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The Hagia Sophia, whose name means “holy wisdom,” is a domed monument originally built as a cathedral in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the sixth century A.D.
It contains two floors centered on a giant nave that has a great dome ceiling, along with smaller domes, towering above.
“Hagia Sophia’s dimensions are formidable for any structure not built of steel,” writes Helen Gardner and Fred Kleiner in their book "Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History." “In plan it is about 270 feet [82 meters] long and 240 feet [73 meters] wide. The dome is 108 feet [33 meters] in diameter and its crown rises some 180 feet [55 meters] above the pavement.”
Building the Hagia Sophia
To build his cathedral, Justinian turned to two men named Anthemius and Isidore the Elder.
“Contemporary writers do not refer to Anthemius and Isidore as architects, though the term was common in the sixth century, but as mechanikoi or mechanopoioi,” writes Indiana University professor W. Eugene Kleinbauer in a section of the book "Hagia Sophia" (Scala Publishers, 2004). “These terms denote a very small number of practitioners of the arts of design, whether of buildings or of machines or other works ...”
They built the Hagia Sophia in great haste, finishing it in less than six years. To put this in comparison it took nearly a century for medieval builders to construct the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.
This short construction period appears to have led to problems. Ancient sources, such as the writer Procopios, write that the builders had problems with the dome roof, the structure almost collapsing during construction. The dome used a system of piers to channel its weight.
“The piers on top of which the structure was being built, unable to bear the mass that was pressing down on them, somehow or other suddenly started to break away and seemed to be on the point of collapsing...” writes Procopios (translation republished on Columbia University’s website).
Eventually Anthemius and Isidore did get the domed roof to stand and it was a magnificent sight indeed. “It seems not to be founded on solid masonry, but to be suspended from heaven by that golden chain and so cover the space,” wrote Procopios.
Unfortunately this roof did not stand. It collapsed about two decades later and it fell to a man named Isidore the Younger to build a new domed roof. It has lasted, with some repairs, nearly 1,400 years, down to the present day.
“The dome rests not on a drum but on pendentives, spherical triangles that arise from four huge piers that carry the weight of the cupola. The pendentives made it possible to place the dome over a square compartment,” writes researcher Victoria Hammond, who describes the structure of the surviving Hagia Sophia dome, in a chapter of the book "Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture" (Springer, 2005).
Hagia SophiaSunlight coming in through the windows of the Hagia Sophia "seemed to dissolve the solidity of the walls and created an ambience of ineffable mystery," wrote one author.
Credit: Yulia Gursoy | ShutterstockView full size image
Beneath the dome are 40 windows with sunlight coming through. “The sunlight emanating from the windows surrounding its lofty cupola, suffusing the interior and irradiating its gold mosaics, seemed to dissolve the solidity of the walls and created an ambience of ineffable mystery,” she writes. “On the completion of Hagia Sophia, Justinian is said to have remarked, ‘Solomon, I have outdone thee’.”
Imperial seating
Modern-day visitors will note that the Hagia Sophia has two levels, the ground floor and a gallery above. The presence of the two levels may mean that people were organized according to gender and class when services were held at the cathedral.
In Byzantine churches “galleries seem to have been used as a means of segregation of genders and of social classes,” writes Vasileios Marinis in a chapter of the book "The Byzantine World" (Routledge, 2010). “In Hagia Sophia a part of the gallery was used as an imperial lodge, from which the empress and occasionally the emperor attended the services.”
This lodge wasn’t the only benefit the emperor got. Antony White writes in another chapter of the 2004 "Hagia Sophia" book that to enter the cathedral’s nave from the narthex there are nine doorways. “The central or Imperial Door was reserved for the use of the emperor and his attendants, and provides the most perfect approach to the interior of the church.”
Decorations and iconoclasm
The decorations within the Hagia Sophia at the time of construction were probably very simple, images of crosses for instances. Over time this changed to include a variety of ornate mosaics.
“There are a number of mosaics that have been added over the centuries, imperial portraits, images of the imperial family, images of Christ and different emperors, those have been added since Justinian’s day,” said Goodson in the documentary.
During the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., there was a period of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire that resulted in some of the mosaics being destroyed.
“The controversy spanned roughly a century, during the years 726–87 and 815–43. In these decades, imperial legislation barred the production and use of figural images; simultaneously, the cross was promoted as the most acceptable decorative form for Byzantine churches,” writes Sarah Brooks, of James Madison University, in a Metropolitan Museum of Art article.
Hagia Sophia mosaicPin It The Apse Mosaic in the Hagia Sophia shows the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. It is 13 feet tall.
Credit: Artur Bogacki | ShutterstockView full size image
“Fear that the viewer misdirected his/her veneration toward the image rather than to the holy person represented in the image lay at the heart of this controversy.”
At the end of this period decoration of the interior of Hagia Sophia resumed, each emperor adding their own images. One of the most well-known mosaics is located on the apse of the church showing a 13-foot-tall (4 meters) Virgin Mary with Jesus as a child. Dedicated on March 29, 867, it is located 30 meters (almost 100 feet) above the church floor, notes University of Sussex professor Liz James in a 2004 article published in the journal Art History.
Conversion to mosque
Another chapter in the Hagia Sophia’s life began in 1453. In that year the Byzantine Empire ended, with Constantinople falling to the armies of Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
The Byzantine Empire had been in decline for centuries and by 1453 the Hagia Sophia had fallen into disrepair, notes researcher Elisabeth Piltz in a 2005 British Archaeological Reports series book. Nevertheless, the Christian cathedral made a strong impression on the new Ottoman rulers and they decided to convert it into a mosque.
“What a dome, that vies in rank with the nine spheres of heaven! In this work a perfect master has displayed the whole of the architectural science,” wrote Ottoman historian Tursun Beg during the 15th century (translation from Piltz’s book).
Outside the church, four minarets would eventually be added, Kleiner writes (in a 2010 edition of his book) that these “four slender pencil-shaped minarets” are more than 200 feet (60 meters) tall and are “among the tallest ever constructed.”
Changes occurred on the inside as well. Piltz writes that “after the Ottoman conquest the mosaics were hidden under yellow paint with the exception of the Theotokos [Virgin Mary with child] in the apse.” In addition “Monograms of the four caliphs were put on the pillars flanking the apse and the entrance of the nave.”
The style of the Hagia Sophia, in particular its dome, would go on to influence Ottoman architecture, most notably in the development of the Blue Mosque, built in Istanbul during the 17th century. [Related Video: Enormous Roman Mosaic Unearthed in Turkey]
Present-day museum
In 1934, the government of Turkey secularized the Hagia Sophia and turned it into a museum. The Turkish Council of Ministers stated that due “to its historical significance, the conversion of the (Hagia Sophia) mosque, a unique architectural monument of art located in Istanbul, into a museum will please the entire Eastern world and its conversion to a museum will cause humanity to gain a new institution of knowledge.” [From Robert Nelson, "Hagia Sophia: 1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument," University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Research, repair and restoration work continues to this day and the Hagia Sophia is now an important site for tourism in Istanbul. It is a place that has been part of the cultural fabric of the city in both ancient and modern times. dulides
(2/3) #Turkey’s escalating, flagrant violation of its international obligations is manifested in its decision to alter the designation of #HagiaSophia, a world heritage site that is a universal symbol of the Orthodox faith.
Title page of The Solidity of True Religion by Rev. C. J. Vaughan 1874.
Vaughan's sermons during the General Election of 1874.
Published by Henry King, London. Brown and gilt cloth boards, 120 +35 pages 18.5cm x 12cm.
Special thanks to JohnnyG1955 for sharing the below info
www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyg1955/sets/72157604152348131/...
The parish of the Holy Rosary is the seventh oldest mission in the City of Leeds, with the first Church and School of the Holy Rosary built in Barrack Street in 1886 as a Chapel-of-Ease to St Anne’s Cathedral.
As the area from Sheepscar up to Moortown was developed, the population of the parish increased until in 1927 the first steps were taken to build a new church. Rev Canon Mitchell invited architects to submit plans for a new church with Marten & Burnett chosen as the architects for the building. A site was bought on Chapeltown Road in 1930 and then in 1935 test holes were dug in what was then the garden of Ashbourne House on Chapeltown Road. The foundation stone was laid on May 3rd 1936 by Canon Hawkswell. The church was completed at a cost of over £13,000, with Ashbourne House becoming the Presbytery of the new church.
The first mass was celebrated on September 30th 1937 by The Bishop of Leeds, Bishop Henry John Poskitt with Bishop Shine of Middlesbrough. Father Ward was the first priest in the parish.
Among the priests at the first mass in the new church in 1937 was a young priest who had been ordained in Ireland for the Leeds Diocese the previous year. In 1951, this priest, Canon P. O’Meara, became the first Parish Priest of the Holy Rosary, a position he held until his death in 1985. There is a commemorative plaque to Canon O’Meara in the church.
The first priest to be ordained from the Holy Rosary Parish was Father Gerald Creasey who was ordained in 1961.
In 1987 Father James Leavy instigated renovations to the church including: the relocation of the altar, removal of the communion rails, the font being moved to the chancel steps and the shortening of the nave creating a community room between the narthex and the main body of the church. The front of the original organ was retained above the community room and a new altar of Yorkshire Stone was created in the side chapel.
In 1989 the Presbytery, occupying what had been Ashbourne House, was split in two. The part nearest the church became the new presbytery and the House of Light took over the other half. At this time the presbytery was refurbished. The hall underneath the church was leased out to the Northern School of Contemporary Dance at this time.
The parish feast day is on October 7th, the feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
William Marshall, the last abbot of Kirkstall Abbey to die in office, came from what is now the Holy Rosary parish. He built the tower of Kirkstall Abbey in 1527, just twelve years before his successor, John Ripley, the 27th and last Abbot, had the sad duty of surrendering the Abbey to King Henry VIII. That the remains of the tower are still visible after 430 years is proof of the solidity of its construction, and a memorial to one who might be considered an early parishioner.
For more about the history of Kirkstall Abbey see:
www.leeds.gov.uk/kirkstallabbey/Kirkstall_Abbey/History.aspx
Another that could be seen as an early parishioner is William Scott of Scott Hall. Scott Hall was situated in Potternewton, just about where Scott Hall Place is now. This had been the home of the Scott family who had originated from Scotland. When the last of the family line died, the hall was demolished and the land was quarried, with the stone used for many Leeds buildings. When the quarry was worked out it was filled in and is now the playing fields on Scott Hall Road. When the A61 was built in the 1930s, it was named Scott Hall as a reminder of the former land use.
William Scott left a “parcel of land” on the corner of Vicar Lane and Kirkgate to the Parish Priest of Leeds Parish Church in 1470, on which a modest mansion was built. The site existed for almost 400 years and was known as Vicar’s Croft, until it was bought in 1857 by the Leeds Corporation and is now the home of the Leeds Markets.
An aerial view of the Church its surroundings can be found at:
www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=20021127_4...
Sources:
Silver Jubilee brochure for Holy Rosary Church, Leeds 1937-1962, can be downloaded from here.
www.movinghere.org.uk/search/catalogue.asp?catphase=short...
Gilleghan J (1990) Worship North and East of Leeds, Kingsway Press
The Diocese of Leeds
Leeds in The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1913:
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Leeds
The Diocese of Leeds on Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Leeds
For more about the history of Kirkstall Abbey see:
www.leeds.gov.uk/kirkstallabbey/Kirkstall_Abbey/History.aspx
Villa Mansi in Segromigno, in the municipality of Capannori, is one of the main examples of 17th-century architecture in Lucca, belonging to the wealthy Mansi family who acquired it in the 17th century from the Cenami family.
Its main façade, which was planned by an architect from Urbino – Muzio Oddi– gives a visual effect of non-static solidity. The building actually looks like a compact block, but the façade is livened up by the fact that the central body is slightly set back from the two side parts.
The airy porticoon the raised floor, the double flight of stairs and the chromatic contrast between the plaster and the architectural and decorative elements contribute to the movement and lightness of the building. The composed motif of the serliana which characterises the portico continues in the highest part, throughout the double columns and central arcade.
Inside, there are paintings and frescoes by Lucca-based painter Stefano Tofanelli, greatly admired by Elisa Baciocchi, princess of Lucca and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, dating back to the end of the 18th century and featuring mythological themes in the style of the time that depict the stories of the god Apollo.
In the garden, there are fountains and fishponds with statues by the architect Juvarra, whose original 18th-century garden design has been subsequently changed radically. Today, the property’s botanic gardens are home to over 40 types of trees from all over the world.
Artist’s Statement:
This work, born from the wild beauty of Randolph’s Leap on the River Findhorn, delves into the liminal space between surface and depth, solidity and fluidity. The river’s slow movement through the gorge presents a counterpoint of temporal stillness and shifting fluidity, where time appears suspended yet inexorably flows. The mirrored surface of the water, reduced to an essential palette of deep blues, autumnal rusts, and ghostly purples, invites contemplation on the interplay between reality and its reflection—a duality in which truth and illusion are refracted through nature’s quiet lens.
The swirling eddy pattern of white bubbles, a delicate choreography on the water’s skin, speaks to the river’s subtle turbulence beneath a seemingly calm exterior. These eddies become metaphors for memory and transience, gentle disruptions that punctuate the serenity of the surface yet yield to the river’s unstoppable motion. Embedded within this scene, the river embodies a natural duality: it is at once an indelible geographic entity and an ephemeral flux, a place where geological permanence meets the impermanence of water.
The palette—rich in deep hues with intrusions of black—serves not only to mirror the tangible landscape but to evoke a visceral experience of the gorge’s shadowed depths and ephemeral light. It speaks to a landscape imbued with the weight of history, as if the rocks themselves remember the generations of water that have passed through, shaping and eroding, always in dialogue with the river’s unceasing journey.
In this painting, Randolph’s Leap becomes more than a physical location; it emerges as a place of metaphysical inquiry—a convergence of stasis and change, presence and absence, solidity and flow. The simplicity of the reflection juxtaposed against the intricacy of the eddying bubbles opens a visual dialogue on perception, a subtle reminder of the complex undercurrents shaping what we see and believe to be real.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
Kengo Kuma (隈 研吾, Kuma Kengo, born August 8, 1954) is a Japanese architect and emeritus professor in the Department of Architecture (Graduate School of Engineering) at the University of Tokyo. Frequently compared to contemporaries Shigeru Ban and Kazuyo Sejima, Kuma is also noted for his prolific writings. He is the designer of the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo, which was built for the 2020 Summer Olympics. He is married to architect Satoko Shinohara, and they have one son, Taichi, also an architect. He is an advisor for Kitakyushu-city in Japan.
Early life and education
Kuma was born in Kanagawa, and attended Eiko Gakuen Junior and Senior High School. After graduating in architecture from the University of Tokyo in 1979, he worked for a time at Nihon Sekkei [ja] and Toda Corporation [ja]. He then moved to New York City for further studies at Columbia University as a visiting researcher from 1985 to 1986.
Career
In 1987, Kuma founded the Spatial Design Studio, and in 1990, he established his own firm, Kengo Kuma & Associates. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Keio University, where in 2008, Kuma was awarded a Ph.D. degree in architecture. As a professor at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Tokyo, he runs a variety of research projects concerning architecture, urbanism and design within his laboratory, Kuma Lab. Kengo Kuma & Associates employs over 300 architects in Tokyo, China (Beijing and Shanghai) and Paris, designing projects of diverse type and scale throughout the world.
Philosophy and writings
Kuma's stated goal is to recover the tradition of Japanese buildings and to reinterpret these traditions for the 21st century. In 1997, he won the Architectural Institute of Japan Award and in 2009 was made an Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. Kuma lectures extensively and is the author of numerous books and articles discussing and criticizing approaches in contemporary architecture. His seminal text Anti-Object: The Dissolution and Disintegration of Architecture written in 2008, calls for an architecture of relations, respecting its surroundings instead of dominating them. Kuma's projects maintain a keen interest in the manipulation of light with nature through materiality.
Material theory
Although remaining in continuity with Japanese traditions with the clarity of structural solutions, implied tectonics, and importance of light and transparency, Kuma does not restrain himself to the banal and superficial use of ‘light’ materials. Instead, he goes much deeper, extending to the mechanisms of composition to expand the possibilities of materiality. He utilizes technological advancements which can challenge unexpected materials, such as stone, into providing the same sense of lightness and softness as glass or wood. Kuma attempts to attain a sense of spatial immateriality as a consequence of the ‘particulate nature’ of the light and establishing a relationship between a space and the natural round[clarification needed] around it.
Describing his practice, Kuma said “You could say that my aim is ‘to recover the place’. The place is a result of nature and time; this is the most important aspect. I think my architecture is some kind of frame of nature. With it, we can experience nature more deeply and more intimately. Transparency is a characteristic of Japanese architecture; I try to use light and natural materials to get a new kind of transparency.”
In many of Kuma’s projects, attention is focused on the connection spaces; on the segments between inside and outside, and one room to the next. The choice of materials stems not so much from an intention to guide the design of the forms, but to conform to the existing surroundings from a desire to compare similar materials, yet show the technical advances that have made possible new uses.
When dealing with stone work, for example, Kuma displays a different character from the preexisting buildings of solid, heavy, traditional masonry construction. Instead his work surprises the eye by slimming down and dissolving the walls in an effort to express a certain “lightness” and immateriality, suggesting an illusion of ambiguity and weakness not common to the solidity of stone construction.
In parallel, Kuma showed material innovation to support local traditional craftsmanship through his works. Collaborating with Japanese craftsmen specialized in wood, earth or paper, he helped in maintaining the associated building techniques while modernizing them, bringing his know-how in modularity. This work led Kuma to win a Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2016.
Projects
Key projects include the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, Bamboo Wall House in China, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) Group's Japan headquarters, Besançon Art Center in France, and one of the largest spas in the Caribbean for Mandarin Oriental Dellis Cay.
Stone Roof, a private residence in Nagano, Japan, built in 2010, consists of a roof which is meant to spring from the ground, providing a complete enclosure to the home. A local stone was chosen to intimately relate itself to the preexisting natural environment of the mountainside. The exterior stonework is made light and airy by cutting each stone into thin slices and bracing each slice as a pivoting panel. In this way, the heavy quality of the stone is diluted and provides the eye with an illusion of lightness, allowing light and air directly into the space within. With this choice of material and construction, a new kind of transparency emerges; one that not only frames nature the way a glass curtain wall would but also deeply relates itself to the mountainside.
In 2016, Kuma also delved into designing pre-fabricated pavilions in partnership with Revolution Precrafted. He designed the mobile multifunctional pavilion named The Aluminum Cloud Pavilion. The structure, composed of aluminum panels joined using Kangou technique, can be used as a teahouse or a space of meditation.
As a part of the Time–Space–Existence video interview series Kengo Kuma collaborated with the European Cultural Centre to create a video documentation discussing the topics Time Space and Existence.
Kuma Lab
Kuma Lab is a Research Laboratory headed by Kuma based in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo's Hongo Campus that was started in 2009. In 2012, Kuma Lab published the book Patterns and Layering, Japanese Spatial Culture, Nature and Architecture, including the research from various Doctoral Candidate Lab members.
The lab's research topics consist of: a comprehensive survey of architectural, urban, community, landscape, and product designs; survey of structural, material, and mechanical designs; and methodology for bridging sustainable, physical, and information designs.[citation needed] Its activities include participation in architectural design competitions, organization and management of regional and international design workshops, joint research with other departments at the University of Tokyo, and research and proposal to aid the recovery from the Great East Japan earthquake.
Continuing with the 1631 manuscript “On Mr Edmund Arrowsmith”, the author relates that his subject
“was arrested once before his last apprehension, and imprisoned in Lancaster... At that apprehension, he was brought before Dr Bridgeman, the pseudo-Bishop* of Chester, where divers ministers were at supper with the Bishop who did all eat flesh [despite] it being in Lent. Dr Bridgeman made his own apology to Mr Edmund for eating flesh, saying he was old and weak and was dispensed withal. “But who dispenses with your lusty ministers there”, said Mr Edmund, “for they have no such need?” The ministers both before and after supper were busy in disputing with Mr Edmund, and one time, divers of them urging against him at once, he merrily said to the Bishop, “Turn all your dogs loose at once against me, and let us have a loose [de]bait””.
The “dispute then had with the pseudo-bishop of Chester” is also reported in an Italian manuscript -“Relatione del processo, condamnatione et mort del P Edmondo Arrosmith...”- at ARSI ref. Angl. 7 f.100, of which a part is shown above.
Concerning the same incident, the 1737 tract says that Edmund Arrowsmith “entered into a Dispute with the then Bishop of Chester, wherein the learned Champion baffled his Opponent and eruditely proved the Truth of the Catholick Religion, and the Authority of the Holy See, with such Strength and Solidity that he silenced his Adversary”. Shortly after this episode, Arrowsmith was “released upon pardon, with divers others”. This is likely to have been in or about 1622 when, in order to advance the prospect of a marriage between the future Charles I and the Spanish Infanta “and in expectation of the like correspondence from Forreign Princes to the Professors of our Religion”, James I “resolved to grant some grace to the imprisoned Papists”.**
*“Apostolicae Curae”, a decree of Pope Leo XIII in 1896, re-stated the position taken by the Catholic Church ever since the times of Julius III and Paul IV in the 16th century that “when in England, shortly after it was rent from the centre of Christian Unity, a new rite for conferring Holy Orders was publicly introduced under Edward VI, the true Sacrament of Order as instituted by Christ lapsed, and with it the hierarchical succession”. Consequently, it could not recognise as bishops etc those holding office in the Church of England.
**John Rushworth, “Historical Collections of Private Passages of State: Volume 1, 1618-29 (London, 1721). Finding that his intentions had been frustrated by the judges, James directed his Lord Keeper to insist “that they make no niceness or difficulty to extend his Princely favour to all such as they shall find prisoners in the gaols of their circuits, for any Church recusancy, or refusing the Oath of Supremacy, or dispersing of Popish books, or any other point of recusancy that shall concern religion only, and not matters of State”. The move did not result in a lasting toleration for English Catholics, and the marriage negotiations ultimately stalled.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
The Hagia Sophia, whose name means “holy wisdom,” is a domed monument originally built as a cathedral in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the sixth century A.D.
It contains two floors centered on a giant nave that has a great dome ceiling, along with smaller domes, towering above.
“Hagia Sophia’s dimensions are formidable for any structure not built of steel,” writes Helen Gardner and Fred Kleiner in their book "Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History." “In plan it is about 270 feet [82 meters] long and 240 feet [73 meters] wide. The dome is 108 feet [33 meters] in diameter and its crown rises some 180 feet [55 meters] above the pavement.”
Building the Hagia Sophia
To build his cathedral, Justinian turned to two men named Anthemius and Isidore the Elder.
“Contemporary writers do not refer to Anthemius and Isidore as architects, though the term was common in the sixth century, but as mechanikoi or mechanopoioi,” writes Indiana University professor W. Eugene Kleinbauer in a section of the book "Hagia Sophia" (Scala Publishers, 2004). “These terms denote a very small number of practitioners of the arts of design, whether of buildings or of machines or other works ...”
They built the Hagia Sophia in great haste, finishing it in less than six years. To put this in comparison it took nearly a century for medieval builders to construct the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.
This short construction period appears to have led to problems. Ancient sources, such as the writer Procopios, write that the builders had problems with the dome roof, the structure almost collapsing during construction. The dome used a system of piers to channel its weight.
“The piers on top of which the structure was being built, unable to bear the mass that was pressing down on them, somehow or other suddenly started to break away and seemed to be on the point of collapsing...” writes Procopios (translation republished on Columbia University’s website).
Eventually Anthemius and Isidore did get the domed roof to stand and it was a magnificent sight indeed. “It seems not to be founded on solid masonry, but to be suspended from heaven by that golden chain and so cover the space,” wrote Procopios.
Unfortunately this roof did not stand. It collapsed about two decades later and it fell to a man named Isidore the Younger to build a new domed roof. It has lasted, with some repairs, nearly 1,400 years, down to the present day.
“The dome rests not on a drum but on pendentives, spherical triangles that arise from four huge piers that carry the weight of the cupola. The pendentives made it possible to place the dome over a square compartment,” writes researcher Victoria Hammond, who describes the structure of the surviving Hagia Sophia dome, in a chapter of the book "Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture" (Springer, 2005).
Hagia SophiaSunlight coming in through the windows of the Hagia Sophia "seemed to dissolve the solidity of the walls and created an ambience of ineffable mystery," wrote one author.
Credit: Yulia Gursoy | ShutterstockView full size image
Beneath the dome are 40 windows with sunlight coming through. “The sunlight emanating from the windows surrounding its lofty cupola, suffusing the interior and irradiating its gold mosaics, seemed to dissolve the solidity of the walls and created an ambience of ineffable mystery,” she writes. “On the completion of Hagia Sophia, Justinian is said to have remarked, ‘Solomon, I have outdone thee’.”
Imperial seating
Modern-day visitors will note that the Hagia Sophia has two levels, the ground floor and a gallery above. The presence of the two levels may mean that people were organized according to gender and class when services were held at the cathedral.
In Byzantine churches “galleries seem to have been used as a means of segregation of genders and of social classes,” writes Vasileios Marinis in a chapter of the book "The Byzantine World" (Routledge, 2010). “In Hagia Sophia a part of the gallery was used as an imperial lodge, from which the empress and occasionally the emperor attended the services.”
This lodge wasn’t the only benefit the emperor got. Antony White writes in another chapter of the 2004 "Hagia Sophia" book that to enter the cathedral’s nave from the narthex there are nine doorways. “The central or Imperial Door was reserved for the use of the emperor and his attendants, and provides the most perfect approach to the interior of the church.”
Decorations and iconoclasm
The decorations within the Hagia Sophia at the time of construction were probably very simple, images of crosses for instances. Over time this changed to include a variety of ornate mosaics.
“There are a number of mosaics that have been added over the centuries, imperial portraits, images of the imperial family, images of Christ and different emperors, those have been added since Justinian’s day,” said Goodson in the documentary.
During the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., there was a period of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire that resulted in some of the mosaics being destroyed.
“The controversy spanned roughly a century, during the years 726–87 and 815–43. In these decades, imperial legislation barred the production and use of figural images; simultaneously, the cross was promoted as the most acceptable decorative form for Byzantine churches,” writes Sarah Brooks, of James Madison University, in a Metropolitan Museum of Art article.
Hagia Sophia mosaicPin It The Apse Mosaic in the Hagia Sophia shows the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. It is 13 feet tall.
Credit: Artur Bogacki | ShutterstockView full size image
“Fear that the viewer misdirected his/her veneration toward the image rather than to the holy person represented in the image lay at the heart of this controversy.”
At the end of this period decoration of the interior of Hagia Sophia resumed, each emperor adding their own images. One of the most well-known mosaics is located on the apse of the church showing a 13-foot-tall (4 meters) Virgin Mary with Jesus as a child. Dedicated on March 29, 867, it is located 30 meters (almost 100 feet) above the church floor, notes University of Sussex professor Liz James in a 2004 article published in the journal Art History.
Conversion to mosque
Another chapter in the Hagia Sophia’s life began in 1453. In that year the Byzantine Empire ended, with Constantinople falling to the armies of Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
The Byzantine Empire had been in decline for centuries and by 1453 the Hagia Sophia had fallen into disrepair, notes researcher Elisabeth Piltz in a 2005 British Archaeological Reports series book. Nevertheless, the Christian cathedral made a strong impression on the new Ottoman rulers and they decided to convert it into a mosque.
“What a dome, that vies in rank with the nine spheres of heaven! In this work a perfect master has displayed the whole of the architectural science,” wrote Ottoman historian Tursun Beg during the 15th century (translation from Piltz’s book).
Outside the church, four minarets would eventually be added, Kleiner writes (in a 2010 edition of his book) that these “four slender pencil-shaped minarets” are more than 200 feet (60 meters) tall and are “among the tallest ever constructed.”
Changes occurred on the inside as well. Piltz writes that “after the Ottoman conquest the mosaics were hidden under yellow paint with the exception of the Theotokos [Virgin Mary with child] in the apse.” In addition “Monograms of the four caliphs were put on the pillars flanking the apse and the entrance of the nave.”
The style of the Hagia Sophia, in particular its dome, would go on to influence Ottoman architecture, most notably in the development of the Blue Mosque, built in Istanbul during the 17th century. [Related Video: Enormous Roman Mosaic Unearthed in Turkey]
Present-day museum
In 1934, the government of Turkey secularized the Hagia Sophia and turned it into a museum. The Turkish Council of Ministers stated that due “to its historical significance, the conversion of the (Hagia Sophia) mosque, a unique architectural monument of art located in Istanbul, into a museum will please the entire Eastern world and its conversion to a museum will cause humanity to gain a new institution of knowledge.” [From Robert Nelson, "Hagia Sophia: 1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument," University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Research, repair and restoration work continues to this day and the Hagia Sophia is now an important site for tourism in Istanbul. It is a place that has been part of the cultural fabric of the city in both ancient and modern times. dulides
(2/3) #Turkey’s escalating, flagrant violation of its international obligations is manifested in its decision to alter the designation of #HagiaSophia, a world heritage site that is a universal symbol of the Orthodox faith.
أول صورة أنزلها بعدستي الجديدة ♥
واجهت مشاكل مع الشاشة بالألوان والمعالجة ..
لكن حاولت أحسنها بأفضل شكل ممكن وهذا اللي طلع معي بالأخير ..
الموديل أقرب صديق إلى قلبي
وصاحب أحلى نظرات
وأفضل واحد يستعمل الآي فون ذذذذ :
زياد الجهني ♥ ..
رآيكم يهمني = )
Albi Cathedral is one of the most unique, awe-inspiring churches ever concieved, quite simply one of the wonders of the medieval world.
Although contemporary with the great gothic cathedrals of Northern France, this largely 13th century structure is radically different, being constructed almost entirely of brick and built like a mighty fortress; mostly unadorned walls rise uninterrupted from the ground like sheer cliff-faces of brick. The simplicity of the design gives it an almost modern appearance, and the massive scale gives it a quite overpowering presence.
The cathedral's powerful fortified appearance is largely down to two factors, the shape of the building is consistent with local forms of gothic churches in southern France and northern Spain, whilst thr fortified solidity can be associated with the supression of the Cathars in this area during the Albigensian Crusades, the building serving a lesson in strength and permanence as a warning to any rebellious locals.
The plain exterior was relieved in the more stable climate of the 16th century by the huge flamboyant porch on the south side of the nave, more like an enormous spikey canopy open on three sides. It remains the main entrance to the cathedral, the base of the enormous tower being so massively constructed as to leave no room for a traditional west entrance.
On entering this vast edifice one's senses are overwhelmed yet again, this time by the profusion of decoration in the cavernous interior. The walls and ceilings are entirely covered by frescoes dating from the early 16th century (mostly in Renaissance style, much of it colourful geometric patterns. The most memorable sections are the earliest frescoes at the west end from an enormous Last Judgement; the central section was sadly removed in the 18th century but the extensive and graphic depiction of the torments of Hell remains.
In addition this cathedral is rare in preserving it's 'jube' or choir screen), a late medieval masterpiece of decoration an sculpture which extends into a lavishly sculpted choir enclosure adorned with a riot of angels and saints.
All in all this unforgettable cathedral is a monument that defies description alone and bombards the senses!
Part of the complete sequence of seven early 14th century windows preserving most of their original glass in the choir clerestorey.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
Melbourne Central Activities District (CAD) Conservation Study 1985 survey images: approx. 1200 Kodak colour negatives
_________________
FROM GRAEME BUTLER 1985 MELBOURNE CENTRAL ACTIVITIES DISTRICT CONSERVATION STUDY
Statement of Significance
666-668 Bourke Street Melbourne
DATE: 1878; ASSOCIATIONS: Joseph Shelton; Shelton Trust; W R Synott; DESIGNER: Flanagan, John; BUILDER: Martin & Peacock
History
Heralded after its construction, as a testimony to the commercial solidity of Melbourne's merchants, even in the depressed economy of the 1870s, this was P.B. Curtain & Company's wool broking warehouse, designed by John Flanagan and erected (at a cost of 12,000 pounds) by Martin & Peacock. The new stores were both close to the Spencer Street railway station and goods yards also in the thick of Melbourne's wool broking firms.
It consisted of a wool warehouse, with detached single-storey sheep skin and hide store at the rear, a large basement and a top-level show room where wool lay on exhibition, prior to auction and had maximum access to indirect natural light (south facing skylights).
The front ground-level had a `spacious lobby', a suite of `lofty' offices, sample rooms and waiting areas, all fitted out with oak-grained partitioning. As well as the Kauri pine flooring, the auction room which lay beyond the office suite, was equipped with Kauri seating with a `very handsome' polished cedar rostrum. It was claimed that these were the only stores in Melbourne to allow under cover dispatch and delivery of wool into the warehouse, via the carriageway still existing on the west of the building.
The architecture was described in 1879 as `Roman', the lower wall finish as Malmsbury basalt (axed and partly polished)) and the arched windows `...giving a bold and effective appearance at the front...' The entablature above, was dentilated and modillioned (now demolished) and the upper-level walls of cemented brickwork, with rusticated piers. The parapet detailing included a massive segment-arched pediment, central to the main facade.
Typically the land was owned separately by Joseph Shelton and it was he who applied to build the warehouse, not Curtain. Neither was Curtain a tenant for very long, if at all; W R Synott taking possession soon after construction and remaining there into the late 1880s. Younghusband & Co. was both owner and occupier in the early 1900s and Fanny Stanley around the First War period.
Description
An evidently incomplete facade but, nevertheless, possessing fine ground level stone work and relatively distinctive
upper level stucco work. Ground level is in dressed deeply rusticated basalt, with quarry-faced blocks supporting the main arches. At the doorway a Ram's head stares balefully over the Doric order entrance portico with the unusual arch above it. The signs, `Sun, Grain and Fertiliser Drill,' `Horseworks and Chaffcutters,' `Sunrise, S.J. Disc Ploughs,' `H.V. McKay,' `The Sun Drill Hoe and Disc,' `Moulder Board and Disc,' `Sunray Disc Ploughs,' and `The Sunbeam Ploughs' in gold lettering, as advertisements for the produce within. Another faded sign says `Bourke Bond Free Stores,' next to the giant basalt arch which signals the carriageway through to the stores at the rear. The ground-level rustication is taken in a bold fashion up the piers that divide the upper facade. Pier window openings have unusual rounded corners at the first level and more typical segment-arched architraves adjoining pilasters at the uppermost level. Remnants of the main cornice survive.
External Integrity
The basement lights have been bricked up, the upper level cornice removed, some window joinery replaced with steel in the western part of the first level and sympathetic lobby doors replace the originals.
Streetscape
The earliest part of a notable mainly Edwardian warehouse streetscape.
Significance
Architecturally debased by the parapet removal, the remaining internal and external fabric are surprisingly intact, retaining the covered carriageway claimed as the first of its type in Melbourne. Historically it exemplifies its use and period, representing the custom-built wool warehouses (undercover delivery, natural lighting, custom flooring, auction rooms) of Melbourne's west end, most of which have been demolished (Asmic warehouse). It is also the earliest part of a visually cohesive 19th and early 20th century warehouse streetscape.
Blythe size stand made of painted acrylic resin.
Inspired by Michael Ende's novel, 'The Neverending Story', and the imaginery of the 1984 movie by Wolfgang Petersen's, it shows the Auryn, a medallion with two serpents carved in relief, a light one and a dark one that bite each other's tails.
Because of the nature of the material used, it has a nice strong and compact presence and a stone-like solidity.
The pole is removable and it's crossed by a tin wire that can be bent to grab the doll.
PAGEANT 23 (WESTERLY)
Sailboat Specifications
Hull Type: Twin Keel
Rigging Type: Masthead Sloop
LOA: 23.00 ft / 7.01 m
LWL: 19.00 ft / 5.79 m
Beam: 8.00 ft / 2.44 m
S.A. (reported): 236.00 ft2 / 21.93 m2
Draft (max): 2.83 ft / 0.86 m
Displacement: 4,300 lb / 1,950 kg
Ballast: 2,094 lb / 950 kg
S.A./Disp.: 14.32
Bal./Disp.: 48.70
Disp./Len.: 279.87
Construction: GRP
First Built: 1970
Last Built: 1979
# Built: 551
Designer: Laurent Giles
Builder: Westerly Yacht Construction Ltd (UK)
Builder: Westerly Marine, Hampshire
The Pageant is one of the smaller of the Westerly range designed by Laurent Giles and produced in volume in the 1970s. She offers an excellent small cruiser, with remarkable room below for her length, and has the typical Westerly virtues of strength and solidity.
The Pageant was designed for Westerly by Laurent Giles in 1969, as a replacement for the earlier Nomad. Production ran from 1970 to 1979, the yacht shown in the photographs here being one of the last of the 550 or so built. A very few (reportedly just six) fin-keel versions were also produced in 1976, these being called Westerly Kendals. As with all other Westerly Marine yachts the Pageant was very strongly built to Lloyds specifications, which meant that the building processes were rigorously monitored and all materials had to be approved by Lloyds in order that a hull certificate could be issued.
Auxiliary Power/Tanks (orig. equip.)
Make: Volvo Penta
Model: MD1B
Type: Diesel
HP: 10
Fuel: 10 gals / 38 L
Sailboat Calculations
S.A./Disp.: 14.32
Bal./Disp.: 48.70
Disp./Len.: 279.87
Comfort Ratio: 20.61
Capsize Screening Formula: 1.97
Accommodations
Water: 15 gals / 57 L
Headroom1.75m
Cabins 2
Berths 5/6
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
This elevator and grain terminal located on North Maple street in McPherson, Kansas, is being demolished. The property is owned by Mid Kansas COOP and was built in the 1920's. It was last used in the 1960's. The solidity of the structure was no loger there. There are no definite plans for the lot.
Special thanks to JohnnyG1955 for sharing the below info
www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyg1955/sets/72157604152348131/...
The parish of the Holy Rosary is the seventh oldest mission in the City of Leeds, with the first Church and School of the Holy Rosary built in Barrack Street in 1886 as a Chapel-of-Ease to St Anne’s Cathedral.
As the area from Sheepscar up to Moortown was developed, the population of the parish increased until in 1927 the first steps were taken to build a new church. Rev Canon Mitchell invited architects to submit plans for a new church with Marten & Burnett chosen as the architects for the building. A site was bought on Chapeltown Road in 1930 and then in 1935 test holes were dug in what was then the garden of Ashbourne House on Chapeltown Road. The foundation stone was laid on May 3rd 1936 by Canon Hawkswell. The church was completed at a cost of over £13,000, with Ashbourne House becoming the Presbytery of the new church.
The first mass was celebrated on September 30th 1937 by The Bishop of Leeds, Bishop Henry John Poskitt with Bishop Shine of Middlesbrough. Father Ward was the first priest in the parish.
Among the priests at the first mass in the new church in 1937 was a young priest who had been ordained in Ireland for the Leeds Diocese the previous year. In 1951, this priest, Canon P. O’Meara, became the first Parish Priest of the Holy Rosary, a position he held until his death in 1985. There is a commemorative plaque to Canon O’Meara in the church.
The first priest to be ordained from the Holy Rosary Parish was Father Gerald Creasey who was ordained in 1961.
In 1987 Father James Leavy instigated renovations to the church including: the relocation of the altar, removal of the communion rails, the font being moved to the chancel steps and the shortening of the nave creating a community room between the narthex and the main body of the church. The front of the original organ was retained above the community room and a new altar of Yorkshire Stone was created in the side chapel.
In 1989 the Presbytery, occupying what had been Ashbourne House, was split in two. The part nearest the church became the new presbytery and the House of Light took over the other half. At this time the presbytery was refurbished. The hall underneath the church was leased out to the Northern School of Contemporary Dance at this time.
The parish feast day is on October 7th, the feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
William Marshall, the last abbot of Kirkstall Abbey to die in office, came from what is now the Holy Rosary parish. He built the tower of Kirkstall Abbey in 1527, just twelve years before his successor, John Ripley, the 27th and last Abbot, had the sad duty of surrendering the Abbey to King Henry VIII. That the remains of the tower are still visible after 430 years is proof of the solidity of its construction, and a memorial to one who might be considered an early parishioner.
For more about the history of Kirkstall Abbey see:
www.leeds.gov.uk/kirkstallabbey/Kirkstall_Abbey/History.aspx
Another that could be seen as an early parishioner is William Scott of Scott Hall. Scott Hall was situated in Potternewton, just about where Scott Hall Place is now. This had been the home of the Scott family who had originated from Scotland. When the last of the family line died, the hall was demolished and the land was quarried, with the stone used for many Leeds buildings. When the quarry was worked out it was filled in and is now the playing fields on Scott Hall Road. When the A61 was built in the 1930s, it was named Scott Hall as a reminder of the former land use.
William Scott left a “parcel of land” on the corner of Vicar Lane and Kirkgate to the Parish Priest of Leeds Parish Church in 1470, on which a modest mansion was built. The site existed for almost 400 years and was known as Vicar’s Croft, until it was bought in 1857 by the Leeds Corporation and is now the home of the Leeds Markets.
An aerial view of the Church its surroundings can be found at:
www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=20021127_4...
Sources:
Silver Jubilee brochure for Holy Rosary Church, Leeds 1937-1962, can be downloaded from here.
www.movinghere.org.uk/search/catalogue.asp?catphase=short...
Gilleghan J (1990) Worship North and East of Leeds, Kingsway Press
The Diocese of Leeds
Leeds in The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1913:
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Leeds
The Diocese of Leeds on Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Leeds
For more about the history of Kirkstall Abbey see:
www.leeds.gov.uk/kirkstallabbey/Kirkstall_Abbey/History.aspx
clinical waste / institutionalisation
An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.
Enoch Powell, when Minister for Health in the early 1960s, was a later opponent who was appalled by what he witnessed on his visits to the asylums, and his famous "water tower" speech in 1961 called for the closure of all NHS asylums and their replacement by wards in general hospitals:
"There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside - the asylums which our forefathers built with such immense solidity to express the notions of their day. Do not for a moment underestimate their powers of resistance to our assault. Let me describe some of the defences which we have to storm."
scandal after scandal followed, with many high profile public inquiries. These involved the exposure of abuses such as unscientific surgical techniques such as lobotomy and the widespread neglect and abuse of vulnerable patients in the USA and Europe. The growing anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s and 1970s led in Italy to the first successful legislative challenge to the authority of the mental institutions, culminating in their closure.
During the 1980 s and 1990s the hospital population started to fall rapidly, mainly because of the deaths of long-term inmates. Significant efforts were made to re-house large numbers of former residents in a variety of suitable or otherwise alternative accommodation. The first 1,000+ bed hospital to close was Darenth Park in Kent, swiftly followed by many more across the UK. The haste of these closures, driven by the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led to considerable criticism in the press, as some individuals slipped through the net into homelessness or were discharged to poor quality private sector mini-institutions. The resistance of many institutions to change, predicted by Enoch Powell, has continued into the 21st century, and there are still several thousand people permanently resident in the dwindling asylums and long stay hospital replacement campuses scattered across the UK.
A National Historic Landmark
Otsego County, NY
Listed in NR: 10/07/1971
Designated an NHL: 06/24/1986
This remarkable limestone manor, begun in 1817, combines the high style grace of an English country house with the solidity and ingenuity of an American dwelling. It also happens to be one of early America’s most thoroughly documented buildings. Phillip Hooker designed it for George Hyde Clarke, and both the architect’s drawings and the owner’s bills survive. Architecturally, as a student of the house has aptly stated, Hyde Hall “stand with one foot in the English Regency and the other in the American Greek Revival.” It has been restored and is open to the public as a major attraction in Glimmerglass State Park.
PAGEANT 23 (WESTERLY)
Sailboat Specifications
Hull Type: Twin Keel
Rigging Type: Masthead Sloop
LOA: 23.00 ft / 7.01 m
LWL: 19.00 ft / 5.79 m
Beam: 8.00 ft / 2.44 m
S.A. (reported): 236.00 ft2 / 21.93 m2
Draft (max): 2.83 ft / 0.86 m
Displacement: 4,300 lb / 1,950 kg
Ballast: 2,094 lb / 950 kg
S.A./Disp.: 14.32
Bal./Disp.: 48.70
Disp./Len.: 279.87
Construction: GRP
First Built: 1970
Last Built: 1979
# Built: 551
Designer: Laurent Giles
Builder: Westerly Yacht Construction Ltd (UK)
Builder: Westerly Marine, Hampshire
The Pageant is one of the smaller of the Westerly range designed by Laurent Giles and produced in volume in the 1970s. She offers an excellent small cruiser, with remarkable room below for her length, and has the typical Westerly virtues of strength and solidity.
The Pageant was designed for Westerly by Laurent Giles in 1969, as a replacement for the earlier Nomad. Production ran from 1970 to 1979, the yacht shown in the photographs here being one of the last of the 550 or so built. A very few (reportedly just six) fin-keel versions were also produced in 1976, these being called Westerly Kendals. As with all other Westerly Marine yachts the Pageant was very strongly built to Lloyds specifications, which meant that the building processes were rigorously monitored and all materials had to be approved by Lloyds in order that a hull certificate could be issued.
Auxiliary Power/Tanks (orig. equip.)
Make: Volvo Penta
Model: MD1B
Type: Diesel
HP: 10
Fuel: 10 gals / 38 L
Sailboat Calculations
S.A./Disp.: 14.32
Bal./Disp.: 48.70
Disp./Len.: 279.87
Comfort Ratio: 20.61
Capsize Screening Formula: 1.97
Accommodations
Water: 15 gals / 57 L
Headroom1.75m
Cabins 2
Berths 5/6
Ponce County, Puerto Rico
Listed: 06/25/1987
The predominant style is related to the Beaux art neoclassical, with three horizontal bands defining this wraparound facade. The base is made of a pinkish stone extracted from a quarry close to the city. This stone has been commonly used in other Ponce buildings. Over said base, there is a body defined by a colossal Corinthian order, with paired pilasters turning into columns at the most dramatic point, where the front to the Square is defined.
The building's major occupant since its construction - the Banco de Ponce – was founded in 1912, as a bank oriented to finance the needs of the locally-based largescale cane and coffee industry. At that time, Ponce was in the midst of an economic boom which entailed the construction of Beaux arts and eclectic buildings in the city reflecting the "cultured" taste, of the wealthy landowning class. This particular building is a relatively late but very successful example of Ponce interpretation of the FindeSiecle Beaux Arts architects. Its architect Francisco Porrata Doria, had, at the time, recently returned to Puerto Rico, after studying engineering at Cornell University and some architectural courses at Columbia University.
This may account for the academic correctness of the detailing, also evident in the next-door Banco Credito y Ahorro Ponceno, another of his works. Later Porrata-Doria would evolve stylistically to execute Streamline, Art Deco, and even early International Style designs; several of these examples are located very close to this building, right on Ponce's main square. The Banco de Ponce's setting on the city's main square contributes to the elegance of this part of the city. Several adjacent structures are already listed in the National Register: the old Firehouse (1883, NR 07-12-84) the City Hall 1845, NR 11-19-86) and the Cathedral (1841, NR 12-10-84). The latter's facade is a 1932 Porrata-Doria design. Banco de Ponce's monumental exuberance expresses the pride of the institution, its solidity and its capacity to hold its own against far more wealthy Stateside institutions competing for the dollars of the local moneyed classes.
Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire
St.Mary
A cruciform church of C12-C13, outside a preaching cross, with some remaining detail. of particular note is the nave with its fine capitals, which even though over restored, still have a shapely grandeur and solidity that makes them and the church worthy of special attention. The chancel is long with lancet windows, the whole feel of the place is grand and well proportioned.The monument is of John Seymour brother of Jane Seymour Queen of Henry VII. The heraldic glass was brought from Wolfhall by Georgina wife of the 5th Marquess of Ailesbury in 1905 from Wolf Hall at Burbage.
Albi Cathedral is one of the most unique, awe-inspiring churches ever concieved, quite simply one of the wonders of the medieval world.
Although contemporary with the great gothic cathedrals of Northern France, this largely 13th century structure is radically different, being constructed almost entirely of brick and built like a mighty fortress; mostly unadorned walls rise uninterrupted from the ground like sheer cliff-faces of brick. The simplicity of the design gives it an almost modern appearance, and it's massive scale exudes a quite overpowering presence.
The cathedral's powerful fortified appearance is largely down to two factors, the form of the building is consistent with local forms of gothic churches in southern France and northern Spain, whilst thr fortified solidity can be associated with the supression of the Cathars in this area during the Albigensian Crusades, the building serving as a lesson in strength and permanence as a warning to any rebellious locals.
The plain exterior was relieved in the more stable climate of the 16th century by the huge flamboyant porch on the south side of the nave, more like an enormous spikey canopy open on three sides. It remains the main entrance to the cathedral, the base of the enormous tower being so massively constructed as to leave no room for a traditional west entrance.
On entering this vast edifice one's senses are overwhelmed yet again, this time by the profusion of decoration in the cavernous interior. The walls and ceilings are entirely covered by frescoes dating from the early 16th century, mostly in Renaissance style, much of it colourful geometric patterns. The most memorable sections are the earliest frescoes at the west end from an enormous Last Judgement; the central section was sadly removed in the 18th century but the extensive and graphic depiction of the torments of Hell remains.
In addition this cathedral is rare in preserving it's 'jube' or choir screen), a late medieval masterpiece of decoration and sculpture which extends into a lavishly sculpted choir enclosure adorned with a riot of angels and saints.
All in all this unforgettable cathedral is a monument that defies description alone and bombards the senses!
The Lafayette Building and former First Presbyterian Church in South Bend are new on Indiana Landmarks' 10 Most Endangered in 2015. Learn more at www.indianalandmarks.org.
Two South Bend landmarks on the 10 Most Endangered list sit next door to one another, across the street from the city’s historic courthouses. The city ordered both structures sealed until multiple code violations are cured.
Last fall, when slate began cascading from the roof of the long-vacant former First Presbyterian, the out-of-state owner replaced the slate with a tar paper roof. This year, finally, installation of a new imitation slate roof began on the vacant, damaged landmark.
Pittsburgh architect J. P. Bailey—creator of courthouses and schools from the Midwest to Maine—designed the 1888 sandstone and limestone church in the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style. Local industrialists J. M Studebaker and J.D. Oliver, who each covered a third of the cost, favored the style’s expression of solidity and permanence.
The Lafayette Building dates from 1901 and 1903, when it went from three to five stories. The understated Neoclassical exterior gives no hint of the graceful interior, lit by a five-story skylighted atrium. In addition to its deteriorated condition, the property’s delinquent tax bill tops $1 million.
“Indiana Landmarks linked the two sites as a 10 Most Endangered entry because we think each affects the fate of the other, and because we believe the solution may be a redevelopment that unites them,” says Todd Zeiger, director of the organization’s northern office.
Los Angeles, California
Listed 7/23/2013
Reference Number: 13000509
The Boyle Hotel - Cummings Block is significant tmder Criterion A as an important anchor to the early commercial development of Los Angeles in the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of the Los Angeles River. When completed in 1889,6 it reflected expansion and growth outside the commercial core in Los Angeles. Now, as the last remaining commercial building from the early development of Boyle Heights in the 1880s, the building represents the late nineteenth century transition of Los Angeles from a small city surrounded by farmland to a burgeoning city center surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. Pre-twentieth century commercial buildings are extremely rare in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area and likely number fewer than a dozen. Extant pre-twentieth century hotels are even rarer and probably number fewer than five. The Boyle Hotel - Cummings Block is also significant under Criterion C for its rare and unique architectural design in a Queen A1me style. 8 The building embodies distinctive character defining features, including its highly decorative wall surface, ornamental spiral columns, parapets with patterned surfacing, comer turret, second story double window with an arched pediment, and decorative brickwork. The building commands a prominent position at the crest of a hill overlooking downtown, as well as at an important intersection, and its construction out of brick signifies solidity and durability at this important site.
National Register of Historic Places Homepage
We know it is often hard to tell the size of things on the screen, so we have taken a photograph with Gary Baseman's Kidrobot 3 inch Dunny for reference.
As you can see, the Jibibuts are quite a bit bigger than other blindbox figures. The fact they are made from wood makes them feel even larger. They have a great weight and solidity to them that can not be achieved through vinyl or plastic.
For Station Saturday here's a simple little portrait of a gorgeous little depot sitting beside modern day CPKC's River Sub mainline and still in use twice daily by Amtrak's Empire Builder.
Per Amtrak's Great American Stations page on the depot:
Red Wing’s historic depot, built by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad – known as the Milwaukee Road – opened to the public in 1905. It was constructed as a combination depot, meaning it contained passenger and freight functions under one roof. Today it is a beautifully restored gateway to the recreation, arts and commerce of this vibrant city on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
Designed by Milwaukee Road architect J.M. Nettenstrom, the one story building is composed of brown brick and has a steep gabled roof. A cross gable contains entrances on both the track and street sides of the depot, and each of these gabled fronts displays impressive decorative geometric brickwork in a contrasting buff tone. Facing the tracks is a wide porch with ornamental open stickwork in the gable supported by curving brackets. The corners of the building and cross gables, as well as the porch columns, feature sturdy quoins that provide the depot with a visual heft indicating solidity and permanence.
In 1991, the city acquired the depot from the SOO Line Railroad. The Red Wing Area Fund, a private entity comprised of local philanthropists, leased and renovated the building. In 2004, the Area Fund purchased the depot from the city and has since contributed more than $53,000 for operations and $21,000 for repairs. Today it houses the Red Wing Visitor and Convention Bureau, an Amtrak waiting room and an arts gallery.
Red Wing, Minnesota
Monday May 8, 2023
Albi Cathedral is one of the most unique, awe-inspiring churches ever concieved, quite simply one of the wonders of the medieval world.
Although contemporary with the great gothic cathedrals of Northern France, this largely 13th century structure is radically different, being constructed almost entirely of brick and built like a mighty fortress; mostly unadorned walls rise uninterrupted from the ground like sheer cliff-faces of brick. The simplicity of the design gives it an almost modern appearance, and it's massive scale exudes a quite overpowering presence.
The cathedral's powerful fortified appearance is largely down to two factors, the form of the building is consistent with local forms of gothic churches in southern France and northern Spain, whilst thr fortified solidity can be associated with the supression of the Cathars in this area during the Albigensian Crusades, the building serving as a lesson in strength and permanence as a warning to any rebellious locals.
The plain exterior was relieved in the more stable climate of the 16th century by the huge flamboyant porch on the south side of the nave, more like an enormous spikey canopy open on three sides. It remains the main entrance to the cathedral, the base of the enormous tower being so massively constructed as to leave no room for a traditional west entrance.
On entering this vast edifice one's senses are overwhelmed yet again, this time by the profusion of decoration in the cavernous interior. The walls and ceilings are entirely covered by frescoes dating from the early 16th century, mostly in Renaissance style, much of it colourful geometric patterns. The most memorable sections are the earliest frescoes at the west end from an enormous Last Judgement; the central section was sadly removed in the 18th century but the extensive and graphic depiction of the torments of Hell remains.
In addition this cathedral is rare in preserving it's 'jube' or choir screen), a late medieval masterpiece of decoration and sculpture which extends into a lavishly sculpted choir enclosure adorned with a riot of angels and saints.
All in all this unforgettable cathedral is a monument that defies description alone and bombards the senses!
Roof boss in St Edmund & St Dunstan's chapel.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
Part of the complete sequence of seven early 14th century windows preserving most of their original glass in the choir clerestorey.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
of completion. The surface of soil is undulating and well adapted to agricultural pursuits. It is well watered by Wills creek, Crooked creek, Leatherwood creek, Salt Fork creek, and tributaries, while the present population of the county will exceed 30,000 inhabitants. The semi-mountainous ranges are covered with a heavy growth of timber; a fine quality of fire clay abounds in various sections suitable for the best quality of brick and tiling, which is being utilized to some extent. Building stone quarries have been opened and the beauty and solidity of the stone have already secured more than local reputation. A fine quality of coal is found in various portions of the county and several mines are being successfully operated, and last, but not least is the demonstrated fact that NATURAL GAS is found in such abundance as to give the county marked celebrity, in the advantages it offers for lighting, heating and manufacturing purposes. This subject is treated of elsewhere in its local interests. The County Commissioners are J. B. Hartley, Geo. Watson and John A. Thompson. The Infirmary Directors are R. L. Spencer, Alex. Speer and Isaac McCollum.
STATISTICAL.
The number of acres of cultivated lands in this county for 1888 were 75,325; the number of acres in pasture 152,296; the number of acres lying waste and wood land 73,903. Number of acres of wheat sown 19,252, bushels produced 210,635; number of acres sown in rye 609, bushels produced 6,000; buckwheat produced 1,637 bushels; bushels of oats produced 256,841; bushels of barley raised 1,000; corn 782,511; tons of hay 51,614; clover 2,093 bushels; number of pounds of butter made in home dairies 581,121, and in factories and creameries 36,000 pounds; bushels of potatoes raised 85,464; pounds of honey 15,358; eggs produced 656,831 dozen, of which 195,000 dozen were shipped to foreign markets; apples produced 583,624 bushels, and 110,800 bushels of peaches; pounds of wool shorn 237,243; number of milch cows 5,811; stallions 39; number of sheep in county 132,508; number of horses 6,863; number of cattle 15,962, and number of hogs 12,605. Guernsey County Agricultural Fair is held near Washington and is noticed in connection with that place. Other matters will be found in special editorials upon the towns and their respective industries.
COMMENT
ALTHOUGH the earlier estimates of the number of persons killed and the magnitude of the area devastated by the San Francisco catastrophe have been reduced materially, the value of the property destroyed is still computed at hundreds of millions of dollars, and it is expected that the resources of the fire-insurance companies will be taxed severely in the effort to bear their share of the loss. As we go to press, the aggregate of the relief fund has already reached the unprecedented figure of over $20,000,000. Some surprise and concern seem to have been caused in San Francisco by the discovery that of the $2,500,000 appropriated by Congress for the inhabitants of the stricken city, only about $300,000 will reach them in the shape of cash. They overlook the fact that the appropriation had to be used primarily to make good the rations and other supplies furnished by the military and naval authorities. Neither Secretary TAFT nor Secretary BONAPARTE had a right to expend a dollar or a dollar's worth of supplies for the purpose of relieving the necessities of the victims of the catastrophe, though they rightly dealt with an awful emergency on the assumption that their acts would be ratified by Congress. The ratification came promptly, but it must be remembered that it took the form of specifying $2,500,000 as the outlay beyond which the War Department and the Navy Department must not go. No doubt a con-siderable proportion of the private contributions has also been disbursed in purchasing and forwarding food-supplies. The amount of cash which will be available for employment by local authorities and local committees in San Francisco and other afflicted towns in California will, nevertheless, be large. The funds needed for reconstruction, however, will, of course, come mainly from the fire-insurance companies and from capitalists who are willing to erect new buildings on their own lands or to make building loans on the lands of others. There is reason to believe that the major part of the losses incurred by fire-insurance companies will be met promptly, and that the requisite supplementary supplies of money will be quickly forthcoming. There is a deep and growing conviction that San Francisco will be rebuilt within five years, and that no large permanent draft from its popula-tion will be made by Seattle, or even by Oakland, though, of course, the last-named city is temporarily a gainer by the misfortunes of its great neighbor.
We may also take for granted that as regards the applica-tion of fire-proof methods of construction, the new San Fran-cisco will be a striking improvement on its predecessor. For such improvement there was ample room. The report pub-lished last October by the fire-insurance experts, after a care-ful examination of American cities with reference to water supplies and the means of protection against fire, indicated that the prolonged escape of San Francisco from a sweeping conflagration was little short of a miracle. It was pointed out by the fire-insurance experts that ninety per cent of the buildings were of wood; that only 2.2 per cent. of them were what is called "fireproof"; that there was but one sprinkler equipment, and that obsolete; and that there was no means of utilizing the water in the bay for the purpose of fighting fire. On the other hand, San Francisco was ac-knowledged to possess some advantages from an underwriter's point of view which many American cities lack. For example, it had several independent sources of water-supply, and some of its distributing reservoirs were provided with gravity-supply mains. Moreover, its fire department was well organized and well equipped, except in the matter of fire-boats. The danger that water-mains will be fractured by earthquake will, of course, always remain. It is impossible to guarantee a water- supply against seismic disturbance, but in all other respect;; San Francisco may be relied upon to have, five years hence, as efficient means of protection against fire as human in-genuity can devise.
The San Francisco catastrophe has directed attention to the fact that fires are much more common in American than in British cities, although our fire departments are much more costly than are their British counterparts. According to the lately published returns of the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade for 1905 and the report of the Fire Marshal of New York for the same year, there were, during the preceding twelve months, in the Boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Richmond, 7750 fires as against only 3511 in London, which contains upwards of 6,000,000 inhabitants. Mr. ALBEllT SHAW, in his book on Municipal Government in Great Britain, points out that American towns of 50,000 inhabitants have in some years as many fires as London. On the other hand, the fire department of Chicago, as well as that of New York, employs considerably more men than that of London, while even that of Boston has three-fourths as many employees. To maintain the New York fire department costs over twice as much as London spends for the same purpose. The rela-tive immunity of London from destructive fires is doubtless attributable in part to the solidity of the materials of which most of the buildings are constructed, but mainly to the ab-sence of American negligence with reference to chimneys and flues and the management of heating apparatus, and to the absence of American carelessness in the use of matches, although in the British metropolis also matches cause most of the conflagrations. In the London report no conflagrations are ascribed to bonfires or brush-fires, whereas the New York fire marshal imputes nearly five hundred to this cause.
Caesarea was developed over a period of 12 Years into a grand city and major seaport and he dedicated it to Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, who had returned it to Herod after wresting it away from Cleopatra. It left a spectacular Roman amphitheater that is still used as a performance venue today. Caesarea, often simplified to Keisarya, and Qaysaria, is an affluent town in north-central Israel, which inherits its name and much of its territory from the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima. Located midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The ancient city of Caesarea Maritima was built by Herod the Great about 25–13 BCE as a major port. It served as an administrative center of the province of Judaea in the Roman Empire, and later as the capital of the Byzantine province of Palaestina Prima. During the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, it was the last city of the Holy Land to fall to the Arabs. The city degraded to a small village after the provincial capital was moved from here to Ramla and had an Arab majority until Crusader conquest. Under the Crusaders it became once again a major port and a fortified city. It was diminished after the Mamluk conquest. In 1884, Bosniak immigrants settled there establishing a small fishing village. Hellenistic and early Roman periods - In 90 BCE, Jewish ruler Alexander Jannaeus captured Straton's Tower as part of his policy of developing the shipbuilding industry and enlarging the Hasmonean kingdom. Straton's Tower remained a Jewish settlement for two more generations, until the area became dominated by the Romans in 63 BCE, when they declared it an autonomous city. Herodian city of Caesarea Maritima (22 BCE – 6CE) - Caesarea Maritima was built in Roman-ruled Judea under the Jewish client King Herod the Great during c. 22-10/9 BCE near the ruins of the small naval station of Straton's Tower. The site, along with all of Judea, was awarded by Rome to Herod the Great in 30 BCE. The pagan city underwent vast changes under Herod, who renamed it Caesarea in honor of the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Caesarea Maritima was known as the administrative, economic, and cultural capital of the Palestinian province from this time. In 22 BCE, Herod began construction of a deep-sea harbor named Sebastos and built storerooms, markets, wide roads, baths, temples to Rome and Augustus, and imposing public buildings. Herod built his palace on a promontory jutting out into the sea, with a decorative pool surrounded by stoas. Every five years, the city hosted major sports competitions, gladiator games, and theatrical productions in its theatre overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Construction of Sebastos Harbor / King Herod built the two jetties of the harbor between 22 and 15 BCE, and in 10/9 BCE he dedicated the city and harbor to Emperor Augustus (Sebastos is Greek for Augustus). The pace of construction was impressive considering the project's size and complexity. At its height, Sebastos was one of the most impressive harbors of its time. It had been constructed on a coast that had no natural harbors and served as an important commercial harbor in antiquity, rivaling Cleopatra's harbor at Alexandria. Josephus wrote: "Although the location was generally unfavorable, [Herod] contended with the difficulties so well that the solidity of the construction could not be overcome by the sea, and its beauty seemed finished off without impediment." When it was built in the 1st century BCE, the harbor of Sebastos ranked as the largest artificial harbor built in the open sea, enclosing around 100,000 m2. The breakwaters were made of lime and pozzolana, a type of volcanic ash, set into an underwater concrete. Herod imported over 24,000 m3 of pozzolana from the name-giving town of Puteoli, today Pozzuoli in Italy, to construct the two breakwaters: the southern one 500 meter, and the northern one 275 meter long. A shipment of this size would have required at least 44 shiploads of 400 tons each. Herod also had 12,000 m3 of local kurkar stone quarried to make rubble and 12,000 m3 of slaked lime mixed with the pozzolana. Architects had to devise a way to lay the wooden forms for the placement of concrete underwater. One technique was to drive stakes into the ground to make a box and then fill it with pozzolana concrete bit by bit. However, this method required many divers to hammer the planks to the stakes underwater and large quantities of pozzolana were necessary. Another technique was a double planking method used in the northern breakwater. On land, carpenters would construct a box with beams and frames on the inside and a watertight, double-planked wall on the outside. This double wall was built with a 23 cm (9 in) gap between the inner and outer layer. Although the box had no bottom, it was buoyant enough to float out to sea because of the watertight space between the inner and outer walls. Once it was floated into position, pozzolana was poured into the gap between the walls and the box would sink into place on the seafloor and be staked down in the corners. The flooded inside area was then filled by divers bit by bit with pozzolana-lime mortar and kurkar rubble until it rose above sea level. On the southern breakwater, barge construction was used. The southern side of Sebastos was much more exposed than the northern side, requiring sturdier breakwaters. Instead of using the double planked method filled with rubble, the architects sank barges filled with layers of pozzolana concrete and lime sand mortar. The barges were similar to boxes without lids, and were constructed using mortise and tenon joints, the same technique used in ancient boats, to ensure they remained watertight. The barges were ballasted with 0.5 meters of pozzolana concrete and floated out to their position. With alternating layers, pozzolana-based and lime-based concretes were hand-placed inside the barge to sink it and fill it up to the surface. However, there were underlying problems that led to its demise. Studies of the concrete cores of the moles have shown that the concrete was much weaker than similar pozzolana hydraulic concrete used in ancient Italian ports. For unknown reasons, the pozzolana mortar did not adhere as well to the kurkar rubble as it did to other rubble types used in Italian harbors. Small but numerous holes in some of the cores also indicate that the lime was of poor quality and stripped out of the mixture by strong waves before it could set. Also, large lumps of lime were found in all five of the cores studied at Caesarea, which shows that the mixture was not mixed thoroughly. However, stability would not have been seriously affected if the harbor had not been constructed over a geological fault line that runs along the coast. Seismic action gradually took its toll on the breakwaters, causing them to tilt down and settle into the seabed. Studies of seabed deposits at Caesarea have shown that a tsunami struck the area sometime during the 1st or 2nd century. Although it is unknown if this tsunami simply damaged or completely destroyed the harbor, it is known that by the 6th century the harbor was unusable and today the jetties lie more than 5 meters underwater. During the Byzantine period, Caesarea became the capital of the new province of Palaestina Prima in 390. As the capital of the province, Caesarea was also the metropolitan see, with ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Jerusalem, when rebuilt after the destruction in the year 70. In 451, however, the Council of Chalcedon established Jerusalem as a patriarchate, with Caesarea as the first of its three subordinate metropolitan sees. Caesarea remained the provincial capital throughout the 5th and 6th centuries. It fell to Sassanid Persia in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, in 614, and was re-conquered by Byzantium in 625.
Los Angeles, California
Listed 7/23/2013
Reference Number: 13000509
The Boyle Hotel - Cummings Block is significant tmder Criterion A as an important anchor to the early commercial development of Los Angeles in the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of the Los Angeles River. When completed in 1889,6 it reflected expansion and growth outside the commercial core in Los Angeles. Now, as the last remaining commercial building from the early development of Boyle Heights in the 1880s, the building represents the late nineteenth century transition of Los Angeles from a small city surrounded by farmland to a burgeoning city center surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. Pre-twentieth century commercial buildings are extremely rare in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area and likely number fewer than a dozen. Extant pre-twentieth century hotels are even rarer and probably number fewer than five. The Boyle Hotel - Cummings Block is also significant under Criterion C for its rare and unique architectural design in a Queen A1me style. 8 The building embodies distinctive character defining features, including its highly decorative wall surface, ornamental spiral columns, parapets with patterned surfacing, comer turret, second story double window with an arched pediment, and decorative brickwork. The building commands a prominent position at the crest of a hill overlooking downtown, as well as at an important intersection, and its construction out of brick signifies solidity and durability at this important site.
National Register of Historic Places Homepage
EARLY PEARL®
As the first outdoor Sativa designed especially for shorter summers, Early Pearl has been providing northern growers with luxurious harvests of bulky, trichome-frosted bud for over 20 years. Before the development of early hybrids and acclimatised strains, producing powerful outdoor weed in Holland and similar climates was difficult. Though cannabis can grow anywhere, there was a time when seeds of truly psychoactive strains could only be obtained from imported weed. While often promising in their genetic potential, these seeds, especially the Sativas, had no chance of succeeding in the northern climate.
Sensi’s three Early strains were developed and released in the mid Eighties to give cool-climate growers access to the three most important groups of psychoactive cannabis ? Early Skunk, Indica-dominant Early Girl, and Early Pearl to represent the Sativa side of the family. Each of those groundbreaking hybrids has its own advantages, and we would hesitate to choose an absolute favourite. If a choice had to be made, Early Pearl is a very strong contender, as she has the yield and solidity of an Indica, the dazzling high of a Sativa and a vibrant, unstoppable zest for life that’s all her own. Furthermore, the Early Pearl line has proven to be first-class breeding-stock, perfect for adding toughness and stability to other hybrids.
For the largest possible yield, Early Pearl can be started indoors at the end of winter and should be transferred outdoors to a location with maximum exposure to direct sunlight a few weeks after the spring equinox. Allow wide spacing between plants, especially if growing directly in the ground, as these ladies can attain a final height equivalent to a small tree. Except in cases of continuous rain or long periods of below-freezing temperatures at the end of the outdoor season, Early Pearl can be left outdoors to reach full-budded crystal-coated maturity.
"...Then the Bogan will be liberated from its prison, and all the Galaxy will burn in a holocaust of despair and chaos."
-Partial translation of a petroglyph found on a dead world located in the Galactic rim
...
According to legend, the Bogan is a malignant Darkside entity that blots out suns and devours worlds. This is not far from the truth.
The Bogan is an amorphous, planet-sized entity composed of cold plasmas and dark matter. It absorbs ambient energy, including light, so it appears black. Its intelligence is spread throughout its mass. It can alter its density from a solid mass the size of a planet to a gaseous interstellar cloud, though its typical form is a thick viscous fluid.
It is capable of "breaking off" pieces of itself to interact with "lesser beings" such as humans and the Bogan's Servitors. These units are capable of independent thought to various degrees. They communicate with the main mass by a form of quantum entanglement. There are various types of sub-units:
INTERLOCUTORS: Humanoid-sized units. Black, amorphous entities with three glowing red eyes arranged in a triangular shape. They can extend pseudopods to manipulate objects.
THE TEN: Similar to the Interlocutors, but with a more humanoid shape and a greater degree of autonomy. Serve as the Bogan's "Generals". They possess a single hourglass shaped glowing red eye. Each of the Ten has their own individual paranormal ability. The Ten's physical bodies were destroyed when the Bogan was imprisoned, they now exist as hyper-dimensional thoughtform constructs and must possess the body of a sentient host to interact with this plane of existence. This act of possession is permanent and cannot be undone. The memories and personality of the Host body remain and are accessible to the possessing entity. The goal of The Ten is to free the Bogan from its inter-dimensional prison.
FLIERS: Starfighter sized units used for recon and attack. Vary in shape from squid-like to insect-like
The Bogan will "feed" by surrounding a planet and then absorbing its energy rapidly, leaving a cold dead mass of rock that the Bogan then assimilates into itself as mass.
By condensing its mass to solidity, the Bogan can use absorbed Hydrogen to initiate a fusion reaction for sublight propulsion. Sub-units of the Bogan can travel on Hyperspace-capable vessels.
LIMANI Bistro, a Mediterranean resaurant built within the Roman ruins of Caesarea / Caesarea was developed over a period of 12 Years into a grand city and major seaport and he dedicated it to Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, who had returned it to Herod after wresting it away from Cleopatra. It left a spectacular Roman amphitheater that is still used as a performance venue today. Caesarea, often simplified to Keisarya, and Qaysaria, is an affluent town in north-central Israel, which inherits its name and much of its territory from the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima. Located midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The ancient city of Caesarea Maritima was built by Herod the Great about 25–13 BCE as a major port. It served as an administrative center of the province of Judaea in the Roman Empire, and later as the capital of the Byzantine province of Palaestina Prima. During the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, it was the last city of the Holy Land to fall to the Arabs. The city degraded to a small village after the provincial capital was moved from here to Ramla and had an Arab majority until Crusader conquest. Under the Crusaders it became once again a major port and a fortified city. It was diminished after the Mamluk conquest. In 1884, Bosniak immigrants settled there establishing a small fishing village. Hellenistic and early Roman periods - In 90 BCE, Jewish ruler Alexander Jannaeus captured Straton's Tower as part of his policy of developing the shipbuilding industry and enlarging the Hasmonean kingdom. Straton's Tower remained a Jewish settlement for two more generations, until the area became dominated by the Romans in 63 BCE, when they declared it an autonomous city. Herodian city of Caesarea Maritima (22 BCE – 6CE) - Caesarea Maritima was built in Roman-ruled Judea under the Jewish client King Herod the Great during c. 22-10/9 BCE near the ruins of the small naval station of Straton's Tower. The site, along with all of Judea, was awarded by Rome to Herod the Great in 30 BCE. The pagan city underwent vast changes under Herod, who renamed it Caesarea in honor of the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Caesarea Maritima was known as the administrative, economic, and cultural capital of the Palestinian province from this time. In 22 BCE, Herod began construction of a deep-sea harbor named Sebastos and built storerooms, markets, wide roads, baths, temples to Rome and Augustus, and imposing public buildings. Herod built his palace on a promontory jutting out into the sea, with a decorative pool surrounded by stoas. Every five years, the city hosted major sports competitions, gladiator games, and theatrical productions in its theatre overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Construction of Sebastos Harbor / King Herod built the two jetties of the harbor between 22 and 15 BCE, and in 10/9 BCE he dedicated the city and harbor to Emperor Augustus (Sebastos is Greek for Augustus). The pace of construction was impressive considering the project's size and complexity. At its height, Sebastos was one of the most impressive harbors of its time. It had been constructed on a coast that had no natural harbors and served as an important commercial harbor in antiquity, rivaling Cleopatra's harbor at Alexandria. Josephus wrote: "Although the location was generally unfavorable, [Herod] contended with the difficulties so well that the solidity of the construction could not be overcome by the sea, and its beauty seemed finished off without impediment." When it was built in the 1st century BCE, the harbor of Sebastos ranked as the largest artificial harbor built in the open sea, enclosing around 100,000 m2. The breakwaters were made of lime and pozzolana, a type of volcanic ash, set into an underwater concrete. Herod imported over 24,000 m3 of pozzolana from the name-giving town of Puteoli, today Pozzuoli in Italy, to construct the two breakwaters: the southern one 500 meter, and the northern one 275 meter long. A shipment of this size would have required at least 44 shiploads of 400 tons each. Herod also had 12,000 m3 of local kurkar stone quarried to make rubble and 12,000 m3 of slaked lime mixed with the pozzolana. Architects had to devise a way to lay the wooden forms for the placement of concrete underwater. One technique was to drive stakes into the ground to make a box and then fill it with pozzolana concrete bit by bit. However, this method required many divers to hammer the planks to the stakes underwater and large quantities of pozzolana were necessary. Another technique was a double planking method used in the northern breakwater. On land, carpenters would construct a box with beams and frames on the inside and a watertight, double-planked wall on the outside. This double wall was built with a 23 cm (9 in) gap between the inner and outer layer. Although the box had no bottom, it was buoyant enough to float out to sea because of the watertight space between the inner and outer walls. Once it was floated into position, pozzolana was poured into the gap between the walls and the box would sink into place on the seafloor and be staked down in the corners. The flooded inside area was then filled by divers bit by bit with pozzolana-lime mortar and kurkar rubble until it rose above sea level. On the southern breakwater, barge construction was used. The southern side of Sebastos was much more exposed than the northern side, requiring sturdier breakwaters. Instead of using the double planked method filled with rubble, the architects sank barges filled with layers of pozzolana concrete and lime sand mortar. The barges were similar to boxes without lids, and were constructed using mortise and tenon joints, the same technique used in ancient boats, to ensure they remained watertight. The barges were ballasted with 0.5 meters of pozzolana concrete and floated out to their position. With alternating layers, pozzolana-based and lime-based concretes were hand-placed inside the barge to sink it and fill it up to the surface. However, there were underlying problems that led to its demise. Studies of the concrete cores of the moles have shown that the concrete was much weaker than similar pozzolana hydraulic concrete used in ancient Italian ports. For unknown reasons, the pozzolana mortar did not adhere as well to the kurkar rubble as it did to other rubble types used in Italian harbors. Small but numerous holes in some of the cores also indicate that the lime was of poor quality and stripped out of the mixture by strong waves before it could set. Also, large lumps of lime were found in all five of the cores studied at Caesarea, which shows that the mixture was not mixed thoroughly. However, stability would not have been seriously affected if the harbor had not been constructed over a geological fault line that runs along the coast. Seismic action gradually took its toll on the breakwaters, causing them to tilt down and settle into the seabed. Studies of seabed deposits at Caesarea have shown that a tsunami struck the area sometime during the 1st or 2nd century. Although it is unknown if this tsunami simply damaged or completely destroyed the harbor, it is known that by the 6th century the harbor was unusable and today the jetties lie more than 5 meters underwater. During the Byzantine period, Caesarea became the capital of the new province of Palaestina Prima in 390. As the capital of the province, Caesarea was also the metropolitan see, with ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Jerusalem, when rebuilt after the destruction in the year 70. In 451, however, the Council of Chalcedon established Jerusalem as a patriarchate, with Caesarea as the first of its three subordinate metropolitan sees. Caesarea remained the provincial capital throughout the 5th and 6th centuries. It fell to Sassanid Persia in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, in 614, and was re-conquered by Byzantium in 625.
With the Matchbox basic mainline being transformed from a generic filled hell to one of almost complete licensed castings within less than a decade it would be churlish to complain too much regarding their new Blaze Buster II. Yes Matchbox do have scores of licensed Fire Engine castings they could use but sometimes either through cost saving or the whims of a designer they feel compelled to go "original" or generic to you and I ;-p
Its all plastic body is to be expected now though for me the whole thing has lost that visual solidity and futuristic styling of the original Blaze Buster and has been replaced with something more akin to the Hot Wheels line!
It isn't awful by any means for its pocket money toy status, its just not something which is probably needed and seems a bit devoid of any meaningful character!
Part of 2024 Case L sourced recently from Jcar in the US.
Mint and boxed.
Villa Mansi in Segromigno, in the municipality of Capannori, is one of the main examples of 17th-century architecture in Lucca, belonging to the wealthy Mansi family who acquired it in the 17th century from the Cenami family.
Its main façade, which was planned by an architect from Urbino – Muzio Oddi– gives a visual effect of non-static solidity. The building actually looks like a compact block, but the façade is livened up by the fact that the central body is slightly set back from the two side parts.
The airy porticoon the raised floor, the double flight of stairs and the chromatic contrast between the plaster and the architectural and decorative elements contribute to the movement and lightness of the building. The composed motif of the serliana which characterises the portico continues in the highest part, throughout the double columns and central arcade.
Inside, there are paintings and frescoes by Lucca-based painter Stefano Tofanelli, greatly admired by Elisa Baciocchi, princess of Lucca and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, dating back to the end of the 18th century and featuring mythological themes in the style of the time that depict the stories of the god Apollo.
In the garden, there are fountains and fishponds with statues by the architect Juvarra, whose original 18th-century garden design has been subsequently changed radically. Today, the property’s botanic gardens are home to over 40 types of trees from all over the world.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
SPG's title says Church of St. George, however, modern photos of St George's in Staraya Ladoga show a very different building. The real St George's does have a dome atop a central tower, like the building on the left, however, the roofline below is very different, and there is no association with a tower like the one shown on the right. So if it is St George's, it's another St George's and I doubt that is in Staraya Ladoga. As I've noted before, SPG seems to have simply guessed at quite a number of the locations he ascribes.
A peasant couple sit on logs, enjoying their lunch, by Lake Ladoga. Starya Ladoga means the old town; the church in the previous photo is part of the new town founded by Peter the Great.
This church is a small one, unassuming, compared with the complex of three churches at the new town, and it sits behind what looks to be a very old rubble and mortar wall, which has a slight slope and a slight curve inwards, towards the viewer. Then, in the opposite direction, a ramped footpath slopes down to the foreshore, where our couple sits, smiling and apparently enjoying a meal. The man has a sort of a lunchbox on his lap. To his left, a large axe is buried in one of the logs, so I assume his work, whether for himself or for others, involves breaking up the longer logs which we see in the water and carrying off the shorter lengths.
I can't fathom the purpose of the old wall, but it is pierced by three oval shaped apertures. The one in about the centre of the frame has a brick arch above it; the next one along, almost invisible, appears to have collapsed at some point, and now has two supports inside it, and a reconstruction of the stonework above it; and the third is a mere darkness off towards the right side of the picture, about which one can tell very little, except that it too appears to have a brick arch over it. These holes are too small to walk through, and my hypothesis would be that they are basically drainage holes, for carrying away rainwater, perhaps, which otherwise might accumulate around the church; just a guess, of course. Note that the stones which make up the wall look like locally obtained ones, but they have been carefully selected to fall within a similar size range. This is so that the wall will be stronger; walls of this type, for all their seeming solidity, are actually only as strong as the binding agent (some variety of concrete or mortar) because, being irregularly shaped, the stones don't support each other. Thus, when the mortar begins to crack and fall out, the wall rapidly collapses. To make such a wall stronger, it needs to be faced with brick or stone, leaving the stone and rubble and mortar as mere infilling.
May 2012: I have applied a small amount of colour correction to the shot to get rid of the red blobs on the couple's face.
June 2014: Okay, one more try. I was unhappy with the purpleish cast to the wall and some of the patches of earth, so I have tried to reduce them a bit. The only trouble is, that with an RGB file, if you reduce the purple, you tend to increase the green. Well, let's assume that the green is moss growing on the wall...
December 2021 I've gone over it again one more time. In the last seven years, Photoshop has expanded its tools, and my skills have improved a bit, so I wanted to see if I could improve the contrast in the sky, and make the colours a bit more vibrant.
The Castel Vecchio Bridge or Scaliger Bridge is a fortified bridge in Verona, northern Italy, over the Adige River. The segmental arch bridge featured the world's largest span at the time of its construction (48.70 m).
It was built (most likely in 1354-1356) by Cangrande II della Scala, to grant him a safe way of escape from the annexed eponymous castle in the event of a rebellion of the population against his tyrannic rule. The solidity of the construction allowed it to resist untouched until, in the late 18th century, the French troops destroyed the tower on the left bank.
The bridge was however totally destroyed, along with the Ponte Pietra, by the retreating German troops on April 24, 1945. The bridge's reconstruction by architect Libero Cecchini began in 1949 and completed in 1951, with the exception of the left tower.