted until 2015, when it relocated to a separate location down the street. Likely, CBM’s relocation was a result of landlord Ole Miss kicking them out, so that they could put their own university bookstore in this space during the Student Union remodel. But that’s just conjecture.

 

(c) 2019 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

When I decided to divide my singular Monster High Flickr album, I knew it would be an opportunity to write up more of these "My Story" posts. I relocated all the major characters into their own albums for ease of identification. Colleen and I decided to divvy up the "My Story" write ups. That way, the essays would be less redundant since they'd be written from two different perspectives (even if we were telling essentially the same stories). Some of the characters spoke to us individually. Clawdeen was one that I immediately knew I would be responsible for writing about. I have so much to say about her, so it only seemed fair that I write this. To summarize how I've always felt about Clawdeen: she's one of the most striking Monster High characters. I've always felt she was breathtaking, despite her monster features. Granted, the earlier characters were more toned down than some of the later ones. But even compared to the other original six, Clawdeen and Cleo were relatively simple and attractive. I can't deny that I've almost always pegged Clawdeen as the best looking from a Monster High line. Her only rival tends to be Cleo...much to Clawdeen's benefit, Cleo isn't included in as many sets. It's for this reason that Clawdeen quickly became one of my favorite Monster High dolls to collect...she was always impossible to say "no" to!

 

Strangely, my very first Clawdeen is much more boyish and under styled than she typically is. I was dead set on getting Dead Tired Clawdeen (pun intended). The 2012 dated wave was brand new in stores, when I began collecting in March of 2013. I was shocked to find the entire Dead Tired trio stocked at the Family Dollar. I didn't even realize that this store carried name brand toys. As a kid, the Family Dollar was notorious for having a piddly toy section with only a few clone dolls. Even better, the dolls were buy one get one 50% off. Of course, I bought ALL three of the gals...so only one was discounted. Clawdeen was the apple of my eye. Although I didn't own a single other Clawdeen at that present time, I knew she was special. I had spent some time admiring dolls online. This Clawdeen stood out, what with her natural face, blunt bangs, and sporty pajamas. She's the kind of doll that would have appealed to my child self. Her ensemble could work on childhood favorites, like Generation Girl Tori, if it was not paw print themed and a larger scale. In those early days, I intended to keep my Monster High collection modest in size. Of course, my humble collection didn't stay small for long. The problem was, I didn't anticipate how addictive these little beasties could be!

 

Early on, I had my sights set on purchasing more Clawdeen Wolf dolls. I cannot recall anymore who was my second. I ended up on a Monster High binge until late summer that year...which meant I was buying dolls in quite rapid succession. I do recall with clarity that Werewolf Sister Pack Clawdeen was one of the earliest members of my family. Even though the pack wasn't newly released, I realized that Target still had the gals in stock. This seemed miraculous to me at the time, given that there was so much Monster High scalping going on. By this I mean that people were buying desirable sets and dolls in bulk, and then selling them on sites like eBay for absurd markups. I took note that many collectors were ONLY interested in Werewolf Sister Pack Howleen, since this was her first appearance. Don't get me wrong, Howleen is indeed a magnificent creature. She sports orange curly hair....a similar color to what I use on myself (so of course we are kindred spirits as Anne of Green Gables would say). But there was something modestly classy and appealing about Clawdeen. Strangely, I think part of me was MORE excited about getting her in the set than Howleen. Colleen made a phone call to Target and had the employees set aside a pack for us. I was afraid some internet reseller would snag all the ones in stock before we could venture out to the store. This was the first of several occasions Colleen had to make Monster High related phone calls. Once at home, with the freshly procured pack, I fell even more in love with Clawdeen. To this day, she's one of my top five favorites.

 

A few other names that come to mind when discussing my early Monster High days are 13 Wishes, Skull Shores, Little Dead Riding Wolf, Skulltimate Roller Maze, and Power Ghouls. I was sorely tempted to purchase 13 Wishes Clawdeen when my local Walmart first put the dolls out. I probably would have cracked and bought at least Clawdeen that day, if the dolls hadn't been put out too early. Their bar codes wouldn't even register in the system! I ended up finding her on sale later on, at Kmart. I still think she's the best looking from the set...a beauty that is difficult to rival. As for Little Dead Riding Wolf, she was yet another dolly I acquired on sale. I admit she was overshadowed that night at Target by Sea Stunnerz Cloe and Snow Bite Draculaura. Standing on her own though, Little Dead is magnificent. Her quality and details truly blew me away. I recall how much Colleen and I fawned over this Clawdeen when we first got her home (to this day, she still receives her fair share of compliments). Power Ghouls Clawdeen caught my eye at a Target too...but I purchased her in a frenzy one night after we got paid for some scrap metal that was in the yard. I was hoping to score Skulltimate Roller Maze Clawdeen that evening, but she proved to be hard to find. Luckily, I finally got my hands on her at the local flea market in 2016! Power Ghouls spoke to me in that moment....maybe it was her Wonder Woman inspired ensemble, that green streaked hair, and her heavy makeup. I can never quite put my finger on why I'm so keen for her, but she's still a classic in my collection. I admit I mostly wanted the Skull Shores Gift Set FOR Clawdeen. Unlike some of the other ghouls, she was an exclusive to the set...meaning she was not available separately. Since I'd already bought Draculaura and Ghoulia on their own, I didn't think I'd ever be able to acquire the gift set. But I found it for a bargain at Target one afternoon by chance. It was so inexpensive that I could justify the purchase...even with the duplicated dolls. To be honest, Clawdeen is such a stunning specimen that on her own she warranted the retail price of the entire set (not that I would have spent it on her alone). She was also lucky that I always found Skull Shores Cleo to be a little odd looking...that hairdo didn't do her any favors.

 

It wasn't just Skull Shores Gift Set Clawdeen that prompted me to splurge on an entire pack just for her. I was supposed to be curbing my Monster High appetite at the end of the summer of 2013. Colleen and I were grocery shopping at Walmart one afternoon when we popped into the toy section. It was on the lowest shelf of the toy aisle that I spotted a brand new pack--the Ghouls' Night Out one! All four dolls were dazzling, and exclusive to the set (with the exception of Rochelle, who was my favorite separately sold gal). Okay, so the entire quad of dolls was tempting, not just Clawdeen. But even if she'd been lumped in with three other, less appealing ladies, I'd still have made an excuse to buy the four pack just for her. Likewise, I most anticipated the re-release of "1st Edition" Draculaura in 2013. However, Clawdeen found her way into the virtual shopping cart on Walmart's website (as did Frankie). Clawdeen impressed me so much in person...I had never paid much mind to her previously. That same fall in 2013, I stumbled upon my first secondhand Clawdeen. The Gloom Beach lady was part of the infamous "Lagoona Bin" we discovered at the local flea market for $10. Most of the dolls were moldy and bug infested (we saved them though, no worries). However, the three Monster High dolls fared a bit better. Clawdeen was shockingly mostly complete. If it weren't for her loose hips and gluey hair, she could have passed off for being brand new! I desired Music Festival Clawdeen since she debuted. It was almost impossible to return the two I accidentally got in the mail when I placed an order from Kmart. I recall that Skulltimate Roller Maze Clawdeen was supposed to be in that order. However, Kmart had NONE of the dolls in stock, and instead sent me a box of random Monster High dolls. In the end, I made the right choice returning them all, because I found Music Festival Clawdeen at Barnes and Noble for 50% that following summer. Her makeup is still some of the most distinctive and jazzy in my entire collection. Even if it was a Clawdeen doll I had not been interested in prior, I still couldn't resist getting her on some sort of sale. That's how I ended up with Scaris, Sweet 1600, and Shriek-Wrecked. Although I can't deny that I had started falling in love with Scaris when I was working on making myself a Monster High guide. I quite literally can talk myself into ANY doll in just ten minutes.

 

My Clawdeen collection didn't just grow via in store purchases. I feel very grateful to have had many opportunities to acquire her secondhand over the years. Frights, Camera, Action was one of my earliest in the wild finds. I purchased her at the flea market from the same elderly couple that many of my monsters originated from over the years. I was stunned by her impeccable condition. I was left wondering why I had not wanted this lady when she was in stores. The local Salvation Army proved to be fruitful when it came to Clawdeen. I rescued Ghouls Rule Clawdeen at the start of 2017 from there. She was in horrible condition--with oozing glue and a missing arm. Fortunately, I had just purchased some extra Monster High parts, so I could afford to take her on. She is still incomplete to this day, but I can't imagine my family without her. Ironically, she's one of the few Clawdeen dolls Colleen couldn't work into this photo, but we do love her! "Emoji" and Freaky Field Trip Clawdeen were also rescued from the same Salvation Army (which sadly closed in 2020). Granted, "Emoji" Claween hardly looked played with compared to the nude Freaky Field Trip gal. I did not recognize Freaky Field Trip when we first met. But I refused to leave her behind at the store, completely stark naked, when she was so inexpensive. She's a gorgeous gal...she cleaned up wonderfully and models my Clawdeen fashion pack flawlessly. There was a funny mix up with Coffin Bean and Skull Shores Clawdeen around the same time. Skull Shores was sporting Coffin Bean Clawdeen's dress. Since the Salvation Army was chaotic that day, I stupidly purchased the Skull Shores duplicate. At home, I realized who this doll was (it was so obvious I don't know how I made that mistake). Ironically, two weeks later Coffin Bean Clawdeen the doll popped up at the same store! I'm guessing she was hidden somewhere in the toy section when I initially purchased the dupe, or she was not put out yet. Either way, it was a miraculous reunion...especially appreciated since I coveted Coffin Bean Clawdeen for years. Last but not least, there is my 2015 "Basic" doll. She's the most recent Clawdeen addition to my collection. She was also one of the best dolls from the "L.O.L. Flea Market Surprise Lot" of 2021. She hails from the crossover era of Monster High--when Mattel was just beginning to put out basic dolls with cheapened details and less articulation. I love how she's a weird combination of the two eras--her face is so classic Clawdeen but everything else about her design screams revamped!

 

Writing this post and admiring the photo my sister set up above it makes me crave MORE Clawdeen dolls. I'm reminded of just how gorgeous she is...whether we are talking about an old school Clawdeen or one of the revamped gals. It really doesn't matter to me. I don't think there is such a thing as an ugly Clawdeen...at least, I have yet to see one. She can rock more exaggerated makeup and hairstyles, but also pull off being plain Jane. It's no wonder my Clawdeen collection expanded so quickly...and why I could always justify forking over the dough for her. Of course, there are still plenty of iconic Clawdeen dolls who I'd love to own someday. But I'm grateful that some of my formerly most wanted gals are part of my collection. Believe it or not, Skulltimate Roller Maze was one of my top five most coveted Monster High dolls for several years (surprising given that she was a budget doll from a not so popular line). I'm also equally as obsessed with Clawdeen's family...Clawd, Howleen, and Clawdia are so charming. Although they can't match Clawdeen's beauty. The first decade of my Clawdeen story has been written, but I'm excited to see who the next ten years will bring!