2022 Reading List

 

•Top Fiction: The Periodic Table, Primo Levi; These are just such a lovely set of stories of life great (war) and small (little relations) mixed in with a very personal and practical view of chemistry.

•Top Non-Fiction: Science and Human Behavior, B.F. Skinner; Even though this is dated and abandoned by modern psychology I find myself referring to this book more than others as it is so relevant to modern issues of AI, A/B Testing, and social media.

•Top Business: Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson; I find this book persuasive on how financial malfeasance really does effect the real world we all have to live in.

 

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Full List

 

1.Being Ram Dass, Ram Dass; A history of the counterculture by one of its icons. The mix of psychology, Buhdism, and Hinduism is peculiar and western and deeply personal to Ram Dass. It gave me insights and context into many personalities that influenced my early life: Leary, Muktanada, Keasey, Sai Baba, and ZBS productions. I was disappointed in his reliance on miracles to explain is devotion to Mittenanda, but it did show what was best in the self actualization movement and how to end well.

2.How to Read a Book, Mortimer J Adler; This time I spent quite a bit of attention on the notion of meaning, truth, and tradition. I believe if you read for meaning then Truth must be important to you, otherwise it is just entertainment. “Terms” can only achieve meaning and work within a given tradition or literature. Not all traditions are equal, and believe that just as mathematics is an overly specific language, you can reason and find truth within a tradition, but you can assess the falsity of a tradition by comparing it to pragmatic concerns with the physical world. This brings up concerns with a post modernists view has real consequences for reasoning about the natural world.

3.Paradise Lost, John Milton; This is the story we all know of the Bible that isn’t in the Bible. The ultimate sin is “pride,” Satan is the serpent and the seducer, Eve is blonde, and Jesus is doubly a king (of heaven and earth). The book does show off its time, clearly responding to the Glorious Revolution and anti-Catholic in nature, not mention Satan’s use of canon.

4.Science and Human Behavior, B.F. Skinner; This book encourages a purely external black box view of human being with consciousness and cognition as unimportant characteristics. What is impressive is not the shortcoming of this technique found in the last 70 years (CBT, Neural Imaging, Deep-Learning) but the shear efficacy of the approach at predicting and controlling human behavior. His lessons on the failures of punishment, and the importance of distributed control structures have become increasingly important as behavior controlling power has become much more centralized through entertainment and advertising companies.

5.The Rise of Rome, Anthony Everett; I modern telling of Republican Rome, that always starts with the myth and then explains the confirmation and differences of modern scholarship, but keeps to the classical narrative of Rome as that is what drives its importance to us. The importance of civilian Militia to Rome and their obsession with order and ambivalence to Greece are well described, the section on Hannibal was very good to make some sense of Punic/Phonetian/Catheginian/Spanish all fit together as the semetic rival of Rome.

6.The Aeneid, Virgil, tr. Cecil Day-Lewis; A great epic poem that feels a bit like a Greek epic remix with so many of Ulysses and other Greek adventures revisited, but characters have so many more inner voices and are so much more psychologically modern.

7.Great Courses Aeneid, prof Elizabeth Vandiver; It was interesting the degree the book was meant to justify Augustus Caesar, from simple examples like the Trojan Games, to explain the war on Carthage, and to justify the importance of Piety/Duty. Also the idea that he mixes both the Odyssey and the Iliad in reverse order to bring those stories to a wider audience is fascinating, and how this is the only details extent of the Trojan Horse.

8.The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger; A surprisingly amusing journalistic book of how to write a story about a lost boat in which we don’t know what happened and the whole story is done by simile of the similar stories. The stories of modern fishing and how hard and brutal life can still be due to weather and the realities of the sea.

9.Children of Gebelawi, Naguib Mahfouz; A story that mostly uses ordinary people in a realistic violent patriarchy as metaphor for the Judo-Christian-Islamic tradition and by extension our modern world. The story creates an emotional understanding of the middle eastern cultures of what is both loved and hated within their own culture, but with a desire for freedom and fairness that externally we assume means independence.

10.A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism, Daniel A. Sjursen; An attempt at a 21st century Progressive’s history of the United States. It feels a bit awkward as it tells the story of America through its military conflicts, which doesn’t always align well with the important events for its oppressed peoples, also the book does not define nore justify concern about equity or hyper-capitalism. More complete than Zinn’s book but still not a stand-alone history and starts to feel journalistic starting with George Bush Jr. The pre-Bill of rights section is by far the best covering the complexities of colonial times and an unusually in-depth analysis of the Spanish American war. FDR and Russian apologist tendencies are mediocre.

11.Economics Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell; Fairly basic economic analysis of tradeoffs and incentives, from a very conservative African American Economist. Generally well argued and very clear, though not always covering all the data. Not very persuasive on executive pay, excellent examples of the problems with statistical comparisons for economic development for wages, women, and blacks around non-comparable demographics age, education, marriage status. I agree with his analysis that the real problem with gender pay inequality is a problem with marriage and motherhood, I disagree that this is not a problem.

12.Arabian Nights and Days, Mafouz Naguib; A selection of 1001 nights stories, converted to a slightly more modern and real world and given specific moral meanings. The themes of the corruption of power from position, wealth, or invisibility caps is very present. The Sultan is ultimately creating corruption through his abuse of power, the book leaves unanswered to what degree we can ever achieve forgiveness for our sins.

13.The Koran, Mohamed tr. N.J. Dawood; A much more clear and prescriptive religious text than the bible. The retold stories include Adam and Satan, where Satan denies man's dominion over the earth, Moses where even clear miracles are denied, Jesus has a virgin mother but got has no son nor wife. Alms/Charity are always repeated ass is the care of orphans.

14.Cleopatra: A Biography, Michael Grant; Tries to tell the story from Cleopatra’s point of view, relying heavily on an optimistic strategic view of what could have been to her interest. In this story Cleopatra is the Hellenic Queen and represents the traditions of Alexander. She becomes a competent extension of the Tolomeis traditions working hard with vision and ruthlessness to maintain the power of her family within its own traditions. Relied surprisingly heavily on coin evidence and it was fun though not inherently convincing to mix in poetry through the ages to describe the possible scenes.

15.The Canterbury Tales, Geofrey Chaucer; Modern spelling and pronunciation, but original words. Was excellent storytelling, a collection of short stories that speak to each other as a series. Curious mixture of baudy and pious that feels surprisingly like Shakespeare (also the overlap of historic and classical themes). Many if not most of the stories are taken from other sources and are reset to give them a specific impact, that still resonates until today with the humor~ and lessons even if we moderns miss the stereotypes of the time.

16.Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff; This was a specific attempt at a positive view of Cleopatra as a competent ruler. The author correctly interprets that the primary stories we have have all been tainted by a conqueror who needed to have a villain to justify his war. Her arguments are convincing that Cleopatra was an active and judicious ruler working for her own self interest, she expanded her empire substantially, she reduced her own infighting, increased wealth and power though she eventually lost the entire kindgdom.

17.Immune, Philipp Dettmer; This is narrative biology, really optimized for kids to learn their first cellular system. It is up to date and current on the science but eliminates the biochemistry on the immune system, I learned about feedback loop of Macrophages/Neutrophil, Dendritic messengers, Lymphocyte (T&B) activation with silly analogies that are memorable.

18.The Bhagavad Gita, Traditional tr. Swami Swarupananda; It is interesting to read the raw text with its curious mixtures of things. I was most surprised by the mixing of caste called out as one of the obvious and greatest sins. I also found the mixing of the ideas that I am more familiar with from Chinese traditions such as the importance of duty (confucianism) and unattachment (buddhism). The lesson I took the most was the focus on accomplishment of duty without the aim for attaining Glory of the universe even if evil actions are taken, they can be forgiven if they follow the glorification of god. This produces a strong social structure without revenge and incrimination. This is a very un-Christian solution to the problem of Evil, as it always exists with us, and it exists without intent, but we can only overcome it (not individually) by maintaining society/duty.

19.A Short History of Artificial Intelligence, Michael Wooldridge; This books feels weak when compared to Mitchel’s AI book as it fails to really explain how different techniques work and covers a bit of the same history. This book is more in the history and makes it much more clear how much AI has always been part of mainstream software history, as the “Intelligence” has never been precise, the best insight of this book was the importance of computation complexity theory on the limits of AI, and why a combination of deep neural nets and monte-carlo strategies have only superficially solved the problem for some very deterministic cases like games. The second big insight was how much Brook’s strategy of interactive “intelligence” (roomba like) produces powerful results, but has no theoretical structure for progression.

20.The Sandman (01-75) & Audio Book, Neil Gaiman; Literary Horror, but still a comic book. The audiobook felt so much darker than the comic. It is a writers book, it is about the power of stories, both to create the gods and let them live on, the stories we create to punish ourselves (hell, furies) and the nightmares to guide us, and how end of each story is a little death that doesn’t

21.The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides tr. Benjamin Jowett; this almost feels like a modern history other than the unquoted speeches that are one the best parts of the book, the various rhetorical devices are masterworks. For Thucydides the war is a conflict between the slow alliance building oligarchs of Sparta and the mercurial imperialists of Athens. One offering honor and stability and other wealth and democracy. Nicias is my favorite General who doesn’t want to go to war but tries and fails. It feels a bit like a modern history book, and it is a great adventure story in its own right with detailed local politics with twisting alliances.

22.Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson; I do prefer the author's term secrecy jurisdiction s over Tax havens. It makes it clear it is a way to legally hide things from laws. Tax is lost which while that has negative consequences especially for the poor and weak it is side story from the evasion of legislation, and encouraging crime and corruption. The author's pro legislation, kaysien, labour movement opinions distract from how lack of rule of law hurt us all, even Delaware, Zürich, and the city of London.

23.Old Man's War Series (Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, Zoe’s Tale, The Human Division, The End of All Things), John Scalzi; The series has too much plot and not enough character or setting, it goes from super soldier, to frontier, to teenage team, to band of misfits save the world adventure stories. The world is a screed against sectionalism, and panegyric to individualism and the power of choice. The tension between these drives the relationships with the Aliens and development of human society.

24.Do Dice Play God, Ian Stewart; This is a book of practical mathematics, it focuses on statistics, unlike Taleb who really focuses on the meaning of uncertainty, this explains a difference between randomness (true incompressible information) and unpredictability (deterministic chaos). It goes well beyond the history of statistics and into dynamic equations and partial differential estimations and the how and why these techniques have been developed. Basically the practical side of the most advanced mathematics I studied. Stewart is determinist and makes an argument we should look for deterministic chaos in systems such as quantum.

25.Superior: the return of race science, Angela Saini; The book is a journalist look into biological racism's history, disproof, and revival. The author approaches the subject as a Briton of Indian decent, points out the two biggest proponents of eugenics we're the USA and Nazi Germany, how statistically there is more variation within any identified racial group than between any of them and how race consciousness especially in medicine combined with new national narratives is bringing back biological (scientific) racism.

26.Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowery; This is a very lyrical novel, that has great depth of character stuffed into 1 day and 1 hour a year later. The story is set with the tension of 1938 as an implicit background, and individuals whose horrible fate seems avoidable if they could just for a moment be something other than their ordinary selves. The Consul can observe and analyze the world in detail, but cannot make even simple choices in his anxiety and alcoholism, Yvonne has independently struck upon the same idea as the Consul to escape but cannot articulate it to him in his malaise to force it to reality, Hugh wants desperately to make his mark on the world, but always chooses the hopeless irrelevant path of history, when opportunity is so close but he cannot know. It leaves me thinking of how many decisions in our life are close to something that could make us better, but the default is to remain stuck where we are.

27.American Cartel, Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz; It is a two part story, starts with a crime novel and switches to an unfinished courtroom drama. I can almost sympathize with the manufacturers and distributors' claim that they are not responsible for prescribing or handing out the drugs, but the ‘71 controlled substance act gave the distributors the impossible task of regulating the distribution of what made them money. The story doesn’t explain why those groups went to Trump, but the ineffectiveness of the law to curb the distribution and death (even when doctors and pharmacists could be jailed), the revolving door of regulators and advisors, the lobbying to make it impossible to enforce the laws left many communities with nothing but anger and woe.

28.Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky; A primer on American leftist ideology, and a guidebook for Q-Anon. I did not know Chomsky’s past in the peace movement, or the American Communist party. Fundamentally he is an Anrcho-Syndicalist who has extreme faith in the ability of planners. He is very good at guiding a reader through institutional analysis, but as the book progresses he takes to much of the aims and institutions as responsibility for the outcomes. “they” must of planned it and made it happen. He is well read in history but provides a sometimes bizarre but not unsupportable view of facts, like people forced off farms into industry. His anti-Expert views, then demanding that aims can easily become results creates a perfect motte-bailey argument pattern for conspiracy theories, now popularized by the far right.

29.The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo; An ode to Medieval Paris, with a believable world with ridiculously over the top operatic characters and plot. Esmerelda and Frolio are both entirely corrupted by lust, there is no real redemption for Quasimodo who overcomes his position in society that believes that the soul must follow the body, leaving everything in tragedy. Even while maudlin over the top the details and dialog are fantastic, the philosophizing on architecture and poets is hilarious and insightful, I am left of thinking how the times and place make the man.

30.How Numbers Work, New Scientist; Fun superficial survey of modern mathematics, some little history like base10 and decimals moving from China to India to Europe, a very consise explanation ofhow set theory can ground numbers, cute applications of stats to the real world, the big names like Hilbert and Weil get little vignettes, the phycs and philosophy was just weak, casual read I recommend it to my kids

31.Proof: The Science of Booze, Adam Rogers; This was a fun book, mycology and biochemistry. The importance of the yeast, how the enzymes of malt work, good fun casual science read with a little bit of politics and history thrown in.

32.Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison; re-read last time I read it I was in high school, and I barely remember it but it is fantastic, I would classify it more as a middle-age book than a coming of age book. It is deeply about the African American experience that still exists today, but that is used to show sharp relief of more general problems of how we find our place in society,. The anonymous author is invisible in many ways, the biggest is that he cannot be recognized for who he is, unlike the modern focus on identitarian politics. This focus is on how our history must effect us but we still desire freedom and recognition as individuals, not live other peoples dreams for them. I find the section on the inadequacy of the freedom of the duplicitous hipster Rinehart as inadequate, interesting and convincing.

33.Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, Jon Lee Anderson; This was an excellent biography that gives strong historical perspective and evaluates the existing controversies. Che comes out as an amazing leader through his passion for a fair society for socialist man Well done biography giving a sense of characters and balancing the historic controversies of the subject. I very much appreciated the level of context of the Americas in the ‘50s as a background setting. Che comes through as a quirky and unique individual, who provided leadership through strong conviction, and unflinching dedication to his ideals. The story is ultimately tragic, not due to the death and horror that he wrought, but how in life we can only learn one set of hard won lessons of loyalty and universally high standards for mankind that served Che so well in Cuba failed utterly in the Congo and Bolivia leading to his failure and death. His thesis of “Gorilla war as the crucible to forge the socialist man” is both true and inadequate. It was true as only extreme hardship could provide an environment to force people to work together wholeheartedly as one without conventions and institutions, but inadequate for creating a complete society.

34.The World According to Physics, Jim Al-Khalili; This a book about physics in 2020’s, it explains the 3 foundations of Relativity, Quantum, and Thermodynamics at their current state for the non-mathematical. I think the failure to address the dimensionality problems of Superstrings and the divide by 0 problems of merging Relativity and Quantum was sad even for a non-mathematical summary, but he does a great job of addressing the big problems of physics why unified theories are hard and desirable, why quantum is so important to the real world, the realists demands, why esoteric particles are so important to find, why holographic theory is important for cross-over from the large to the small.

35.The Periodic Table, Primo Levi; a beautiful collection of stories about life, work, the material world, growing up, and growing old. The background of his experience in concentration camp keeps the story somber, but his playful look at his youth and becoming a chemist, and making friends keeps the collection cheerful and insightful to human characters. Vanadium is such a short and concise look at many of the complexities of coming to terms with the ordinary horror of IG Farben employees and the inability to fully appreciate the enormity of the camps.

36.Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin; I was looking for ideas to improve underperforming teams, what I got was a refresher on the importance of deliberate practice: intentional, responsive, specific, and repeatable practice is what makes great performance. General skills/IQ allow people to get to a basic level fast, but does not speed up specific performance, also specific practice can even overcome much of the general failures of aging. The ability to apply this to teams was only through simile and didn‘t provide direct guidance. But is a good reminder of just how important intentionality is any result.

37.101 Wilderness Survival Skills, Kevin Estell; This was 80% covered in the old Boy Scout handbook, it reminded me of a set of skills that do make me feel more comfortable outside even if I rarely use them. I agree with the incredible nature of 550 paracord, but it is a bit more “survivalist” oriented than my relationship with the outside. It did make me think about emergency preparedness and the basic usefulness of knife, “cord”, and fire skills. I don’t really know how to teach fire skills to my kids in our modern low fire world.

38.Baltasar and Blimunda, José Saramago; The compelling plot is driven by the magical realism narrative and love of Baltasar and Blimunda, but the main thrust of the book is the condemnation of the church & monarchy failing to take care of the people and the great waste of wealth. The naive and omniscient across time narrator sets a sarcastic tone to the book to offset the saccharin love of the main characters, but their relationships with others are subtle and realistic: the monk, the music master, the sister, the father, and the workers are all beautiful vignettes.

39.The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World, Andrew Doyle; A very contemporary work with an obnoxious beginning. The worst parts of the book are the complaints and examples of Woke aggression, the best part is the intellectual history of related topics and terms. I am unpersuaded that calling people their preferred pronouns is anything other than polite, but I do agree it should not be legally enforced, which leads to my strong sympathies with defense of Liberal Enlightenment ideology and primacy of reasoned argument as a method of social and material progress that must be defended and encouraged.

40.What I Didn’t Learn in Business School, Jay B. Barney; A fictional novel of management consultants as a pedagogical tool for business. It works OK, to explain the importance of real world experience to utilize NPV, 5-Forces, etc…, the need for diverse experiences to get at data, and the unrelenting importance of relationships and teamwork.

41.The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing; This is surprisingly readable, technically complicated book, the divisions into a writer’s versions of herself and multiple fictionalized versions of the characters lives, reactions and experience divided up by themes. The themes that left an impression on me were those of the communists and feminism. The focus on ideology that is supposed to be good but became corrupt echos of itself, self aware and embarrassed of its own failure. The relations between genders is deeply personal leaving open tradeoffs of independence and community, the social needs and expectations that come bundled in ways that even when the law allows cannot be taken apart leaving individuals unsatisfied. Watching the world the views of an empath who knows what everyone feels from the their body languages and is intellectual aware of how she is influenced by others but incapable of resisting was well portrayed.

 

Legong is a form of Balinese dance. It is a refined dance form characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions.

 

An extremely basic definition of legong is a dance traditionally performed by pre-pubescent girls in the palaces of feudal Bali.

 

One translation is that the word is made up of two words. Lega meaning happy and Ing wong meaning person – put them together and you get: “something that makes people happy”. Another one is oleg meaning dance and gong meaning gamelan, the music that accompanies the dance.

 

Legong probably originated in the 19th century as royal entertainment. Today the most common legong dance is Legong Keraton, so named by the Sultanate of Keraton Surakarta when the music and dance composer and genius I Wayan Lotring from Kuta was invited to perform in the 1920s with his Gamelan Pelegongan group in the keraton (palace) in Surakarta.

 

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Bali is an island and province of Indonesia. The province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan. It is located at the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. Its capital of Denpasar is located at the southern part of the island.

 

With a population of 3,890,757 in the 2010 census, and 4,225,000 as of January 2014, the island is home to most of Indonesia's Hindu minority. According to the 2010 Census, 83.5% of Bali's population adhered to Balinese Hinduism, followed by 13.4% Muslim, Christianity at 2.5%, and Buddhism 0.5%.

 

Bali is a popular tourist destination, which has seen a significant rise in numbers since the 1980s. It is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. The Indonesian International Film Festival is held every year in Bali.

 

Bali is part of the Coral Triangle, the area with the highest biodiversity of marine species. In this area alone over 500 reef building coral species can be found. For comparison, this is about 7 times as many as in the entire Caribbean. There is a wide range of dive sites with high quality reefs, all with their own specific attractions. Many sites can have strong currents and swell, so diving without a knowledgeable guide is inadvisable. Most recently, Bali was the host of the 2011 ASEAN Summit, 2013 APEC and Miss World 2013.

 

HISTORY

ANCIENT

Bali was inhabited around 2000 BC by Austronesian people who migrated originally from Southeast Asia and Oceania through Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are closely related to the people of the Indonesian archipelago, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Oceania. Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.

 

In ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Bhairawa, Siwa Shidanta, Waisnawa, Bodha, Brahma, Resi, Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal Godhead.

 

Inscriptions from 896 and 911 don't mention a king, until 914, when Sri Kesarivarma is mentioned. They also reveal an independent Bali, with a distinct dialect, where Buddhism and Sivaism were practiced simultaneously. Mpu Sindok's great granddaughter, Mahendradatta (Gunapriyadharmapatni), married the Bali king Udayana Warmadewa (Dharmodayanavarmadeva) around 989, giving birth to Airlangga around 1001. This marriage also brought more Hinduism and Javanese culture to Bali. Princess Sakalendukirana appeared in 1098. Suradhipa reigned from 1115 to 1119, and Jayasakti from 1146 until 1150. Jayapangus appears on inscriptions between 1178 and 1181, while Adikuntiketana and his son Paramesvara in 1204.

 

Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning "Walidwipa". It was during this time that the people developed their complex irrigation system subak to grow rice in wet-field cultivation. Some religious and cultural traditions still practised today can be traced to this period.

 

The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. The uncle of Hayam Wuruk is mentioned in the charters of 1384-86. A mass Javanese emigration occurred in the next century.

 

PORTUGUESE CONTACTS

The first known European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1512, when a Portuguese expedition led by Antonio Abreu and Francisco Serrão sighted its northern shores. It was the first expedition of a series of bi-annual fleets to the Moluccas, that throughout the 16th century usually traveled along the coasts of the Sunda Islands. Bali was also mapped in 1512, in the chart of Francisco Rodrigues, aboard the expedition. In 1585, a ship foundered off the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung.

 

DUTCH EAST INDIA

In 1597 the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali, and the Dutch East India Company was established in 1602. The Dutch government expanded its control across the Indonesian archipelago during the second half of the 19th century (see Dutch East Indies). Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various competing Balinese realms against each other. In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.

 

In June 1860 the famous Welsh naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled to Bali from Singapore, landing at Buleleng on the northcoast of the island. Wallace's trip to Bali was instrumental in helping him devise his Wallace Line theory. The Wallace Line is a faunal boundary that runs through the strait between Bali and Lombok. It has been found to be a boundary between species of Asiatic origin in the east and a mixture of Australian and Asian species to the west. In his travel memoir The Malay Archipelago, Wallace wrote of his experience in Bali:

 

I was both astonished and delighted; for as my visit to Java was some years later, I had never beheld so beautiful and well-cultivated a district out of Europe. A slightly undulating plain extends from the seacoast about ten or twelve miles inland, where it is bounded by a fine range of wooded and cultivated hills. Houses and villages, marked out by dense clumps of coconut palms, tamarind and other fruit trees, are dotted about in every direction; while between them extend luxurious rice-grounds, watered by an elaborate system of irrigation that would be the pride of the best cultivated parts of Europe.

 

The Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and were met by the thousands of members of the royal family and their followers who fought against the superior Dutch force in a suicidal puputan defensive assault rather than face the humiliation of surrender. Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated 200 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders. In the Dutch intervention in Bali, a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung.

 

AFTERWARD THE DUTCH GOVERNORS

exercised administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture generally remained intact. Dutch rule over Bali came later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.

 

n the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee all spent time here. Their accounts of the island and its peoples created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature." Western tourists began to visit the island.

 

Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II. It was not originally a target in their Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were inoperative due to heavy rains, the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy Bali, which did not suffer from comparable weather. The island had no regular Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There was only a Native Auxiliary Corps Prajoda (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native soldiers and several Dutch KNIL officers under command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P. Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942 the Japanese forces landed near the town of Senoer [Senur]. The island was quickly captured.

 

During the Japanese occupation, a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. The harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule more resented than Dutch rule. Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch returned to Indonesia, including Bali, to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the Balinese rebels, who now used recovered Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they made a suicide attack on the heavily armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military resistance.

 

INDIPENDENCE FROM THE DUTCH

In 1946, the Dutch constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia, which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.

 

CONTEMPORARY

The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting this system. Politically, the opposition was represented by supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs. An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto.

 

The army became the dominant power as it instigated a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population. With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members.

 

As a result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno out of the presidency. His "New Order" government reestablished relations with western countries. The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in a modern form. The resulting large growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the country. A bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the tourist area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and another in 2005, severely reduced tourism, producing much economic hardship to the island.

 

GEOGRAPHY

The island of Bali lies 3.2 km east of Java, and is approximately 8 degrees south of the equator. Bali and Java are separated by the Bali Strait. East to west, the island is approximately 153 km wide and spans approximately 112 km north to south; administratively it covers 5,780 km2, or 5,577 km2 without Nusa Penida District, its population density is roughly 750 people/km2.

 

Bali's central mountains include several peaks over 3,000 metres in elevation. The highest is Mount Agung (3,031 m), known as the "mother mountain" which is an active volcano rated as one of the world's most likely sites for a massive eruption within the next 100 years. Mountains range from centre to the eastern side, with Mount Agung the easternmost peak. Bali's volcanic nature has contributed to its exceptional fertility and its tall mountain ranges provide the high rainfall that supports the highly productive agriculture sector. South of the mountains is a broad, steadily descending area where most of Bali's large rice crop is grown. The northern side of the mountains slopes more steeply to the sea and is the main coffee producing area of the island, along with rice, vegetables and cattle. The longest river, Ayung River, flows approximately 75 km.

 

The island is surrounded by coral reefs. Beaches in the south tend to have white sand while those in the north and west have black sand. Bali has no major waterways, although the Ho River is navigable by small sampan boats. Black sand beaches between Pasut and Klatingdukuh are being developed for tourism, but apart from the seaside temple of Tanah Lot, they are not yet used for significant tourism.

 

The largest city is the provincial capital, Denpasar, near the southern coast. Its population is around 491,500 (2002). Bali's second-largest city is the old colonial capital, Singaraja, which is located on the north coast and is home to around 100,000 people. Other important cities include the beach resort, Kuta, which is practically part of Denpasar's urban area, and Ubud, situated at the north of Denpasar, is the island's cultural centre.

 

Three small islands lie to the immediate south east and all are administratively part of the Klungkung regency of Bali: Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan. These islands are separated from Bali by the Badung Strait.

 

To the east, the Lombok Strait separates Bali from Lombok and marks the biogeographical division between the fauna of the Indomalayan ecozone and the distinctly different fauna of Australasia. The transition is known as the Wallace Line, named after Alfred Russel Wallace, who first proposed a transition zone between these two major biomes. When sea levels dropped during the Pleistocene ice age, Bali was connected to Java and Sumatra and to the mainland of Asia and shared the Asian fauna, but the deep water of the Lombok Strait continued to keep Lombok Island and the Lesser Sunda archipelago isolated.

 

CLIMATE

Being just 8 degrees south of the equator, Bali has a fairly even climate year round.

 

Day time temperatures at low elevations vary between 20-33⁰ C although it can be much cooler than that in the mountains. The west monsoon is in place from approximately October to April and this can bring significant rain, particularly from December to March. Outside of the monsoon period, humidity is relatively low and any rain unlikely in lowland areas.

 

ECOLOGY

Bali lies just to the west of the Wallace Line, and thus has a fauna that is Asian in character, with very little Australasian influence, and has more in common with Java than with Lombok. An exception is the yellow-crested cockatoo, a member of a primarily Australasian family. There are around 280 species of birds, including the critically endangered Bali myna, which is endemic. Others Include barn swallow, black-naped oriole, black racket-tailed treepie, crested serpent-eagle, crested treeswift, dollarbird, Java sparrow, lesser adjutant, long-tailed shrike, milky stork, Pacific swallow, red-rumped swallow, sacred kingfisher, sea eagle, woodswallow, savanna nightjar, stork-billed kingfisher, yellow-vented bulbul and great egret.

 

Until the early 20th century, Bali was home to several large mammals: the wild banteng, leopard and the endemic Bali tiger. The banteng still occurs in its domestic form, whereas leopards are found only in neighbouring Java, and the Bali tiger is extinct. The last definite record of a tiger on Bali dates from 1937, when one was shot, though the subspecies may have survived until the 1940s or 1950s. The relatively small size of the island, conflict with humans, poaching and habitat reduction drove the Bali tiger to extinction. This was the smallest and rarest of all tiger subspecies and was never caught on film or displayed in zoos, whereas few skins or bones remain in museums around the world. Today, the largest mammals are the Javan rusa deer and the wild boar. A second, smaller species of deer, the Indian muntjac, also occurs. Saltwater crocodiles were once present on the island, but became locally extinct sometime during the last century.

 

Squirrels are quite commonly encountered, less often is the Asian palm civet, which is also kept in coffee farms to produce Kopi Luwak. Bats are well represented, perhaps the most famous place to encounter them remaining the Goa Lawah (Temple of the Bats) where they are worshipped by the locals and also constitute a tourist attraction. They also occur in other cave temples, for instance at Gangga Beach. Two species of monkey occur. The crab-eating macaque, known locally as "kera", is quite common around human settlements and temples, where it becomes accustomed to being fed by humans, particularly in any of the three "monkey forest" temples, such as the popular one in the Ubud area. They are also quite often kept as pets by locals. The second monkey, endemic to Java and some surrounding islands such as Bali, is far rarer and more elusive is the Javan langur, locally known as "lutung". They occur in few places apart from the Bali Barat National Park. They are born an orange colour, though by their first year they would have already changed to a more blackish colouration. In Java however, there is more of a tendency for this species to retain its juvenile orange colour into adulthood, and so you can see a mixture of black and orange monkeys together as a family. Other rarer mammals include the leopard cat, Sunda pangolin and black giant squirrel.

 

Snakes include the king cobra and reticulated python. The water monitor can grow to at least 1.5 m in length and 50 kg and can move quickly.

 

The rich coral reefs around the coast, particularly around popular diving spots such as Tulamben, Amed, Menjangan or neighbouring Nusa Penida, host a wide range of marine life, for instance hawksbill turtle, giant sunfish, giant manta ray, giant moray eel, bumphead parrotfish, hammerhead shark, reef shark, barracuda, and sea snakes. Dolphins are commonly encountered on the north coast near Singaraja and Lovina.

 

A team of scientists conducted a survey from 29 April 2011 to 11 May 2011 at 33 sea sites around Bali. They discovered 952 species of reef fish of which 8 were new discoveries at Pemuteran, Gilimanuk, Nusa Dua, Tulamben and Candidasa, and 393 coral species, including two new ones at Padangbai and between Padangbai and Amed. The average coverage level of healthy coral was 36% (better than in Raja Ampat and Halmahera by 29% or in Fakfak and Kaimana by 25%) with the highest coverage found in Gili Selang and Gili Mimpang in Candidasa, Karangasem regency.

 

Many plants have been introduced by humans within the last centuries, particularly since the 20th century, making it sometimes hard to distinguish what plants are really native.[citation needed] Among the larger trees the most common are: banyan trees, jackfruit, coconuts, bamboo species, acacia trees and also endless rows of coconuts and banana species. Numerous flowers can be seen: hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea, poinsettia, oleander, jasmine, water lily, lotus, roses, begonias, orchids and hydrangeas exist. On higher grounds that receive more moisture, for instance around Kintamani, certain species of fern trees, mushrooms and even pine trees thrive well. Rice comes in many varieties. Other plants with agricultural value include: salak, mangosteen, corn, kintamani orange, coffee and water spinach.

 

ENVIRONMENT

Some of the worst erosion has occurred in Lebih Beach, where up to 7 metres of land is lost every year. Decades ago, this beach was used for holy pilgrimages with more than 10,000 people, but they have now moved to Masceti Beach.

 

From ranked third in previous review, in 2010 Bali got score 99.65 of Indonesia's environmental quality index and the highest of all the 33 provinces. The score measured 3 water quality parameters: the level of total suspended solids (TSS), dissolved oxygen (DO) and chemical oxygen demand (COD).

 

Because of over-exploitation by the tourist industry which covers a massive land area, 200 out of 400 rivers on the island have dried up and based on research, the southern part of Bali would face a water shortage up to 2,500 litres of clean water per second by 2015. To ease the shortage, the central government plans to build a water catchment and processing facility at Petanu River in Gianyar. The 300 litres capacity of water per second will be channelled to Denpasar, Badung and Gianyar in 2013.

 

ECONOMY

Three decades ago, the Balinese economy was largely agriculture-based in terms of both output and employment. Tourism is now the largest single industry in terms of income, and as a result, Bali is one of Indonesia's wealthiest regions. In 2003, around 80% of Bali's economy was tourism related. By end of June 2011, non-performing loan of all banks in Bali were 2.23%, lower than the average of Indonesian banking industry non-performing loan (about 5%). The economy, however, suffered significantly as a result of the terrorist bombings 2002 and 2005. The tourism industry has since recovered from these events.

 

AGRICULTURE

Although tourism produces the GDP's largest output, agriculture is still the island's biggest employer; most notably rice cultivation. Crops grown in smaller amounts include fruit, vegetables, Coffea arabica and other cash and subsistence crops. Fishing also provides a significant number of jobs. Bali is also famous for its artisans who produce a vast array of handicrafts, including batik and ikat cloth and clothing, wooden carvings, stone carvings, painted art and silverware. Notably, individual villages typically adopt a single product, such as wind chimes or wooden furniture.

 

The Arabica coffee production region is the highland region of Kintamani near Mount Batur. Generally, Balinese coffee is processed using the wet method. This results in a sweet, soft coffee with good consistency. Typical flavours include lemon and other citrus notes. Many coffee farmers in Kintamani are members of a traditional farming system called Subak Abian, which is based on the Hindu philosophy of "Tri Hita Karana". According to this philosophy, the three causes of happiness are good relations with God, other people and the environment. The Subak Abian system is ideally suited to the production of fair trade and organic coffee production. Arabica coffee from Kintamani is the first product in Indonesia to request a Geographical Indication.

 

TOURISM

The tourism industry is primarily focused in the south, while significant in the other parts of the island as well. The main tourist locations are the town of Kuta (with its beach), and its outer suburbs of Legian and Seminyak (which were once independent townships), the east coast town of Sanur (once the only tourist hub), in the center of the island Ubud, to the south of the Ngurah Rai International Airport, Jimbaran, and the newer development of Nusa Dua and Pecatu.

 

The American government lifted its travel warnings in 2008. The Australian government issued an advice on Friday, 4 May 2012. The overall level of the advice was lowered to 'Exercise a high degree of caution'. The Swedish government issued a new warning on Sunday, 10 June 2012 because of one more tourist who was killed by methanol poisoning. Australia last issued an advice on Monday, 5 January 2015 due to new terrorist threats.

 

An offshoot of tourism is the growing real estate industry. Bali real estate has been rapidly developing in the main tourist areas of Kuta, Legian, Seminyak and Oberoi. Most recently, high-end 5 star projects are under development on the Bukit peninsula, on the south side of the island. Million dollar villas are being developed along the cliff sides of south Bali, commanding panoramic ocean views. Foreign and domestic (many Jakarta individuals and companies are fairly active) investment into other areas of the island also continues to grow. Land prices, despite the worldwide economic crisis, have remained stable.

 

In the last half of 2008, Indonesia's currency had dropped approximately 30% against the US dollar, providing many overseas visitors value for their currencies. Visitor arrivals for 2009 were forecast to drop 8% (which would be higher than 2007 levels), due to the worldwide economic crisis which has also affected the global tourist industry, but not due to any travel warnings.

 

Bali's tourism economy survived the terrorist bombings of 2002 and 2005, and the tourism industry has in fact slowly recovered and surpassed its pre-terrorist bombing levels; the longterm trend has been a steady increase of visitor arrivals. In 2010, Bali received 2.57 million foreign tourists, which surpassed the target of 2.0–2.3 million tourists. The average occupancy of starred hotels achieved 65%, so the island is still able to accommodate tourists for some years without any addition of new rooms/hotels, although at the peak season some of them are fully booked.

 

Bali received the Best Island award from Travel and Leisure in 2010. The island of Bali won because of its attractive surroundings (both mountain and coastal areas), diverse tourist attractions, excellent international and local restaurants, and the friendliness of the local people. According to BBC Travel released in 2011, Bali is one of the World's Best Islands, ranking second after Santorini, Greece.

 

In August 2010, the film Eat Pray Love was released in theatres. The movie was based on Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. It took place at Ubud and Padang-Padang Beach at Bali. The 2006 book, which spent 57 weeks at the No. 1 spot on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list, had already fuelled a boom in Eat, Pray, Love-related tourism in Ubud, the hill town and cultural and tourist center that was the focus of Gilbert's quest for balance through traditional spirituality and healing that leads to love.

 

In January 2016, after music icon David Bowie died, it was revealed that in his will, Bowie asked for his ashes to be scattered in Bali, conforming to Buddhist rituals. He had visited and performed in a number of Southest Asian cities early in his career, including Bangkok and Singapore.

 

Since 2011, China has displaced Japan as the second-largest supplier of tourists to Bali, while Australia still tops the list. Chinese tourists increased by 17% from last year due to the impact of ACFTA and new direct flights to Bali. In January 2012, Chinese tourists year on year (yoy) increased by 222.18% compared to January 2011, while Japanese tourists declined by 23.54% yoy.

 

Bali reported that it has 2.88 million foreign tourists and 5 million domestic tourists in 2012, marginally surpassing the expectations of 2.8 million foreign tourists. Forecasts for 2013 are at 3.1 million.

 

Based on Bank Indonesia survey in May 2013, 34.39 percent of tourists are upper-middle class with spending between $1,286 to $5,592 and dominated by Australia, France, China, Germany and the US with some China tourists move from low spending before to higher spending currently. While 30.26 percent are middle class with spending between $662 to $1,285.

 

SEX TOURISM

In the twentieth century the incidence of tourism specifically for sex was regularly observed in the era of mass tourism in Indonesia In Bali, prostitution is conducted by both men and women. Bali in particular is notorious for its 'Kuta Cowboys', local gigolos targeting foreign female tourists.

 

Tens of thousands of single women throng the beaches of Bali in Indonesia every year. For decades, young Balinese men have taken advantage of the louche and laid-back atmosphere to find love and lucre from female tourists—Japanese, European and Australian for the most part—who by all accounts seem perfectly happy with the arrangement.

 

By 2013, Indonesia was reportedly the number one destination for Australian child sex tourists, mostly starting in Bali but also travelling to other parts of the country. The problem in Bali was highlighted by Luh Ketut Suryani, head of Psychiatry at Udayana University, as early as 2003. Surayani warned that a low level of awareness of paedophilia in Bali had made it the target of international paedophile organisations. On 19 February 2013, government officials announced measures to combat paedophilia in Bali.

 

TRANSPORTATION

The Ngurah Rai International Airport is located near Jimbaran, on the isthmus at the southernmost part of the island. Lt.Col. Wisnu Airfield is found in north-west Bali.

 

A coastal road circles the island, and three major two-lane arteries cross the central mountains at passes reaching to 1,750m in height (at Penelokan). The Ngurah Rai Bypass is a four-lane expressway that partly encircles Denpasar. Bali has no railway lines.

 

In December 2010 the Government of Indonesia invited investors to build a new Tanah Ampo Cruise Terminal at Karangasem, Bali with a projected worth of $30 million. On 17 July 2011 the first cruise ship (Sun Princess) anchored about 400 meters away from the wharf of Tanah Ampo harbour. The current pier is only 154 meters but will eventually be extended to 300–350 meters to accommodate international cruise ships. The harbour here is safer than the existing facility at Benoa and has a scenic backdrop of east Bali mountains and green rice fields. The tender for improvement was subject to delays, and as of July 2013 the situation remained unclear with cruise line operators complaining and even refusing to use the existing facility at Tanah Ampo.

 

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed by two ministers, Bali's Governor and Indonesian Train Company to build 565 kilometres of railway along the coast around the island. As of July 2015, no details of this proposed railways have been released.

 

On 16 March 2011 (Tanjung) Benoa port received the "Best Port Welcome 2010" award from London's "Dream World Cruise Destination" magazine. Government plans to expand the role of Benoa port as export-import port to boost Bali's trade and industry sector. The Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry has confirmed that 306 cruise liners are heading for Indonesia in 2013 – an increase of 43 percent compared to the previous year.

 

In May 2011, an integrated Areal Traffic Control System (ATCS) was implemented to reduce traffic jams at four crossing points: Ngurah Rai statue, Dewa Ruci Kuta crossing, Jimbaran crossing and Sanur crossing. ATCS is an integrated system connecting all traffic lights, CCTVs and other traffic signals with a monitoring office at the police headquarters. It has successfully been implemented in other ASEAN countries and will be implemented at other crossings in Bali.

 

On 21 December 2011 construction started on the Nusa Dua-Benoa-Ngurah Rai International Airport toll road which will also provide a special lane for motorcycles. This has been done by seven state-owned enterprises led by PT Jasa Marga with 60% of shares. PT Jasa Marga Bali Tol will construct the 9.91 kilometres toll road (totally 12.7 kilometres with access road). The construction is estimated to cost Rp.2.49 trillion ($273.9 million). The project goes through 2 kilometres of mangrove forest and through 2.3 kilometres of beach, both within 5.4 hectares area. The elevated toll road is built over the mangrove forest on 18,000 concrete pillars which occupied 2 hectares of mangroves forest. It compensated by new planting of 300,000 mangrove trees along the road. On 21 December 2011 the Dewa Ruci 450 meters underpass has also started on the busy Dewa Ruci junction near Bali Kuta Galeria with an estimated cost of Rp136 billion ($14.9 million) from the state budget. On 23 September 2013, the Bali Mandara Toll Road is opened and the Dewa Ruci Junction (Simpang Siur) underpass is opened before. Both are ease the heavy traffic congestion.

 

To solve chronic traffic problems, the province will also build a toll road connecting Serangan with Tohpati, a toll road connecting Kuta, Denpasar and Tohpati and a flyover connecting Kuta and Ngurah Rai Airport.

 

DEMOGRAPHICS

The population of Bali was 3,890,757 as of the 2010 Census; the latest estimate (for January 2014) is 4,225,384. There are an estimated 30,000 expatriates living in Bali.

 

ETHNIC ORIGINS

A DNA study in 2005 by Karafet et al. found that 12% of Balinese Y-chromosomes are of likely Indian origin, while 84% are of likely Austronesian origin, and 2% of likely Melanesian origin. The study does not correlate the DNA samples to the Balinese caste system.

 

CASTE SYSTEM

Bali has a caste system based on the Indian Hindu model, with four castes:

 

- Sudra (Shudra) – peasants constituting close to 93% of Bali's population.

- Wesia (Vaishyas) – the caste of merchants and administrative officials

- Ksatrias (Kshatriyas) – the kingly and warrior caste

- Brahmana (Bramhin) – holy men and priests

 

RELIGION

Unlike most of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 83.5% of Bali's population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, formed as a combination of existing local beliefs and Hindu influences from mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. Minority religions include Islam (13.3%), Christianity (1.7%), and Buddhism (0.5%). These figures do not include immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.

 

Balinese Hinduism is an amalgam in which gods and demigods are worshipped together with Buddhist heroes, the spirits of ancestors, indigenous agricultural deities and sacred places. Religion as it is practised in Bali is a composite belief system that embraces not only theology, philosophy, and mythology, but ancestor worship, animism and magic. It pervades nearly every aspect of traditional life. Caste is observed, though less strictly than in India. With an estimated 20,000 puras (temples) and shrines, Bali is known as the "Island of a Thousand Puras", or "Island of the Gods". This is refer to Mahabarata story that behind Bali became island of god or "pulau dewata" in Indonesian language.

 

Balinese Hinduism has roots in Indian Hinduism and Buddhism, and adopted the animistic traditions of the indigenous people. This influence strengthened the belief that the gods and goddesses are present in all things. Every element of nature, therefore, possesses its own power, which reflects the power of the gods. A rock, tree, dagger, or woven cloth is a potential home for spirits whose energy can be directed for good or evil. Balinese Hinduism is deeply interwoven with art and ritual. Ritualizing states of self-control are a notable feature of religious expression among the people, who for this reason have become famous for their graceful and decorous behaviour.

 

Apart from the majority of Balinese Hindus, there also exist Chinese immigrants whose traditions have melded with that of the locals. As a result, these Sino-Balinese not only embrace their original religion, which is a mixture of Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism and Confucianism, but also find a way to harmonise it with the local traditions. Hence, it is not uncommon to find local Sino-Balinese during the local temple's odalan. Moreover, Balinese Hindu priests are invited to perform rites alongside a Chinese priest in the event of the death of a Sino-Balinese. Nevertheless, the Sino-Balinese claim to embrace Buddhism for administrative purposes, such as their Identity Cards.

 

LANGUAGE

Balinese and Indonesian are the most widely spoken languages in Bali, and the vast majority of Balinese people are bilingual or trilingual. The most common spoken language around the tourist areas is Indonesian, as many people in the tourist sector are not solely Balinese, but migrants from Java, Lombok, Sumatra, and other parts of Indonesia. There are several indigenous Balinese languages, but most Balinese can also use the most widely spoken option: modern common Balinese. The usage of different Balinese languages was traditionally determined by the Balinese caste system and by clan membership, but this tradition is diminishing. Kawi and Sanskrit are also commonly used by some Hindu priests in Bali, for Hinduism literature was mostly written in Sanskrit.

 

English and Chinese are the next most common languages (and the primary foreign languages) of many Balinese, owing to the requirements of the tourism industry, as well as the English-speaking community and huge Chinese-Indonesian population. Other foreign languages, such as Japanese, Korean, French, Russian or German are often used in multilingual signs for foreign tourists.

 

CULTURE

Bali is renowned for its diverse and sophisticated art forms, such as painting, sculpture, woodcarving, handcrafts, and performing arts. Balinese cuisine is also distinctive. Balinese percussion orchestra music, known as gamelan, is highly developed and varied. Balinese performing arts often portray stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana but with heavy Balinese influence. Famous Balinese dances include pendet, legong, baris, topeng, barong, gong keybar, and kecak (the monkey dance). Bali boasts one of the most diverse and innovative performing arts cultures in the world, with paid performances at thousands of temple festivals, private ceremonies, or public shows.

 

The Hindu New Year, Nyepi, is celebrated in the spring by a day of silence. On this day everyone stays at home and tourists are encouraged to remain in their hotels. On the day before New Year, large and colourful sculptures of ogoh-ogoh monsters are paraded and finally burned in the evening to drive away evil spirits. Other festivals throughout the year are specified by the Balinese pawukon calendrical system.

 

Celebrations are held for many occasions such as a tooth-filing (coming-of-age ritual), cremation or odalan (temple festival). One of the most important concepts that Balinese ceremonies have in common is that of désa kala patra, which refers to how ritual performances must be appropriate in both the specific and general social context. Many of the ceremonial art forms such as wayang kulit and topeng are highly improvisatory, providing flexibility for the performer to adapt the performance to the current situation. Many celebrations call for a loud, boisterous atmosphere with lots of activity and the resulting aesthetic, ramé, is distinctively Balinese. Often two or more gamelan ensembles will be performing well within earshot, and sometimes compete with each other to be heard. Likewise, the audience members talk amongst themselves, get up and walk around, or even cheer on the performance, which adds to the many layers of activity and the liveliness typical of ramé.

 

Kaja and kelod are the Balinese equivalents of North and South, which refer to ones orientation between the island's largest mountain Gunung Agung (kaja), and the sea (kelod). In addition to spatial orientation, kaja and kelod have the connotation of good and evil; gods and ancestors are believed to live on the mountain whereas demons live in the sea. Buildings such as temples and residential homes are spatially oriented by having the most sacred spaces closest to the mountain and the unclean places nearest to the sea.

 

Most temples have an inner courtyard and an outer courtyard which are arranged with the inner courtyard furthest kaja. These spaces serve as performance venues since most Balinese rituals are accompanied by any combination of music, dance and drama. The performances that take place in the inner courtyard are classified as wali, the most sacred rituals which are offerings exclusively for the gods, while the outer courtyard is where bebali ceremonies are held, which are intended for gods and people. Lastly, performances meant solely for the entertainment of humans take place outside the walls of the temple and are called bali-balihan. This three-tiered system of classification was standardised in 1971 by a committee of Balinese officials and artists to better protect the sanctity of the oldest and most sacred Balinese rituals from being performed for a paying audience.

 

Tourism, Bali's chief industry, has provided the island with a foreign audience that is eager to pay for entertainment, thus creating new performance opportunities and more demand for performers. The impact of tourism is controversial since before it became integrated into the economy, the Balinese performing arts did not exist as a capitalist venture, and were not performed for entertainment outside of their respective ritual context. Since the 1930s sacred rituals such as the barong dance have been performed both in their original contexts, as well as exclusively for paying tourists. This has led to new versions of many of these performances which have developed according to the preferences of foreign audiences; some villages have a barong mask specifically for non-ritual performances as well as an older mask which is only used for sacred performances.

 

Balinese society continues to revolve around each family's ancestral village, to which the cycle of life and religion is closely tied. Coercive aspects of traditional society, such as customary law sanctions imposed by traditional authorities such as village councils (including "kasepekang", or shunning) have risen in importance as a consequence of the democratisation and decentralisation of Indonesia since 1998.

 

WIKIPEDIA

US forest service Ford fire truck . Seen at a tire shop in Truth or Consequences County seat of Sierra County NM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

( photo courtesy of Candy H )

Note most of Sierra County is desert ,but western edge of the county is Forest,Gila.

  

In the closing days of 2019, and courtesy of Alan Roi, a view of the recent trolleybus overhead reconfiguration that has been in progress for some two months now and which will also meet with the new Health & Safety requirements.

 

WELLINGTON ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT ARRIVES

The Tramway Historical Society has been able to obtain a matched Transformer and solid state Rectifier set from the former Wellington trolleybus system. This has recently arrived on site. And in the same container, there were nine boxes of trolleybus overhead parts purchased from the Wellington Tramway Museum – many of which will be needed for the new trolleybus bracket arms that are intended to be installed.

The next step for the new transformer/rectifier set is to determine how this equipment will be stored in the short-term, pending subsequent installation. We intend to consult a panel of “experts” to determine the next step/s – and how soon these next steps should occur. This panel of experts would likely involve Society members such as Steve Lea, Dave Sanders, Murray Sanders, Greg Harris, Brian Lester and Alex Hunter should be involved, their brief being to help determine:

- Do we leave the items in the container, or move them to “better” covered storage, and if so, where – Traction Substation if there is space, Tram Barn 3 or possibly elsewhere, and how soon?

- What do we need to do to commission the transformer/rectifier – and likely costs, and how soon? We may have to fund raise for this.

- Will it be “instead of”, or “as well as” the current Mercury Arc transformer installation in the Traction substation?

 

TROLLEYBUS NEWS

Alan Roi informs that all of the trolleybus wiring has been moved over to new poles and work has now moved down to the depot area. Here the focus is on realigning and simplifying the overhead to give a better result operationally, as well as reducing both the weight of the overhead and the possibility of de-wiring or stopping in a dead section when trolley bus services resume.

As of 7 December, the overhead had been transferred to temporary hooks at the new height; future work parties will focus on properly installing the overhead and bring the network one step closer to being operational again.

 

Here is the latest from Alan Roi. ... We have managed to connect all the existing spans to the replacement poles and we now have the old ones ready for our line contractor, Independent Line Services to remove. There are still a couple of poles we would like to replace in the area beside the Trolleybus Shed.

As part of the preparations for a cycleway running along the perimeter of the Ferrymead Park, a contractor to the City Council has been through and undergrounded the 66kv. power supply that feeds through to the port of Lyttelton. As part of this exercise the domestic wiring on Truscotts Rd and the relevant section of Ferrymead Park Drive has also been undergrounded and removal of the domestic wiring is underway. The requirements for overhead power lines in Christchurch specify new poles, not second hand, so all those in this work area are being removed and presented to us. It is more economical than the line contractors taking them away. We are sharing these with our good friends in the Ferrymead Railway but will get a number of good treated poles for further use on the trolleybus system.

Work is now concentrating on the area around the trolleybus shed. We had a complicated arrangement of wiring out the front of the shed that needed simplifying and repositioning. At one stage our trolleybus folk had plans to go from the shed into the Ferrymead township with a 3 different routes having been suggested. However we did not have the contact wire or the poles to do this job so it is currently just a possible future plan. Facing points had been installed at the start of this but were a problem with buses dewiring and as a consequence the overhead is being realigned through this area and the points are about to be removed. With this happening and the overhead being simplified at the front of the shed there should be considerably less chances of a dewirement or stalling on a dead section of overhead. As part of this realignment process a good portion of the overhead in the shed area has been removed from its hangers giving the impression it is catenary style railway wire but this is only temporary to keep the wiring clear of vehicles travelling through the site.

A number of new span wires have been installed to raise the overhead.

 

The Tramway Historical Society Inc. is located at the Ferrymead Heritage Park in the Christchurch, New Zealand suburb of Ferrymead and operates the standard gauge Ferrymead Tramway. Trams have operated at Ferrymead since 1968, with progressive extensions built between 1970 and 1984 allowing trams to operate within the boundaries of the Heritage Park. The Society also operates and own a collection of historic trolleybuses and diesel buses.

 

Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion.

 

There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degredation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful.

 

--Dalai Lama

 

Explore #468

 

Ash has just spent a week in hospital after being shot by Nio, and is out in her wheelchair when she sees Ember...

 

Ashur Kentoku blinks owlishly at Em as she aproaches...

 

Emberen Twine's anger dissapates at the sight of Ash, tears silently gathering and pooling before streaming down her cheeks. "Ash?" she says, her voice shaky..."You alright?"

 

Ashur Kentoku's face is pale from her exertions and the pain, and a light sheen of sweat causes a few strands of hair to stick to her cheeks...she nods slowly, eyes brimming with tears now too at the sight of Em..."yes,' she mews in a small voice. "I'll live....are you okay?"

 

Emberen Twine nods, her lips curving downward into a pained frown. "I'll live," she says, her voice quivering, before breaking out into sobs as she toddles over to Ash and sits by her . She grasps her hand and looks up at her, eyes wide, cheeks glistening.

 

Ashur Kentoku bends painfully over and rests her cheek against Em's, trying to purr, although it hurts her to do so..."Then everything's gonna be all right," she merrs. She clings to Em, sniffling....but she's smiling....

 

Emberen Twine: "Oh Ash...I was so scared...and I couldn't remember most of what happened after you got to the hospital. AndI thought I was gooing to lose my only family...I thought you were gonna die! I...I...." She just stops talking....stops breathing...only sobs, shaking her head as she thinks about it all, overwhelmed, and unable to take it all in at one time.

 

Ashur Kentoku: "Shhh," she meers, petting Em, trying to soothe her..."I might have died but I didn't...I'm here....we're here." She swallows, and lifts her face away and brushes tears from Em's cheek, the faint smile still on her face.

 

Emberen Twine sniffles and rests her forehead on Ash's knee, still shaking it back and forth. "It was all just so awful...There was so much blood." She takes a deep breath and brings a hand up to her cheeks, blotting away the tears. "I never left you Ash...I didn't leave," at least that she remembers.

 

Ashur Kentoku strokes her fiery red hair..."Yeah...amazing how much blood there is in a person, huh?" She tilts her head..."Yeah, one of the nurses told me you refused to leave my side..." She smiles..."Love ya, kitten. Won't ever forget that..."

 

Emberen Twine: "But you left mine," she whispers as she raises her eyes to study Ashur's. "You wouldn't even listen to me...wouldn't wait to get just a little better. It was like you didn't care if you died." She swallows hard her face contorting with a pained grimace.

 

Ashur Kentoku blinks..."Maybe I don't."

 

Emberen Twine sucks up a soggy breath, startled at Ashur's answer. "So..." she looks down, assembling her thoughts, raising her eyes once again to Ash with confusion. "So I get spend my nights worried sick about you, end up with unexplained wounds and a bloody axe....and you don't even care enough about me to live?" She gapes, her eyes searching for some sort of sense that could come from all of this.

 

Ashur Kentoku shakes her head..."No...I dont mean it that way...just that I didnt expect Nio to try murder me. I know you care and I dont want you to have to suffer...dammit I wanna live as much as the next person..." She sighs.

 

Emberen Twine: "But...when you regained conciousness in the hospital...you ...you wouldn't even lay down. You...wouldn't even let the doctor clear you before you left! I...I was so worried that you would bleed again. AndI was hurt that you would jeopardise your life again for...for a meeting. "

 

Ashur Kentoku nods..."I just had to do something normal...show them they can't keep me down. I went baaaack for a while afterwards,' she says defensively.

 

Emberen Twine stares at her, remaining quiet for a while. Her brows knit together with grief, slight relief that her friend, her family, is still alive. "Gods Ash...I would lose my mind if anything ever happened to you." Hell, she already did. "You're gonna heal now right? You are gonna take it easy and not endanger yourself again?"

 

Ashur Kentoku nods again, another glassy blink..."Yes...the Oracle gave me some nanites...should heal me up faster than normal. And then I can pay Nio a visit..." She smiles.

 

Emberen Twine: "Ash...." she says, her tone measured, brow furrowing. "Revenge isn't going to make things any better. Don't you know that? It's only going to wind up in more blood on the pavement. Please don't. Please don't meet her violence with your own." This is what she had been fearing...retribution. "I talked to her...and she admited her mistake. She knows that what she did was wrong."

 

Ashur Kentoku perks her ears..."Oh, I've not decided whether I'll return her attempt at murdering me in kind," she merrs. "I very well may...but I am certainly going to pay her a visit. What transpires will be determined mostly from her behaviour...and judging from her last psychotic response, it may well be blood again, yes. But not mine, this time."

 

Emberen Twine: "Ash! Gods...you totally goaded her into it! She had no right to do what she did...but I got the feeling you wanted to push her into a reaction. You just weren't counting on her reaction being so...overblown!" That anger that she felt the day it happened spikes, making itself known with a burn in her chest. Tears, now dried, stain her cheek, and a resolve to call Ash on her shit sets in.

 

Ashur Kentoku's face becomes expressionless and she withdraws from Em..."I told the furball to get lost because the furball was goading me, Em. you know s well as I do that the corner I was standing on is disputed territory at best, and that often non-Catwalkers hang out there. You have, yourself. She deliberately used it as an excuse to try murder me. She aimed for my head after shooting me in the chest," she growls. "Don't think I didnt see that...or forget it. So don't talk to me about goading..."

 

Emberen Twine: "You could have given in to her...that corner, or standing your ground wasn't worth a chest full of holes. Did you really think that battle would win the war? At best it gave you an excuse to start one. Let them protect their prison with their lives. Let them rot in it! As long as you aren't dying along with them for some "cause" which will never be one you can win!" She stares at Ash intently as she speaks, unwilling to back down, unwilling to let her retreat.

 

Ashur Kentoku: "That wasn't a battle, Em," she whispers quietly. "if it was, it would have been Nio you'd have been visiting in hospital, not me...."

 

Ashur Kentoku: "But you're right about their prison...nevertheless, I AM going to pay Nio a visit. Nothing you can say will change that. What happens during that visit, happens. As I've said."

 

Emberen Twine: "So you mean to tell me you had no intention of getting her to shoot you by mouthing off like that? You want me to believe that...that your refusal to move was in no way designed to get her to lose her shit on you?" She shakes her head, realizing she can't change Ash's mind, before shuddering at the sound of shots fired.

 

Ashur Kentoku: "I mean to tell you that it's time certain people in this city learned that there are consequences to their actions, and that Nio is learning that. And I intend to make sure the point is driven home...to see that for myself. Because trying to murder someone for standing where you don't want them to stand is wrong, and carrying a big gun doesnt mean it grants you the right to behave that way."

 

Emberen Twine sighs...unable to disagree with that logic. It's so much easier to argue with Ash when she isn't being rational. But the blood lust was absent from her...this night. "Ash," she says softly..."Just...just be careful. I..." Tears yet again.."I just don't want a life without you in it."

 

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Tuesday 22 November 2016, saw local Greater Manchester Police officers join HMP Manchester Community Team in a visit to St. Edward’s RC Priamry School in Lees, Oldham as part of the ‘Actions Have Consequences’ campaign.

‘Actions Have Consequences’ workshops inform pupils on how their actions can affect them and their local community and the negative outcomes that could occur if they were to stray off the beaten track.

 

Subjects include nuisance 999 calls, bullying, anti-social behaviour, stranger danger, internet safety as well as others. Although the workshops carry a serious message, they are structured to be fun, informative and engaging.

  

The HMP Community Team gave the young people an idea of the harsh reality of prison life and the dangers of knife and gang-related crime.

 

To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.

www.gmp.police.uk

 

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

 

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

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

 

Great Sampford, Essex

 

The beautiful church of St Michael the Archangel at Great Sampford is not the first church to stand on the rising ground at the centre of the village overlooking the cornfields along the valley of the river Pant. It is possibly sited on an ancient place of cult or religious significance. The proximity of the Stow farm may be of some importance, for the word ‘Stow’ in Old English can mean a ‘holy place’ or ‘place of assembly’. A pre-Conquest church, presumably of timber and thatch construction, followed perhaps, by a simple stone-built church, was replaced by the 13c on the same site by a major church building of which one of the transepts remains as the vestry of the present church which was built between 1320 and 1350. The original dedication of the church, if different, is not known as the first documentary reference to St Michael occurs as late as 1540 in a Sampford will. Dedications were sometimes changed and the use of the proper style, St. Michael the Archangel, is in fact quite rare. However, dedications to St. Michael or St. Michael and All Angels are numerous and were popular as the Archangel is an important figure in Christian tradition and art, symbolising the victory of God over evil, as an intercessor for the sick and as a leader of the Church militant. Churches dedicated to him, as at Great Sampford, are often found on hill—top sites or on high ground .a possible allusion to St. Michael’s pre-eminence in the Angelic Host of Christian belief. His Feast Day is 29th September.

 

Knowledge of the origins of the Christian Church in Essex relies largely on the fragile but growing evidence of archaeology and landscape interpretation. An ill-defined and mobile pattern of contemporaneous pagan and early Christian practices in the Roman era comes into historical focus with the missionary endeavours of the Roman and Celtic Churches when such names as Augustine, Mellitus and Cedd are prominent in Essex history. Within that tradition there are various, as yet unproven, theories about the establishment of a church at Great Sampford.

 

On entering the church the first impression that the visitor receives is of its elegant dignity; the next, the incongruence of its scale in such a tiny rural community. An interesting aspect of this enigma is the search for a convincing explanation of its status, from the mid-13c until 1907, as a deanery church serving twenty-one surrounding parishes in the Freshwell Hundred and in part of Uttlesford. It may have been a consequence of an early ‘minster’ (i.e.: missionary) role or as the result of a parochial compromise in an area with more important communities such as (Saffron) Walden. We do not know. However, it is a fact that the missionary work of the early minsters often extended to and beyond the boundaries of the administrative hundreds and became the sites of the hundredal centres themselves. There may well be historic linkages, not yet understood, between the Freshwell and Uttlesford Hundreds and the Sampford Deanery that relate to the early status of the church at Great Sampford.

 

The earliest historical fact about St. Michael’s is the grant by William Rufus, son and successor of William the Conqueror, of the church at Sampford along with the subordinate chapel at Hempstead with their lands and tithes to Battle Abbey in 1094. According to Philip Morant, the most famous of Essex historians, this was a formal confirmation of the Conqueror's original royal grant. This act of confirmation was a necessary and regular practice in regard to the efficacy of grants and early charters which were frequently forged. The church at Hempstead was within the jurisdiction of the vicar of Great Sampford until as late as 1979. Great Sampford remained in the hands of Battle Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. In 1836 it passed to the newly-established Church Commissioners. In 1982 Great Sampford was combined with the parish of Little Sampford.

 

For perhaps a thousand years, even more, the Church at Sampford pursued its mission and, like others of medieval foundation, did not escape the consequences of religious, political and parochial events or circumstances. An astonishing flowering of spiritual faith and social commitment led to the building and re-building of these lovely churches. This phase was followed by the painful disruption of the Reformation, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, all of which led to anxious change and despoliation. In the course of these events much of the magnificence of the church at Great Sampford and its furnishings was lost or abandoned. All his was compounded by periods of neglect and the chronic problems of maintaining a great building in a small village bereft of wealthy resident patrons.

 

The loss, confiscation or sale of the rood, images, church plate and "such other goods as could be spared" was mirrored by decay of the fabric as is evident from the Parochial Inventories and Visitations of the l6c and l7c. The l7c saw the introduction of new arrangements for the railing of the Lord’s Table and seating for the congregation, a school was held in the south transept and the village musicians performed in a gallery under the tower. The inevitable ‘restorations’ by the Victorians led to the removal of furnishings, the installation of new pews, patterned floor tiling and the stripping of the stucco from the exterior walls of the church to expose the original flint and rubble surfaces. In more recent times the spiral staircase in the tower was removed and the roof structure of the south aisle replaced. We are, fortunately, left with a church of beauty and distinction.

 

It is hoped that the following brief notes on the architectural features and minor objects and details of interest in the church will help visitors to enjoy their visit.

  

The significance of St. Michael the Archangel in the village scene is apparent from the scale of the building, its strong profiles and conspicuous English Gothic idiom of the Decorated period. Internally, the major architectural theme is that of a restrained, uncomplicated elegance that is enhanced by the ample light admitted by plain glass windows. A dominant feature is the fine range of trefoiled, cinquefoiled and sexfoiled lights of the nave, chancel and aisle windows all dating from the period c. 1320-50. The cusped tracery of the windows is complemented by the symmetrical refinement of the arcading which is only lightly embellished by mouldings and carved capitals, typical of the period, and among the best in the county. Although not devoid of interesting detail, there is nothing to detract from the simple elegance and spatial qualities with which the fenestration and graceful arcading endow this fine building.

 

In 1769 Peter Muilman referred to the church at Great Sampford which "stands pleasantly on a small eminence by the roadside". Pleasantly indeed, the church is handsomely set in the Essex cornfields and seen to advantage from the high ground on the opposite side of the river. Close to, the sturdy profiles and somewhat severe external textures, relieved by some decorative areas of knapped flint flushwork, offer little hint of the quality of its Gothic interior. The main structure is built with random-faced flint and rubble set in lime mortar with limestone and clunch dressings. The roof is tiled and slated. The prominent west tower was built in the mid-l4c and, like the south aisle, has an embattled parapet. The south porch is of the same period. Unhappily, the window tracery of the 13c transept has been lost and is now disfigured by brickwork of two phases which seem to date from the late-18c to early-19c. Conspicuous in the churchyard are the fine lime trees planted in about 1835. The only monument of significance is the obelisk near the east wall of the churchyard which commemorates members of the Watson Family of Sampford. Colonel Jonas Watson was a distinguished soldier who was killed in action at the siege of Cartagena in 1741. But spare a moment to look at the adjacent grave stone of William Ruffle who died in 1881, a village worthy who served Great Sampford as shopkeeper, constable, clerk and in other public offices for over half a century.

 

External details of note are a rare series of consecration crosses of varying designs around the church, an early scratch dial, now displaced and seen on a doorstep in the north wall, a benchmark and the slot for the surveyor’s bench on the south-west buttress of the tower and miscellaneous graffiti mainly in the porch. Other details of interest include the rainwater heads, the vigorous carvings on the label of the south transept and niches in the south transept and the north and west walls. The clock on the church tower was installed in l9ll to mark the coronation of King George V.

 

On entering, visitors will appreciate the impressive dimensions and architectural refinement of this handsome village church. Standing in the centre of the nave the dominant curvilinear idiom of the Gothic styling will be apparent. The nave is flanked by north and south arcaded aisles with plain two-centred arches datable to the l4c. The piers of the north arcade are quatrefoil in plan with slender engaged shafting; those of the south arcade are octagonal in plan. All of the piers have moulded bases and capitals.

 

The 14c west tower is constructed in four stages. Internally it is open to the nave under a two-centred moulded arch. There is access to the belfry but, sadly, the brick-built circular Tudor staircase was removed about fifty years ago. The carved head of a woman recovered from this staircase, although it presumably originated from elsewhere in the church, can be seen in the vestry. But the finest aspects of this church are to be seen in the early chancel which is remarkable for its size and the splendour of its architectural expression. It dates from the first decades of the l4c. This fine chancel is framed by an exceptionally large east window of five cinquefoiled lights, the curvilinear bar tracery and verticality of which enhance the powerful impact of this aspect of the building. Most interesting, and presumably deriving from the deanery status of the church, there is a series on the north and south walls of twenty-one stalls recessed under a canopied arcade with mouldings and cusping. At the east end of the south arcade there are the piscina and sedilia. The chancel arch, of the same period and sprung from the capitals of clustered shafts, shows residual traces, near the base on either side of the step, of a former stone screen which is possibly significant in view of the rare stone screens in the nearby churches of Stebbing and Great Bardfield. Note also the small blocked low window by the north side of the arch. The panels behind the altar on which the Creed, Lords Prayer and Commandments are painted were made in 1837 for the church at Danbury and brought to Great Sampford in 1894.

 

The vestry, formerly a chapel, is of great interest as a surviving major element of the previous church of the late - 13c (however when I visited this was locked). In the east wall there are good coupled windows of two trefoiled lights with two quatrefoil and sexfoil circular openings, interesting examples of pierced plate-tracery. The large brick-filled window in the south wall is of the mid-13c with good mouldings and the surviving arch and shafting in the splays. Below this window, fragments of medieval glass were found buried in the ground outside. The contemporary archway in the west wall has some intriguing carved capitals richly adorned with robust oak-leaf foliage and vibrant figures including an owl, snail, pig and a human face in a good state of preservation. One is assumed to be a representation of a ‘Green Man’ a symbolic figure of English folklore. The north wall has four quatrefoil openings. There is, under the south window, a triple gabled recess with crockets and linear moulding, pinnacles and a neat acanthus motif which was probably once a fine tomb of an important local family, perhaps a member of the de Kemesek family. It is said to have served as a fireplace in the time when the vestry housed the village school! The battened and studded oak door leading into the chancel is 16c.

 

The open church roof structures are well worth close study. The best is in the vestry which is roofed with twelve pairs of collared scissor-braced trusses supporting the steep-pitched rafters on moulded wall plates. The chancel roof is also of trussed-rafter construction of seven cants, as is that of the nave roof which also has three tie-beams which may have been installed at a later date, perhaps when, as we know from church records, the roof was repaired in the 16c. The lean-to roof of the north aisle is attractively braced with graceful curved members sprung from a good moulded wall-plate. Unfortunately, the original roof of the south aisle has been replaced by a modern structure, but three of the amusing stone corbels which supported it remain. The trussed-rafter roof of the south porch with seven cants should be noted as it rests on extremely fine early moulded plates. Visitors should not miss the intriguing carved medieval wooden head which is fastened onto the wall above the chancel arch at the north-west corner facing the nave. This appears to have been repositioned, perhaps from a figure that was once part of church statuary. On the south side in the clerestory will be seen an attractive 15c Perpendicular style rectilinear and cinquefoiled window of three ogee lights which was devised to throw light onto the former rood.

 

Originally the church would have been resplendent with a comprehensive range of wall paintings for visual instruction depicting scenes of biblical or religious significance. A few fragments survive, having been discovered during restoration work in 1979, above the arches on the walls of the north arcade. Although faint and incomplete the two remaining paintings are of interest. One represents the seven deadly sins in the form of a diagrammatic tree which is comparatively rare. The other may be of St. Christopher, a saintly figure normally positioned, as possibly here, opposite the church entrance as a reassuring gesture to the worshippers. There are traces, too, possibly of another period, that suggest a dragon was depicted which would imply an association with St. Michael to whom the church is dedicated or, possibly, St. Margaret. Traces of colour in the wall plaster of the vestry may eventually yield further paintings.

 

Worthy of note are some special features beginning with the door at the church entrance. This is thought to be contemporary with the building of the church in the early l4c and, although damaged at the base, is still a fine example and retains the original wrought iron strap-work and studding. According to expert opinion it is the most elaborate of all saltire-braced doors in Essex. The boards of which it is constructed are pegged together. The font in the south aisle has a plain moulded octagonal bowl of the 15c. Its stem is earlier and has complex decoration which combines ogee-headed panels with intricate tracery on a chamfered 14c plinth. The Victorian pews were recently detached and the nave flooring paved. The beautiful series of kneelers worked with flower motifs were recently embroidered by local people. The lovely embroidered runner on the step of the sanctuary was made in 1990 and is an exact copy of the Victorian runner it replaced.

 

It is valid to observe that St. Michael’s benefits aesthetically from the absence of monumental clutter which, although sometimes historically useful, can be detrimental to the architectural purity of the building as a whole. The only remaining monuments of antiquity in the church are the tomb slabs (Calthorp and Burrows) of the 17c and 18c in the chance]. They commemorate a family whose name persists at a local farm and another of textile merchants who lived opposite the church. There is another (Gretton) in the south aisle. The pulpit, the provenance of which is unknown, is Victorian. There are also a few notable pieces of furniture. These include a 17c desk with a writing slope and cupboard which once served the school in the church. There is also a standing cupboard or hutch of the late 16c and a 16c church chest, iron-banded with strap hinges and an interior ‘till’ which may have been built-in as a response to a Parochial Visitation of 1686 which ordered it to be provided and lockable. The modern portable altar at the east end of the north aisle was given to the church by an anonymous donor in 1991. The small bronze of the Madonna and Child is of German provenance.

 

The five church bells which were once rung for church services as well as for special village occasions like harvest and gleaning can no longer be pealed. This is because of structural weaknesses in the belfry though they are still hung on the original stocks. Nowadays one is chimed for church services, as a Sanctus bell and used to ring the hours for the clock. The first, third and fourth bells were cast by William Land in 1624; the second (which bears the Royal Arms and a medallion with a bust of Charles II) by Henry Yaxley in 1684; the fifth by John Hodson in 1664. The church plate includes an interesting early Elizabethan silver cup of 1562 with a paten cover of c1567 and another paten dated 1630. None of these is inscribed although they carry makers' marks. An electro-plated flagon of 1854 was purchased by the vicar for five guineas in 1856. The organ, installed in 1976, is said to have come from a nonconformist chapel and to have been built in c1830 by G.M. Holdich. The eagle lectern in the south aisle was placed in the church in 1909 as a tribute to the incumbency of the Rev. Robert Eustace, vicar from 1850 to 1905.

 

Almost every ancient church has a range, most of which cannot be satisfactorily explained, of markings and graffiti, ostensibly symbolic figuring, idle scratchings and numerous initials and dates. Great Sampford has a generous quota of such. Of genuine interest is a 3-men’s (or 9-men's) Morris cut into the second stall on the north side of the chancel inside the altar rail. These are gaming boards of some antiquity, the play having affinities with ludo and allegedly used to relieve the boredom of long sermons or tedious ritual. On the opposite side one of the sedilia has a set of unexplained grooves, possibly another game.

 

This guide has so far been concerned mostly with events, architecture and objects of beauty or interest. More important are the people, clergy, church officers and villagers who have worked for and worshipped in the church. They all emerge from the obscurity of the past through the church records and the village archives as personalities or in human situations which help us to share their hopes, commitment or despair. The clergy, ever since Thomas de Sampford, dean in 1163, have served the church and ministered to the people throughout the ages and struggled with the traumas of turbulent and anxious times. The churchwardens, like Richard Petytt and John Mylner in the l6c and their successors, have striven to preserve the church from decay and neglect and carried out their onerous and multifarious duties with devotion if not always with alacrity. There have been too the countless parishioners whose recurring family names fill the registers recording the joy of marriage and birth and the sadness of illness and death. They are all part of the story and the reality of the church and its life in the village. They too were familiar with the building we admire. They sat in the pews and looked upon the beauty that is now our heritage. Their responsibility has passed to successive generations, and now to us. We hope that they would have approved of this little booklet and that it will play its part in safeguarding the continuity of that inheritance.

Runnymede is a water-meadow alongside the River Thames in the English county of Surrey, and just over 20 miles (32 km) west of central London. It is notable for its association with the sealing of Magna Carta, and as a consequence is, with its adjoining hillside, the site of memorials. Runnymede Borough is named after the area, Runnymede being at its northernmost point.

 

Topography

 

The name Runnymede refers to land in public and National Trust ownership in the Thames flood plain south-west of the river between Old Windsor and Egham. The area includes (to the west of A308 road) the Long Mede and Runnymede, which together with Coopers Hill Slopes is managed by the National Trust. There is also a narrower strip of land, east of the road and west of the river, known as the Yard Mede. Slightly further downstream from the area shown on the map are (inter alia): a recreational area with a car park; a number of private homes; a large distribution centre; and an hotel.

 

The landscape of Runnymede is characterised as "Thames Basin Lowland", urban fringe. It is a gently undulating vale of small fields interspersed by woods, shaws, ponds, meadows, and heath. The National Trust area is a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) which contains a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Both sites are overseen by Runnymede Borough Council.

 

The National Trust holding includes:

 

188 acres (0.76 km2) donated in 1929 set behind a narrow riverside park with occasional benches on the southern river bank, with car and coach parking;

110 acres (0.45 km2) of broadleaved woodland on Coopers Hill Slopes, given in 1963 by the former Egham Urban District Council.

Long Mede is a meadow north of the ancient "mede" (meadow) of Runnymede towards Old Windsor and has been used for centuries to provide good-quality hay from the alluvial pasture. Runnymede itself lies towards Egham. It is likely that Runnymede proper was the site of the sealing of Magna Carta, although the Magna Carta Memorial (see below) stands on Long Mede, and the event is also popularly associated with Magna Carta Island, on the opposite bank of the Thames.

 

Near the Island, on the north-east flood plain, in parkland on the eastern bank of the river, are Ankerwycke and the ruins of the 12th century Priory of St Mary's. The Thames has changed course here occasionally, and these areas may once have been an integral part of Runnymede. Both were acquired by the National Trust in 1998.

 

History

Runnymede's historical significance has been heavily influenced by its proximity to the Roman Road river crossing at nearby Staines-upon-Thames.

 

The name Runnymede may be derived from the Anglo-Saxon runieg (regular meeting) and mede (mead or meadow), describing a place in the meadows used to hold regular meetings. The Witan, Witenagemot or Council of the Anglo-Saxon Kings of the 7th to 11th centuries was held from time to time at Runnymede during the reign of Alfred the Great. The Council met usually in the open air. This political organ was transformed in succeeding years, influencing the creation of England's 13th century parliament.

 

The water-meadow at Runnymede is the most likely location at which, in 1215, King John sealed Magna Carta. The charter indicates Runnymede by name as "Ronimed. inter Windlesoram et Stanes" (between Windsor and Staines). Magna Carta had an impact on common and constitutional law as well as political representation also affecting the development of parliament.

 

Runnymede's association with ideals of democracy, limitation of power, equality and freedom under law has attracted placement there of monuments and commemorative symbols.

 

The last fatal duel in England took place in 1852, on Priest Hill, a continuation of Cooper's Hill by Windsor Great Park.

 

The National Trust land was donated in 1929 by Cara Rogers Broughton and her two sons. The American-born widow of Urban Hanlon Broughton, she was permitted by letter from George V to join her son's new peerage in tribute to her husband and this gift and be officially styled Lady Fairhaven. The gift was given in memory of Urban Broughton. At the time the New Bedford Standard-Times commented "It must be a source of gratification to all Americans, and especially to us here and in Fairhaven, that the presentation of this historic spot as public ground has been brought about by an American woman, an appropriate enough circumstance considering that the great charter underlies the USA's conception of government and human rights."

 

Features

 

Urban H. Broughton Memorials

After the death of Urban Broughton in 1929, Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to design a set of twin memorials consisting of large kiosks and posts or "piers" with stone blocks crowned with laurel wreaths and formalised urns at the Egham end and with lodges and piers at the Windsor end. Lutyens also designed a low wide arch bridge to carry the main road over the Thames to the north, integrating the road layout and bridge design into his plans for the memorials. The southern kiosks were moved to their present location when the M25 motorway was constructed.

 

There are two octagonal kiosks with piers facing each other across the A308 towards Egham. These piers are a shorter version of those adjacent to the lodges either side of the same road towards Old Windsor in the Long Mede. The lodges show typical Lutyens design features with steeply angled roofs, large false chimneys and no rainwater gutters at the eaves.

 

The piers carry similar inscriptions. On one face is the inscription:

 

“ In these Meads on 15th June 1215 King John at the instance of Deputies from the whole community of the Realm granted the Great Charter the earliest of constitutional documents whereunder ancient and cherished customs were confirmed abuses redressed and the administration of justice facilitated new provisions formulated for the preservation of peace and every individual perpetually secured in the free enjoyment of his life and property. ”

and on the other the words:-

 

“ In perpetual memory of Urban Hanlon Broughton 1857 – 1929 of Park Close Englefield Green in the county of Surrey Sometime Member of Parliament These meadows of historic interest on 18th December 1929 were gladly offered to the Nation by his widow Cara Lady Fairhaven and his sons Huttleston Lord Fairhaven and Henry Broughton ”

The memorials were opened in 1932 by the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and are Grade II listed buildings.

 

Langham Pond SSSI

  

Langham Pond was created when the meandering River Thames formed an oxbow lake. Its status as a wetland Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) was first notified in 1975 and later reviewed under Section 28 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 when the protected area was extended to 64 acres (260,000 m2) within Runnymede as managed by the National Trust.

 

The pond and associated meadow form a habitat considered unique in Southern England and of international importance for nature conservation. The flora and fauna include nationally scarce plants and insects including a species of fly unrecorded elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

 

Air Forces Memorial

The Air Forces Memorial commemorates the men and women of the Allied Air Forces who died during the Second World War and records the names of the 20,456 airmen who have no known grave.

 

From the top of the tower visitors can see long views over Windsor, the surrounding counties and aircraft taking off and landing at Heathrow. On a good day visitors can see as far as the Wembley Arch and even the Gherkin in the City of London. The memorial was designed by Sir Edward Maufe, architect of Guildford Cathedral.

 

John F. Kennedy Memorial

The British memorial for U.S. President John F. Kennedy was jointly dedicated in May 1965, by Queen Elizabeth II and Jacqueline Kennedy, prior to a reception for the Kennedy family at Windsor Castle. The memorial consists of a garden and Portland stone memorial tablet inscribed with the famous quote from his Inaugural Address:

 

“ Let every Nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty. ”

Visitors reach the memorial by treading a steep path of irregular granite steps, intended to symbolise a pilgrimage. There are 50 steps in total. Each step is different from all others, with the entire flight made from 60,000 hand-cut granite setts.[10] Landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe designed the garden; sculptor Alan Collins designed and carved the stone inscription. The area of ground on which the memorial is situated was given as a gift to the United States of America by the people of Britain. (Though property ownership was transferred to the federal government of the United States, the area remains under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.) It is maintained by the Kennedy Memorial Trust, which also sponsors educational scholarships for British students to attend university in the United States.

 

In 1968 the 7-ton stone was damaged by a bomb during a time of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations; it was later repaired by the sculptor.

 

Magna Carta Memorial

Situated in a grassed enclosure. on the lower slopes of Cooper's Hill, this memorial is of a domed classical style monopteros, containing a pillar of English granite on which is inscribed "To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of Freedom Under Law". The memorial was created by the American Bar Association (ABA) to a design by Sir Edward Maufe R.A., and was unveiled on 18 July 1957 at a ceremony attended by American and English lawyers.

 

Since 1957 representatives of the ABA have visited and rededicated the Memorial, renewing pledges to the Great Charter. In 1971 and 1985 commemorative stones were placed on the Memorial plinth. In July 2000 the ABA came:

 

“ to celebrate Magna Carta, foundation of the rule of law for ages past and for the new millennium. ”

In 2007, on its 50th anniversary, the ABA again visited Runnymede. During its convention it installed as President Charles Rhyne, who devised Law Day, which in the USA represents an annual reaffirmation of faith in the forces of law for peace.

 

In 2008 floodlights were installed to light the memorial at night.

 

In 2015, in anticipation of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, the two wooden benches at the memorial were replaced by stone benches. On 15 June, the anniversary day, the ABA, accompanied by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, rededicated the memorial in a ceremony led by HRH The Princess Royal in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and other members of the Royal family.

 

The Magna Carta Memorial is administered by the Magna Carta Trust, which is chaired by the Master of the Rolls.

 

Ceremonial Tree Plantings

The Duke of Kent together with David K. Diebold, a Minister-Counselor at the US Embassy in London, planted an oak tree adjacent to the Magna Carta Memorial in 1987, as did P. V. Narismha Rao, Prime Minister of the Republic of India. The Prime Minister left a plaque reading:

 

“ As a tribute to the historic Magna Carta, a source of inspiration throughout the world, and as an affirmation of the values of Freedom, Democracy and the Rule of Law which the People of India cherish and have enshrined in their Constitution. March 16, 1994 ”

In 1987 two further oak trees were planted near the Memorial. One, planted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, marked National Tree Week. Another, planted by John O. Marsh, Secretary of the Army of the USA, has a plaque which reads:

 

“ This oak tree, planted with soil from Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, commemorates the bicentenary of the Constitution of the United States of America. It stands in acknowledgement that the ideals of liberty and justice embodied in the Constitution trace their lineage through institutions of English law to the Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede on June 15th, 1215. ”

The Jurors

   

The Jurors artwork was commissioned by Surrey County Council and the National Trust to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. The sculptor Hew Locke created 12 bronze chairs each of which is decorated with symbols of past and present struggles for freedom, equality and the rule of law. The artist / sculptor invites participants to sit, reflect upon and discuss the themes represented. In the image the back of the chair nearest the viewer is a representation of Nelson Mandela's prison cell on Robben Island, South Africa. The portrait seen of the further chair is of Lillie Lenton wearing insignia related to the imprisonment and activism of suffragettes.

 

The installation was inaugurated at Runnymede by Prince William during the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary celebrations.

 

Cooper's Hill House

A large house on Cooper's Hill, overlooking Runnymede and the River Thames, has played a number of roles – as the Royal Indian Engineering College; wartime Post Office headquarters; storage for the Statue of Eros during World War II; an emergency teacher training college; Shoreditch College – a centre for craft and handiwork education – and most recently, Brunel University's design school (has removed to Uxbridge Main Campus).

 

Ankerwycke Yew

The revered +1,400 year old Ankerwycke Yew, on the left bank of the river, is also a possible site where Magna Carta may have been sealed. The sacred tree could have been the location of the Witan council and influenced the founding of St Mary's Priory there. This religious site may well have been the preferred neutral meeting place of King John and the barons.

 

Land development proposals threatening the yew led to action resulting in the tree and surrounding estate passing into the protection of the National Trust in 1998.

 

Henry VIII is said to have met Anne Boleyn under the tree in the 1530s.

 

In 1992, botanist and environmental campaigner David Bellamy led a dedication at the yew, stating:

 

“ We the free people of the islands of Great Britain on the 777th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta do:

Look back and give thanks for the benefits that the signings, sealing and swearing of oaths on that document handed down to us. Look forward to a new age of freedom through sustainability by granting the following rights to all the sons of plants and animals with which we share our islands and our planet.

 

”

There followed ten pledges to sustain all life forms.

 

Location and access

Runnymede is 20 miles (32 km) west by southwest of the centre of London. It is owned by the National Trust and is open 24 hours, seven days a week, at no charge.

 

Runnymede is accessed via the road or river towpath on foot or by bicycle, or by motor vehicle via the A308 road near Egham about 4 miles (6.4 km) southeast of Windsor. Two car parks (on the A308) adjoin the Windsor entrance (these may be closed in winter due to flooding etc.). Runnymede is also along the Thames Path National Trail. The nearest railway station is Egham. One of the Lutyens lodges at the Windsor entrance to the meadow houses a popular tea room.

 

The Anckerwycke area on the other bank of the river is accessible from the B376 between Wraysbury and Staines (nearest station Wraysbury).

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runnymede

 

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Consequence of employing goats for purposes of wildfire prevention, they leave the land barren, invasive species inevitably take root.

This series of 7 photos is the result of an outing through the streets of Lausanne. The adventure began in the Flon district and ended 2 hours later in the Vallon district. These two districts are exciting places to play, because they have an alternative side that arouses my curiosity and inspiration.

 

The photos I've chosen represent different feelings and themes that I experienced as I explored them. I'll try to share these feelings with you through the titles of the photos. Perhaps you'll also feel them when you look at my photos?

 

Cette série de 7 photos est le résultat d’une sortie dans les rues de Lausanne. L’aventure a débuté dans le quartier du Flon pour finir 2 heures plus tard dans le quartier du Vallon. Ces deux quartiers sont des espaces de jeux passionnants car ils ont un côté alternatif qui éveillent ma curiosité et mon inspiration.

 

Les photos que j’ai choisies représentent différents sentiments et différents thèmes que j’ai pu ressentir au fur et à mesure de cette exploration. Ces sentiments je vais essayer de vous les partager au travers des titres des photos. Peut-être les ressentirez-vous aussi en regardant mes clichés ?

The Hispanic-Mexican conflict of 1936

 

A Spanish and a Mexican Arruza

 

The brothers Manuel and Carlos Arruza

   

Then would come his overwhelming seasons, so many times shared with Manuel Rodriguez "Manolete", that afternoon of 1944 in Valladolid when for the first time he shaped "the phone" and so many others that made him a true figure in the Spanish arena. But behind it was a whole less known history of the initial passage through Spain of Carlos Arruza, along with his brother Manuel, when in our country there were very difficult circumstances: in bullfighting, with the complicated Hispanic-Mexican agreement; but, especially, with the impact and consequences of the civil war. But then, after his confirmation of an alternative in Madrid in 1944, who was known as the Cyclone built a very solid career.

 

The brothers Manuel (Santander, 1918 - Mexico, 1941) and Carlos Ruiz Camino Arruza (Mexico, 1920-1966) began their respective bullfighting careers in their country of residence, forming a successful pair of bullfighters who in the first months of 1936 reached Spain, with such bad luck that as soon as they got off the ocean liner, they found themselves in the middle of the conflict that faced the fighters born on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The boycott directly affected the Mexican brother, Carlos Arruza, but not Manuel, born in the Iberian Peninsula. To complicate their objectives, two months after their arrival in Madrid, the fratricidal contest broke out, so they were forced to move their residence to Lisbon. In the capital of Spain they only remained the necessary time to carry out a closed-door test in La Monumental venteña, without much success, although they could see Eduardo Pagés thanks to the intermediation of Marcelino Benito, a friend of the family. The same businessman would sign a few years later the first exclusive to act in the Spanish bullring.

 

The situation was unusual. One brother could only fight in the Mexican rounds and the other in Spain. Therefore, Carlos decided to return to his native country in April 1937 via Paris, where he spent numerous hardships to prove that he was the recipient of the money his mother had sent him through a money order. Five months later Manolo would do it accompanied by his sick father, the Madrid tailor Pepe Ruiz Arruza, who died a few days later. Previously, the mother of bullfighter's apprentices, Cristina Camino [1], was forced to sell fifty percent of the marital society she shared with the partner and family friend Benjamín Burillo, the Sastrerías Burillo-Arruza, La Parisina , Rosales and Chauffeur to Rosales.

 

Back in his country of residence, Manolo was able to show his knowledge on the shores of some Aztec states thanks to special permission. Those same days they decided that each of the brothers would follow their own path in the rounds.

 

In 1938, the poet León Felipe, a relative of the mother of the beginners, went into exile in Mexico - financed and half blind - and suggested that they settle in Portugal to continue making progress in the trade they had chosen. Once in Lisbon, they had as their only reference to find some contract the gatherings that Swiss coffee usually hosted, which frequented numerous bullfighters, and where he wanted the chance and the shortage of Spanish swords discovered a horny Portuguese businessman, who subjected them to a successful practical test prior to hiring. From then on, the Arruza brothers got dressed in lights in various Portuguese squares.

 

On July 30, 1939, just a few weeks after the end of the civil war, the Spanish Arruza appeared in Las Ventas --Novillos de Concha y Sierra, along with López Lago [2] and Paquito Casado--, but without luck with the lot that corresponded to him, which motivated Manuel Sánchez del Arco Giraldillo, critic of ABC, to dedicate a very hard review, very discouraging and, perhaps, full of "political intentionality":

 

“Manuel Arruza is irresponsible. The responsibility of the unfortunate spectacle that he gave us must fall entirely on those who ‘took him out’. It has been a lack of consideration for the public and an attack on the prestige of the Plaza de Toros de Madrid introducing us to a boy who could not even catch the cape. If Manuel Arruza receives a grenade yesterday, whose fault would it have been? When making the posters you have to find out.

 

This celebration was attended by the Italian general Gastón Gambara, whom López Lago gave one of the utreros. That evening, the attendees heard the sounds of the Giovinezza, arm raised, in a firm gesture and between continuous acclamations to the Caudillo and the Duce [4].

  

Manolete with Carlos Arruza

 

On November 1, 1940, Carlos Arruza received the alternative in Mexico from Armillita Chico, late in which he was taken seriously. His brother Manuel was still unable to fight on the Aztec coast, which caused him a very strong depression. Finally, on June 12, 1941, a casual gun shot, apparently of his brother José, truncated forever the career of the Spanish Arruza, only 22 years old, which caused a terrible trauma to his mother and brothers.

 

Carlos Arruza was the first sword of Mexican nationality that when the armed conflict ended appeared in the Las Ventas arena to confirm the alternative, on July 18, 1944 (Simao da Veiga, Antonio Bienvenida and Morenito de Talavera with Muriel bulls). It was the baptized as "Corrida de la Concordia", which was intended to forget the old quarrels between professionals of both nationalities and that actually only served to commemorate the 'V Anniversary of the National Uprising'.

A few days later the representatives of both groups signed a protocol of intentions that put an end to the eight years of disagreements. Anyway, we had to wait until February 25, 1951, after the official signing of a bullfighting agreement, to participate in the true “Corrida de la Concordia” in the Plaza El Torero (Curro Caro, Antonio Velásquez and Carlos Arruza) , which was attended by numerous Republican exiles.

 

The resounding triumphs of the Mexican Arruza the 1944 season in the Spanish arena were initially received with some disbelief in their own country. Carlos –inventor of the pass of the Telephone and the pass of the wreck [5], did not come to mean politically, but he was supposed to be sympathetic to the republican cause, thanks to his coexistence and family connection with León Felipe. In May 1957, his previous performance in numerous philanthropic-inspired festivities motivated General Franco's government to impose the Benefit Cross in Santander. An unexpected traffic accident ended his life in May 1966.

 

__________________

 

[1] Cristina Camino Galicia (Sequeros, Salamanca) was the daughter of the notary of Zamora Higinio Camino de la Rosa, married to Valeriana Galicia Ayala. The Camino Galicia marriage had eight children. The eldest, Julio, was an illustrious military, as well as a doctor-psychiatrist. The second brother, Carnal uncle of the Arruza, was Felipe Camino Galicia, better known by the name of León Felipe.

 

[2] Extremadura bullfighters Juan López Lago (1915) and Aquilino Claver López (1916) the beginning of the civil war surprised them by taking their first steps through the bullfighting planet, so that they were forced to enroll in the National Army , activity that made compatible with some sporadic performances in bullfighting festivals of military inspiration.

 

In July 1939 López Lago appeared at Las Ventas (Manuel Arruza and Paquito Casado with cattle from Concha y Sierra) and a year later at La Monumental Barcelona. In the month of June 1954 there was a subsequent appearance in the Plaza de Badajoz (Antonio Vázquez and Francisco Mendes against Antonio de la Coba cattle).

 

[3] Manuel del Arco Giraldillo. ABC, July 30, 1939.

 

[4] On April 24, 1937 Franco signed a decree in which he ordered “The national greeting is established with the arm raised, with an open and extended hand and forming an angle of forty-five with the vertical of the body degrees". Its compliance and protocol was mandatory from August 1937 to 1945.

Unos días más tarde los representantes de ambos colectivos de estoqueadores firmaron un protocolo de intenciones que ponía fin a los ocho años de desavenencias. De todas maneras, hubo que esperar al 25 de febrero de 1951, tras la firma oficial de un convenio taurino, para poder participar en la verdadera “Corrida de la Concordia” en la Plaza El Torero (Curro Caro, Antonio Velásquez y Carlos Arruza), a la que asistieron numerosos exiliados republicanos.

 

Los rotundos triunfos del mexicano Arruza la temporada de 1944 en los ruedos españoles se recibieron inicialmente con cierta incredulidad en su propio país. Carlos –inventor del pase del Teléfono y el pase de la arrucina[5], no llegó a significarse políticamente, pero se le presuponía simpatizante de la causa republicana, gracias a su convivencia y nexo familiar con León Felipe. En mayo de 1957, su actuación previa en numerosos festejos de inspiración filantrópica motivó que el gobierno del general Franco le impusiese la Cruz de Beneficencia en Santander. Un inesperado accidente de circulación puso fin a su vida en mayo de 1966.

 

__________________

 

[1] Cristina Camino Galicia (Sequeros, Salamanca) era hija del notario de Zamora Higinio Camino de la Rosa, casado con Valeriana Galicia Ayala. El matrimonio Camino Galicia tuvo ocho hijos. El mayor, Julio, fue un militar ilustre, además de médico- psiquiatra. El segundo hermano, tío carnal de los Arruza, era Felipe Camino Galicia, más conocido por el nombre de León Felipe.

 

[2] A los novilleros extremeños Juan López Lago (1915) y Aquilino Claver López (1916) el comienzo de la guerra civil les sorprendió dando sus primeros pasos a través del planeta taurino, de manera que se vieron obligados a enrolarse en el Ejército Nacional, actividad que compatibilizaron con algunas esporádicas actuaciones en festivales taurinos de inspiración castrense.

 

En julio de 1939 López Lago se presentó en Las Ventas (Manuel Arruza y Paquito Casado con reses de Concha y Sierra) y un año después en La Monumental barcelonesa. En el mes de junio de 1954 se registró una ulterior comparecencia en la plaza de Badajoz (Antonio Vázquez y Francisco Mendes frente a reses de Antonio de la Coba).

 

[3] Manuel del Arco Giraldillo. ABC, 30 de julio de 1939.

 

[4] El 24 de abril de 1937 Franco firmó un decreto en el que ordenaba “Se establece como saludo nacional el constituido con el brazo en alto, con la mano abierta y extendida y formando con la vertical del cuerpo un ángulo de cuarenta y cinco grados”. Su cumplimiento y protocolo fue obligatorio desde el mes de agosto de 1937 hasta 1945.

 

[5] Este lance consiste en rematar una serie de pases apoyando el codo en el testuz del animal. La Arrucina, por su parte, son los pases naturales dados con las dos rodillas en tierra.

   

Great Sampford, Essex

 

The beautiful church of St Michael the Archangel at Great Sampford is not the first church to stand on the rising ground at the centre of the village overlooking the cornfields along the valley of the river Pant. It is possibly sited on an ancient place of cult or religious significance. The proximity of the Stow farm may be of some importance, for the word ‘Stow’ in Old English can mean a ‘holy place’ or ‘place of assembly’. A pre-Conquest church, presumably of timber and thatch construction, followed perhaps, by a simple stone-built church, was replaced by the 13c on the same site by a major church building of which one of the transepts remains as the vestry of the present church which was built between 1320 and 1350. The original dedication of the church, if different, is not known as the first documentary reference to St Michael occurs as late as 1540 in a Sampford will. Dedications were sometimes changed and the use of the proper style, St. Michael the Archangel, is in fact quite rare. However, dedications to St. Michael or St. Michael and All Angels are numerous and were popular as the Archangel is an important figure in Christian tradition and art, symbolising the victory of God over evil, as an intercessor for the sick and as a leader of the Church militant. Churches dedicated to him, as at Great Sampford, are often found on hill—top sites or on high ground .a possible allusion to St. Michael’s pre-eminence in the Angelic Host of Christian belief. His Feast Day is 29th September.

 

Knowledge of the origins of the Christian Church in Essex relies largely on the fragile but growing evidence of archaeology and landscape interpretation. An ill-defined and mobile pattern of contemporaneous pagan and early Christian practices in the Roman era comes into historical focus with the missionary endeavours of the Roman and Celtic Churches when such names as Augustine, Mellitus and Cedd are prominent in Essex history. Within that tradition there are various, as yet unproven, theories about the establishment of a church at Great Sampford.

 

On entering the church the first impression that the visitor receives is of its elegant dignity; the next, the incongruence of its scale in such a tiny rural community. An interesting aspect of this enigma is the search for a convincing explanation of its status, from the mid-13c until 1907, as a deanery church serving twenty-one surrounding parishes in the Freshwell Hundred and in part of Uttlesford. It may have been a consequence of an early ‘minster’ (i.e.: missionary) role or as the result of a parochial compromise in an area with more important communities such as (Saffron) Walden. We do not know. However, it is a fact that the missionary work of the early minsters often extended to and beyond the boundaries of the administrative hundreds and became the sites of the hundredal centres themselves. There may well be historic linkages, not yet understood, between the Freshwell and Uttlesford Hundreds and the Sampford Deanery that relate to the early status of the church at Great Sampford.

 

The earliest historical fact about St. Michael’s is the grant by William Rufus, son and successor of William the Conqueror, of the church at Sampford along with the subordinate chapel at Hempstead with their lands and tithes to Battle Abbey in 1094. According to Philip Morant, the most famous of Essex historians, this was a formal confirmation of the Conqueror's original royal grant. This act of confirmation was a necessary and regular practice in regard to the efficacy of grants and early charters which were frequently forged. The church at Hempstead was within the jurisdiction of the vicar of Great Sampford until as late as 1979. Great Sampford remained in the hands of Battle Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. In 1836 it passed to the newly-established Church Commissioners. In 1982 Great Sampford was combined with the parish of Little Sampford.

 

For perhaps a thousand years, even more, the Church at Sampford pursued its mission and, like others of medieval foundation, did not escape the consequences of religious, political and parochial events or circumstances. An astonishing flowering of spiritual faith and social commitment led to the building and re-building of these lovely churches. This phase was followed by the painful disruption of the Reformation, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, all of which led to anxious change and despoliation. In the course of these events much of the magnificence of the church at Great Sampford and its furnishings was lost or abandoned. All his was compounded by periods of neglect and the chronic problems of maintaining a great building in a small village bereft of wealthy resident patrons.

 

The loss, confiscation or sale of the rood, images, church plate and "such other goods as could be spared" was mirrored by decay of the fabric as is evident from the Parochial Inventories and Visitations of the l6c and l7c. The l7c saw the introduction of new arrangements for the railing of the Lord’s Table and seating for the congregation, a school was held in the south transept and the village musicians performed in a gallery under the tower. The inevitable ‘restorations’ by the Victorians led to the removal of furnishings, the installation of new pews, patterned floor tiling and the stripping of the stucco from the exterior walls of the church to expose the original flint and rubble surfaces. In more recent times the spiral staircase in the tower was removed and the roof structure of the south aisle replaced. We are, fortunately, left with a church of beauty and distinction.

 

It is hoped that the following brief notes on the architectural features and minor objects and details of interest in the church will help visitors to enjoy their visit.

  

The significance of St. Michael the Archangel in the village scene is apparent from the scale of the building, its strong profiles and conspicuous English Gothic idiom of the Decorated period. Internally, the major architectural theme is that of a restrained, uncomplicated elegance that is enhanced by the ample light admitted by plain glass windows. A dominant feature is the fine range of trefoiled, cinquefoiled and sexfoiled lights of the nave, chancel and aisle windows all dating from the period c. 1320-50. The cusped tracery of the windows is complemented by the symmetrical refinement of the arcading which is only lightly embellished by mouldings and carved capitals, typical of the period, and among the best in the county. Although not devoid of interesting detail, there is nothing to detract from the simple elegance and spatial qualities with which the fenestration and graceful arcading endow this fine building.

 

In 1769 Peter Muilman referred to the church at Great Sampford which "stands pleasantly on a small eminence by the roadside". Pleasantly indeed, the church is handsomely set in the Essex cornfields and seen to advantage from the high ground on the opposite side of the river. Close to, the sturdy profiles and somewhat severe external textures, relieved by some decorative areas of knapped flint flushwork, offer little hint of the quality of its Gothic interior. The main structure is built with random-faced flint and rubble set in lime mortar with limestone and clunch dressings. The roof is tiled and slated. The prominent west tower was built in the mid-l4c and, like the south aisle, has an embattled parapet. The south porch is of the same period. Unhappily, the window tracery of the 13c transept has been lost and is now disfigured by brickwork of two phases which seem to date from the late-18c to early-19c. Conspicuous in the churchyard are the fine lime trees planted in about 1835. The only monument of significance is the obelisk near the east wall of the churchyard which commemorates members of the Watson Family of Sampford. Colonel Jonas Watson was a distinguished soldier who was killed in action at the siege of Cartagena in 1741. But spare a moment to look at the adjacent grave stone of William Ruffle who died in 1881, a village worthy who served Great Sampford as shopkeeper, constable, clerk and in other public offices for over half a century.

 

External details of note are a rare series of consecration crosses of varying designs around the church, an early scratch dial, now displaced and seen on a doorstep in the north wall, a benchmark and the slot for the surveyor’s bench on the south-west buttress of the tower and miscellaneous graffiti mainly in the porch. Other details of interest include the rainwater heads, the vigorous carvings on the label of the south transept and niches in the south transept and the north and west walls. The clock on the church tower was installed in l9ll to mark the coronation of King George V.

 

On entering, visitors will appreciate the impressive dimensions and architectural refinement of this handsome village church. Standing in the centre of the nave the dominant curvilinear idiom of the Gothic styling will be apparent. The nave is flanked by north and south arcaded aisles with plain two-centred arches datable to the l4c. The piers of the north arcade are quatrefoil in plan with slender engaged shafting; those of the south arcade are octagonal in plan. All of the piers have moulded bases and capitals.

 

The 14c west tower is constructed in four stages. Internally it is open to the nave under a two-centred moulded arch. There is access to the belfry but, sadly, the brick-built circular Tudor staircase was removed about fifty years ago. The carved head of a woman recovered from this staircase, although it presumably originated from elsewhere in the church, can be seen in the vestry. But the finest aspects of this church are to be seen in the early chancel which is remarkable for its size and the splendour of its architectural expression. It dates from the first decades of the l4c. This fine chancel is framed by an exceptionally large east window of five cinquefoiled lights, the curvilinear bar tracery and verticality of which enhance the powerful impact of this aspect of the building. Most interesting, and presumably deriving from the deanery status of the church, there is a series on the north and south walls of twenty-one stalls recessed under a canopied arcade with mouldings and cusping. At the east end of the south arcade there are the piscina and sedilia. The chancel arch, of the same period and sprung from the capitals of clustered shafts, shows residual traces, near the base on either side of the step, of a former stone screen which is possibly significant in view of the rare stone screens in the nearby churches of Stebbing and Great Bardfield. Note also the small blocked low window by the north side of the arch. The panels behind the altar on which the Creed, Lords Prayer and Commandments are painted were made in 1837 for the church at Danbury and brought to Great Sampford in 1894.

 

The vestry, formerly a chapel, is of great interest as a surviving major element of the previous church of the late - 13c (however when I visited this was locked). In the east wall there are good coupled windows of two trefoiled lights with two quatrefoil and sexfoil circular openings, interesting examples of pierced plate-tracery. The large brick-filled window in the south wall is of the mid-13c with good mouldings and the surviving arch and shafting in the splays. Below this window, fragments of medieval glass were found buried in the ground outside. The contemporary archway in the west wall has some intriguing carved capitals richly adorned with robust oak-leaf foliage and vibrant figures including an owl, snail, pig and a human face in a good state of preservation. One is assumed to be a representation of a ‘Green Man’ a symbolic figure of English folklore. The north wall has four quatrefoil openings. There is, under the south window, a triple gabled recess with crockets and linear moulding, pinnacles and a neat acanthus motif which was probably once a fine tomb of an important local family, perhaps a member of the de Kemesek family. It is said to have served as a fireplace in the time when the vestry housed the village school! The battened and studded oak door leading into the chancel is 16c.

 

The open church roof structures are well worth close study. The best is in the vestry which is roofed with twelve pairs of collared scissor-braced trusses supporting the steep-pitched rafters on moulded wall plates. The chancel roof is also of trussed-rafter construction of seven cants, as is that of the nave roof which also has three tie-beams which may have been installed at a later date, perhaps when, as we know from church records, the roof was repaired in the 16c. The lean-to roof of the north aisle is attractively braced with graceful curved members sprung from a good moulded wall-plate. Unfortunately, the original roof of the south aisle has been replaced by a modern structure, but three of the amusing stone corbels which supported it remain. The trussed-rafter roof of the south porch with seven cants should be noted as it rests on extremely fine early moulded plates. Visitors should not miss the intriguing carved medieval wooden head which is fastened onto the wall above the chancel arch at the north-west corner facing the nave. This appears to have been repositioned, perhaps from a figure that was once part of church statuary. On the south side in the clerestory will be seen an attractive 15c Perpendicular style rectilinear and cinquefoiled window of three ogee lights which was devised to throw light onto the former rood.

 

Originally the church would have been resplendent with a comprehensive range of wall paintings for visual instruction depicting scenes of biblical or religious significance. A few fragments survive, having been discovered during restoration work in 1979, above the arches on the walls of the north arcade. Although faint and incomplete the two remaining paintings are of interest. One represents the seven deadly sins in the form of a diagrammatic tree which is comparatively rare. The other may be of St. Christopher, a saintly figure normally positioned, as possibly here, opposite the church entrance as a reassuring gesture to the worshippers. There are traces, too, possibly of another period, that suggest a dragon was depicted which would imply an association with St. Michael to whom the church is dedicated or, possibly, St. Margaret. Traces of colour in the wall plaster of the vestry may eventually yield further paintings.

 

Worthy of note are some special features beginning with the door at the church entrance. This is thought to be contemporary with the building of the church in the early l4c and, although damaged at the base, is still a fine example and retains the original wrought iron strap-work and studding. According to expert opinion it is the most elaborate of all saltire-braced doors in Essex. The boards of which it is constructed are pegged together. The font in the south aisle has a plain moulded octagonal bowl of the 15c. Its stem is earlier and has complex decoration which combines ogee-headed panels with intricate tracery on a chamfered 14c plinth. The Victorian pews were recently detached and the nave flooring paved. The beautiful series of kneelers worked with flower motifs were recently embroidered by local people. The lovely embroidered runner on the step of the sanctuary was made in 1990 and is an exact copy of the Victorian runner it replaced.

 

It is valid to observe that St. Michael’s benefits aesthetically from the absence of monumental clutter which, although sometimes historically useful, can be detrimental to the architectural purity of the building as a whole. The only remaining monuments of antiquity in the church are the tomb slabs (Calthorp and Burrows) of the 17c and 18c in the chance]. They commemorate a family whose name persists at a local farm and another of textile merchants who lived opposite the church. There is another (Gretton) in the south aisle. The pulpit, the provenance of which is unknown, is Victorian. There are also a few notable pieces of furniture. These include a 17c desk with a writing slope and cupboard which once served the school in the church. There is also a standing cupboard or hutch of the late 16c and a 16c church chest, iron-banded with strap hinges and an interior ‘till’ which may have been built-in as a response to a Parochial Visitation of 1686 which ordered it to be provided and lockable. The modern portable altar at the east end of the north aisle was given to the church by an anonymous donor in 1991. The small bronze of the Madonna and Child is of German provenance.

 

The five church bells which were once rung for church services as well as for special village occasions like harvest and gleaning can no longer be pealed. This is because of structural weaknesses in the belfry though they are still hung on the original stocks. Nowadays one is chimed for church services, as a Sanctus bell and used to ring the hours for the clock. The first, third and fourth bells were cast by William Land in 1624; the second (which bears the Royal Arms and a medallion with a bust of Charles II) by Henry Yaxley in 1684; the fifth by John Hodson in 1664. The church plate includes an interesting early Elizabethan silver cup of 1562 with a paten cover of c1567 and another paten dated 1630. None of these is inscribed although they carry makers' marks. An electro-plated flagon of 1854 was purchased by the vicar for five guineas in 1856. The organ, installed in 1976, is said to have come from a nonconformist chapel and to have been built in c1830 by G.M. Holdich. The eagle lectern in the south aisle was placed in the church in 1909 as a tribute to the incumbency of the Rev. Robert Eustace, vicar from 1850 to 1905.

 

Almost every ancient church has a range, most of which cannot be satisfactorily explained, of markings and graffiti, ostensibly symbolic figuring, idle scratchings and numerous initials and dates. Great Sampford has a generous quota of such. Of genuine interest is a 3-men’s (or 9-men's) Morris cut into the second stall on the north side of the chancel inside the altar rail. These are gaming boards of some antiquity, the play having affinities with ludo and allegedly used to relieve the boredom of long sermons or tedious ritual. On the opposite side one of the sedilia has a set of unexplained grooves, possibly another game.

 

This guide has so far been concerned mostly with events, architecture and objects of beauty or interest. More important are the people, clergy, church officers and villagers who have worked for and worshipped in the church. They all emerge from the obscurity of the past through the church records and the village archives as personalities or in human situations which help us to share their hopes, commitment or despair. The clergy, ever since Thomas de Sampford, dean in 1163, have served the church and ministered to the people throughout the ages and struggled with the traumas of turbulent and anxious times. The churchwardens, like Richard Petytt and John Mylner in the l6c and their successors, have striven to preserve the church from decay and neglect and carried out their onerous and multifarious duties with devotion if not always with alacrity. There have been too the countless parishioners whose recurring family names fill the registers recording the joy of marriage and birth and the sadness of illness and death. They are all part of the story and the reality of the church and its life in the village. They too were familiar with the building we admire. They sat in the pews and looked upon the beauty that is now our heritage. Their responsibility has passed to successive generations, and now to us. We hope that they would have approved of this little booklet and that it will play its part in safeguarding the continuity of that inheritance.

A consequence of using my truck on a daily basis means it gets subjected to all the rigours of day to day driving.

Including this!

For my troubles I also gained two fractured ribs in the ensuing chaos! Ouch!

I had been to Mettingham once before. Well, other than passing through. Back in the 80s Mettingham had a fine trucker's cafe, which I seem to remember won awards, and nearby was the Tally Ho pub.

 

The Tally Ho are now tearooms, and the greasy spoon long gone.

 

I had gone to Mettingham to visit the village show, many of my friends at the chicken factory lived on farms and for them it was a major event. I took my whole family in our Ford Cortina. It was a low key thing, as you would imagine, but at the same time very enjoyable.

 

I drove out of Bungay, back up the hill past where the old Harley Davidson shop used to be, past where another pub used to stand, that was the Watch House if I remember. That has been knocked down and more houses built. Up the hill out of Bungay and I could see the Tally Ho ahead, but just after that there was a sign saying 'church open'. I didn't know there was a church on the road.

 

Later, as I drove further along, I saw another church at Shipmeadow, but that I discovered later is now a private house.

 

Anyway, back to Mettingham. I turned round and found a place to park just off the road, not knowing if private vehicles would be allowed up the lane.

 

The lane was very narrow, and curved to the left about 50 yards up, thus hiding the church completely.

 

I walked up and found a perfect small round-towered church, once again like in Bungay with a window set in the base of the tower.

 

Despite its rural setting, it was very tidy inside, cool and welcoming. A church I rather liked.

 

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There was a church at Mettingham in Saxon times, but the present edifice, though a very ancient structure, is of Norman foundation. It exhibits a very elegant doorway, on the north side of the nave, profusely ornamented with the chevron mouldings. The stone employed in this elaborate portal is of the very finest quality, and has braved the corroding blasts of our north-eastern gales for above seven centuries with little injury. The hand of man, however, has despoiled it of its columns, and failed to spare what time would have left unscathed.

 

The church comprises a nave, with a south aisle, a chancel, and a round tower, with a large porch on the south side, in the west wall of which is a fire-place and chimney. The tower is girded, about midway of its height, with a strong band of iron; but an examination of its interior presents no visible rent or decay, requiring such a singular appendage. It was put on about half a century ago, by the then churchwarden; who, as he was also the village blacksmith, has exemplified the truth of the fable, that there is nothing like leather. In the south aisle is an inarched monument, with a handsome canopy: there is also a good octagonal font of stone, with the remains of some very rich stalls, and portions of a once elegant screen.

 

The interior is kept in a very neat and reputable state, but is sadly disfigured by a barbarous east window. Besides the arms of De Norwich, which yet remain, the windows of this church formerly contained the following cognizances. Ufford quartering Becke; France and England quartered; and, sab. an eagle displayed or.

 

Having been early appropriated to Bungay Nunnery, this benefice became a vicarage. Upon the suppression of religious houses, the appropriation and advowson were granted, in the twenty-ninth of Henry VIII., to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk; but they were soon afterwards conveyed to Sir Nicholas Bacon, and united with the castle estates; the Rev. James Cutting Safford being the present impropriator, and patron of the vicarage.

 

The registers of this parish commence in the time of the Commonwealth; and I quote the first page from them to show what advantages were gained by the nation in consequence of the Act of Parliament which deprived the parochial clergy of their custody, and transferred it to laymen.

 

"Mettingham Register Booke.

 

"Wherein are written all the Mariages, Burths, and Burialls, accordinge to the late Act of Parlament made the 22 day of September, 1653.

 

"Richard Stannard, of the same towne, in the Countie of Suff., Gent., approved by us, whose handes are here under subscribed accordinge to the choice of him made by the Inhabitants of the said Parish, to have the keeping of the Booke, and sworne to performe the Office of a Register accordinge to an Act of Parlament made in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand sixe hundred fifty and three.

 

Simon Suckbottle

 

Nasty Nan

 

John Gingerbread

 

Halfbrickt Man

 

Jumping Jones

 

Bounty Bridg

 

Dick Devill

 

Inhabitants of Utopia.

 

Monuments.—William Gooch, Esq., died 1685. Thomas Gooch, Gent., 1688. Attached to the monument are the arms of Gooch; party per pale, arg. and sab., a chevron between 3 talbots pass., counterchanged; on a chief gules 3 leopards' faces or. These gentlemen were ancestors of the present Sir Thomas Gooch, Bart., of Benacre Hall, whose family appears to have sprung from this village. In 1537, I meet with the name of Thomas Gooch, as witness to a deed, now preserved in the parish chest.

 

Jacob Twiss, Gent., died 1706. George Robinson, died 1808, aged 79.

 

There are many monuments of the Belwards, a family of ancient descent; being derived from Hugh de Belward, who came over with the Conqueror. Their arms, which are placed over some of the monuments here, are party per pale gules and argent, 3 pheons reversed, counterchanged.

 

In the reign of William the Conqueror, Robert Fitz-Hugh was Baron of Malpas in Cheshire, and held above thirty manors under Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, as appears by Domesday Book; but leaving no issue male, this barony, at length, by marriage of the heir female, came into the famous and knightly family of the Belwards, as Camden styles it, of which was John le Belward de Malpas, who lived in Rufus's time: to him succeeded William his son, who was Baron of Malpas in right of his mother, who was Lætitia, daughter and heiress of Robert Fitz-Hugh, and bore for arms 3 pheons, or dart heads. William, who was Baron of Malpas, left no legitimate issue; but Philip, his next brother, and then possessed of the manor of Egerton near Malpas, took, according to the custom of that age, the surname of Egerton from the place of his residence, and spread into many eminent and flourishing families, one of whose posterity is the Duke of Bridgewater.

 

Viscount Malpas and Earl of Cholmondeley, 1706, descended from William le Belward, Baron Malpas. Robert, by the gift of his father, had the lordship of Cholmondeley, settled there, and assumed the name of the place.

 

Thomas Cholmondeley, created Earl Delamere, 1821.

 

Thomas Egerton, Earl of Wilton, descended from William le Belward, who assumed the name of Egerton. The twelfth in descent was Sir Rowland Egerton, created a Baronet in 1617.

 

The Rev. Henry Belward Belward, of Mettingham (1845) assumed the name of his mother Esther, by the will of Dr. Richard Fisher Belward, who left him his estates.

 

Maria, daughter of William Belward, Gent., died 1731. Anna, fourth daughter of William Belward, died 1736. William Belward, Gent., died 18th August, 1700, aged 54. Hannah, his fifth daughter, died 1753, aged 58. Susanna, widow of the Rev. Charles Cock, A.M., died of the small-pox, 1738, aged 72. Edmund Purdy, died 1618. William Hayward, died 1753, aged 68. John Youngs, died 1671.

 

Elizabeth, relict of the Rev. James Chartres, formerly fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and vicar of Godmanchester, and West Haddon, obt. March 20, 1840, æt. 76.

 

James Cutting, eldest son of the Rev. James Cutting, and Louisa Safford, obt. July 9th, 1842, æt. 16.

 

The town estate of Mettingham produces a rental of about £100 per annum, and is under the management of feoffees chosen by the parishioners. The lands which produce this fine income were devised some centuries ago for parochial purposes; but the exact intentions of the benefactors are not clearly understood. The proceeds of their bequests are applied to the reparation of the church; in a distribution of coals to the poor; and to other parish purposes, which are, perhaps, not altogether legitimate. Laurence Skete, of Mettingham, and others, gave several pieces of land and meadow ground for the use of the poor. Among the deeds preserved in the office of the Bishop of Norwich is the following record. "Villuta de Mettingham tenet 3 ac: et dim: terræ nativæ tenem'ti Stambornes Manerij in una pecia de Metyngham. Idem tenet 3 rodas terræ liberæ pertinentis gilde, et jac: in Metyngham inter unam semitam."

 

Richard Umfrey, or Humfrey, Clerk, vicar of Mettingham in 1517, gave to the poor of this parish, lands, now let at £32. 7s. 6d. The original deed is—or was lately—in the parish chest, and is dated "apud Metyngham, ultimo die mensis Maij Anno regni Regis Henrici septimo."

 

As the above Richard Umfrey was also a liberal benefactor to the parish in other ways, I transcribe his short will, which contains many very curious and interesting particulars, illustrative of the manners and customs of his period.

 

"In nōie Dei, Amen. in the yere of our Lorde God MCCCCCXVij, the first day of Marche, I Richarde Umfrey, Clerke, Vicar of the church of All Seynts of Metyngh'm, beying in good and hool mynde, make my testamente and laste wille undre this fourme followyng. First, I come'nde my soule to Almyghtie God, to our blyssed Ladye, and to the celestyall Courte in Hevyn. And my Bodye to be buryed in the chauncell of Metyngh'm forsad byfor the sepultur and grave of Syr John Arcente, my predecessor. And at the daye of my buryeng I will that the maist' of the College in Metyngh'm forsad shall have xxd. And every brodre of the same College, xijd. And ev'y yoman servaunte abidyng in the said College shall have iiijd, and ev'y other servaunte and childe of the Almouse ther ijd. Also I will that ev'y other priste that shalbe at my buryeng shall have iiijd. Also I will that at the same daye of my buryeng the Ladye Prioresse of the monast'ye in Bongey shall have xijd. And ev'y other Lady of the same monast'ye vjd, and their convente priste viijd. to praye for my soule. Also I bequeath to ev'y houssolder in the said p'ysshe of Metyngh'm wheras arn man and wiff, viijd. And to ev'y other p'son jd at the sad daye to praye for my soule and all crysten soules. Also I gyff and bequeth to the maist' of the forsad College and to his brodren all that my Tēnt called Pyrtewell in Metyngh'm wt the gardeyn and the cloos to the sad tēnt belongyng wt thapp'tenents, undre this condic'on, that the said maist' and his brodren shall hold my annyv'sary yerly wt placebo and dirige and masse of Requiem for my soule, my fadres and modres soules, for my fryndes soules, and all cristen soules. And moreov' the sad maist' and his brodren shall gyff to thoos p'sones that shall rynge at Metyngh'm Church forsaid in the tyme of saying or syngyng of placebo and dirige at the said daye of my annyv'sary oon caste of brede and oon gallon of drynk. Also I gyff and bequeth to the Tounesshippe of Metyngh'm forsaid oon acr of londe lyeng among the londes of the said tounesshippe, undre this condison, that the Churchwardeyns of the same p'ysshe shall gyffe yerly at the daye of my annyv'ssary to the Vicar of the sad church of Metyngh'm, or to his Depute ther saying or syngyng placebo and dirige for my soule, my fryndes soules, and for all crysten soules, iiijd. And to offer jd. at Masse. Also I will that my cooffeoffes shall dely' or cause to be delyv'ed a state and seisyne of the forsaid te'nt, and all other landes forsade to the p'fourmaunce of this my laste will, when so ev' ther shall be required by my Executors. Also I will have an honest seculer priste to syng and praye for my soule, my fryndes soules, and for all crysten soules, by the space of twoo yers and longer yf yt may extende of my Goodes. Also I gyff and bequeth to the Cathedrall Church of the hooly Trinite of Norwych, vjs viijd. Also I bequeth to the forsaid Church of Metyngh'm my vestymente of blewe Velvett powdered wt flowres. And my chalice for to remayn to the same church as long as ther shall endur. And to the gyldyng of the Tabernacle of Seynt Mychael in the sad church, xxs. Also I gyff and bequeth to the Ladye Prioresse of the monast'ye in Bongay oon Goun wt the hoode. And to Dame Anne Page oon goun wt the hoode and vjs viijd. Also I bequeth to Mr. Thomas Wylkynes wiff a goun wt the hoode: to Mr. Reeves wiff a Goun wt the Hood: to Hamonde Lynstedes wife a Goun with the Hood. And to John Rooses wife a Goun wt the Hood: Also I bequeth to Robte Arwarde my lesser ffedrebedde with the bolster. The residue of all my Goodes wt my detts not bequethed I gyff and bequeth to the Disposicon and orderyng of Mayster Richarde Shelton, Clerk, and Sir Richard Wyburgh, priste, whom I ordeyn and make my Executors of this my Testamente and lastwille, thei to distrisbute and dispose them in Dedys of Charite to the most laude and praysyng of Allmyghty God for the welth and p'fyte of my soule, my fryndes soules, and for all cristen soules.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/suffolk-history-antiq...

Ash is a large village, now almost a town, now bypassed by the Canterbury to Sandwich road.

 

St Nicholas is a large church, and sits on a low mound above the High Street and houses.

 

The church itself is cruciform in shape, and previously stated, large.

 

It is furnished with serval monuments and brasses, all of a very high standard.

 

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A large and impressive church of mainly thirteenth century date over restored in 1847 by the irrepressible William Butterfield. The scale of the interior is amazing - particularly in the tower crossing arches which support the enormous spire. They are an obvious insertion into an earlier structure. The best furnishing at Ash is the eighteenth century font which stands on an inscribed base. For the visitor interested in memorials, Ash ahs more than most ranging from the fourteenth century effigy of a knight to two excellent alabaster memorials to Sir Thomas Harfleet (d 1612) and Christopher Toldervy (d 1618). Mrs Toldervy appears twice in the church for she accompanies her husband on his memorial and may also be seen as a `weeper` on her parents` memorial! On that she is one of two survivors of what was once a group of seven daughters - all her weeping brothers have long since disappeared.

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Ash+2

 

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ASH

LIES adjoining to the last-described parish of Staple northward. It is written in Domesday, Ece, and in other antient records, Aisse, and is usually called Ash, near Sandwich, to distinguish it from Ash, near Wrotham.

 

The parish of Ash is very large, extending over a variety of soil and country, of hill, dale, and marsh lands, near four miles across each way, and containing more than six thousand acres of land, of which about one half is marsh, the river Stour being its northern bounday, where it is very wet and unwholesone, but the southern or upland part of the parish is very dary, pleasant and healthy. The soil in general is fertile, and lets on an average at about one pound an acre; notwithstanding, there is a part of it about Ash-street and Gilton town, where it is a deep sand. The village of Ash, commonly called Ash-street, situated in this part of it, on high ground, mostly on the western declivity of a hill, having the church on the brow of it, is built on each side of the road from Canterbury to Sandwich, and contains about fifty houses. On the south side of this road, about half a mile westward, is a Roman burial ground, of which further mention will be taken hereaster, and adjoining to it the hamlet of Gilton town, formerly written Guildanton, in which is Gilton parsonage, a neat stuccoed house, lately inhabited by Mr. Robert Legrand, and now by Mrs. Becker. In the valley southward stands Mote farm, alias Brooke house, formerly the habitation of the Stoughtons, then of the Ptoroude's and now the property of Edward Solly, esq. of London.

 

There are dispersed throughout this large parish many small hamlets and farms, which have been formerly of more consequence, from the respective owners and in habitants of them, all which, excepting East and New Street, and Great Pedding, (the latter of which was the antient residence of the family of solly, who lie buried in Ash church-yard, and bore for their arms, Vert, a chevron, per pale, or, and gules, between three soles naiant, argent, and being sold by one of them to dean Lynch, is now in the possession of lady Lynch, the widow of Sir William Lynch, K. B.) are situated in the northern part of the parish, and contain together about two hundred and fifty houses, among them is Hoden, formerly the residence of the family of St. Nicholas; Paramour-street, which for many years was the residence of those of that name, and Brook-street, in which is Brook-house, the residence of the Brooke's, one of whom John Brooke, esq. in queen Elizabeth's reign, resided here, and bore for his arms, Per bend, vert and sable, two eagles, counterchanged.

 

William, lord Latimer, anno 38 Edward III. obtained a market to be held at Ash, on a Thursday; and a fair yearly on Lady-day, and the two following ones. A fair is now held in Ash-street on Lady and Michaelmas days yearly.

 

In 1473 there was a lazar house for the infirm of the leprosy, at Eche, near Sandwich.

 

¶The manor of Wingham claims paramount over this parish, subordinate to which there were several manors in it, held of the archbishop, to whom that manor belonged, the mansions of which, being inhabited by families of reputation and of good rank in life, made this parish of much greater account than it has been for many years past, the mansions of them having been converted for a length of time into farmhouses to the lands to which they belong.

 

f this manor, (viz. Wingham) William de Acris holds one suling in Fletes, and there he has in demesne one carucate and four villeins, and one knight with one carucate, and one fisbery, with a saltpit of thirty pence. The whole is worth forty shillings.

 

This district or manor was granted by archbishop Lanfranc, soon after this, to one Osberne, (fn. 7) of whom I find no further mention, nor of this place, till king Henry III.'s reign, when it seems to have been separated into two manors, one of which, now known by the name of the manor of Gurson Fleet, though till of late time by that of Fleet only, was held afterwards of the archbishop by knight's service, by the family of Sandwich, and afterwards by the Veres, earls of Oxford, one of whom, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, who died anno 3 Edward III. was found by the escheat-rolls of that year, to have died possessed of this manor of Fleet, which continued in his descendants down to John de Vere, earl of Oxford, who for his attachment to the house of Lancaster, was attainted in the first year of king Edward IV. upon which this manor came into the hands of the crown, and was granted the next year to Richard, duke of Gloucester, the king's brother, with whom it staid after his succession to the crown, as king Richard III. on whose death, and the accession of king Henry VII. this manor returned to the possession of John, earl of Oxford, who had been attainted, but was by parliament anno I Henry VII. restored in blood, titles and possessions. After which this manor continued in his name and family till about the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign, when Edward Vere, earl of Oxford, alienated it to Hammond, in whose descendants it continued till one of them, in the middle of king Charles II.'s reign, sold it to Thomas Turner, D. D. who died possessed of it in 1672, and in his name and descendants it continued till the year 1748, when it was sold to John Lynch, D. D. dean of Canterbury, whose son Sir William Lynch, K. B. died possessed of it in 1785, and by his will devised it, with the rest of his estates, to his widow lady Lynch, who is the present possessor of it. A court baron is held for this manor.

 

Archbishop Lanfranc, on his founding the priory of St. Gregory, in the reign of the Conqueror, gave to it the tithe of the manor of Fleet; which gift was confirmed by archbishop Hubert in Richard I.'s reign. This portion of tithes, which arose principally from Gurson Fleet manor, remained with the priory at its dissolution, and is now part of Goldston parsonage, parcel of the see of Canterbury, of which further mention has been made before.

 

The other part of the district of Fleet was called, to distinguish it, and from the possessors of it, the manor of Nevills Fleet, though now known by the name of Fleet only, is situated between Gurson and Richborough, adjoining to the former. This manor was held in king John's reign of the archbishop, by knight's service, by Thomas Pincerna, so called probably from his office of chief butler to that prince, whence his successors assumed the name of Butler, or Boteler. His descendant was Robert le Boteler, who possessed this manor in king Ed ward I.'s reign, and from their possession of it, this manor acquired for some time the name of Butlers Fleet; but in the 20th year of king Edward III. William, lord Latimer of Corbie, appears to have been in the possession of it, and from him it acquired the name of Latimers Fleet. He bore for his arms, Gules, a cross flory, or. After having had summons to parliament, (fn. 8) he died in the begening of king Richard II.'s reign, leaving Elizabeth his sole daughter and heir, married to John, lord Nevill, of Raby, whose son John bore the title of lord Latimer, and was summoned to parliament as lord Latimer, till the 9th year of king Henry VI. in which he died, so that the greatest part of his inheritance, among which was this manor, came by an entail made, to Ralph, lord Nevill, and first earl of Westmoreland, his eldest, but half brother, to whom he had sold, after his life, the barony of Latimer, and he, by seoffment, vested it, with this manor and much of the inheritance above-mentioned, in his younger son Sir George Nevill, who was accordingly summoned to parliament as lord Latimer, anno 10 Henry VI. and his grandson Richard, lord Latimer, in the next regin of Edward IV. alienated this manor, which from their length of possession of it, had acquired the name of Nevill's Fleet, to Sir James Cromer, and his son Sir William Cromer, in the 11th year of king Henry VII, sold it to John Isaak, who passed it away to Kendall, and he, in the beginning of king Henry VIII.'s reign, sold it to Sir John Fogge, of Repton, in Ashford, who died possessed of it in 1533, and his son, of the same name, before the end of it, passed it away to Mr. Thomas Rolfe, and he sold it, within a few years afterwards, to Stephen Hougham, gent. of this parish, who by his will in 1555, devised it to his youngest son Rich. Hougham, of Eastry, from one of whose descendants it was alienated to Sir Adam Spracklin, who sold it to one of the family of Septvans, alias Harflete, in which name it continued till within a few years after the death of king Charles I. when by a female heir Elizabeth it went in marriage to Thomas Kitchell, esq. in whose heirs it continued till it was at length, about the year 1720, alienated by one of them to Mr. Thomas Bambridge, warden of the Fleet prison, upon whose death it became vested in his heirs-at-law, Mr. James Bambridge, of the Temple, attorney at-law, and Thomas Bambridge, and they divided this estate, and that part of it allotted to the latter was soon afterwards alienated by him to Mr. Peter Moulson, of London, whose only daughter and heir carried it in marriage to Mr. Geo. Vaughan, of London, and he and the assignees of Mr. James Bambridge last mentioned, have lately joined in the conveyance of the whole fee of this manor to Mr. Joseph Solly, gent. of Sandwich, the present owner of it. There is not any court held for this manor.

 

In this district, and within this manor of Fleet lastmentioned, there was formerly a chapel of cose to the church of Ash, as that was to the church of Wingham, to which college, on its foundation by archbishop Peckham in 1286, the tithes, rents, obventions, &c of this chapel and district was granted by him, for the support in common of the provost and canons of it, with whom it remained till the suppression of it, anno I king Edward VI. The tithes, arising from this manor of Fleet, and the hamlet of Richborough, are now a part of the rectory of Ash, and of that particular part of it called Gilton parsonage, parcel of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, of which further mention will be made hereafter. There have not been any remains left of it for a long time part.

 

Richborough is a hamlet and district of land, in the south-east part of this parish, rendered famous from the Roman fort and town built there, and more so formerly, from the port or haven close adjoining to it.

 

It was in general called by the Romans by the plural name of Rutupiæ; for it must be observed that the æstuary, which at that time separated the Isle of Thanet from the main land of Kent, and was the general passage for shipping,had at each mouth of it, towards the sea, a fort and haven, called jointly Rutupiæ. That at the northern part and of it being now called Reculver, and that at the eastern, being the principal one, this of Richborough.

 

The name of it is variously spelt in different authors. By Ptolemy it is written [Patapiaia (?)] urbem; by Tacitus, according to the best reading, Portus, Rutupensis; by Antonine, in his Itinerary, Ritupas, and Ritupis Portum; by Ammianus, Ritupiæ statio; afterwards by the Saxons, Reptacester, and now Richborough.

 

The haven, or Portus Rutupinus, or Richborough, was very eminent in the time of the Romans, and much celebrated in antient history, being a safe and commodious harbour, stationem ex adverso tranquillam, as Ammianus calls it, situated at the entrance of the passage towards then Thamas, and becoming the general place of setting sail from Britain to the continent, and where the Roman fleets arrived, and so large and extensive was the bay of it, that it is supposed to have extended far beyond Sandwich on the one side, almost to Ramsgate cliffs on the other, near five miles in width, covering the whole of that flat of land on which Stonar and Sandwich were afterwards built, and extending from thence up the æstuary between the Isle of Thanet and the main land. So that Antonine might well name it the Port, in his Itinerary, [Kat exochin], from there being no other of like consequence, and from this circumstance the shore for some distance on each side acquired the general name of Littus Rutupinum, the Rutupian shore. (fn. 9) Some have contended that Julius Cæsar landed at Richborough, in his expeditions into Britain; but this opinion is refuted by Dr. Hasley in Phil, Trans. No. 193, who plainly proves his place of landing to have been in the Downs. The fort of Richborough, from the similarity of the remains of it to those of Reculver, seems to have been built about the same time, and by the same emperer, Serveris, about the year 205. It stands on the high hill, close to a deep precipice eastward, at the soot of which was the haven. In this fortress, so peculiarly strengthened by its situation, the Romans had afterwards a stationary garrison, and here they had likewise a pharos, of watch tower, the like as at Reculver and other places on this coast, as well to guide the shipping into the haven, as to give notice of the approach of enemies. It is by most supposed that there was, in the time of the Romans, near the fort, in like manner as at Reculver, a city or town, on the decline of the hill, south-westward from it, according to custom, at which a colony was settled by them. Prolemy, in his geography, reckons the city Rutpia as one of the three principal cities of Kent. (fn. 10) Orosius. and Bede too, expressly mention it as such; but when the haven decayed, and there was no longer a traffic and resort to this place, the town decayed likewise, and there have not been, for many ages since, any remains whatever of it left; though quantities of coins and Roman antiquities have been sound on the spot where it is supposed to have once stood.

 

During the latter part of the Roman empire, when the Saxons prevented all trade by sea, and insefted these coasts by frequent robberies, the second Roman legion, called Augusta, and likewise Britannica, which had been brought out of Germany by the emperor Claudius, and had resided for many years at the Isca Silurum, in Wales, was removed and stationed here, under a president or commander, præpositus, of its own, who was subordinate to the count of the Saxon shore, and continued so till the final departure of the Romans from Britain, in the year 410, when this fortress was left in the hands of the Britons, who were afterwards dispossessed of it by the Saxons, during whose time the harbour seems to have began to decay and to swerve up, the sea by degrees entirely deserting it at this place, but still leaving one large and commodious at Sandwich, which in process of time became the usual resort for shipping, and arose a flourishing harbour in its stead, as plainly appears by the histories of those times, by all of which, both the royal Saxon fleets, as well as those of the Danes, are said to sail for the port of Sandwich, and there to lie at different times; (fn. 11) and no further mention is made by any of them of this of Rutupiæ, Reptachester, or Richborough; so that the port being thus destroyed, the town became neglected and desolate, and with the castle sunk into a heap of ruins. Leland's description of it in king Henry VIII.'s reign, is very accurate, and gives an exceeding good idea of the progressive state of its decay to that time. He says, "Ratesburg otherwyse Richeboro was, of ever the ryver of Sture dyd turn his botom or old canale, withyn the Isle of the Thanet, and by Iykelyhod the mayn se came to the very foote of the castel. The mayn se ys now of yt a myle by reason of wose, that has there swollen up. The scite of the town or castel ys wonderful fair apon an hille. The walles the wich remayn ther yet be in cumpase almost as much as the tower of London. They have bene very hye thykke stronge and wel embateled. The mater of them is flynt mervelus and long brykes both white and redde after the Britons fascion. The sement was made of se sand and smaul pible. Ther is a great lykelyhod that the goodly hil abowte the castel and especially to Sandwich ward hath bene wel inhabited. Corne groweth on the hille yn bene mervelous plenty and yn going to plowgh ther hath owt of mynde fownd and now is mo antiquities of Romayne money than yn any place els of England surely reason speketh that this should be Rutupinum. For byside that the name sumwhat toucheth, the very near passage fro Cales Clyves or Cales was to Ratesburgh and now is to Sandwich, the which is about a myle of; though now Sandwich be not celebrated by cawse of Goodwine sandes and the decay of the haven. Ther is a good flyte shot of fro Ratesburg toward Sandwich a great dyke caste in a rownd cumpas as yt had bene for sens of menne of warre. The cumpase of the grownd withyn is not much above an acre and yt is very holo by casting up the yerth. They cawle the place there Lytleborough. Withyn the castel is a lytle paroche chirch of St. Augustine and an heremitage. I had antiquities of the heremite the which is an industrious man. Not far fro the hermitage is a cave wher men have sowt and digged for treasure. I saw it by candel withyn, and ther were conys. Yt was so straite that I had no mynd to crepe far yn. In the north side of the castel ys a hedde yn the walle, now fore defaced with wether. They call it queen Bertha hedde. Nere to that place hard by the wal was a pot of Romayne mony sownd."

 

The ruins of this antient castle stand upon the point of a hill or promontory, about a mile north-west from Sandwich, overlooking on each side, excepting towards the west, a great flat which appears by the lowness of it, and the banks of beach still shewing themselves in different places, to have been all once covered by the sea. The east side of this hill is great part of it so high and perpendicular from the flat at the foot of it, where the river Stour now runs, that ships with the greatest burthen might have lain close to it, and there are no signs of any wall having been there; but at the north end, where the ground rises into a natural terrace, so as to render one necessary, there is about 190 feet of wall left. Those on the other three sides are for the most part standing, and much more entire than could be expected, considering the number of years since they were built, and the most so of any in the kingdom, except Silchester. It is in shape an oblong square, containing within it a space of somewhat less than five acres. They are in general about ten feet high within, but their broken tops shew them to have been still higher. The north wall, on the outside, is about twice as high as it is within, or the other two, having been carried up from the very bottom of the hill, and it seems to have been somewhat longer than it is at present, by some pieces of it sallen down at the east end. The walls are about eleven feet thick. In the middle of the west side is the aperture of an entrance, which probably led to the city or town, and on the north side is another, being an entrance obliquely into the castle. Near the middle of the area are the ruins of some walls, full of bushes and briars, which seem as if some one had dug under ground among them, probably where once stood the prætorium of the Roman general, and where a church or chapel was afterwards erected, dedicated to St. Augustine, and taken notice of by Leland as such in his time. It appears to have been a chapel of ease to the church of Ash, for the few remaining inhabitants of this district, and is mentioned as such in the grant of the rectory of that church, anno 3 Edward VI. at which time it appears to have existed. About a furlong to the south, in a ploughed field, is a large circular work, with a hollow in the middle, the banks of unequal heights, which is supposed to have been an amphitheatre, built of turf, for the use of the garrison, the different heights of the banks having been occasioned by cultivation, and the usual decay, which must have happened from so great a length of time. These stations of the Romans, of which Richborough was one, were strong fortifications, for the most part of no great compass or extent, wherein were barracks for the loding of the soldiers, who had their usual winter quarters in them. Adjoining, or at no great distance from them, there were usually other, buildings forming a town; and such a one was here at Richborough, as has been already mentioned before, to which the station or fort was in the nature of a citadel, where the soldiers kept garrison. To this Tacitus seems to allude, when he says, "the works that in time of peace had been built, like a free town, not far from the camp, were destroyed, left they should be of any service to the enemy." (fn. 12) Which in great measure accounts for there being no kind of trace or remains left, to point out where this town once stood, which had not only the Romans, according to the above observation, but the Saxons and Danes afterwards, to carry forward at different æras the total destruction of it.

 

The burial ground for this Roman colony and station of Richborough, appears to have been on the hill at the end of Gilton town, in this parish, about two miles south-west from the castle, and the many graves which have been continually dug up there, in different parts of it, shew it to have been of general use for that purpose for several ages.

 

The scite of the castle at Richborough was part of the antient inheritance of the family of the Veres, earls of Oxford, from which it was alienated in queen Elizabeth's reign to Gaunt; after which it passed, in like manner as Wingham Barton before-described, to Thurbarne, and thence by marriage to Rivett, who sold it to Farrer, from whom it was alienated to Peter Fector, esq. of Dover, the present possessor of it. In the deed of conveyance it is thus described: And also all those the walls and ruins of the antient castle of Rutupium, now known by the name of Richborough castle, with the scite of the antient port and city of Rutupinum, being on and near the lands before-mentioned. About the walls of Richborough grows Fæniculum valgare, common fennel, in great plenty.

 

It may be learned from the second iter of Antonine's Itinerary, that there was once a Roman road, or highway from Canterbury to the port of Richborough, in which iter the two laft stations are, from Durovernum, Canterbury, to Richborough, ad portum Rutupis, xii miles; in which distance all the different copies of the Itinerary agree. Some parts of this road can be tracted at places at this time with certainty; and by the Roman burial-ground, usually placed near the side of a high road, at Gilton town, and several other Roman vestigia thereabouts, it may well be supposed to have led from Canterbury through that place to Richborough, and there is at this time from Goldston, in Ash, across the low-grounds to it, a road much harder and broader than usual for the apparent use of it, which might perhaps be some part of it.

 

Charities.

A person unknown gave four acres and an half of land, in Chapman-street, of the annual produce of 5l. towards the church assessments.

 

Thomas St. Nicholas, esq. of this parish, by deed about the year 1626, gave an annuity of 11. 5s. to be paid from his estate of Hoden, now belonging to the heirs of Nathaniel Elgar, esq. to be distributed yearly, 10s. to the repairing and keeping clean the Toldervey monument in this church, and 15s. on Christmas-day to the poor.

 

John Proude, the elder, of Ash, yeoman, by his will in 1626, ordered that his executor should erect upon his land adjoining to the church-yard, a house, which should be disposed of in future by the churchwardens and overseers, for a school-house, and for a storehouse, to lay in provision for the church and poor. This house is now let at 1l. per annum, and the produce applied to the use of the poor.

 

Richard Camden, in 1642, gave by will forty perches of land, for the use of the poor, and of the annual produce of 15s. now vested in the minister and churchwardens.

 

Gervas Cartwright, esq. and his two sisters, in 1710 and 1721, gave by deed an estate, now of the yearly value of 50l. for teaching fifty poor children to read, write, &c. vested in the minister, churchwardens, and other trustees.

 

The above two sisters, Eleanor and Anne Cartwright, gave besides 100l. for beautifying the chancel, and for providing two large pieces of plate for the communion service; and Mrs. Susan Robetts added two other pieces of plate for the same purpose.

 

There is a large and commodious workhouse lately built, for the use of the poor, to discharge the expence of which, 100l. is taken yearly out of the poor's rate, till the whole is discharged. In 1604, the charges of the poor were 29l. 15s. 11d. In 1779. 1000l.

 

There is a charity school for boys and girls, who are educated, but not cloathed.

 

The poor constantly relieved are about seventy-five, casually fifty-five.

 

This parish is within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the dioceseof Canterbury, and deanry of Bridge.

 

The church, which is dedicated to St. Nicholas, is a handsome building, of the form of a cross, consisting of two isles and two chancels, and a cross sept, having a tall spire steeple in the middle, in which are eight bells and a clock. It is very neat and handsome in the inside. In the high or south chancel is a monument for the Roberts's, arms, Argent, three pheons, sable, on a chief of the second, a greybound current of the first; another for the Cartwrights, arms, Or, a fess embattled, between three catherine wheels, sable. In the north wall is a monument for one of the family of Leverick, with his effigies, in armour, lying cross-legged on it; and in the same wall, westward, is another like monument for Sir John Goshall, with his effigies on it, in like manner, and in a hollow underneath, the effigies of his wife, in her head-dress, and wimple under her chin. A gravestone, with an inscription, and figure of a woman with a remarkable high high-dress, the middle part like a horseshoe inverted, for Jane Keriell, daughter of Roger Clitherow. A stone for Benjamin Longley, LL. B. minister of Ash twenty-nine years, vicar of Eynsford and Tonge, obt. 1783. A monument for William Brett, esq. and Frances his wife. The north chancel, dedicated to St. Nicholas, belongs to the manor of Molland. Against the north wall is a tomb, having on it the effigies of a man and woman, lying at full length, the former in armour, and sword by his side, but his head bare, a collar of SS about his neck, both seemingly under the middle age, but neither arms nor inscription, but it was for one of the family of Harflete, alias Septvans; and there are monuments and several memorials and brasses likewise for that family. A memorial for Thomas Singleton, M. D. of Molland, obt. 1710. One for John Brooke, of Brookestreet, obt. 1582, s. p. arms, Per bend, two eagles.—Several memorials for the Pekes, of Hills-court, and for Masters, of Goldstone. A monument for Christopher Toldervy, of Chartham, obt. 1618. A memorial for Daniel Hole, who, as well as his ancestors, had lived upwards of one hundred years at Goshall, as occupiers of it. In the north cross, which was called the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, was buried the family of St. Nicholas. The brass plates of whom, with their arms, are still to be seen. A tablet for Whittingham Wood, gent. obt. 1656. In the south cross, a monument for Richard Hougham, gent. of Weddington, and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Edward Sanders, gent. of Norborne. An elegant monument for Mary, wife of Henry Lowman, esq. of Dortnued, in Germany. She died in 1737, and he died in 1743. And for lieutenant colonel Christopher Ernest Kien, obt. 1744, and Jane his wife, their sole daughter and heir, obt. 1762, and for Evert George Cousemaker, esq. obt. 1763, all buried in a vault underneath, arms, Or, on a mount vert, a naked man, bolding a branch in his hand, proper, impaling per bend sinister, argent and gules, a knight armed on borjeback, holding a tilting spear erect, the point downwards, all counterchanged. On the font is inscribed, Robert Minchard, arms, A crescent, between the points of it a mullet. Several of the Harfletes lie buried in the church-yard, near the porch, but their tombs are gone. On each side of the porch are two compartments of stone work, which were once ornamented with brasses, most probably in remembrance of the Harfleets, buried near them. At the corner of the church-yard are two old tombs, supposed for the family of Alday.

 

In the windows of the church were formerly several coats of arms, and among others, of Septvans, alias Harflete, Notbeame, who married Constance, widow of John Septvans; Brooke, Ellis, Clitherow, Oldcastle, Keriell, and Hougham; and the figures of St. Nicholas, Keriell, and Hougham, kneeling, in their respective surcoats of arms, but there is not any painted glass left in any part of the church or chancels.

 

John Septvans, about king Henry VII.'s reign, founded a chantry, called the chantry of the upper Hall, as appears by the will of Katherine Martin, of Faversham, sometime his wife, in 1497. There was a chantry of our blessed Lady, and another of St. Stephen likewise, in it; both suppressed in the 1st year of king Edward VI. when the former of them was returned to be of the clear yearly certified value of 15l. 11s. 1½d. (fn. 13)

 

The church of Ash was antiently a chapel of east to that of Wingham, and was, on the foundation of the college there in 1286, separated from it, and made a distinct parish church of itself, and then given to the college, with the chapels likewise of Overland and Fleet, in this parish, appurtenant to this church; which becoming thus appropriated to the college, continued with it till the suppression of it in king Edward VI.'s reign, when this part of the rectory or parsonage appropriate, called Overland parsonage, with the advowson of the church, came, with the rest of the possessions of the college, into the hands of the crown, where the advowson of the vicarage, or perpetual curacy of it did not remain long, for in the year 1558, queen Mary granted it, among others, to the archbishop. But the above-mentioned part of the rectory, or parsonage appropriate of Ash, with those chapels, remained in the crown, till queen Elizabeth, in her 3d year, granted it in exchange to archbishop Parker, who was before possessed of that part called Goldston parsonage, parcel of the late dissolved priory of St. Gregory, by grant from king Henry VIII. so that now this parish is divided into two distinct parsonages, viz. of Overland and of Goldston, which are demised on separate beneficial leases by the archbishop, the former to the heirs of Parker, and the latter, called Gilton parsonage, from the house and barns of it being situated in that hamlet, to George Gipps, esq. M. P. for Canterbury. The patronage of the perpetual curacy remains parcel of the possessions of the see of Canterbury.

 

¶At the time this church was appropriated to the college of Wingham, a vicarage was endowed in it, which after the suppression of the college came to be esteemed as a perpetual curacy. It is not valued in the king's books. The antient stipend paid by the provost, &c. to the curate being 16l. 13s. 4d. was in 1660, augmented by archbishop Juxon with the addition of 33l. 6s. 8d. per annum; and it was afterwards further augmented by archbishop Sheldon, anno 28 Charles II. with twenty pounds per annum more, the whole to be paid by the several lessees of these parsonages. Which sum of seventy pounds is now the clear yearly certified value of it. In 1588 here were communicants five hundred; in 1640, eight hundred and fifty. So far as appears by the registers, the increase of births in this parish is almost double to what they were two hundred years ago.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol9/pp191-224

Kathakali (Malayalam: കഥകളി, kathakaḷi; Sanskrit: कथाकळिः, kathākaḷiḥ) is a stylized classical Indian dance-drama noted for the attractive make-up of characters, elaborate costumes, detailed gestures and well-defined body movements presented in tune with the anchor playback music and complementary percussion. It originated in the country's present day state of Kerala during the 17th century and has developed over the years with improved looks, refined gestures and added themes besides more ornate singing and precise drumming.

 

HISTORY

Popular belief is that kathakali is emerged from "Krishnanattam", the dance drama on the life and activities of Lord Krishna created by Sri Manavedan Raja, the Zamorin of Calicut (1585-1658 AD). Once Kottarakkara Thampuran, the Raja of Kottarakkara who was attracted by Krishnanattam requested the Zamorin for the loan of a troupe of performers. Due to the political rivalry between the two, Zamorin did not allow this. So Kottarakkara Thampuran created another art form called Ramanattam which was later transformed into Aattakatha. Krishnanaattam was written in Sanskrit, and Ramanattam was in Malayalam. By the end of 17th century, Attakatha was presented to the world with the title 'Kathakali'.

 

Kathakali also shares a lot of similarities with Krishnanattam, Koodiyattam (a classical Sanskrit drama existing in Kerala) and Ashtapadiyattam (an adaptation of 12th-century musical called Gitagovindam). It also incorporates several other elements from traditional and ritualistic art forms like Mudiyettu, Thiyyattu, Theyyam and Padayani besides a minor share of folk arts like Porattunatakam. All along, the martial art of Kalarippayattu has influenced the body language of Kathakali. The use of Malayalam, the local language (albeit as a mix of Sanskrit and Malayalam, called 'Manipravaalam'), has also helped the literature of Kathakali sound more transparent for the average audience.

 

As a part of modernising, propagating, promoting and popularizing Kathakali, the International Centre for Kathakali at New Delhi has taken up a continuing project since 1980 of producing new plays based on not only traditional and mythological stories, but also historical stories, European classics and Shakespeare's plays. Recently they produced Kathakali plays based on Shakespeare's Othello and Greek-Roman mythology of Psyche and Cupid.

 

Even though the lyrics/literature would qualify as another independent element called Sahithyam, it is considered as a component of Geetha or music, as it plays only a supplementary role to Nritham, Nrithyam and Natyam.

 

KATHAKALI PLAYS

Traditionally there are 101 classical Kathakali stories, though the commonly staged among them these days total less than one-third that number. Almost all of them were initially composed to last a whole night. Nowadays, there is increasing popularity for concise, or oftener select, versions of stories so as the performance lasts not more than three to four hours from evening. Thus, many stories find stage presentation in parts rather than totality. And the selection is based on criteria like choreographical beauty, thematic relevance/popularity or their melodramatic elements. Kathakali is a classical art form, but it can be appreciated also by novices—all contributed by the elegant looks of its character, their abstract movement and its synchronisation with the musical notes and rhythmic beats. And, in any case, the folk elements too continue to exist. For better appreciation, perhaps, it is still good to have an idea of the story being enacted.

 

The most popular stories enacted are Nalacharitham (a story from the Mahabharata), Duryodhana Vadham (focusing on the Mahabharata war after profiling the build-up to it), Kalyanasougandhikam, (the story of Bhima going to get flowers for his wife Panchali), Keechakavadham (another story of Bhima and Panchali, but this time during their stint in disguise), Kiratham (Arjuna and Lord Shiva's fight, from the Mahabharata), Karnashapatham (another story from the Mahabharata), Nizhalkuthu and Bhadrakalivijayam authored by Pannisseri Nanu Pillai. Also staged frequently include stories like Kuchelavrittam, Santanagopalam, Balivijayam, Dakshayagam, Rugminiswayamvaram, Kalakeyavadham, Kirmeeravadham, Bakavadham, Poothanamoksham, Subhadraharanam, Balivadham, Rugmangadacharitam, Ravanolbhavam, Narakasuravadham, Uttaraswayamvaram, Harishchandracharitam, Kacha-Devayani and Kamsavadham.

 

Recently, as part of attempts to further popularise the art, stories from other cultures and mythologies, such as those of Mary Magdalene from the Bible, Homer's Iliad, and William Shakespeare's King Lear and Julius Caesar besides Goethe's Faust too have been adapted into Kathakali scripts and on to its stage. Synopsis of 37 kathakali stories are available in kathakalinews.com.

 

MUSIC

The language of the songs used for Kathakali is Manipravalam. Though most of the songs are set in ragas based on the microtone-heavy Carnatic music, there is a distinct style of plain-note rendition, which is known as the Sopanam style. This typically Kerala style of rendition takes its roots from the temple songs which used to be sung (continues even now at several temples) at the time when Kathakali was born.

 

As with the acting style, Kathakali music also has singers from the northern and southern schools. The northern style has largely been groomed by Kerala Kalamandalam in the 20th century. Kalamandalam Neelakantan Nambisan, an overarching Kathakali musician of those times, was a product of the institute. His prominent disciples include Kalamandalam Unnikrishna Kurup, Kalamandalam Gangadharan, Kalamandalam P.G. Radhakrishnan, Rama Varrier, Madambi Subramanian Namboodiri, Tirur Nambissan, Kalamandalam Sankaran Embranthiri, Kalamandalam Hyderali, Kalamandalam Haridas, Subramanian, Kalanilayam Unnikrishnan and Kalamandalam Bhavadasan. The other prominent musicians of the north feature Kottakkal Vasu Nedungadi, Kottakkal Parameswaran Namboodiri, Kottakkal P.D. Narayanan Namboodiri, Kottakkal Narayanan, Kalamandalam Anantha NarayananKalamandalam Sreekumar Palanad Divakaran, Kalanilayam Rajendran, Kolathappilli Narayanan Namboodiri, Kalamandalam Narayanan Embranthiri, Kottakkal Madhu, Kalamandalam Babu Namboodiri, Kalamandalam Harish and Kalamandalam Vinod. In the south, some of whom are equally popular in the north these days, include Pathiyur Sankarankutty. Southerner musicians of the older generation include Cherthala Thankappa Panikker, Thakazhi Kuttan Pillai, Cherthala Kuttappa Kurup, Thanneermukkam Viswambharan and Mudakkal Gopinathan.

 

PERFORMANCE

Traditionally, a Kathakali performance is usually conducted at night and ends in early morning. Nowadays it isn't difficult to see performances as short as three hours or fewer. Kathakali is usually performed in front of the huge Kalivilakku (kali meaning dance; vilakku meaning lamp) with its thick wick sunk till the neck in coconut oil. Traditionally, this lamp used to provide sole light when the plays used to be performed inside temples, palaces or abodes houses of nobles and aristocrats. Enactment of a play by actors takes place to the accompaniment of music (geetha) and instruments (vadya). The percussion instruments used are chenda, maddalam (both of which underwent revolutionary changes in their aesthetics with the contributions of Kalamandalam Krishnankutty Poduval and Kalamandalam Appukutty Poduval) and, at times, edakka. In addition, the singers (the lead singer is called “ponnani” and his follower is called “singidi”) use chengila (gong made of bell metal, which can be struck with a wooden stick) and ilathalam (a pair of cymbals). The lead singer in some sense uses the Chengala to conduct the Vadyam and Geetha components, just as a conductor uses his wand in western classical music. A distinguishing characteristic of this art form is that the actors never speak but use hand gestures, expressions and rhythmic dancing instead of dialogue (but for a couple of rare characters).

 

ACTING

A Kathakali actor uses immense concentration, skill and physical stamina, gained from regimented training based on Kalaripayattu, the ancient martial art of Kerala, to prepare for his demanding role. The training can often last for 8–10 years, and is intensive. In Kathakali, the story is enacted purely by the movements of the hands (called mudras or hand gestures) and by facial expressions (rasas) and bodily movements. The expressions are derived from Natyashastra (the tome that deals with the science of expressions) and are classified into nine as in most Indian classical art forms. Dancers also undergo special practice sessions to learn control of their eye movements.

 

There are 24 basic mudras—the permutation and combination of which would add up a chunk of the hand gestures in vogue today. Each can again can be classified into 'Samaana-mudras'(one mudra symbolising two entities) or misra-mudras (both the hands are used to show these mudras). The mudras are a form of sign language used to tell the story.

 

The main facial expressions of a Kathakali artist are the 'navarasams' (Navarasas in anglicised form) (literal translation: Nine Tastes, but more loosely translated as nine feelings or expressions) which are Sringaram (amour), Hasyam (ridicule, humour), Bhayanakam (fear), Karunam (pathos), Roudram (anger, wrath), Veeram (valour), Beebhatsam (disgust), Adbhutam (wonder, amazement), Shantam (tranquility, peace). The link at the end of the page gives more details on Navarasas.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of Kathakali is its elaborate make-up code. Most often, the make-up can be classified into five basic sets namely Pachcha, Kathi, Kari, Thaadi, and Minukku. The differences between these sets lie in the predominant colours that are applied on the face. Pachcha (meaning green) has green as the dominant colour and is used to portray noble male characters who are said to have a mixture of "Satvik" (pious) and "Rajasik" (dark; Rajas = darkness) nature. Rajasik characters having an evil streak ("tamasic"= evil) -- all the same they are anti-heroes in the play (such as the demon king Ravana) -- and portrayed with streaks of red in a green-painted face. Excessively evil characters such as demons (totally tamasic) have a predominantly red make-up and a red beard. They are called Red Beard (Red Beard). Tamasic characters such as uncivilised hunters and woodsmen are represented with a predominantly black make-up base and a black beard and are called black beard (meaning black beard). Women and ascetics have lustrous, yellowish faces and this semi-realistic category forms the fifth class. In addition, there are modifications of the five basic sets described above such as Vella Thadi (white beard) used to depict Hanuman (the Monkey-God) and Pazhuppu, which is majorly used for Lord Shiva and Balabhadra.

 

NOTABLE TRAINING CENTRES & MASTERS

Kathakali artistes need assiduous grooming for almost a decade's time, and most masters are products of accomplished institutions that give a minimum training course of half-a-dozen years. The leading Kathakali schools (some of them started during the pre-Independent era India) are Kerala Kalamandalam (located in Cheruthuruthy near Shoranur), PSV Natya Sangham (located in Kottakal near Kozhikode), Sadanam Kathakali and Classical Arts Academy (or Gandhi Seva Sadan located in Perur near Ottappalam in Palakkad), Unnayi Varier Smaraka Kalanilayam (located in Irinjalakuda south of Thrissur), Margi in Thiruvananthapuram, Muthappan Kaliyogam at Parassinikkadavu in Kannur district and RLV School at Tripunithura off Kochi and Kalabharathi at Pakalkkuri near Kottarakkara in Kollam district, Sandarshan Kathakali Kendram in Ambalapuzha and Vellinazhi Nanu Nair Smaraka Kalakendra in Kuruvattor. Outside Kerala, Kathakali is being taught at the International Centre for Kathakali in New Delhi, Santiniketan at Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal, Kalakshetra in Chennai and Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad among others. PadmaSree Guru Chengannur Raman Pillai mostly known as 'Guru Chengannur'was running a traditional Gurukula Style approach to propagate Kathakali.

 

‘Guru Chengannur” is ever renowned as the Sovereign Guru of Kathakali. His precision in using symbols, gestures and steps were highest in the field of Kathakali. Guru Chegannur's kaththi vesham, especially the portrayal of Duryodhana enthralled the audience every time he performed. A master of the art, he found immense happiness and satisfaction in the success and recognition of his disciples.

 

Senior Kathakali exponents of today include Padma Bhushan Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair, Padma Shri Kalamandalam Gopi, Madavoor Vasudevan Nair, Chemancheri Kunhiraman Nair, Kottakkal Krishnankutty Nair, Mankompu Sivasankara Pillai, Sadanam Krishnankutty, Nelliyode Vasudevan Namboodiri, Kalamandalam Vasu Pisharody, FACT Padmanabhan, Kottakkal Chandrasekharan, Margi Vijayakumar, Kottakkal Nandakumaran Nair, Vazhenkada Vijayan, Inchakkattu Ramachandran Pillai, Kalamandalam Kuttan, Mayyanad Kesavan Namboodiri, Mathur Govindan Kutty, Narippatta Narayanan Namboodiri, Chavara Parukutty, Thonnakkal Peethambaran, Sadanam Balakrishnan, Kalanilayam Gopalakrishnan, Chirakkara Madhavankutty, Sadanam K. Harikumaran, Thalavadi Aravindan, Kalanilayam Balakrishnan, Pariyanampatta Divakaran, Kottakkal Kesavan, Kalanilayam Gopi and Kudamaloor Muralikrishnan. The late titan actor-dancers of Kathakali's modern age (say, since the 1930s) include Pattikkamthodi Ravunni Menon, Chenganoor Raman Pillai, Chandu Panicker, Thakazhi Guru Kunchu Kurup, Padma Shri Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair, Padma Shri Vazhenkada Kunchu Nair, Kavalappara Narayanan Nair, Kurichi Kunhan Panikkar, Thekkinkattil Ramunni Nair, Padma Shri Keezhpadam Kumaran Nair, Kalamandalam Padmanabhan Nair, Mankulam Vishnu Namboodiri, Oyur Kochu Govinda Pillai, Vellinezhi Nanu Nair, Padma Shri Kavungal Chathunni Panikkar, Kudamaloor Karunakaran Nair, Kottakkal Sivaraman, Kannan Pattali, Pallippuram Gopalan Nair, Haripad Ramakrishna Pillai, Champakkulam Pachu Pillai, Chennithala Chellappan Pillai, Guru Mampuzha Madhava Panicker, and Vaikkom Karunakaran.

 

Kathakali is still hugely a male domain but, since the 1970s, females too have made entry into the art form on a recognisable scale. The central Kerala temple town of Tripunithura has, in fact, a ladies troupe (with members belonging to several part of the state) that performs Kathakali, by and large in Travancore.

 

KATHAKALI STYLES

Known as Sampradäyaṃ(Malayalam: സമ്പ്രദായം); these are leading Kathakali styles that differ from each other in subtleties like choreographic profile, position of hand gestures and stress on dance than drama and vice versa. Some of the major original kathakali styles included:

 

Vettathu Sampradayam

Kalladikkodan Sampradyam

Kaplingadu Sampradayam

 

Of late, these have narrowed down to the northern (Kalluvazhi) and southern (Thekkan) styles. It was largely developed by the legendary Pattikkamthodi Ravunni Menon (1881-1949) that is implemented in Kerala Kalamandalam (though it has also a department that teaches the southern style), Sadanam, RLV and Kottakkal. Margi has its training largely based on the Thekkan style, known for its stress on drama and part-realistic techniques. Kalanilayam, effectively, churns out students with a mix of both styles.

 

OTHER FORMS OD DANCE & OFFSHOOTS

Kerala Natanam is a kind of dance form, partly based on Kathakali techniques and aesthetics, developed and stylised by the late dancer Guru Gopinath in the mid-20th century. Kathakali also finds portrayal in Malayalam feature films like Vanaprastham, Parinayam, Marattam, and Rangam. Besides documentary films have also been shot on Kathakali artistes like Chenganoor Raman Pillai, Kalamandalam Krishnan Nair, Keezhpadam Kumaran Nair, Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair, Kalamandalam Gopi and Kottakkal Sivaraman.

 

As for fictional literature, Kathakali finds mention in several Malayalam short stories like Karmen (by N.S. Madhavan) and novels like Keshabharam (by P.V. Sreevalsan). Even the Indo-Anglian work like Arundhati Roy's Booker prize-winning The God of Small Things has a chapter on Kathakali, while, of late, Anita Nair's novel, Mistress, is entirely wrapped in the ethos of Kathakali.

 

Similar musical theater is popular in Kasaragod and the coastal and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, viz. Yakshagana. Though Yakshagana resembles Kathakali in terms of its costume and makeup to an extent, Yakshagana is markedly different from Kathakali as it involves dialogues and method acting also the narration is in Kannada, wherein philosophical debates are also possible within framework of the character. As per records the art form of Yakshagana was already rooted and well established at the time of Sri Manavedan Raja. There is possibilities of its significant influence in formation of Kathakkali as the troupe of performers of "Krishnanattam" designed the basic costume of the art form already established in other parts of south India including Males playing the female roles (until more recently).

 

Kottayam thamburan's way of presenting kathakali was later known as Kalladikkoden sambradayam. Chathu Paniker,the introducer of Kallikkoden Sambrathayam, stayed in Kottayam for five years with Kottayam Thamburan's residence and practiced Kalladikkoden Sambrathayam. Then he returned to his home place. After a short period Chathu Paniker reached Pulapatta as instructed by Kuthiravattath nair. That was around the year ME 865. Many deciples from Kadathanadu, Kurumbra nadu, Vettathu nadu, Palakkadu and Perumpadappu studied kathakali(Kalladikkoden Sambrathayam ) By that time Chathu Paniker was an old man. Some years later he died from Pulapatta.

 

NOTED KATHAKALI VILLAGES & BELTS

There are certain pockets in Kerala that have given birth to many Kathakali artistes over the years. If they can be called Kathakali villages (or some of them, these days, towns), here are some of them: Vellinezhi, Kuruvattoor, Karalmanna, Cherpulassery, Kothachira, peringode, sreekrishnapuram Kongad and Ottapalam in Palakkad district, Vazhenkada in Malappuram district, Thichur or Tichoor, Guruvayur, Thiruvilwamala and Irinjalakuda in Thrissur district, Tripunithura, Edappally, Thekkan Chittoor in Ernakulam district and Kuttanad, Harippad belt in Alappuzha district besides places in and around Thiruvanathapuram in south Travancore and Payyannur in north Malabar.

 

AWARDS FOR KATHAKALI ARTISTS

Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardees - Kathakali (1956–2005)

Nambeesan Smaraka Awards—For artistic performances related kathakali{1992-2008}

 

KATHAKALI ATTAMS (ELAKI ATTAMS)

Attams or more specifically "elaki attams" are sequences of acting within a story acted out with the help of mudras without support from vocal music. The actor has the freedom to change the script to suit his own individual preferences. The actor will be supported ably by Chenda, Maddalam, and Elathalam (compulsory), Chengila (not very compulsory).

 

The following are only some examples. 'Kailasa Udharanam' and 'Tapas Attam' are very important attams and these are described at the end. Two of the many references are Kathakali Prakaram, pages 95 to 142 by Pannisheri Nanu Pillai and Kathakaliyile Manodharmangal by Chavara Appukuttan Pillai.

 

VANA VARNANA: BHIMA IN KALYANA SAUGANDHIKA

Modern man looks at the forest, indeed the birthplace of primates, with a certain wonder and a certain respect. Kathakali characters are no exception.

 

When Pandavas were living in the forest, one day, a flower, not seen before, wafted by the wind, comes and falls at the feet of Panchali. Exhilarated by its beauty and smell, Panchali asks Bhima to bring her more such flowers. To her pleasure Bhima is ready to go at once. But Panchali asks him what he shall do for food and drink on the way. Bhima thinks and says "Food and Drink! Oh, this side glance (look) of yours. This look of longing. This look of anticipation. The very thought fills me up. I don't need any food and drink at all. Let me go." He takes his mace and off he goes. Ulsaham (enthusiasm) is his Sdhayi Bhavam (permanent feature).

 

"Let me go at once in search of this flower," says Bhima. "The scented wind is blowing from the southern side. Let me go that way." After walking some distance he sees a huge mountain called Gandhamadana and three ways. He decides to take the middle one which goes over the mountain. After going further "The forest is getting thicker. Big trees, big branches in all directions. The forest looks like a huge dark vessel into which even light can not penetrate. This is my (Bhima's) way. Nothing can hinder me." So saying he pulls down many trees. Sometimes he shatters the trees with his mace. Suddenly he sees an elephant. "Oh! Elephant." He describes it. Its trunk. Sharp ears.

 

The itching sensation in the body. It takes some mud and throws on the body. Oh good. Then it sucks water and throws on the body. Somewhat better. Slowly it starts dosing even though alert at times. A very huge python is approaching steadily. Suddenly it catches hold of the elephant's hind leg. The elephant wakes up and tries to disengage the python. The python pulls to one side. The elephant kicks and drags to the other side. This goes on for some time. Bhima looks to the other side where a hungry lion is looking for food. It comes running and strikes the elephants head and eats part of the brain and goes off. The python completes the rest. "Oh my god, how ruthless!" says Bhima and proceeds on his way.

 

UDYANA VARNANA: NALA IN NALACHARITHAM SECOND DAY

Descriptions of gardens are found in most dance forms of India and abroad. These are also common in Kathakali.

 

Newly married Nala and Damayanthi are walking in the garden. When Nala was lovingly looking at Damayanthi a flower falls on her. Nala is overjoyed and thinks that this is a kindness nature has shown on his wife. Nala says "On seeing the arrival of their queen, the trees and climbers are showing happiness by dropping flowers on you." He tells her, "See that tree. When I used to be alone the tree used to hug the climber and seemingly laugh at my condition." Then he looks at the tree and says, "Dear Tree, look at me now. See how fortunate I am with my beautiful wife."

 

Both wander about. A bumblebee flies towards Damayanthi. Immediately Nala protects her face with a kerchief. He looks at the bee and then at Damayanthi. He says, "On seeing your face the bee thought it was a flower and came to drink the nectar." Nala and Damayanthi listen to the sounds coming out of the garden. Damayanti says, "It appears that the whole garden is thrilled. The flowers are blooming and smiling. Cuckoos are singing and the bees are dancing. Gentle winds are blowing and rubbing against our bodies. How beautiful the whole garden looks." Then Nala says that the sun is going down and it is time for them to go back and takes her away.

 

SHABDA VARNANA: HANUMAN IN KALYANA SAUGANDHIKAM

While Bhima goes in search of the flower, here Hanuman is sitting doing Tapas with mind concentrated on Sri Rama.

 

When he hears the terrible noises made by Bhima in the forest he feels disturbed in doing his Tapas. He thinks "What is the reason for this?" Then the sounds become bigger. "What is this?" He thinks, "The sounds are getting bigger. Such a terrible noise. Is the sea coming up thinking that the time is ripe for the great deluge (Pralaya). Birds are flying helter-skelter. Trees look shocked. Even Kali Yuga is not here. Then what is it? Are mountains quarreling with each other? No, That can't be it. Indra had cut off the wings of mountains so that they don't quarrel. Is the sea changing its position? No it can't be. The sea has promised it will not change its position again. It can't break the promise." Hanuman starts looking for clues. "I see elephants and lions running in fear of somebody. Oh a huge man is coming this way. Oh, a hero is coming. He is pulling out trees and throwing it here and there. Okay. Let him come near, We will see."

 

THANDEDATTAM: RAVANA IN BALI VADHAM

After his theranottam Ravana is seen sitting on a stool. He says to himself "I am enjoying a lot of happiness. What is the reason for this?" Thinks. "Yes I know it. I did Tapas to Brahma and received all necessary boons. Afterwards I won all ten directions. I also defeated my elder brother Vaishravana. Then I lifted Kailas mountain when Siva and Parvathi were having a misunderstanding. Parvathi got frightened and embraced Siva in fear. Siva was so happy he gave a divine sword called Chandrahasa. Now the whole world is afraid of me. That is why I am enjoying so much happiness." He goes and sits on the stool. He looks far away. "Who is coming from a distance. he is coming fast. Oh, it is Akamba. Okay. Let me find out what news he has for me."

 

ASHRAMA VARNANA: ARJUNA IN KIRATHAM

Arjuna wants to do Tapas to Lord Siva and he is looking a suitable place in the Himalayan slopes. He comes to place where there is an ashram. Arjuna looks closely at the place. "Oh. What a beautiful place this is. A small river in which a very pure water is flowing. Some hermits are taking baths in the river. Some hermits are standing in the water and doing Tapsas. Some are facing the Sun. Some are standing in between five fires." Arjuna salutes the hermits from far. He says to himself "Look at this young one of a deer. It is looking for its mother. It seems to be hungry and thirsty. Nearby a female tiger is feeding its young ones. The little deer goes towards the tigress and pushes the young tiger cubs aside and starts drinking milk from the tigress. The tigress looks lovingly at the young deer and even licks its body as if it were its own child. How beautiful. How fulfilling."

 

Again he looks "Here on this side a mongoose and a serpent forgetting their enmity are hugging each other. This place is really strange and made divine by saints and hermits. Let me start my Tapas somewhere nearby."

 

A sloka called "Shikhini Shalabha" can be selected instead of the above if time permits.

 

AN ATTAM BASED ON A SLOKA

Sansrit slokas are sometimes shown in mudras and it has a pleasing and exhilarating effect. Different actors use slokas as per his own taste and liking. However, the slokas are taught to students during their training period. An example is given below.

 

Kusumo Kusumolpatti Shrooyathena Chathushyathe

Bale thava Mukhambuje Pashya Neelolpaladwayam

 

Meaning a flower blooming inside another flower is not known to history. But, my dear, in your lotus like face are seen two blue Neelolpala flowers (eyes).

 

A CONVERSATION BASED ON A SLOKA

Sanskrit slokas can also be used to express an intent. One such example is a sloka used by Arjuna addressed to Mathali the charioteer in Kalakeya Vadham. Sloka:

Pitha: Kushalee Mama hritha Bhujaam

Naatha Sachee Vallabha:

Maatha: kim nu Pralomacha Kushalinee

Soonurjayanthasthayo

Preethim va Kushchate Thadikshnavidhow

Cheta Samutkanuthe

Sutha: tvam Radhamashu Chodaya vayam

Dharmadivam Mathala

 

Meaning: The husband of Indrani and the lord of gods my father - Is he in good health? His son Jayantha - Is he strictly following the commands of his father? Oh, I am impatient to see all of them.

 

SWARGA VARNANA: ARJUNA IN KELAKEYA VADHAM

Arjuna goes to heaven on the invitation of his father, Indra. After taking permission from Indrani he goes out to see all the places in Swarga. First he sees a building, his father's palace. It is so huge with four entrances. It is made of materials superior to gold and jewels of the world. Then he goes ahead and sees Iravatha. Here he describes it as a huge elephant with four horns. He is afraid to touch it. Then he thinks that animals in Swarga can't be cruel like in the world and so thinking he goes and touches and salutes Iravatha. He describes the churning of the white sea by gods and demons with many details and how Iravatha also came out of the white sea due to this churning.

 

He walks on and sees his father's (Indra's) horse. It is described as being white and its mane is sizzling like the waves of the white sea from which it came. He touches and salutes the horse also. Then he goes to see the river of the sky (or milky way). He sees many birds by this river and how the birds fly and play is shown.

 

Then he sees the heavenly ladies. Some are collecting flowers, and one of them comes late and asks for some flowers for making garland. The others refuse. She goes to the Kalpa Vriksha and says "please give me some flowers." Immediately a shower of flowers occurs which she collects in her clothes and goes to make garlands chiding the others. "See... I also got flowers." After this he sees the music and dance of the heavenly ladies. First it starts with the adjustments of instruments Thamburu, Mridangam, Veena. Then the actual music starts along with the striking of cymbals. Then two or three types of dances are shown. Then comes juggling of balls. It is described by a sloka thus:

 

Ekopi Thraya Iva Bhathi Kandukoyam

 

Kanthayaa: Karathala Raktharaktha:

Abhrastho Nayanamareechi Neelaneelo

Popular belief is that kathakali is emerged from "Krishnanattam", the dance drama on the life and activities of Lord Krishna created by Sri Manavedan Raja, the Zamorin of Calicut (1585-1658 AD). Once Kottarakkara Thampuran, the Raja of Kottarakkara who was attracted by Krishnanattam requested the Zamorin for the loan of a troupe of performers. Due to the political rivalry between the two, Zamorin did not allow this. So Kottarakkara Thampuran created another art form called Ramanattam which was later transformed into Aattakatha. Krishnanaattam was written in Sanskrit, and Ramanattam was in Malayalam. By the end of 17th century, Attakatha was presented to the world with the title 'Kathakali'. Kathakali also shares a lot of similarities with Krishnanattam, Koodiyattam (a classical Sanskrit drama existing in Kerala) and Ashtapadiyattam (an adaptation of 12th-century musical called Gitagovindam). It also incorporates several other elements from traditional and ritualistic art forms like Mudiyettu, Thiyyattu, Theyyam and Padayani besides a minor share of folk arts like Porattunatakam. All along, the martial art of Kalarippayattu has influenced the body language of Kathakali. The use of Malayalam, the local language (albeit as a mix of Sanskrit and Malayalam, called ), has also helped the literature of Kathakali sound more transparent for the average audience. As a part of modernising, propagating, promoting and popularizing Kathakali, the International Centre for Kathakali at New Delhi has taken up a continuing project since 1980 of producing new plays based on not only traditional and mythological stories, but also historical stories, European classics and Shakespeare's plays. Recently they produced Kathakali plays based on Shakespeare's Othello and Greek-Roman mythology of Psyche and Cupid.

 

Even though the lyrics/literature would qualify as another independent element called Sahithyam, it is considered as a component of Geetha or music, as it plays only a supplementary role to

Bhumau Talcharana Naghamshu Gaurgaura:

 

Meaning One ball looks like three balls. When it is in the hands of the juggler, it takes the redness of the hands, when it goes up it takes the blueness of the eyes, when it strikes the ground it becomes white from the whiteness of the leg nails. Once a juggled ball falls down. Then she, the juggler, somehow manages to proceed and remarks "See.. how I can do it".

 

At one time a garment slips from a lady's body and she adjusts the cloth showing shameful shyness (Lajja). Then the ladies go in for a Kummi dance. As Arjuna was enjoying this dance, suddenly somebody calls him. Arjuna feels scared. "Oh God, where am I?" he says and beats a hasty retreat.

 

TAPAS ATTAM: RAVANA IN RAVANA ULBHAVAM

[Background: Mali, Sumali and Malyavan were three brothers ruling Sri Lanka. During a war between them and Indra, Indra requested help from Lord Vishnu and as a consequence Lord Vishnu killed Mali. Sumali and Malyavan escaped to Patala. Kaikasi was the daughter of Sumali. She wandered in the forest. She belong three boys through a great sage called Vishravassu. (Vishravassu had an earlier son called Vaishravana who became the richest among all people.) The eldest boy of Kaikasi was Ravana followed by Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana.]

 

SCENE 1

When Ravana was a young boy (Kutti Ravana vesham), one day he was sleeping on his mothers lap in a place called madhuvanam. At that time Kaikasi sees Vaishravana flying overhead in his vimana (mythical aeroplane). She thinks “Oh, that is Vaishravana, technically a brother of my son who is sleeping on my lap. He is rich and strong. My son is so poor and weak. While thinking thus a drop of tear from her eyes drops on Ravana’s face. Ravana suddenly wakes up and sees his mother crying. When he knew the reason he could not bear it. He says he is going to do tapas to Brahma to get boons so that he will be strong and rich.

 

SCENE 2

(The tapas itself is shown as a part of autobiographical narration of adult ravana)

 

Ravana (adult Ravana, not kutti Ravana) is sitting on a stool. He thinks “Why am I so happy? How did I become so rich and strong? Oh yes. It is because of the tapas I did. What made me do the tapas? When I was a young boy, one day I was sleeping on my mother’s lap in a place called Madhuvanam. A drop of tear from her eyes falls on my face. I asked her why she was crying. She said she saw Vaishravana flying overhead in his vimana (plane). She told me Vaishravan was a brother of mine now flying in a plane. He is rich and strong. I am so poor and weak. When I heard this comparison between me and my brother, I could not bear it. I am going to do tapas to Brahma to get boons so that I will be strong and rich.

 

I made five different types of fires (while doing tapas gods are approached through Agni the god of fire). Then I started my tapas. I asked my brothers to stand guard and also keep the fires burning. Then I fully concentrated on tapas. Time passed but Brahma did not appear. I looked. Why is Brahma not appearing? I doubled my concentration. Time passed. Brahma is not appearing. Still not appearing? I cut one of my heads and put it in the fire. Waited, Brahma did not come. One more head rolls. Still no Brahma comes. Heads roll and roll. No Brahma. Only one head is left. First I thought of stopping my tapas. But no! Never! That will be an insult to me and my family. It is better to die than stop. Also when I die Brahma will be judged as being partial. With great determination I swung the sword at my last neck, when, lo and behold, suddenly Brahma appeared and caught my hand. I looked at him with still un-subsided, but gradually subsiding anger. Brahma asked me what boons I wanted. I asked for a boon that I should win all the worlds and have all the wealth and fame and that I should not be killed except by man. I also asked him to give boons for my brothers.

 

In the next scene Ravana asks Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana what boons they got. Unfortunately Kumbhakarna’s tongue got twisted while asking for boon and he got ‘sleep’ instead of becoming the ‘king of gods’. Ravana laughed it off. As for Vibhishana, he being a bhaktha of Vishnu, asked for Vishnu’s blessings and got it. Ravana laughs it off and also decides to conquer all the worlds and starts preparing his grand army for the big conquest of the worlds.

 

[This method of presentation with a peculiar sequence has a tremendous dramatic affect. The main actor redoes a small part of what happened to kutti Ravana vesham, and this gives a view of the high contrast between the boy and the man Ravana. Similarly the presence of Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana in the subsequent scene offers a good smile on the face of the viewer at the end of the play.]

 

KAILASA UDDHARANAM: RAVANA IN BALI VIJAYAM

[Background and Previous scene: After receiving the boons, and widening his kingdom in all directions, Ravana lives in Sri Lanka with great pomp and splendor. One day he sees Saint Narada approaching his palace singing songs in praise of him ‘Jaya jaya Ravana, Lanka Pathe’. Happily he receives Narada and seats him next to him. After telling Narada about the victory of his son Indrajith on Indra, Ravana tells Narada “Now there is nobody on earth or other worlds who can fight with me”. To this Narada replies “ Very true indeed, but there is one huge monkey called Bali who says he can defeat you. He even said that you are just like a blade of grass to him. Well let him say what he wants. You are unbeatable.” Then Narada says ‘let us go there and see him’. Both decide to go. But Ravana takes his famous sword called “Chandrahasam”. Then Narada asks the history of this sword. Ravana’s Attam Starts.]

 

Ravana says “I received this sword from Lord Siva. It happened thus. Once when I was conquering new places and expanding my empire I happened to be going across the Kailasa mountain. The plane got stuck on the mountain unable to move forward. I got down from the plane and looked at the mountain. (Looks from one end to the other first horizontally and then vertically.) So huge it was. Then I decided to lift it with my bare hand and keep it aside and move forward. I started sticking my hands under it one by one. Then I tried to lift it. It doesn’t move. I put more force and more force. It moved just a bit. I pushed harder and harder, slowly it started moving then again and again and it moved easily. Then I lifted it up with my hands and started juggling it (exaggeration evident).

 

“At that particular time Lord Siva was quarreling with his wife Parvathi. Why did they fight? The story is as follows. Parvathi had gone for enjoying swimming and bathing in some beautiful pond. At that time Siva opened his jata (disheveled long hair) and called Ganga for some entertainment after asking Ganapathi and Subramania to go for some errands. Somehow becoming suspicious, right at that time, Parvathi came back in a hurry with wet clothes and saw Siva with Ganga. Siva was wondering what to do and it was at that time that Ravana started lifting the Kailasa. When Kailasa started shaking Parvathi got scared and ran to Siva and hugged him. So the quarrel ended and Siva was happy. “As a reward Siva called me and gave me this famous Chandrahasa sword.”

 

Then Narada and Ravana leave to meet Bali. Ravana wanted to take the sword along with him, but Narada suggested that the sword is not required for teaching a lesson to Bali who is after all an unarmed monkey.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Had the whole "bubbles" all to myself last night.

The consequences were quite tangible today. :s

(Taken @ Liverpool's famous Black-E. ; formerly The Blackie)

www.theblack-e.co.uk/

 

Shoot one, get one free? One posed and one candid -- both in one frame'

Maybe the model on the right (who simply strolled straight into shot) knew I loved candids, eh?

 

[At the time, I was angry. However, having cropped the unintended consequence, I'm now more than happy. ]

consequences of a weekend with lots of fun and alcohol hahah

'Shoes' by Antonio Carty (8th April 2017)

(105cm square - Pencil, acrylics & inks on paper)

  

Shoes.

 

Here to accompany my words, being an artist, is a picture I just made about the great encounter between europe & refugee people that is occurring, as a consequence of the industry and interests of war.

 

The refugee people I have portrayed in this moment are Syrian's, who having crossed the Mediterranean sea in their tiny rubber dingy and are just about to land their hopes and set foot on the shores of Europe. I created the picture from an actual photos sacred trace caught in time.

 

I title this picture 'Shoes' www.flickr.com/photos/antoniocarty/33692526774/in/datepos...

 

Why shoes? Because we all need them and we understand each other when we try to walk in each others! The picture portrays great multitudes of individual people all gathered together in a moment of expectant spectation, the stadium becomes a vast beach shore where every grain of sand is counted. Making this effort thru' art to render every individual in the vast crowd together all at once, I hope to awaken and fulfill a respect, for the simultaneous magnitude of all the lives and stories that makes a society. By looking at the real mystery of our gathered multitude as individuals, this social art hopefully asks us to see ourselves and helps us to believe in the true responsibility of how we each treat the other. Are we just spectators or the actors in our lives, is it to be, or not to be!

 

As Pope Francis in a gathering of European children along with children who had survived the desperate and brave Mediterranean crossing, all sang together in a common sense chorus, about the crisis of the Refugee, "They are not a danger, they are in danger, They are not a danger, they are in danger!!"

 

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This picture's description is part of a longer social essay I have written called 'Civilization and the River' where my picture here 'Shoes' was the main featured illustration. It is available to read as a 24 page pamphlet and as a blog. If you like to read the full blog it is here in this first link below.

 

zcomm.org/zblogs/civilization-and-the-river/

 

zcomm.org/zblogs/brexit-charade-and-the-madness-of-a-prac...

 

zcomm.org/zcommentary/myths-of-globalization/

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Latest News on 'Shoes'

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This picture was exhibited as part of Kilmainham & Inchicore's August 2017 Festival's Group Art Show in Dublin. The show of 10 artists organized by my fellow artists Sean O'Neill & Catherine Ryan was called 'An Ideal World' & my series of large drawing paintings as part of it, I called 'In Your Shoes'

 

In Your Shoes.

'My social art believes there is sacred truth and creativity to be realised in every moment we encounter. I like to journey into moments caught in time, to try unravel and truly see them in art. Looking in the mirror of an other's shoes, we can find ourselves, alive thru' them!'

 

-Antonio Carty

(August 25th 2017)

 

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Civilization and the River

-Reversing Social Austerity and Validating a Popular Progressive Society

 

by Antonio Carty - 27th May 2017

  

Why?

 

Why the Collapse?

 

Social Austerity and our loss of democratic control to debtors has crippled society, rightly enraged us and out of necessity is politically awakening the global constitution of 'We the People' of our world.

 

This great strain on societies resources, this great gap, is been blamed on different scapegoats, the wealthy usually like to blame it back on society, implying life's population is the burden, that our societies expectations are to great, wages are unsustainable, people want to much, our multitude health needs are an unending waste, a weakness that the sensible mature wealth of this world just cant in good conscience afford! Look at the barbarity of the 'health' bill that just passed in USA Congress, it will cause at least 24 million more people to lose health protection, but it gets celebrated by the wealthy in power as a 'victory for freedom'… freedom from responsibility.

 

The majority of people polled everywhere naturally disagree, people think and feel this social austerity is not a fair reward for our work, that society is underfunded and we should expect and have more to fulfill all our lives and societies potential. We protest, because there is a lack of money in wages, taxes and spending, yet at the same time we see there is greater profits being made and boasted in our world, than ever before.

 

Why is our world set this way? Because it is natural and was always meant to be?.. No, the world changes and leans to different directions according to action and influence.

 

One great influence is Democracy, which translates as the Rule of People. But the influence of people's voice and vote has been usurped by private and corporate wealth. Gigantic never before existing corporate powers have now grown and manifested to influence our world. This is a key fact. Social Austerity which has rightly angered and makes desperate the lives and pride of our majority, is caused by the great wealth not paying its fair share, why don't they?

 

Because they do not have to! Corporations are courted by nations. Its we nations who follow and compete to please and favour their interests, why?

 

Because they can simply Hop. If they don't like their deal, if wages and taxes are not low enough, if environmental regulations are not compliant to their interests, they Hop!

  

The Hop.

 

Is this hopping just a law of nature?

 

No, they hop because it is an advantageous dynamic for them to exploit, to get our nations to compete against each other and we do, we compete in a race to the bottom of our own societies wealth, health and future. We compete to increase our austerity and environmental loss, to help them continue to profit and become ever more influential and powerful, over our lives.

 

This 'race to the bottom', this contraction of social austerity and suicidal environmental collapse is getting worse and worse. Causing anger, doubt and fear in people. Even making some of us so desperate as to lose confidence in our character's fair reason, in our dignity and the grace of compassion, letting ourselves instead become hopeless, divided and conquered cowards, putting our fear and blame more easily onto the consequences, the victims of the economy, on the local poor and jobless, on enviously reversing the hard one equality of proud minorities, or blaming migrants of economic poverty and refugees, victims who must exodus the murdering global consequences of our cruelest industry, War.

 

But how do we change this desperate economic dynamic, this doomed global race to the bottom, so big businesses wont hop and might chose to stay and pay their fair share, to follow our democratic common sense agreements for mutual survival?

 

We turn from the established leaderships, because we've seen that their pro corporate low tax and wage Centre, is not offering a choice to vote for real effective change, from this doomed dynamic, no plan of change to achieve a better funded fairer world that is not this way. But how could it be different, this is the Market we must follow, this is how its meant to be, many repeat and echo this, making it seem absolute and true.

 

It is not.

  

We Are The River.

 

Yes we can influence, we can guide the market for better, like our great ancient civilizations who's necessity, with confidence, learnt and acted to guide the rivers on which they lived and depended so as they could better grow and prosper! But how do we today fix the river/market in our social interests with out corruption, bias and causing it to dry up and collapse?

 

I believe the answer is possible once you have questioned the problem and decided to act. We must unite the world's nations in an agreement to benefit all our economies. An agreement in regard and to the purpose of ending, the necessity of our nation's competing with each other into lower and lower wages and corporate taxes, in what is such a mutually doomed race to the bottom. An agreement that instead, sets to guiding the global river of all our honest work and efforts to more fairly irrigate and suit our human civilization.

 

But what kind of agreement, can achieve that?

 

We set healthy world wide Universal Minimum Wage and Tax Thresholds that all business over a certain size must pay and that cant be lowered and undermined by one nation against another. So, no more special package holiday deals for big corporates, that also unfairly disadvantage local and smaller business.

 

Now Hopping has less incentive and business has to settle and get on with creating a profit with the way the river is. And it will. Don't worry and listen to the shouting and bluster of the old gods, business will get on with it because it will be its reality and only way to make profit. But now the wages and the taxes they pay as they go will be fair and flow in to fund all our societies and nations around the world. People can prosper and live where they wish and not where they must. Democracy will not be twisted to the river, the river that We work, will rightly provide for and serve Our democracy as it flows!

 

So, as the great civilizations of the world before us once awoke and united to fix the river to benefit their lives and environment, now we must unite, to agree a range of global thresholds in wages and taxes.

 

To help ensure that business will be attracted to invest in nations with less developed infrastructure, markets and expertise. According to GDP development perhaps, 3 Tiers of Universal thresholds could be set. Developing nations could offer a lower minimum tier in tax and wages but still a decent one. The other 2 Tiers would be set gradually higher for more developed nations with their better infrastructures and education and training to offer potential business as incentive to settle there. But all the tiers of universal minimums in wages and taxes would be set at a good, fair and decent minimum that cant be undercut. So now as the river of the market flows, people of all nations are properly rewarded for their work, real spending and its economy will also rise everywhere with this new wider distribution of income buoyancy! Our societies' facilities will have the corporate tax previously not paid, to fulfill their best potentials not the lowest cut. Our Democracy will mature to have real and effective meaning beyond the values of economic desperation. Our public forum's fair and willful consensus of decisions, creating powerful new referendums and agreements, as we invest in our constitutions and direct our futures thru' the debates of our concerns, values and ideas.

 

We are the river! Our pride and dignity can have a better world wide civilization and sustainable healthy environment if we agree to guide and command our river's to fairly irrigate the land.

  

Now, this clear and practical idea of setting the river's flow to ensure society's prosperity, will have opposition!..

 

Wholesale Corpratism.

 

The economic chaos exploiting retreaters like trump, brexit and le pen and all the rest who offer an autocratic brute and shallow civil war inducing realization of national ego, encouraging their supporters to revel in their suppressed fears, envy and hate and misplace their blame against blind caricatures of each other.

 

In the USA this new great so called 'Economic Nationalism' has instead, shown itself to be a brazen advancement into Wholesale Corpratism. After waiting 100 days trump reveals the real deal is for huge corporate tax cuts. To go along with his dismantling of the rest of the people's society. Maybe this might attract a few corporate pharaohs to return to USA and have cheap pyramids built in their honour for low wages. Thats 'Jobs' get ready for a 'great nation' of worthless corporate slaves, waving empty flags, made to feel satisfied and empowered instead by a colosseum of cruelties to weaker minorities living among them.

 

A nation is all its people. Their is nothing nationalist about trump, the corporations he is appointing to run the nation will not be obliged, or even be asked to give a better deal in wages, and obviously not in tax. Their new deal is a sellout future, of humiliations not national pride and dignity, a betrayal of what the true wealth of a nation, its people, could have and deserve by their honest work and life.

 

The same is true for brexit, le pen and the rest who offer the hype of solution by this glorious retreat from the world community of possibility, thru' a xenophobic nationalist charade. It is only by the regaining of corporate tax and fair wages thru' international agreements of universal tax and wage minimums that our social austerity and the race to the bottom can be reversed. Only by international unity not retreat that 'a good deal' can be realized and a future thats 'great' can be founded.

 

But this wholesale corpratism that calls itself nationalist, wont be the only obstacle against a practical solution to our austerity. An international agreement for Universal Minimums in fair and decent Wages, Taxes and Environmental protection will also be fiercely condemned, ridiculed and scorned as a most unrealistic impertinence by the establishments of so called Centrists who have led us to this underfunded low corporate tax and wage social austerity crunch.

 

Centrists

 

They call themselves Centrists as if their way is not an ideology, not a left or a right or even an opinion but simply our now and forever truth! They believe most righteously their market worshiping ideologies rise to power was 'the end of history'.

 

They 'Follow the Market' and so like the days when a pro aristocracy Catholic Church would not allow peasants to change their fates and given stations in life as it was God's will, the pro corporate market Centrists wont allow us to fix how our wage and tax river's work as it is the Market's will! As if we are all apart from our world, consumers, passengers, grazers to be harvested, dumb spectators not actors in our own lives, for as they say Our history has ended!

 

We have been, sleepwalking on this ideology, worshipping only the will and values of business profit, our art and soul's voice is seen as redundant and unemployed to this rat race. All the unique consciousness of our individual multitudes and whatever the willful votes of our democracies, are but useless arguments to this generalized and disinterested dark age. We fear the occult of ratings agencies, whose mysteriously augured predictions can devalue a nation's earned savings and perceived wealth overnight. The stock exchange doesn't invest in new business, it disinvests and plunders the works of our real economy. Its a fantasyland through which 'financial wizards' can cast spells to profit off our real world lives.

 

The established centrists have enabled the rise to power of these unelected corporate kings and their insidious access all areas corporate lobbyists. We experience the low tax low wage social desertification of austerity, because their great wealth is not been obliged to pay its fair share. But now inevitably from these repeating economic crashes there is, a growing inescapable conscious resolve in people, people know it and want to vote for a real change from it, where corporate wealth is made pay its fair due share back in like everyone else.

  

The End of trump?

 

Medieval serfdom, like the early American colonists wished to leave behind them in Europe, is trump's new budget 'for american greatness' a plan for 'unleashing peoples dreams' by taking all the money still left in their society and squandering it to an even greater murdering waste of war industry, xenophobia blood sports and more cherries to the cakes of his rich corporate barons, Excelsior! Born in money and contempt with his characteristic golden head top, trump has been richly empowered all his life, he has no experience of how ordinary people live in the society he is gutting. When people are at their worst fates, sick or dying it is money and the burden of cost to loved ones they must worry about first not their health and life. His huge health cuts on the poor and middle incomes are a war against our humanity, trump accelerates us into a growing world of insincere tokenistic capitalist rations, of a nation with semi or no state responsibility for its people, instead of a great society that takes care of its human values whatever they cost.

 

He appoints wholesale corporate wealth to control every state department, its full speed ahead for global environmental collapse, he's at war with the courts and rightly they're stoping him, he now talks of whistle blowers and freedom of speech on our internet as 'deeply troubling', he visits cruel dictatorships to congratulate them, he launches elective missile strikes against undeclared enemies while having 'really delicious chocolate cake', he boasts with pride of deporting and crushing good peoples lives he brands criminal, he green lights police to murder who they like he's got their back, he snorts inhumanities like cocaine, wanting more and more. This ugly showman's brand, is committed to the constant inflation of an ever expanding balloon, a wind bag of outrageous shock and awe reversals of our human rights, hopefully if he doesn't kill us all first, trump and all who sail in him are going to finally explode that balloon with 'the Biggest Ego Meltdown in the World's History of Losers' as he himself might tweet and twitter it!

 

The scary Spectre and in deed the true danger of the trump, may be enough of a nightmare to drive and deliver the mass protests of people's popular progressive anger and hopes, which where originally against social austerity, back again with relief into the arms of the failed Centrists. Even though they remain un changed in their, pro corporate low wage and tax ideology, that bankrupts society and led to the austerity that led to trump. But doctor's logic says no, we need a practical and real change to refund society, not just another pro elite Centrist to save us from terrible trump, who will promise, and get corporations to agree, to smile more again!

  

A Return to Extreme Centrist Failure?

 

So we need a real change of the fundamental problem, not just enough to seem progressive and decent. We must change the international race to the bottom or we have changed nothing. Most centrist politicians may now be clever enough to show they 'feel the pain' but put forward no real idea for change. They will likely not prefer to reflect, grasp, and believe in popular progressive demands to come together and agree, to shape a better economic river. They will say, that if we dare change the river, that it will dry up and all hell will collapse upon us. They heckle us to fear our common sense, because to their extreme market ideology all change is infantile. They believe private profits growth must come before people, because 'it raises all boats with it'. But instead we have crash after crash with rich bailouts and social austerity and repeat. Now, like the fantastic propaganda of a dying regime the unchanging Centrists incredibly proclaim we are growing prosperous again, we hear this as most experience a continued race to the bottom. If we cant effectively oblige corporations to pay back good tax and wages, then no matter their growing prosperity of record profits, it does not matter and count as our prosperity!

 

Desperate to hold to power and relevance Centrists wish to fight back, so conveniently they equate and deride all ideas and voices for change, as the same mad threat to peoples 'stability and future'. They attack the humanitarian popularity of the socially progressive Left, and like to merge the Left with the real threat of the Far Right, when they slyly try declare them both to be the 'Extremes' of this new and 'Dangerous Populism'. I can understand what is been meant by 'Populism', but it is an often and easily misused term to slander all change to the established status quo and it is misleading term to diagnose the irrational and divisive envy, fear and hate the Far Right wishes to trigger and unleash in people to gain their support. Why not call out xenophobia and other dangers by their name and not call them a term that presumes them naturally popular? The Centrists never want to debate their hollow hype, they just repeatedly sum it up for people like we're children in what are certainly populist mantras of 'Stability, Security' ect. By branding the danger 'populism' they imply our democratic popular vote itself is a danger, a danger that might let us finally not vote for them!

 

Democracy is the awoken popular will of people, that each time takes a chance that hopes to change our society, for the better or what may be worse depending on what choice the money in politics and news media allows us to chose from. It is Centrist's stagnant denial in the face of their chronic failure, that is neither a stability or responsibility. What we do or allow is what we will become. By being pro corporate profits for so long, it is the Centrists who have created this dangerously low corporate tax and wage social austerity, and our inevitable race to the bottom, competing in all our indignity of nations, for ever smaller, shaved scraps.

  

A Race to the Top?

 

The river is made of our lives and labour, we will not dry up as long as we live, this great living river on which we all trade lives thru' we the people! So if we set its tax and wage minimums to healthy water levels world wide, corporations will have to just, get on with it.

 

But these world wide minimums are really a good progressive and stable idea for everyone, because it means corporate and all other business will no longer need to hop nations to compete against others who do. They will in fact more likely now need to compete by offering better more useful products to the market.

 

Also thru' this changed dynamic business will have to offer higher wages to attract their workers from other businesses. A calmer competition can begin, a race to the top instead, for the work of people and society! If we are confident and hopeful and remember the river and the market is us, we can reverse the destructively competitive dynamic that has reduced us all. Why not, we have democracy and the numbers, we also have a growing international consciousness, thru' which we find and echo our common causes, cheap travel and migrants and refugees bring fresh perspectives and experiences, a new wider unity, also made more easily possible thru' our cheap open internet, we must keep it open!

 

Lets follow nature's eternal optimism through which we where born, when we seek to regenerate our economic priority a have a happy re birth of our societies central value. We can have a new Renaissance!

 

Cuchulainn Is Not Dead! - www.flickr.com/photos/antoniocarty/30939692460/in/datepos...

  

Competition and Evolution.

 

There is positive competition that drives business to make better products people want. Competition to test and decipher objective truth is what progresses science. In arts there is a subjective competition within each heart and mind to better echo and enlighten our existence. In every person's life, there is competition against the time we get to live, that drives us to better realize ourselves and be true to our communication of that with those we must oppose and those we love. Our societies hope to win an empathetic competition against injustice, that seeks better more equal laws ect. Much competition is a good positive drive for a better quality to our evolution.

 

But a harmful competition, that reduces our societies' welfare, environment and growth, a competition that pits us all against each other in a race to the bottom, is an evolutionary death.

 

International corporate business is locked in a ruthless competition to maximize profit that has no boundaries. Environment, social funding and wages are dissolving to increase their competing race for profits. We must regain control now, using our available national democracies and getting them to unite internationally to mutually agree on more healthy global corporate tax and wage minimums, to end the extreme 'race to the bottom' destabilization caused by corporations cut and running from dependent nations, so as to better compete against each other and keep more and more profit. But if business has to pay the same where ever it goes then it and we are free of this unlimited competing for private accumulation, a calmer competition can be worked, bounded by equal global healthy minimums of wages and taxes, a non destructive competition who's profits are more fairly shared back to serve society, workers and our environment's survival.

  

Money Usurps Democracy.

 

Legally allowing large money donations to politicians, clearly ends an open participation in democracy, for anyone but the rich. We can end donations and instead use the new fairer taxes, to also fund political participants according to their current level of votes. New candidates can get a quota of signatures of citizen support to secure their initial funding before first election. Bring politics back to the people's table!

Car wreckage and a £50,000 pint come to Manchester

 

People in Manchester were be exposed to two very different consequences of drink driving by Greater Manchester Police this week. The wreckage of a car whose owner was killed in drink driving crash went on display at the University of Manchester, alongside a pint worth £50,000 – the personal financial cost of a conviction.

 

The £50,000 pint, displayed behind velvet ropes and housed in a protective glass case, represents the personal financial cost of drink-driving, calculated for the first time by the Institute of Advanced Motorists. The calculation reflects the fines, legal costs, rise in insurance premiums and possible job losses faced by those who are convicted.

 

The wreckage, known as the Think! Car, was owned by a 21-year-old man who lost control of his car on his way home and hit a tree, sadly killing him.

 

The activity was part of the University ‘Wellbeing Week’ and involved police conducting on the spot breathalyser tests and handing out free ‘scratchcards’, as well as activity highlighting the dangers posed to cyclists and bikers straying into the blind spots of HGVs and buses.

 

Inspector Matt Bailey-Smith from Greater Manchester Police said: "Drink driving ruins lives. It can cost motorists their family, job and worse still their life or that of somebody else.

 

"Many people do not think of the consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol until it is too late and police are committed to tackling this issue so that we can make the roads of Greater Manchester a safer place to be.

 

"If you are planning on driving then the safest choice you can make is to avoid alcohol all together, and if you see somebody else attempting to drink and drive then make sure you stop them. It could be the difference between life and death."

 

Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said:

 

“It might only look like a humble pint of beer, but it could end up costing much more than a few quid – in fact it comes with an eye-watering hidden cost if it pushes you over the limit.

 

“Most people know not to drink and drive but a small number still do, which is why we are highlighting the consequences of a drink drive conviction through our THINK! campaign.

 

“Anyone thinking of drinking and driving should be without any doubt – if you are caught driving over the limit you will face a heavy court fine and lose your licence – you could even go to prison.”

 

To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.

www.gmp.police.uk

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

This is what happens when you set up your camera on a tripod and you don't have a mobile signal to check what is going on. You get a going away shot of the train running on time rather than a shot of the oncoming train running 103 minutes late! The tail end of 6S36, a Dalston Oil Terminal to Grangemouth Ineos working is seen here passing Whitespots on the Glasgow & South Western route on 12th January 2016. It was being hauled by Colas Class 60 No. 60002.

Loving you was dumb, dark and cheap

Loving you still takes shots at me

Loving you was sunshine, but then it poured

And I lost so much more than my senses

'Cause loving you had consequences ♫

From 22nd June 2013 route 498 was transferred from First's Dagenham Depot to Go-Ahead at nearby Rainham. This is a consequence of First's decision to pull of its Transport for London operations (see below).

 

Route 498 was recently converted to double-deck to cope with ever-increasing passenger numbers, and is operated with a mixture of Enviro400s and older Dennis Tridents; some of these were transferred to Go-Ahead along with the route. First's Enviro400 DN33565 (which was not one of the three Enviro400s transferred) is seen approaching Romford Station en-route to Brentwood.

 

Route 498 commenced on Boxing Day 2006, when Transport for London stepped in after First (ironically) withdrew its services between Brentwood and Romford. Awarded temporarily to Arriva, First (even more ironically) won the permanent contract from June 2008.

  

*******************************************************************************

 

First sold its Northumberland Park depot and operations to the Go-Ahead group from March 2012, and it had been rumoured for some time that First was seeking buyers for other parts of its London operations.

 

However the scale of the sell-off when it was announced on 9th April 2013 took everyone by surprise. As well as the Tower Transit deal, involving 400 vehicles and around 1,500 staff at a cost of £21.3 million, all the outer West London Garages - at Alperton, Greenford, Hayes, Uxbridge and Willesden Junction - would be sold to Metroline. 494 vehicles and around 1,700 employees will transfer in the deal that will cost Comfort DelGro Corporation Ltd, the Singapore-based holding company of which Metroline is a wholly-owned UK subsidiary, £57.5million. Both deals were finalised to take place with effect from 22nd June.

 

Dagenham Depot was not included in the sale, but from the same date the drivers and vehicles from First Dagenham Depot's routes 193, 368 and 498 were transferred to Go-Ahead at their nearby Rainham Depot. School routes at Dagenham also transferred, but Go-Ahead is using its own vehicles for these.

 

From 22nd June First will be responsible for just four Transport for London routes (165, 179, 252 and 365 at Dagenham); these are due to transfer to Stagecoach on 28th September (165, 252, 365) or 17th October (179) and First intend to operate these routes until the contracts expire.

 

What craziness is this, a day in that London on a weekday? Well, working one day last weekend, and another next weekend, meant I took a day in Lieu.

 

So there.

 

And top of my list of places to visit was St Magnus. This would be the fifth time I have tried to get inside, and the first since I wrote to the church asking whether they would be open a particular Saturday, and then any Saturday. Letters which were ignored

 

So, I walked out of Monument Station, down the hill there was St Magnus: would it be open?

 

It was, and inside it was a box, nay a treasure chest of delights.

 

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

 

St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge is a Church of England church and parish within the City of London. The church, which is located in Lower Thames Street near The Monument to the Great Fire of London,[1] is part of the Diocese of London and under the pastoral care of the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Fulham.[2] It is a Grade I listed building.[3] The rector uses the title "Cardinal Rector". [4]

St Magnus lies on the original alignment of London Bridge between the City and Southwark. The ancient parish was united with that of St Margaret, New Fish Street, in 1670 and with that of St Michael, Crooked Lane, in 1831.[5] The three united parishes retained separate vestries and churchwardens.[6] Parish clerks continue to be appointed for each of the three parishes.[7]

St Magnus is the guild church of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, and the ward church of the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without. It is also twinned with the Church of the Resurrection in New York City.[8]

Its prominent location and beauty has prompted many mentions in literature.[9] In Oliver Twist Charles Dickens notes how, as Nancy heads for her secret meeting with Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, "the tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom". The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who adds in a footnote that "the interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors".[10] One biographer of Eliot notes that at first he enjoyed St Magnus aesthetically for its "splendour"; later he appreciated its "utility" when he came there as a sinner.

 

The church is dedicated to St Magnus the Martyr, earl of Orkney, who died on 16 April in or around 1116 (the precise year is unknown).[12] He was executed on the island of Egilsay having been captured during a power struggle with his cousin, a political rival.[13] Magnus had a reputation for piety and gentleness and was canonised in 1135. St. Ronald, the son of Magnus's sister Gunhild Erlendsdotter, became Earl of Orkney in 1136 and in 1137 initiated the construction of St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall.[14] The story of St. Magnus has been retold in the 20th century in the chamber opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976)[15] by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, based on George Mackay Brown's novel Magnus (1973).

 

he identity of the St Magnus referred to in the church's dedication was only confirmed by the Bishop of London in 1926.[16] Following this decision a patronal festival service was held on 16 April 1926.[17] In the 13th century the patronage was attributed to one of the several saints by the name of Magnus who share a feast day on 19 August, probably St Magnus of Anagni (bishop and martyr, who was slain in the persecution of the Emperor Decius in the middle of the 3rd century).[18] However, by the early 18th century it was suggested that the church was either "dedicated to the memory of St Magnus or Magnes, who suffer'd under the Emperor Aurelian in 276 [see St Mammes of Caesarea, feast day 17 August], or else to a person of that name, who was the famous Apostle or Bishop of the Orcades."[19] For the next century historians followed the suggestion that the church was dedicated to the Roman saint of Cæsarea.[20] The famous Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) promoted the attribution to St Magnus of Orkney during his visit to the British Isles in 1846-7, when he was formulating the concept of the 'Viking Age',[21] and a history of London written in 1901 concluded that "the Danes, on their second invasion ... added at least two churches with Danish names, Olaf and Magnus".[22] A guide to the City Churches published in 1917 reverted to the view that St Magnus was dedicated to a martyr of the third century,[23] but the discovery of St Magnus of Orkney's relics in 1919 renewed interest in a Scandinavian patron and this connection was encouraged by the Rector who arrived in 1921

 

A metropolitan bishop of London attended the Council of Arles in 314, which indicates that there must have been a Christian community in Londinium by this date, and it has been suggested that a large aisled building excavated in 1993 near Tower Hill can be compared with the 4th-century Cathedral of St Tecla in Milan.[25] However, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that any of the mediaeval churches in the City of London had a Roman foundation.[26] A grant from William I in 1067 to Westminster Abbey, which refers to the stone church of St Magnus near the bridge ("lapidee eccle sci magni prope pontem"), is generally accepted to be 12th century forgery,[27] and it is possible that a charter of confirmation in 1108-16 might also be a later fabrication.[28] Nonetheless, these manuscripts may preserve valid evidence of a date of foundation in the 11th century.

 

Archaeological evidence suggests that the area of the bridgehead was not occupied from the early 5th century until the early 10th century. Environmental evidence indicates that the area was waste ground during this period, colonised by elder and nettles. Following Alfred's decision to reoccupy the walled area of London in 886, new harbours were established at Queenhithe and Billingsgate. A bridge was in place by the early 11th century, a factor which would have encouraged the occupation of the bridgehead by craftsmen and traders.[30] A lane connecting Botolph's Wharf and Billingsgate to the rebuilt bridge may have developed by the mid-11th century. The waterfront at this time was a hive of activity, with the construction of embankments sloping down from the riverside wall to the river. Thames Street appeared in the second half of the 11th century immediately behind (north of) the old Roman riverside wall and in 1931 a piling from this was discovered during the excavation of the foundations of a nearby building. It now stands at the base of the church tower.[31] St Magnus was built to the south of Thames Street to serve the growing population of the bridgehead area[32] and was certainly in existence by 1128-33.[33]

The small ancient parish[34] extended about 110 yards along the waterfront either side of the old bridge, from 'Stepheneslane' (later Churchehawlane or Church Yard Alley) and 'Oystergate' (later called Water Lane or Gully Hole) on the West side to 'Retheresgate' (a southern extension of Pudding Lane) on the East side, and was centred on the crossroads formed by Fish Street Hill (originally Bridge Street, then New Fish Street) and Thames Street.[35] The mediaeval parish also included Drinkwater's Wharf (named after the owner, Thomas Drinkwater), which was located immediately West of the bridge, and Fish Wharf, which was to the South of the church. The latter was of considerable importance as the fishmongers had their shops on the wharf. The tenement was devised by Andrew Hunte to the Rector and Churchwardens in 1446.[36] The ancient parish was situated in the South East part of Bridge Ward, which had evolved in the 11th century between the embankments to either side of the bridge.[37]

In 1182 the Abbot of Westminster and the Prior of Bermondsey agreed that the advowson of St Magnus should be divided equally between them. Later in the 1180s, on their presentation, the Archdeacon of London inducted his nephew as parson.

 

Between the late Saxon period and 1209 there was a series of wooden bridges across the Thames, but in that year a stone bridge was completed.[39] The work was overseen by Peter de Colechurch, a priest and head of the Fraternity of the Brethren of London Bridge. The Church had from early times encouraged the building of bridges and this activity was so important it was perceived to be an act of piety - a commitment to God which should be supported by the giving of alms. London’s citizens made gifts of land and money "to God and the Bridge".[40] The Bridge House Estates became part of the City's jurisdiction in 1282.

 

Until 1831 the bridge was aligned with Fish Street Hill, so the main entrance into the City from the south passed the West door of St Magnus on the north bank of the river.[41] The bridge included a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket[42] for the use of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral to visit his tomb.[43] The chapel and about two thirds of the bridge were in the parish of St Magnus. After some years of rivalry a dispute arose between the church and the chapel over the offerings given to the chapel by the pilgrims. The matter was resolved by the brethren of the chapel making an annual contribution to St Magnus.[44] At the Reformation the chapel was turned into a house and later a warehouse, the latter being demolished in 1757-58.

The church grew in importance. On 21 November 1234 a grant of land was made to the parson of St Magnus for the enlargement of the church.[45] The London eyre of 1244 recorded that in 1238 "A thief named William of Ewelme of the county of Buckingham fled to the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, London, and there acknowledged the theft and abjured the realm. He had no chattels."[46] Another entry recorded that "The City answers saying that the church of ... St. Magnus the Martyr ... which [is] situated on the king's highway ... ought to belong to the king and be in his gift".[47] The church presumably jutted into the road running to the bridge, as it did in later times.[48] In 1276 it was recorded that "the church of St. Magnus the Martyr is worth £15 yearly and Master Geoffrey de la Wade now holds it by the grant of the prior of Bermundeseie and the abbot of Westminster to whom King Henry conferred the advowson by his charter.

 

In 1274 "came King Edward and his wife [Eleanor] from the Holy Land and were crowned at Westminster on the Sunday next after the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady [15 August], being the Feast of Saint Magnus [19 August]; and the Conduit in Chepe ran all the day with red wine and white wine to drink, for all such as wished."[50] Stow records that "in the year 1293, for victory obtained by Edward I against the Scots, every citizen, according to their several trade, made their several show, but especially the fishmongers" whose solemn procession including a knight "representing St Magnus, because it was upon St Magnus' day".

An important religious guild, the Confraternity de Salve Regina, was in existence by 1343, having been founded by the "better sort of the Parish of St Magnus" to sing the anthem 'Salve Regina' every evening.[51] The Guild certificates of 1389 record that the Confraternity of Salve Regina and the guild of St Thomas the Martyr in the chapel on the bridge, whose members belonged to St Magnus parish, had determined to become one, to have the anthem of St Thomas after the Salve Regina and to devote their united resources to restoring and enlarging the church of St Magnus.[52] An Act of Parliament of 1437[53] provided that all incorporated fraternities and companies should register their charters and have their ordinances approved by the civic authorities.[54] Fear of enquiry into their privileges may have led established fraternities to seek a firm foundation for their rights. The letters patent of the fraternity of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr of Salve Regina in St Magnus dated 26 May 1448 mention that the fraternity had petitioned for a charter on the grounds that the society was not duly founded.

 

In the mid-14th century the Pope was the Patron of the living and appointed five rectors to the benefice.[56]

Henry Yevele, the master mason whose work included the rebuilding of Westminster Hall and the naves of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, was a parishioner and rebuilt the chapel on London Bridge between 1384 and 1397. He served as a warden of London Bridge and was buried at St Magnus on his death in 1400. His monument was extant in John Stow's time, but was probably destroyed by the fire of 1666.[57]

Yevele, as the King’s Mason, was overseen by Geoffrey Chaucer in his capacity as the Clerk of the King's Works. In The General Prologue of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales the five guildsmen "were clothed alle in o lyveree Of a solempne and a greet fraternitee"[58] and may be thought of as belonging to the guild in the parish of St Magnus, or one like it.[59] Chaucer's family home was near to the bridge in Thames Street.

 

n 1417 a dispute arose concerning who should take the place of honour amongst the rectors in the City churches at the Whit Monday procession, a place that had been claimed from time to time by the rectors of St Peter Cornhill, St Magnus the Martyr and St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The Mayor and Aldermen decided that the Rector of St Peter Cornhill should take precedence.[61]

St Magnus Corner at the north end of London Bridge was an important meeting place in mediaeval London, where notices were exhibited, proclamations read out and wrongdoers punished.[62] As it was conveniently close to the River Thames, the church was chosen by the Bishop between the 15th and 17th centuries as a convenient venue for general meetings of the clergy in his diocese.[63] Dr John Young, Bishop of Callipolis (rector of St Magnus 1514-15) pronounced judgement on 16 December 1514 (with the Bishop of London and in the presence of Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London) in the heresy case concerning Richard Hunne.[64]

In pictures from the mid-16th century the old church looks very similar to the present-day St Giles without Cripplegate in the Barbican.[65] According to the martyrologist John Foxe, a woman was imprisoned in the 'cage' on London Bridge in April 1555 and told to "cool herself there" for refusing to pray at St Magnus for the recently deceased Pope Julius III.[66]

Simon Lowe, a Member of Parliament and Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company during the reign of Queen Mary and one of the jurors who acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554, was a parishioner.[67] He was a mourner at the funeral of Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester from 1554 to 1558 and Rector of St Magnus from 1537 to 1558, who was interred in the church on 30 November 1558 with much solemnity. In accordance with the Catholic church's desire to restore ecclesiastical pageantry in England, the funeral was a splendid affair, ending in a magnificent dinner.

 

Lowe was included in a return of recusants in the Diocese of Rochester in 1577,[69] but was buried at St Magnus on 6 February 1578.[70] Stow refers to his monument in the church. His eldest son, Timothy (died 1617), was knighted in 1603. His second son, Alderman Sir Thomas Lowe (1550–1623), was Master of the Haberdashers' Company on several occasions, Sheriff of London in 1595/96, Lord Mayor in 1604/05 and a Member of Parliament for London.[71] His youngest son, Blessed John Lowe (1553–1586), having originally been a Protestant minister, converted to Roman Catholicism, studied for the priesthood at Douay and Rome and returned to London as a missionary priest.[72] His absence had already been noted; a list of 1581 of "such persons of the Diocese of London as have any children ... beyond the seas" records "John Low son to Margaret Low of the Bridge, absent without licence four years". Having gained 500 converts to Catholicism between 1583 and 1586, he was arrested whilst walking with his mother near London Bridge, committed to The Clink and executed at Tyburn on 8 October 1586.[73] He was beatified in 1987 as one of the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales.

 

Sir William Garrard, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman, Sheriff of London in 1553/53, Lord Mayor in 1555/56 and a Member of Parliament was born in the parish and buried at St Magnus in 1571.[74] Sir William Romney, merchant, philanthropist, Master of the Haberdashers' Company, Alderman for Bridge Within and Sheriff of London in 1603/04[75] was married at St Magnus in 1582. Ben Jonson is believed to have been married at St Magnus in 1594.[76]

The patronage of St Magnus, having previously been in the Abbots and Convents of Westminster and Bermondsey (who presented alternatively), fell to the Crown on the suppression of the monasteries. In 1553, Queen Mary, by letters patent, granted it to the Bishop of London and his successors.[77]

The church had a series of distinguished rectors in the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th century, including Myles Coverdale (Rector 1564-66), John Young (Rector 1566-92), Theophilus Aylmer (Rector 1592-1625), (Archdeacon of London and son of John Aylmer), and Cornelius Burges (Rector 1626-41). Coverdale was buried in the chancel of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange, but when that church was pulled down in 1840 his remains were removed to St Magnus.[78]

On 5 November 1562 the churchwardens were ordered to break, or cause to be broken, in two parts all the altar stones in the church.[79] Coverdale, an anti-vestiarian, was Rector at the peak of the vestments controversy. In March 1566 Archbishop Parker caused great consternation among many clergy by his edicts prescribing what was to be worn and by his summoning the London clergy to Lambeth to require their compliance. Coverdale excused himself from attending.[80] Stow records that a non-conforming Scot who normally preached at St Magnus twice a day precipitated a fight on Palm Sunday 1566 at Little All Hallows in Thames Street with his preaching against vestments.[81] Coverdale's resignation from St Magnus in summer 1566 may have been associated with these events. Separatist congregations started to emerge after 1566 and the first such, who called themselves 'Puritans' or 'Unspottyd Lambs of the Lord', was discovered close to St Magnus at Plumbers' Hall in Thames Street on 19 June 1567.

 

St Magnus narrowly escaped destruction in 1633. A later edition of Stow's Survey records that "On the 13th day of February, between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a Needle-maker near St Magnus Church, at the North end of the Bridge, by the carelessness of a Maid-Servant setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the North end of the Bridge to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water then being very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over."[83] Susannah Chambers "by her last will & testament bearing date 28th December 1640 gave the sum of Twenty-two shillings and Sixpence Yearly for a Sermon to be preached on the 12th day of February in every Year within the Church of Saint Magnus in commemoration of God's merciful preservation of the said Church of Saint Magnus from Ruin, by the late and terrible Fire on London Bridge. Likewise Annually to the Poor the sum of 17/6."[84] The tradition of a "Fire Sermon" was revived on 12 February 2004, when the first preacher was the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.

 

Parliamentarian rule and the more Protestant ethos of the 1640s led to the removal or destruction of "superstitious" and "idolatrous" images and fittings. Glass painters such as Baptista Sutton, who had previously installed "Laudian innovations", found new employment by repairing and replacing these to meet increasingly strict Protestant standards. In January 1642 Sutton replaced 93 feet of glass at St Magnus and in June 1644 he was called back to take down the "painted imagery glass" and replace it.[86] In June 1641 "rail riots" broke out at a number of churches. This was a time of high tension following the trial and execution of the Earl of Strafford and rumours of army and popish plots were rife. The Protestation Oath, with its pledge to defend the true religion "against all Popery and popish innovation", triggered demands from parishioners for the removal of the rails as popish innovations which the Protestation had bound them to reform. The minister arranged a meeting between those for and against the pulling down of the rails, but was unsuccessful in reaching a compromise and it was feared that they would be demolished by force.[87] However, in 1663 the parish resumed Laudian practice and re-erected rails around its communion table.[88]

Joseph Caryl was incumbent from 1645 until his ejection in 1662. In 1663 he was reportedly living near London Bridge and preaching to an Independent congregation that met at various places in the City.[89]

During the Great Plague of 1665, the City authorities ordered fires to be kept burning night and day, in the hope that the air would be cleansed. Daniel Defoe's semi-fictictional, but highly realistic, work A Journal of the Plague Year records that one of these was "just by St Magnus Church"

 

Despite its escape in 1633, the church was one of the first buildings to be destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.[91] St Magnus stood less than 300 yards from the bakehouse of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane where the fire started. Farriner, a former churchwarden of St Magnus, was buried in the middle aisle of the church on 11 December 1670, perhaps within a temporary structure erected for holding services.[92]

The parish engaged the master mason George Dowdeswell to start the work of rebuilding in 1668. The work was carried forward between 1671 and 1687 under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, the body of the church being substantially complete by 1676.[93] At a cost of £9,579 19s 10d St Magnus was one of Wren's most expensive churches.[94] The church of St Margaret New Fish Street was not rebuilt after the fire and its parish was united to that of St Magnus.

 

The chancels of many of Wren’s city churches had chequered marble floors and the chancel of St Magnus is an example,[95] the parish agreeing after some debate to place the communion table on a marble ascent with steps[96] and to commission altar rails of Sussex wrought iron. The nave and aisles are paved with freestone flags. A steeple, closely modelled on one built between 1614 and 1624 by François d'Aguilon and Pieter Huyssens for the church of St Carolus Borromeus in Antwerp, was added between 1703 and 1706.[97] London's skyline was transformed by Wren's tall steeples and that of St Magnus is considered to be one his finest.[98]

The large clock projecting from the tower was a well-known landmark in the city as it hung over the roadway of Old London Bridge.[99] It was presented to the church in 1709 by Sir Charles Duncombe[100] (Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within and, in 1708/09, Lord Mayor of London). Tradition says "that it was erected in consequence of a vow made by the donor, who, in the earlier part of his life, had once to wait a considerable time in a cart upon London Bridge, without being able to learn the hour, when he made a promise, that if he ever became successful in the world, he would give to that Church a public clock ... that all passengers might see the time of day."[101] The maker was Langley Bradley, a clockmaker in Fenchurch Street, who had worked for Wren on many other projects, including the clock for the new St Paul's Cathedral. The sword rest in the church, designed to hold the Lord Mayor's sword and mace when he attended divine service "in state", dates from 1708.

Duncombe and his benefactions to St Magnus feature prominently in Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, a biting satire on critics of William III that went through several editions from 1700 (the year in which Duncombe was elected Sheriff).

 

Shortly before his death in 1711, Duncombe commissioned an organ for the church, the first to have a swell-box, by Abraham Jordan (father and son).[103] The Spectator announced that "Whereas Mr Abraham Jordan, senior and junior, have, with their own hands, joinery excepted, made and erected a very large organ in St Magnus' Church, at the foot of London Bridge, consisting of four sets of keys, one of which is adapted to the art of emitting sounds by swelling notes, which never was in any organ before; this instrument will be publicly opened on Sunday next [14 February 1712], the performance by Mr John Robinson. The above-said Abraham Jordan gives notice to all masters and performers, that he will attend every day next week at the said Church, to accommodate all those gentlemen who shall have a curiosity to hear it".[104]

The organ case, which remains in its original state, is looked upon as one of the finest existing examples of the Grinling Gibbons's school of wood carving.[105] The first organist of St Magnus was John Robinson (1682–1762), who served in that role for fifty years and in addition as organist of Westminster Abbey from 1727. Other organists have included the blind organist George Warne (1792–1868, organist 1820-26 until his appointment to the Temple Church), James Coward (1824–80, organist 1868-80 who was also organist to the Crystal Palace and renowned for his powers of improvisation) and George Frederick Smith FRCO (1856–1918, organist 1880-1918 and Professor of Music at the Guildhall School of Music).[106] The organ has been restored several times - in 1760, 1782, 1804, 1855, 1861, 1879, 1891, 1924, 1949 after wartime damage and 1997 - since it was first built.[107] Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was one of several patrons of the organ appeal in the mid-1990s[108] and John Scott gave an inaugural recital on 20 May 1998 following the completion of that restoration.[109] The instrument has an Historic Organ Certificate and full details are recorded in the National Pipe Organ Register.[110]

The hymn tune "St Magnus", usually sung at Ascensiontide to the text "The head that once was crowned with thorns", was written by Jeremiah Clarke in 1701 and named for the church.

 

Canaletto drew St Magnus and old London Bridge as they appeared in the late 1740s.[112] Between 1756 and 1762, under the London Bridge Improvement Act of 1756 (c. 40), the Corporation of London demolished the buildings on London Bridge to widen the roadway, ease traffic congestion and improve safety for pedestrians.[113] The churchwardens’ accounts of St Magnus list many payments to those injured on the Bridge and record that in 1752 a man was crushed to death between two carts.[114] After the House of Commons had resolved upon the alteration of London Bridge, the Rev Robert Gibson, Rector of St Magnus, applied to the House for relief; stating that 48l. 6s. 2d. per annum, part of his salary of 170l. per annum, was assessed upon houses on London Bridge; which he should utterly lose by their removal unless a clause in the bill about to be passed should provide a remedy.[115] Accordingly, Sections 18 and 19 of 1756 Act provided that the relevant amounts of tithe and poor rate should be a charge on the Bridge House Estates.[116]

A serious fire broke out on 18 April 1760 in an oil shop at the south east corner of the church, which consumed most of the church roof and did considerable damage to the fabric. The fire burnt warehouses to the south of the church and a number of houses on the northern end of London Bridge.

 

As part of the bridge improvements, overseen by the architect Sir Robert Taylor, a new pedestrian walkway was built along the eastern side of the bridge. With the other buildings gone St Magnus blocked the new walkway.[117] As a consequence it was necessary in 1762 to 1763 to remove the vestry rooms at the West end of the church and open up the side arches of the tower so that people could pass underneath the tower.[118] The tower’s lower storey thus became an external porch. Internally a lobby was created at the West end under the organ gallery and a screen with fine octagonal glazing inserted. A new Vestry was built to the South of the church.[119] The Act also provided that the land taken from the church for the widening was "to be considered ... as part of the cemetery of the said church ... but if the pavement thereof be broken up on account of the burying of any persons, the same shall be ... made good ... by the churchwardens"

 

Soldiers were stationed in the Vestry House of St Magnus during the Gordon Riots in June 1780.[121]

By 1782 the noise level from the activities of Billingsgate Fish Market had become unbearable and the large windows on the north side of the church were blocked up leaving only circular windows high up in the wall.[122] At some point between the 1760s and 1814 the present clerestory was constructed with its oval windows and fluted and coffered plasterwork.[123] J. M. W. Turner painted the church in the mid-1790s.[124]

The rector of St Magnus between 1792 and 1808, following the death of Robert Gibson on 28 July 1791,[125] was Thomas Rennell FRS. Rennell was President of Sion College in 1806/07. There is a monument to Thomas Leigh (Rector 1808-48 and President of Sion College 1829/30,[126] at St Peter's Church, Goldhanger in Essex.[127] Richard Hazard (1761–1837) was connected with the church as sexton, parish clerk and ward beadle for nearly 50 years[128] and served as Master of the Parish Clerks' Company in 1831/32.[129]

In 1825 the church was "repaired and beautified at a very considerable expense. During the reparation the east window, which had been closed, was restored, and the interior of the fabric conformed to the state in which it was left by its great architect, Sir Christopher Wren. The magnificent organ ... was taken down and rebuilt by Mr Parsons, and re-opened, with the church, on the 12th February, 1826".[130] Unfortunately, as a contemporary writer records, "On the night of the 31st of July, 1827, [the church's] safety was threatened by the great fire which consumed the adjacent warehouses, and it is perhaps owing to the strenuous and praiseworthy exertions of the firemen, that the structure exists at present. ... divine service was suspended and not resumed until the 20th January 1828. In the interval the church received such tasteful and elegant decorations, that it may now compete with any church in the metropolis.

 

In 1823 royal assent was given to ‘An Act for the Rebuilding of London Bridge’ and in 1825 John Garratt, Lord Mayor and Alderman of the Ward of Bridge Within, laid the first stone of the new London Bridge.[132] In 1831 Sir John Rennie’s new bridge was opened further upstream and the old bridge demolished. St Magnus ceased to be the gateway to London as it had been for over 600 years. Peter de Colechurch[133] had been buried in the crypt of the chapel on the bridge and his bones were unceremoniously dumped in the River Thames.[134] In 1921 two stones from Old London Bridge were discovered across the road from the church. They now stand in the churchyard.

Wren's church of St Michael Crooked Lane was demolished, the final service on Sunday 20 March 1831 having to be abandoned due to the effects of the building work. The Rector of St Michael preached a sermon the following Sunday at St Magnus lamenting the demolition of his church with its monuments and "the disturbance of the worship of his parishioners on the preceeding Sabbath".[135] The parish of St Michael Crooked Lane was united to that of St Magnus, which itself lost a burial ground in Church Yard Alley to the approach road for the new bridge.[136] However, in substitution it had restored to it the land taken for the widening of the old bridge in 1762 and was also given part of the approach lands to the east of the old bridge.[137] In 1838 the Committee for the London Bridge Approaches reported to Common Council that new burial grounds had been provided for the parishes of St Michael, Crooked Lane and St Magnus, London Bridge.

 

Depictions of St Magnus after the building of the new bridge, seen behind Fresh Wharf and the new London Bridge Wharf, include paintings by W. Fenoulhet in 1841 and by Charles Ginner in 1913.[139] This prospect was affected in 1924 by the building of Adelaide House to a design by John James Burnet,[140] The Times commenting that "the new ‘architectural Matterhorn’ ... conceals all but the tip of the church spire".[141] There was, however, an excellent view of the church for a few years between the demolition of Adelaide Buildings and the erection of its replacement.[142] Adelaide House is now listed.[143] Regis House, on the site of the abandoned King William Street terminus of the City & South London Railway (subsequently the Northern Line),[144] and the Steam Packet Inn, on the corner of Lower Thames Street and Fish Street Hill,[145] were developed in 1931.

 

By the early 1960s traffic congestion had become a problem[147] and Lower Thames Street was widened over the next decade[148] to form part of a significant new east-west transport artery (the A3211).[149] The setting of the church was further affected by the construction of a new London Bridge between 1967 and 1973.[150] The New Fresh Wharf warehouse to the east of the church, built in 1939, was demolished in 1973-4 following the collapse of commercial traffic in the Pool of London[151] and, after an archaeological excavation,[152] St Magnus House was constructed on the site in 1978 to a design by R. Seifert & Partners.[153] This development now allows a clear view of the church from the east side.[154] The site to the south east of The Monument (between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane), formerly predominantly occupied by fish merchants,[155] was redeveloped as Centurion House and Gartmore (now Providian) House at the time of the closure of old Billingsgate Market in January 1982.[156] A comprehensive redevelopment of Centurion House began in October 2011 with completion planned in 2013.[157] Regis House, to the south west of The Monument, was redeveloped by Land Securities PLC in 1998.[158]

The vista from The Monument south to the River Thames, over the roof of St Magnus, is protected under the City of London Unitary Development Plan,[159] although the South bank of the river is now dominated by The Shard. Since 2004 the City of London Corporation has been exploring ways of enhancing the Riverside Walk to the south of St Magnus.[160] Work on a new staircase to connect London Bridge to the Riverside Walk is due to commence in March 2013.[161] The story of St Magnus's relationship with London Bridge and an interview with the rector featured in the television programme The Bridges That Built London with Dan Cruickshank, first broadcast on BBC Four on 14 June 2012.[162] The City Corporation's 'Fenchurch and Monument Area Enhancement Strategy' of August 2012 recommended ways of reconnecting St Magnus and the riverside to the area north of Lower Thames Street.

 

A lectureship at St Michael Crooked Lane, which was transferred to St Magnus in 1831, was endowed by the wills of Thomas and Susannah Townsend in 1789 and 1812 respectively.[164] The Revd Henry Robert Huckin, Headmaster of Repton School from 1874 to 1882, was appointed Townsend Lecturer at St Magnus in 1871.[165]

St Magnus narrowly escaped damage from a major fire in Lower Thames Street in October 1849.

 

During the second half of the 19th century the rectors were Alexander McCaul, DD (1799–1863, Rector 1850-63), who coined the term 'Judaeo Christian' in a letter dated 17 October 1821,[167] and his son Alexander Israel McCaul (1835–1899, curate 1859-63, rector 1863-99). The Revd Alexander McCaul Sr[168] was a Christian missionary to the Polish Jews, who (having declined an offer to become the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem)[169] was appointed professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature at King's College, London in 1841. His daughter, Elizabeth Finn (1825–1921), a noted linguist, founded the Distressed Gentlefolk Aid Association (now known as Elizabeth Finn Care).[170]

In 1890 it was reported that the Bishop of London was to hold an inquiry as to the desirability of uniting the benefices of St George Botolph Lane and St Magnus. The expectation was a fusion of the two livings, the demolition of St George’s and the pensioning of "William Gladstone’s favourite Canon", Malcolm MacColl. Although services ceased there, St George’s was not demolished until 1904. The parish was then merged with St Mary at Hill rather than St Magnus.[171]

The patronage of the living was acquired in the late 19th century by Sir Henry Peek Bt. DL MP, Senior Partner of Peek Brothers & Co of 20 Eastcheap, the country's largest firm of wholesale tea brokers and dealers, and Chairman of the Commercial Union Assurance Co. Peek was a generous philanthropist who was instrumental in saving both Wimbledon Common and Burnham Beeches from development. His grandson, Sir Wilfred Peek Bt. DSO JP, presented a cousin, Richard Peek, as rector in 1904. Peek, an ardent Freemason, held the office of Grand Chaplain of England. The Times recorded that his memorial service in July 1920 "was of a semi-Masonic character, Mr Peek having been a prominent Freemason".[172] In June 1895 Peek had saved the life of a young French girl who jumped overboard from a ferry midway between Dinard and St Malo in Brittany and was awarded the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society and the Gold Medal 1st Class of the Sociâetâe Nationale de Sauvetage de France.[173]

In November 1898 a memorial service was held at St Magnus for Sir Stuart Knill Bt. (1824–1898), head of the firm of John Knill and Co, wharfingers, and formerly Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.[174] This was the first such service for a Roman Catholic taken in an Anglican church.[175] Sir Stuart's son, Sir John Knill Bt. (1856-1934), also served as Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within, Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company.

 

Until 1922 the annual Fish Harvest Festival was celebrated at St Magnus.[176] The service moved in 1923 to St Dunstan in the East[177] and then to St Mary at Hill, but St Magnus retained close links with the local fish merchants until the closure of old Billingsgate Market. St Magnus, in the 1950s, was "buried in the stink of Billingsgate fish-market, against which incense was a welcome antidote".

 

A report in 1920 proposed the demolition of nineteen City churches, including St Magnus.[179] A general outcry from members of the public and parishioners alike prevented the execution of this plan.[180] The members of the City Livery Club passed a resolution that they regarded "with horror and indignation the proposed demolition of 19 City churches" and pledged the Club to do everything in its power to prevent such a catastrophe.[181] T. S. Eliot wrote that the threatened churches gave "to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. ... the least precious redeems some vulgar street ... The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten."[182] The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration."[183] Due to the uncertainty about the church's future, the patron decided to defer action to fill the vacancy in the benefice and a curate-in-charge temporarily took responsibility for the parish.[184] However, on 23 April 1921 it was announced that the Revd Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton would be the new Rector. The Times concluded that the appointment, with the Bishop’s approval, meant that the proposed demolition would not be carried out.[185] Fr Fynes-Clinton was inducted on 31 May 1921.[186]

The rectory, built by Robert Smirke in 1833-5, was at 39 King William Street.[187] A decision was taken in 1909 to sell the property, the intention being to purchase a new rectory in the suburbs, but the sale fell through and at the time of the 1910 Land Tax Valuations the building was being let out to a number of tenants. The rectory was sold by the diocese on 30 May 1921 for £8,000 to Ridgways Limited, which owned the adjoining premises.[188] The Vestry House adjoining the south west of the church, replacing the one built in the 1760s, may also have been by Smirke. Part of the burial ground of St Michael Crooked Lane, located between Fish Street Hill and King William Street, survived as an open space until 1987 when it was compulsorily purchased to facilitate the extension of the Docklands Light Railway into the City.[189] The bodies were reburied at Brookwood Cemetery.

 

The interior of the church was restored by Martin Travers in 1924, in a neo-baroque style,[191] reflecting the Anglo-Catholic character of the congregation[192] following the appointment of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton as Rector.[193] Fr Fynes, as he was often known, served as Rector of St Magnus from 31 May 1921 until his death on 4 December 1959 and substantially beautified the interior of the church.[194]

Fynes-Clinton held very strong Anglo-Catholic views, and proceeded to make St Magnus as much like a baroque Roman Catholic church as possible. However, "he was such a loveable character with an old-world courtesy which was irresistible, that it was difficult for anyone to be unpleasant to him, however much they might disapprove of his views".[195] He generally said the Roman Mass in Latin; and in personality was "grave, grand, well-connected and holy, with a laconic sense of humour".[196] To a Protestant who had come to see Coverdale's monument he is reported to have said "We have just had a service in the language out of which he translated the Bible".[197] The use of Latin in services was not, however, without grammatical danger. A response from his parishioners of "Ora pro nobis" after "Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli" in the Litany of the Saints would elicit a pause and the correction "No, Orate pro nobis."

 

In 1922 Fynes-Clinton refounded the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.[198] The Fraternity's badge[199] is shown in the stained glass window at the east end of the north wall of the church above the reredos of the Lady Chapel altar. He also erected a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and arranged pilgrimages to the Norfolk shrine, where he was one of the founding Guardians.[200] In 1928 the journal of the Catholic League reported that St Magnus had presented a votive candle to the Shrine at Walsingham "in token of our common Devotion and the mutual sympathy and prayers that are we hope a growing bond between the peaceful country shrine and the church in the heart of the hurrying City, from the Altar of which the Pilgrimages regularly start".[201]

Fynes-Clinton was General Secretary of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union and its successor, the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, from 1906 to 1920 and served as Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Eastern Churches Committee from 1920 to around 1924. A Solemn Requiem was celebrated at St Magnus in September 1921 for the late King Peter of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

At the midday service on 1 March 1922, J.A. Kensit, leader of the Protestant Truth Society, got up and protested against the form of worship.[202] The proposed changes to the church in 1924 led to a hearing in the Consistory Court of the Chancellor of the Diocese of London and an appeal to the Court of Arches.[203] Judgement was given by the latter Court in October 1924. The advowson was purchased in 1931, without the knowledge of the Rector and Parochial Church Council, by the evangelical Sir Charles King-Harman.[204] A number of such cases, including the purchase of the advowsons of Clapham and Hampstead Parish Churches by Sir Charles, led to the passage of the Benefices (Purchase of Rights of Patronage) Measure 1933.[205] This allowed the parishioners of St Magnus to purchase the advowson from Sir Charles King-Harman for £1,300 in 1934 and transfer it to the Patronage Board.

 

St Magnus was one of the churches that held special services before the opening of the second Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923.[207] Fynes-Clinton[208] was the first incumbent to hold lunchtime services for City workers.[209] Pathé News filmed the Palm Sunday procession at St Magnus in 1935.[210] In The Towers of Trebizond, the novel by Rose Macauley published in 1956, Fr Chantry-Pigg's church is described as being several feet higher than St Mary’s Bourne Street and some inches above even St Magnus the Martyr.[211]

In July 1937 Fr Fynes-Clinton, with two members of his congregation, travelled to Kirkwall to be present at the 800th anniversary celebrations of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. During their stay they visited Egilsay and were shown the spot where St Magnus had been slain. Later Fr Fynes-Clinton was present at a service held at the roofless church of St Magnus on Egilsay, where he suggested to his host Mr Fryer, the minister of the Cathedral, that the congregations of Kirkwall and London should unite to erect a permanent stone memorial on the traditional site where Earl Magnus had been murdered. In 1938 a cairn was built of local stone on Egilsay. It stands 12 feet high and is 6 feet broad at its base. The memorial was dedicated on 7 September 1938 and a bronze inscription on the monument reads "erected by the Rector and Congregation of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge and the Minister and Congregation of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall to commemorate the traditional spot where Earl Magnus was slain, AD circa 1116 and to commemorate the Octocentenary of St Magnus Cathedral 1937"

 

A bomb which fell on London Bridge in 1940 during the Blitz of World War II blew out all the windows and damaged the plasterwork and the roof of the north aisle.[213] However, the church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950[214] and repaired in 1951, being re-opened for worship in June of that year by the Bishop of London, William Wand.[215] The architect was Laurence King.[216] Restoration and redecoration work has subsequently been carried out several times, including after a fire in the early hours of 4 November 1995.[217] Cleaning of the exterior stonework was completed in 2010.

 

Some minor changes were made to the parish boundary in 1954, including the transfer to St Magnus of an area between Fish Street Hill and Pudding Lane. The site of St Leonard Eastcheap, a church that was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, is therefore now in the parish of St Magnus despite being united to St Edmund the King.

Fr Fynes-Clinton marked the 50th anniversary of his priesthood in May 1952 with High Mass at St Magnus and lunch at Fishmongers' Hall.[218] On 20 September 1956 a solemn Mass was sung in St Magnus to commence the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the restoration of the Holy House at Walsingham in 1931. In the evening of that day a reception was held in the large chamber of Caxton Hall, when between three and four hundred guests assembled.[219]

Fr Fynes-Clinton was succeeded as rector in 1960 by Fr Colin Gill,[220] who remained as incumbent until his death in 1983.[221] Fr Gill was also closely connected with Walsingham and served as a Guardian between 1953 and 1983, including nine years as Master of the College of Guardians.[222] He celebrated the Mass at the first National Pilgrimage in 1959[223] and presided over the Jubilee celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Shrine in 1981, having been present at the Holy House's opening.[224] A number of the congregation of St Stephen's Lewisham moved to St Magnus around 1960, following temporary changes in the form of worship there.

 

In 1994 the Templeman Commission proposed a radical restructuring of the churches in the City Deanery. St Magnus was identified as one of the 12 churches that would remain as either a parish or an 'active' church.[226] However, the proposals were dropped following a public outcry and the consecration of a new Bishop of London.

The parish priest since 2003 has been Fr Philip Warner, who was previously priest-in-charge of St Mary's Church, Belgrade (Diocese in Europe) and Apokrisiarios for the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Since January 2004 there has been an annual Blessing of the Thames, with the congregations of St Magnus and Southwark Cathedral meeting in the middle of London Bridge.[227] On Sunday 3 July 2011, in anticipation of the feast of the translation of St Thomas Becket (7 July), a procession from St Magnus brought a relic of the saint to the middle of the bridge.[228]

David Pearson specially composed two new pieces, a communion anthem A Mhànais mo rùin (O Magnus of my love) and a hymn to St Magnus Nobilis, humilis, for performance at the church on the feast of St Magnus the Martyr, 16 April 2012.[229] St Magnus's organist, John Eady, has won composition competitions for new choral works at St Paul's Cathedral (a setting of Veni Sancte Spiritus first performed on 27 May 2012) and at Lincoln Cathedral (a setting of the Matin responsory for Advent first performed on 30 November 2013).[230]

In addition to liturgical music of a high standard, St Magnus is the venue for a wide range of musical events. The Clemens non Papa Consort, founded in 2005, performs in collaboration with the production team Concert Bites as the church's resident ensemble.[231] The church is used by The Esterhazy Singers for rehearsals and some concerts.[232] The band Mishaped Pearls performed at the church on 17 December 2011.[233] St Magnus featured in the television programme Jools Holland: London Calling, first broadcast on BBC2 on 9 June 2012.[234] The Platinum Consort made a promotional film at St Magnus for the release of their debut album In the Dark on 2 July 2012.[235]

The Friends of the City Churches had their office in the Vestry House of St Magnus until 2013.

 

Martin Travers modified the high altar reredos, adding paintings of Moses and Aaron and the Ten Commandments between the existing Corinthian columns and reconstructing the upper storey. Above the reredos Travers added a painted and gilded rood.[237] In the centre of the reredos there is a carved gilded pelican (an early Christian symbol of self-sacrifice) and a roundel with Baroque-style angels. The glazed east window, which can be seen in an early photograph of the church, appears to have been filled in at this time. A new altar with console tables was installed and the communion rails moved outwards to extend the size of the sanctuary. Two old door frames were used to construct side chapels and placed at an angle across the north-east and south-east corners of the church. One, the Lady Chapel, was dedicated to the Rector's parents in 1925 and the other was dedicated to Christ the King. Originally, a baroque aumbry was used for Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, but later a tabernacle was installed on the Lady Chapel altar and the aumbry was used to house a relic of the True Cross.

The interior was made to look more European by the removal of the old box pews and the installation of new pews with cut-down ends. Two new columns were inserted in the nave to make the lines regular. The Wren-period pulpit by the joiner William Grey[238] was opened up and provided with a soundboard and crucifix. Travers also designed the statue of St Magnus of Orkney, which stands in the south aisle, and the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham.[239]

On the north wall there is a Russian Orthodox icon, painted in 1908. The modern stations of the cross in honey-coloured Japanese oak are the work of Robert Randall and Ashley Sands.[240] One of the windows in the north wall dates from 1671 and came from Plumbers' Hall in Chequer Yard, Bush Lane, which was demolished in 1863 to make way for Cannon Street Railway Station.[241] A fireplace from the Hall was re-erected in the Vestry House. The other windows on the north side are by Alfred Wilkinson and date from 1952 to 1960. These show the arms of the Plumbers’, Fishmongers’ and Coopers’ Companies together with those of William Wand when Bishop of London and Geoffrey Fisher when Archbishop of Canterbury and (as noted above) the badge of the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina.

The stained glass windows in the south wall, which are by Lawrence Lee and date from 1949 to 1955, represent lost churches associated with the parish: St Magnus and his ruined church of Egilsay, St Margaret of Antioch with her lost church in New Fish Street (where the Monument to the Great Fire now stands), St Michael with his lost church of Crooked Lane (demolished to make way for the present King William Street) and St Thomas Becket with his chapel on Old London Bridge.[242]

The church possesses a fine model of Old London Bridge. One of the tiny figures on the bridge appears out of place in the mediaeval setting, wearing a policeman's uniform. This is a representation of the model-maker, David T. Aggett, who is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers and was formerly in the police service.[243]

The Mischiefs by Fire Act 1708 and the Fires Prevention (Metropolis) Act 1774 placed a requirement on every parish to keep equipment to fight fires. The church owns two historic fire engines that belonged to the parish of St Michael, Crooked Lane.[244] One of these is in storage at the Museum of London. The whereabouts of the other, which was misappropriated and sold at auction in 2003, is currently unknown.

In 1896 many bodies were disinterred from the crypt and reburied at the St Magnus's plot at Brookwood Cemetery, which remains the church's burial ground.

 

Prior to the Great Fire of 1666 the old tower had a ring of five bells, a small saints bell and a clock bell.[246] 47 cwt of bell metal was recovered[247] which suggests that the tenor was 13 or 14 cwt. The metal was used to cast three new bells, by William Eldridge of Chertsey in 1672,[248] with a further saints bell cast that year by Hodson.[249] In the absence of a tower, the tenor and saints bell were hung in a free standing timber structure, whilst the others remained unhung.[250]

A new tower was completed in 1704 and it is likely that these bells were transferred to it. However, the tenor became cracked in 1713 and it was decided to replace the bells with a new ring of eight.[251] The new bells, with a tenor of 21 cwt, were cast by Richard Phelps of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Between 1714 and 1718 (the exact date of which is unknown), the ring was increased to ten with the addition of two trebles given by two former ringing Societies, the Eastern Youths and the British Scholars.[252] The first peal was rung on 15 February 1724 of Grandsire Caters by the Society of College Youths. The second bell had to be recast in 1748 by Robert Catlin, and the tenor was recast in 1831 by Thomas Mears of Whitechapel,[253] just in time to ring for the opening of the new London Bridge. In 1843, the treble was said to be "worn out" and so was scrapped, together with the saints bell, while a new treble was cast by Thomas Mears.[254] A new clock bell was erected in the spire in 1846, provided by B R & J Moore, who had earlier purchased it from Thomas Mears.[255] This bell can still be seen in the tower from the street.

The 10 bells were removed for safe keeping in 1940 and stored in the churchyard. They were taken to Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1951 whereupon it was discovered that four of them were cracked. After a long period of indecision, fuelled by lack of funds and interest, the bells were finally sold for scrap in 1976. The metal was used to cast many of the Bells of Congress that were then hung in the Old Post Office Tower in Washington, D.C.

A fund was set up on 19 September 2005, led by Dickon Love, a member of the Ancient Society of College Youths, with a view to installing a new ring of 12 bells in the tower in a new frame. This was the first of three new rings of bells he has installed in the City of London (the others being at St Dunstan-in-the-West and St James Garlickhythe). The money was raised and the bells were cast during 2008/9 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The tenor weighed 26cwt 3qtr 9 lbs (1360 kg) and the new bells were designed to be in the same key as the former ring of ten. They were consecrated by the Bishop of London on 3 March 2009 in the presence of the Lord Mayor[256] and the ringing dedicated on 26 October 2009 by the Archdeacon of London.[257] The bells are named (in order smallest to largest) Michael, Margaret, Thomas of Canterbury, Mary, Cedd, Edward the Confessor, Dunstan, John the Baptist, Erkenwald, Paul, Mellitus and Magnus.[258] The bells project is recorded by an inscription in the vestibule of the church.

 

The first peal on the twelve was rung on 29 November 2009 of Cambridge Surprise Maximus.[260] Notable other recent peals include a peal of Stedman Cinques on 16 April 2011 to mark the 400th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to the Plumbers' Company,[261] a peal of Cambridge Surprise Royal on 28 June 2011 when the Fishmongers' Company gave a dinner for Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at their hall on the occasion of his 90th birthday[262] and a peal of Avon Delight Maximus on 24 July 2011 in solidarity with the people of Norway following the tragic massacre on Utoeya Island and in Oslo.[263] On the latter occasion the flag of the Orkney Islands was flown at half mast. In 2012 peals were rung during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June and during each of the three Olympic/Paralympic marathons, on 5 and 12 August and 9 September.

The BBC television programme, Still Ringing After All These Years: A Short History of Bells, broadcast on 14 December 2011, included an interview at St Magnus with the Tower Keeper, Dickon Love,[264] who was captain of the band that rang the "Royal Jubilee Bells" during the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant on 3 June 2012 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.[265] Prior to this, he taught John Barrowman to handle a bell at St Magnus for the BBC coverage.

The bells are currently rung every Sunday around 12:15 (following the service) by the Guild of St Magnus.

 

Every other June, newly elected wardens of the Fishmongers' Company, accompanied by the Court, proceed on foot from Fishmongers' Hall[267] to St Magnus for an election service.[268] St Magnus is also the Guild Church of The Plumbers' Company. Two former rectors have served as master of the company,[269] which holds all its services at the church.[270] On 12 April 2011 a service was held to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the granting of the company's Royal Charter at which the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO, gave the sermon and blessed the original Royal Charter. For many years the Cloker Service was held at St Magnus, attended by the Coopers' Company and Grocers' Company, at which the clerk of the Coopers' Company read the will of Henry Cloker dated 10 March 1573.[271]

St Magnus is also the ward church for the Ward of Bridge and Bridge Without, which elects one of the city's aldermen. Between 1550 and 1978 there were separate aldermen for Bridge Within and Bridge Without, the former ward being north of the river and the latter representing the City's area of control in Southwark. The Bridge Ward Club was founded in 1930 to "promote social activities and discussion of topics of local and general interest and also to exchange Ward and parochial information" and holds its annual carol service at St Magnus.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Magnus-the-Martyr

 

St Mary's

 

As a consequence of the large increase in population in the area of Nunthorpe Station from about 1900, the accommodation at the old Church in the village became inadequate and active steps were taken to provide a new Church. Tenders to a design by Mr. Temple Moore were on the point of being accepted in 1914 but the outbreak of the war put an end to all proposals of building. By 1924 the need for the new Church had become urgent following the erection of further residential property and new tenders were obtained to the same design and specification but owing to the increased cost of labour and materials the lowest tender received was about two-and-a-half times that received from the same firm in 1914.

 

The contract was let to Messrs. John Thompson and Sons Ltd. Of Peterborough and the foundation stone was laid on the 6th November, 1924, by Sir Arthur Dorman who had given the land for the site.

 

Hitherto, Nunthorpe had been ecclesiastically administered as part of Great Ayton Parish but it was considered desirable that a separate and larger Parish be constituted and this was done by adding to it parts of the Parishes of Marton, Ormesby and Great Ayton.

 

Building proceeded throughout 1925 and the consecration by the Archbishop of York took place on the 20th July, 1926.

The Church, which is technically in the Early English period of Architecture, is built in regular coursed ashlar of locally quarried sandstone, with a lightly tooled surface and has brown hand-made tiles on the steeply pitched roofs.

 

The layout is conventional cruciform plan with a western porch which has above its entrance, set in a niche, a statue in white stone of the Virgin and Child. Tall lancet windows are seen in the body of the Church, with its chamfered plinth and stepped buttresses and this adjoins the dominant parapeted square tower at the crossing. Paired louvered windows open from the bell chamber and there is a simple spout on each of the four faces to drain the flat roof of the tower.

 

The roof of the Chancel at the eastern end is higher than that of the nave due to the introduction of twin clerestory windows. Shallow transepts with gabled roofs run from the tower, that on the south being carried down to cover a recessed doorway. Under the clerestory windows tiled lean-to roofs complete the plan form by forming a side chapel to the south side and a sacristry and vestry on the north side.

Inside the Church there is a central stone paved aisle in the nave and massive oak pews run on either side to the oak panelling which covers the walls to the bottom of the windows. The roof of the nave is of timber in the shape of a barrel vault with one tie beam on stone corbels.

 

The crossing under the tower has a flat timber roof and the chamfered and moulded arches form a particularly strong feature. At the east side they spring from a pair of intersecting attached round columns and at the west are supported from one similar half column and a cluster of tapered pilasters. One step leads up to the Chancel and the simple carved pulpit on a round stone plinth on the left which contrasts with the decoratively carved lectern at the right hand side.

 

The font in the south-eastern corner of the south Transept was originally situated in the traditional position, inside the door, at the western end of the Church but it was moved to its present position so that the congregation could participate more easily in the Christening ceremonies.

 

The priest’s stall and the panelled choir seating were added in 1932 – a gift from Lady Dorman in memory of her late husband.

 

The sanctuary is closed with a low timber communion rail with central gates of a similar design and is dominated by the large east window which comprises a group of three central lancets under one mould hood with a single light on either side.

 

The arch at the north is stone filled with a door to the vestry and the south wall has a shelved recess and piscina, and three sedilia built into the wall thickness. Like the font, the Altar has been moved from its original position against the east wall to allow the celebrant to face the congregation.

 

There are two memorial inscriptions carved in stone – that over the south door being to the memory of Charles Dorman, who was one of the first two churchwardens and the other over the belfry door recording that the eight bells in the tower were erected to the memory of the Dorman family who had contributed so much for the Church.

 

The bells are in the upper stage of the belfry and are fixed in a metal frame and the clappers strike the bells, being operated by wires and spring loaded handles from the ringing chamber immediately below.

 

The stained glass window in the east side of the chapel to the memory of Andrew Hutton is by Hugh Eason.

 

Many of the furnishings have been donated as memorials and a number of these are the work of the “mouseman”, Robert Thompson of Kilburn.

 

At the south eastern end of the nave there is an inscription in the wood panelling recording the names of the Vicars of Nunthorpe.

 

The Lych Gate at the entrance to the Churchyard was built as a memorial to all the men who fell in the Second World War and it was designed in the same style as the Church by the present firm succeeding Temple Moor. It was dedicated by the Bishop of Whitby on 6th July, 1947. The stone for the gate was obtained from Gunnergate Hall, Marton, which had recently been demolished and the oak work is also by Robert Thompson.

 

Eric Bailey, June 1976

 

www.stmarys-nunthorpe.org/st-marys-church/a-short-history/

A federal law pending in Congress since 2009 is the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act. The person convicted would be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

 

Statistic taken from:http://www.justaskgemalto.com/us/surfing/tips/what-consequences-do-cyber-bullies-face

Photo taken from:http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/03/juvenile_life_in_prison_without_parole.html

A personal consequence of BREXIT?

Haus Lange in Krefeld is an address of pilgrimage for architectural studies and those people interested in Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s style setting early work. Splendid and ageless architecture and garden environment.

Most recently this building became a new home for BREXIT refugee family that felt no longer welcome in England. Has it really become ‘a home’? If you watch the series of photos I took you might feel shocked as I was when I first lingered thru the stylish rooms. The car was still packed. The door was open… I entered as invited, saw valuable furniture, most goods still in boxes, piles of books. The pantechnicon obviously just left. Also very obvious: The landlady, mother and wife also left and will stay absent: ‘You will never see me again’ written on the mirror. That wasn’t a good sign. I felt sorry.

Then to my utmost horror I found the host floating dead in the pool… A husband, a father: dead! And nobody seems to care!

Even more desperate the boy hiding in the dining room – his distressed body language seems to ask: Can this my home? Where is my mother? Who is my mother? Where are my roots?

You may form your own opinion on this photo story – but being uprooted is the worst prerequisite for a new and positive start. Reasons are manifold. But if it comes to politics as a cause: Think before you vote, choose well whom you elect. It might affect your families’ life, too.

 

The artists Michael Elgreen and Ingar Dragset make us think with their fictive story and installation of an unhappy start in Haus Lange, Krefeld.

I as a photographer tried to transfer this mood and the atmosphre into 17 picture series ‘Die Zugezogenen’.

 

Krefeld, February 2017

Thomas Kopf

 

DISCLAIMER

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

 

The Chinese J-7FS was a direct descendant of the J-7E. The Chengdu J-7 itself has a long heritage of development, even though it is originally a Soviet design, a license-built MiG-21F, which has its roots in the mid 50ies.

 

It took China long way to develop and produce a true supersonic fighter aircraft: in March, 1964, Shenyang Aircraft Factory began the first domestic production of the J-7 jet fighter. However, the mass production of the aircraft, which had been developed through Soviet help, license production and reverse-engineering, was severely hindered by an unexpected problem—the Cultural Revolution. This incident and its consequences resulted in poor initial quality and slow progress.

 

This, in turn, resulted in full scale production only coming about in the 1980s, by which time the J-7 design was showing its age. However, through the years the J-7 saw constant development and refinement in China, and the J-7FS was one of the many directions the simple, basic design went in order to imporve performance and to keep it up to date.

 

The J-7FS was designed in the late 90ies as a dedicated interceptor, and as a lighter option than the twin-engined J-8 fighter of indigenous design. Main task was to incorporate a true air-to-air radar with surveillance capabilities, since the J-7 only featured a rader-based range finder in the central shock cone of the air intake.

 

Fitting a more capable radar required a larger radome, which meant either a bigger central shock cone (as in the 2nd generation MiG-21 fighters) or a totally new nose and air intake arrangement. The accordingly modified J-7FS saw first daylight as a technology demonstration aircraft built by CAC. Its most prominent feature was a redesigned under-chin inlet, reminiscent of the F-8 or A-7 nose, which provided air for a WP-13IIS engine. Above the air intake, a fixed conical radome offered space for a bigger radar dish. “139 Red”, how the first aircraft was coded, first flew in June 1998, starting a 22-month test program. Two prototypes were built, but only the first aircraft was to fly – the second machine was only used for static tests.

 

"139 Red" soon saw major progress in design and equipment: it received a new double-delta wing which nearly doubled internal fuel capacity and improved performance, a modified fin, a more potent WP-13F turbojet engine, and a new 600 mm slot antenna planar array radar using coherent technology to achieve scan, look-down and shoot-down capabilities.

The revamped aircraft also received a sand/green camouflage paint scheme, less flashy than the original white/red livery. The new wing, which was also introduced on the J-7E, made the aircraft 45% more maneuverable than the MiG-21F-like J/F-7M, while the take-off and landing distance is reduced to 600 meters, in comparison to the 1.000 meter take-off distance and 900 meter landing distance of earlier versions of the J-7.

 

The production J-7FS which was ready for service in summer 2000 featured even more changes and novelties: the J-7FS incorporated HOTAS, which has since become standard on other late J-7 versions, too. This version is also the first of J-7 series to be later upgraded with helmet mounted sights (HMS). However, it is reported that the helmet mounted sight is not compatible with radars, and air-to-air missiles must be independently controlled by either HMS or radar, but not both.

 

The serial production radome now had an ogival shape with an even larger base diameter, and for additional avionics such as weapon management, global positioning and flight data recording systems, the production J-7FS featured a bulged spine, reminiscent of the 3rd generation MiG-21 (or the respective Chengdu J-7C, a reverse-engineered MiG-21MF). The aircraft was even able to carry medium range AAMs, e .g. the Chinese PL-11 missile, a license-built Selenia Aspide AAM from Italia, itself a modernized descendant of the venerable AIM-7 Sparrow. Another feature which set the FS version apart was the ventral, twin-barreled Type 23-III gun instead of the single-barelled 30mm cannon at the flank.

 

The role of the J-7FS in the People's Liberation Army was to provide local air defense and tactical air superiority, even though it certainly was only a stop-gap until the introduction of the much more potent Chengdu J-10, which started to enter PLAAF service in 2005 after a long development time. With its more powerful radar the J-7FS was supposed to act as a kind of mini AWACS platform, guiding groups of less potent J-7Es to potential targets. It is known that the J-7FS’s new radar had a range greater than 50 km and could track up to eight targets simultaneously. The aircraft's overall performance is expected to be similar to early F-16 variants.

 

The number of built specimen is uncertain, but it is supposed to be less than 100, probably even less than 50. It is rumored that the type had also been offered to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka around 2001, but was not bought.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 14.885 m (Overall) (48 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 8.32 m (27 ft 3½ in)

Height: 4.11 m (13 ft 5½ in)

Wing area: 24.88 m² (267.8 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 2.8:1

Empty weight: 5,292 kg (11.667 lb)

Loaded weight: 7,540 kg (16.620 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 9.100 kg (20.062 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Guizhou Liyang WP-13F(C) afterburning turbojet with 44.1 kN (9.914 lb) dry thrust and 66.7 kN (14.650 lb) with afterburner:

 

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.0, 2,200 km/h (1.189 knots, 1.375 mph)

Stall speed: 210 km/h (114 knots, 131 mph) IAS

Combat radius: 850 km (459 nmi, 528 mi) (air superiority, two AAMs and three drop tanks)

Ferry range: 2,200 km (1.187 nmi, 1.367 mi)

Service ceiling: 17,500 m (57.420 ft)

Rate of climb: 195 m/s (38.386 ft/min)

 

Armament:

1× twin-barreled Type 23-III 23mm (0.9") cannon with 250 rounds under the fuselage;

5× hardpoints (4× under-wing, 1× centerline under-fuselage) with a capacity of 2,000 kg maximum (up to 500 kg each); Ordnance primarily comprises air-to-air missiles, including PL-2, PL-5, PL-7, PL-8, PL-9 and PL-11 AAMs, but in a secondary CAS role various rocket pods an unguided bombs of up to 500kg caliber could be carried

  

The kit and its assembly:

This whif is based on the real world J-7FS, which actually flew but never made it beyond the technical demonstrator stage. However, I found the air intake design with its raked shape and the pointed radome interesting, and since I had a crappy Matchbox MiG-21MF with misprinted decals in store I decided to use that kit for a whif conversion. There’s even a resin kit of the first J-7FS (still with the standard delta wing, though, and horribly expensive) available, but I wanted to create a more advanced what-if model, if the type had somehow entered service.

 

The kit saw major modification all around the fuselage: the wing tips were clipped and scratch-built ends for the J-7E double delta wing shape attached. The shape is certainly not correct, but it's IMHO the impression that counts. The MiG-21MF's deep fin was replaced by a donation part from an F-16 – the 2nd J-7FS already featured a distinctive kink at the fin’s top which made it already look rather F-16ish, and the taller and more slender fin suits the MiG-21 well.

 

A brake parachute housing with a disctinctive, blunt end was added just above the jet exhaust, and some antennae and pitots were added in order to enhance the bleak Matchbox kit a little. The Type 23-III cannon was sculpted from a piece of sprue, just like the brake parachute housing.

 

The nose section/radome is the front half of an F-18 drop tank. An oval, tapered piece of styrene was implanted as the raked intake lip, trying to copy the look of the real thing according to the few pictures I had at hand. I also added a central splitter in the air intake, which houses the front wheel bay.

 

Some putty work was necessary to blend the new nose into the front fuselage, as well as the dorsal spine into the new fin, but that turned out to be easier than expected.

 

The jet exhaust originally is just a vertical "plate" in the MiG-21's tail. I opened it and implanted a new cover inside of the fuselage, in a deeper position. For some more detail I also added a (simple) jet nozzle, IIRC it is a leftover part from a Matchbox Jaguar kit, probably 30 years old... Not much, but it defininitively enhances the rear view of the machine.

 

The original cockpit only consists of a bulky seat and the pilot figure, and the clear canopy is clear but horribly thick. Hence, I decided to keep the cockpit closed, but nevertheless I added a floor and some side panels, and used an Airfix pilot figure.

 

The missile ordnance comes from the scrap box, reflecting “modern” Chinese air-to-air weaponry: two PL-7 (Matra Magic AAMs from an Italeri NATO weapons kit) on the outer and two PL-11 (two Aspide missiles from the same set ) on the inner wing hardpoints. All wing hardpoints come from MiG-21F kits, one pair is from the Academy kit, the other from the vintage Hasegawa kit, both have the launch rails molded into the weapon pylon. The drop tank is a typical Chinese item - it resembles the Russian/soviet PTB-490 drop tank, but has a more blunt nose and smaller fins - it comes from a FC-1 kit from Trumpeter.

  

Paintings and markings:

Since it is an air superiority aircraft, I wanted an appropriate livery, but not the dull overall grey of contemporary PLAAF fighters. But I found some weird real life paint schemes which inspired the final camouflage.

Since the plane was not supposed to look too American through FS tones I rather used 'other' colors for a wraparound scheme. The basic tone is Testors 2123 (Russian Underside Blue), and from above a darker contrast color was added, Humbrol 230 (PRU Blue). Both tones have a greenish/teal hue, which complements each other well. Together they create a pretty distinctive look, though, esp. with the red and yellow insignia and codes. IMHO these colors suit the fighter well.

 

The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter blue-grey shades (Humbrol 87 and 128), but no weathering, since modern Chinese aircraft tend to look pretty clean and pristine.

 

The decals were puzzled together from the scrap box, IIRC the insignia originally they belong to a Il-28 Trumpeter kit. The 5 digit code comes from a Revell MiG-29 and the number itself is based on the information published in the 2010 book “Chinese Air Power” by Yefim Gordon und Dmitriy Komissarov, where the Chinese code system is explained – I hope that it is more or less authentic ;)

  

So, all in all a rather simple kit conversion, and certainly not a creative masterpiece. To be honest, the similarity with the real thing is just at first glance - but since it is whif world, I am fine with the outcome. ^^

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

(Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese Monk, Peace Activist and Writer, b.1926)

 

Saurabh is an architect in Delhi, he wanted his portrait by me so we met recently for lunch in Hauz khas village which is in South Delhi.

As he was living in Milano for a few years, we spoke Italian for fun, he had many expressions and most of all an amazing smile.

We went outside to the Deer Park and I took several shots.

I selected this one where everything on his face is smiling, it is the universal language in the world and a source of joy and happiness.

View On Black

 

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

 

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.

Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).

The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

Truth or Consequences, NM.

For the past year, I have posted shots of Kent churches on Twitter than on a churchcrawling group on FB, and in the course of that year, I have come to realise that some churches I recorded better than others, and some of the early one, were mostly dreadful wide angle shots.

 

So, one by one, I plan to go back and reshoot them.

 

St Mary was one. It was closed on All Hallow's Eve last year, but on Saturday last month, we dropped off some prints to be framed in the town, and a short walk along Strand Street is St Mary.

 

It was open for an art shot, but that was OK, as I wanted to snap the memorials and details.

 

Today, St Mary is used as a community resource. It has a stage, and the nave either used for the audience or an exhibition space.

 

Around the walls are many fine memorials and details to look at and ponder over.

 

Sandwich had three parish churches, two are now redundant, but both St Mary and St Peter have survived to be assets for the town.

 

As they should be.

 

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An extraordinary barn of a church - one of two in the town cared for by The Churches Conservation Trust. That it was a large Norman church is without question - see the responds at the west end of the nave. Like the other two churches in Sandwich, St Mary's probably also had a central tower, the collapse of which (like St Peter's) caused havoc to the building. Rebuilding here took a rather rare form with the building losing its south arcade; having a new north arcade built of wood; and a new roof to cover the whole! By the 20th century the church was surplus to requirements and was threatened with demolition. However local supporters, encouraged by the doyen of ecclesiologists, Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, saved it. Now used for concerts it is open to visitors and has much of interest. In the north aisle are 18th century pews saved from Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire. The chancel contains a rare banner stave locker for the poles used to carry banners in medieval street processions. Nearby is an example of two pieces of stone being joined together with a dowel made from animal bone. The glass in the east window is scratched with the names of the glaziers who have repaired it on numerous occasions!

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Sandwich+2

 

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THE town of Sandwich is situated on the north-east confines of this county, about two miles from the sea, and adjoining to the harbour of its own name, through which the river Stour flows northward into the sea at Pepperness. It is one of the principal cinque ports, the liberty of which extends over it, and it is within the jurisdiction of the justices of its own corporation.

 

Sandwich had in antient time several members appertaining to it, (fn. 1) called the antient members of the port of Sandwich; these were Fordwich, Reculver, Sarre, Stonar, and Deal; but in the later charters, the members mentioned are Fordwich incorporated, and the non-corporated members of Deal, Walmer, Ramsgate, Stonar, Sarre, all in this county, and Brightlingsea, in Sussex; but of late years, Deal, Walmer, and Stonar, have been taken from it; Deal, by having been in 1699 incorporated with the charter of a separate jurisdiction, in the bounds of which Walmer is included; and Stonar having been, by a late decision of the court of king's bench in 1773, adjudged to be within the jurisdiction of the county at large.

 

The first origin of this port was owing to the decay of that of Richborough, as will be further noticed hereafter. It was at first called Lundenwic, from its being the entrance to the port of London, for so it was, on the sea coast, and it retained this name until the supplanting of the Saxons by the Danes, when it acquired from its sandy situation a new name, being from thenceforward called Sandwic, in old Latin, Sabulovicum, that is, the sandy town, and in process of time, by the change of language, Sandwich.

 

Where this town now stands, is supposed, in the time of the Romans, and before the decay of the haven, or Portus Rutupinus, to have been covered with that water, which formed the bay of it, which was so large that it is said to have extended far beyond this place, on the one side almost to Ramsgate cliffs, and on the other near five miles in width, over the whole of that flat of land, on which Stonar and Sandwich too, were afterwards built, and extending from thence up to the æstuary, which then flowed up between the Isle of Thanet and the main land of this county.

 

During the time of the Saxons, the haven and port of Richborough, the most frequented of any in this part of Britain, began to decay, and swarve up, the sea by degrees entirely deserting it at this place, but still leaving sufficient to form a large and commodious one at Sandwich, which in process of time, became in like manner, the usual resort for shipping, and arose a Flourishing harbour in its stead; from which time the Saxon fleets, as well as those of the Danes, are said by the historians of those times, to sail for the port of Sandwich; and there to lie at different times, and no further mention is made of that of Richborough, which being thus destroyed, Sandwich became the port of general resort; which, as well as the building of this town, seems to have taken place, however, some while after the establishment of the Saxons in Britain, and the first time that is found of the name of Sandwich being mentioned and occurring as a port, is in the life of St. Wilfred, archbishop of York, written by Eddius Stephanus; in which it is said, he and his company, prosper in portum Sandwich, atque suaviter pervenerunt, happily and pleasantly arrived in the harbour of Sandwich, which happened about the year 665, or 666, some what more than 200 years after the arrival of the Saxons in Britain. During the time of the Danes insesting this kingdom, several of their principal transactions happened at this place, (fn. 2) and the port of it became so much frequented, that the author of queen Emma's life stiles it the most noted of all the English ports; Sandwich qui est omnium Anglorum portuum famosissimus.

 

FROM THE TIME of the origin of the town of Sandwich, the property of it was vested in the several kings who reigned over this country, and continued so till king Ethelred, in the year 979, gave it, as the lands of his inheritance, to Christ-church, in Canterbury, free from all secular service and fiscal tribute, except the repelling invasions, and the repairing of bridges and castles. (fn. 3) After which king Canute, having obtained the kingdom, finished the building of this town, and having all parts and places in the realm at his disposal, as coming to the possession of it by conquest, by his charter in the year 1023, gave, or rather restored the port of Sandwich, with the profits of the water of it, on both sides of the stream, for the support of that church, and the sustenance of the monks there.

 

Soon after this, the town of Sandwich increased greatly in size and inhabitants, and on account of the commodity and use of its haven, and the service done by the shipping belonging to it, was of such estimation, that it was made one of the principal cinque ports; and in king Edward the Confessor's days it contained three hundred and seven houses, and was an hundred within itself; and it continued increasing, as appears by the description of it, in the survey of Domesday, taken in the 15th year of the Conqueror's reign, anno 1080, in which it is thus entered, under the title of the lands of the archbishop:

 

Sandwice lies in its own proper hundred. This borough the archbishop holds, and it is of the clothing of the monks, and yields the like service to the king as Dover; and this the men of that borough testify, that before king Edward gave the same to the Holy Trinity, it paid to the king fisteen pounds. At the time of King Edward's death it was not put to ferme. When the archbishop received it, it paid forty pounds of ferme, and forty thousand herrings to the food of the monks. In the year in which this description was made, Sanuuic paid fifty pounds of ferme, & Herrings as above. In the time of king Edward the Confessor there were there three hundred and seven mansions tenanted, now there are seventy six more, that is together three hundred and eighty three.

 

And under the title of the bishop of Baieux's lands, as follows, under the description of the manor of Gollesberge:

 

In Estrei hundred, in Sandunic, the archbishop has thirty two houses, with plats of land belonging to this manor,(viz. Gollesberge) and they pay forty-two shil lings and eight pence, and Adeluuold has one yoke, which is worth ten shillings.

 

These houses, with all the liberties which the bishop of Baieux had in Sandwich, had been given by him to Christ-church, in Canterbury, and confirmed to it in the year 1075, by his brother the Conqueror. (fn. 4)

 

Afterwards king Henry II. granted to the monks the full enjoyment of all those liberties and customs in Sandwich, which they had in the time of king Henry his grandfather, that is, the port and toll, and all maritime customs in this port, on both sides of the water, that is, from Eadburgate unto Merksflete, and the small boat to ferry across it, and that no one should have any right there except them and their servants.

 

The town, by these continued privileges, and the advantages it derived from the great resort to the port, increased much in wealth and number of inhabitants; and notwithstanding, in the year 1217, anno 2 king Henry III. great part of the town was burnt by the French, yet the damage seems soon to have been recompenced by the savors bestowed on it by the several kings, in consideration of the services it had continually afforded, in the shipping of this port, to the nation. The first example of royal favor, being shewn by the last-mentioned king, was in his 11th year, who not only confirmed the customs before granted, but added the further grant of a market to this town and port, (fn. 5) and in his 13th year granted the custom of taking twopence for each cask of wine received into it.

 

After which, the prior and convent of Christ-church, in the 18th year of King Edward I. gave up in exchange for other lands elsewhere, to his queen Eleanor, all their rights, possessions, and privileges here, excepting their houses and keys, and a free passage in the

 

haven, in the small boat, called the vere boat, (fn. 6) and free liberty for themselves and their tenants to buy and sell toll free, which the king confirmed that year; and as a favor to the town, he placed the staple for wool in it for some time.

 

The exception above-mentioned, was afterwards found to be so very prejudicial, as well as inconvenient, that king Edward III. in his 38th year, gave them other lands in Essex, in exchange for all their rights, privileges, and possessions, in this town and port. After which king Richard II. in his first year, removed the staple for wool from Queenborough, where it had been for some time, hither.

 

During the whole of this period from the time of the conquest, this port continued the general rendezvous of the royal sleets, and was as constantly visted by the several monarchs, who frequently embarked and returned again hither from France; the consequence of which was, that the town became so flourishing, that it had increased to between eight and nine hundred houses inhabited, divided into three parishes; and there were of good and able mariners, belonging to the navy of it, above the number of 1500; so that when there was occasion at any time, the mayors of it, on the receipt of the king's letters, furnished, at the town's charges, to the seas, fifteen sail of armed ships of war, which were of such continued annoyance to the French, that they in return made it a constant object of their revenge. Accordingly, in the 16th year of king Henry VI. they landed here and plundered the greatest part of the inhabitants, as they did again in the 35th year of it; but but this not answering the whole of their purpose, Charles VIII. king of France, to destroy it entirely, sent hither four thousand men, who landing in the night, after a long and bloody conflict gained possession of the town, and having wasted it with fire and sword, slew the greatest part of the inhabitants; and to add to these misfortunes it was again ransacked by the earl of Warwick, in the same reign.

 

To preserve the town from such disasters in future, king Edward IV. new walled, ditched, and fortifield it with bulwarks, and gave besides, for the support of them, one hundred pounds yearly out of the customhouse here; which, together with the industry and efforts of the merchants, who frequented this haven, the goodness of which, in any storm or contrary wind, when they were in danger from the breakers, or the Goodwin Sands, afforded them a safe retreat; in a very short time restored it again to a flourishing state, infomuch, that before the end of that reign, the clear yearly receipt of the customs here to that king, amounted to above the sum of 16 or 17,000l. (fn. 7) and the town had ninety five ships belonging to it, and above fifteen hundred sailors.

 

But this sunshine of prosperity lasted no long time afterwards, for in king Henry VII.'s time, the river Stour, or as it was at this place antiently called, the Wantsume, continued to decay so fast, as to leave on each side at low water, a considerable quantity of salts, which induced cardinal archbishop Moreton, who had most part of the adjoining lands belonging to his bishopric, for his own private advantage, to inclose and wall them in, near and about Sarre; which example was followed from time to time, by several owners of the lands adjoining, by which means the water was deprived of its usual course, and the haven felt the loss of it by a hasty decay. Notwithstanding which, so late as the first year of king Richard III. ships failed up this haven as high as Richborough, for that year, as ap pears by the corporation books of Sandwich, the mayor ordered a Spanish ship, lying on the outside of Richborough, to be removed. (fn. 8)

 

"Leland, who wrote in the reign of Henry VIII. gives the following description of Sandwich, as it was in his time. "Sandwich, on the farther side of the ryver of Sture, is neatly welle walled, where the town stonddeth most in jeopardy of enemies. The residew of the town is diched and mudde waulled. There be yn the town iiii principal gates, iii paroche chyrches, of the which sum suppose that St. Maries was sumtyme a nunnery. Ther is a place of White Freres, and an hospistal withowt the town, fyrst ordened for maryners desesid and hurt. There is a place where monkes of Christ-church did resort, when they were lords of the towne. The caryke that was sonke in the haven, in pope Paulus tyme, did much hurt to the haven and gether a great bank. The grounde self from Sandwich to the heaven, and inward to the land, is caullid Sanded bay".

 

The sinking of this great ship of pope Paul IV. in the very mouth of the haven, by which the waters had not their free course as before, from the sand and mud gathering round about it, together with the innings of the lands on each side the stream, had such a fatal effect towards the decay of the haven, that in the time of king Edward VI. it was in a manner destroyed and lost, and the navy and mariners dwindled to almost nothing, and the houses then inhabited in this town did not exceed two hundred, the inhabitants of which were greatly impoverished; the yearly customs of the town, by reason of the insufficiency of the haven, were so desicient, that there was scarcely enough arising from it to satisfy the customer his fee. This occasioned two several commissions to be granted, one in the 2d year of that reign, and another in the 2d year of queen Eli zabeth, to examine the state of the haven, and make a return of it; in consequence of the first of which, a new cut was begun by one John Rogers, which, however, was soon left in an untinished state, though there are evident traces of what was done towards making this canal still remaining, on the grounds between the town and Sandowne castle; and in consequence of the second, other representations and reports were made, one of which was, that the intended cut would be useless, and of no good effect.

 

Whether these different reports where the occasion that no further progress was made towards this work, and the restoration of this haven, or the very great expence it was estimated at, and the great difficulty of raising so large a sum, being 10,000l which the queen at that time could no ways spare, but so it was, that nothing further was done in it.

 

¶The haven being thus abandoned by the queen, and becoming almost useless, excepting to vessels of the small burthen before mentioned, the town itself would before long have become impoverished and fallen wholly to decay, had it not been most singularly preserved, and raised again, in some measure, to great wealth and prosperity, occasioned by the persecution for religion in Brabant and Flanders, which communicated to all the Protestant parts of Europe, the paper, silk, woollen, and other valuable manufactures of Flanders and France, almost peculiar at that time to those countries, and till then, in vain attempted elsewhere; the manufacturers of them came in bodies up to London, and afterwards chose their situations, with great judgment, distributing themselves, with the queen's licence, through England, so as not to interfere too much with one another. The workers in sayes, baize, and flannel in particular, fixed themselves here, at Sandwich, at the mouth of a haven, by which they might have an easy communication with the metropolis, and other parts of this kingdom, and afforded them like wife an easy export to the continent. These manufacturers applied accordingly to the queen, for her protection and licence; for which purpose, in the third year of her reign, she caused letters patent to be passed, directed to the mayor, &c. to give liberty to such of them, as should be approved of by the archbishop, and bishop of London, to inhabit here for the purpose of exercising those manufactures, which had not been used before in England, or for shishing in the seas, not exceeding the number of twenty-five house holders, accounting to every household not above twelve persons, and there to exercise their trade, and have as many servants as were necessary for carrying them on, not exceeding the number above mentioned; these immediately repaired to Sandwich, to the number, men, women, and children, of four hundred and six persons; of which, eight only were masters in the trade. A body of gardeners likewife discovered the nature of the soil about Sandwich to be exceedingly favourable to the growth of all esculent plants, and fixed themselves here, to the great advantage of this town, by the increase of inhabitants, the employment of the poor, and the money which circulated; the landholders like wife had the great advantage of their rents being considerably increased, and the money paid by the town and neighbourhood for vegetables, instead of being sent from hence for the purchase of them, remained within the bounds of it. The vegetables grew here in great perfection, but much of them was conveyed at an easy expence, by water carriage, to London, and from thence dispersed over different parts of the kingdom.

 

These strangers, by their industry and prudent conduct, notwithstanding the obstructions they met with, from the jealousy of the native tradesmen, and the avarice of the corporation, very soon rose to a flourishing condition.

  

There were formerly THREE PAROCHIAL CHURCHES in this town, and a church or chapel likewise, supposed by some to have been parochial, dedicated to St. Jacob, which has been long since demolished; but the three former churches, being those of St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Clement, Still remain; an account of all which will be given separately.

 

ST. MARY'S CHURCH stands in a low situation in Strand street, on the northern part of the town. The original church, built in the time of the Saxons, is said to have been demolished by the Danes, and to have been afterwards rebuilt by queen Emma, which building was burnt down by the French, and it was not long afterwards again rebuilt; notwithstanding which, it appears to have become dilapidated and in a most ruinous state in the time of king Henry VI. for in the 2d year of that reign, anno 1448, part of the steeple fell, in consequence of which it underwent a thorough repair, and then consisted of two isles and the nave; the latter was terminated by the high chancel, and the south isle by St. Laurence's chancel. It however, fell down again on April 25, 1667, and brought down with it most of the church; the western wall, portions of the south isle and its chancel only remaining; and though the church itself was soon afterwards rebuilt, as at present, yet it does not appear that any steeple was built till the year 1718, when the present low one was raised upon the south porch, and one bell put up in it. Before this, there were five small bells, which about the year 1639, had been formed out of three larger ones; the above five bells were sold, for the faculty had been obtained in 1669, to fell the useless timber and the bells, towards the rebuilding of the church, and they were sold, as it is said, to the parish of Eleham.

 

In an antient bead-roll of this church, there is mention made of John and William Condy, the first beginners of the foundation of the chantry of that name in this church; of Thomas Loueryk and his wife, who founded the chapel of our Lady, at the east head of it; and of the three windows of the north side of the church; of Thomas Elys and Margaret his wife, and Sir Thomas Rolling, vicar of this church, of whose goods was made the west window of it, and who made the vicarage of the parish more than it was before; and besides these, of several other benefactors to the windows and other parts of it. And there were divers other gifts made to this church, for its reparation, and for obits, and other religious services performed in it, as appears by the evidences belonging to it.

 

The inventory of the silver and jewels, belonging to the church before the reformation, sufficiently shew the costliness of the utensils belonging to it, and the riches of it. The silver, according to the inventory made of them, amounting to 724 ounces; and the habits of the ministers to officiate in it, the linen and books, were answerable to the rest belonging to it.

 

The present church of St. Mary consists of a north isle, and the nave, at the end of which is the chancel, which has an ascent of three steps on each side; between which entrances are the mayor's seat and other pews. The altar piece, table, and rails, are of wainscot and very ornamental. The sont is at the west end of the nave, it is a stone bason, having eight faces changed alternately with plain shields and roses, in quaterfoils; on the shaft are the letters cw. II. RS. DE. IC. POD. 1662.

 

In this church are numbers of monuments and inscriptions, all which are printed in Mr. Boys's Collections, P. 319, the whole too numerous to mention here, but among others at the west end of the nave, are memorials of the Smiths and Verriers. In the south space are memorials for the Petleys and for the Whites. In the middle space, on an old stone, are the remains of a cross story, resting on a dog or lion, and the remains of an inscription with this date, I. M. CCC. XXX. In the north isle are three grave-stones, on a rise above the pavement, with inscriptions shewing, that underneath is a vault, in which lie many of the family of Hayward, formerly mayors of this town; arms, Argent, on a pale, sable, three crescents of the field, In the chancel is a large stone, robbed of its brasses, which formerly commerated the deaths of Roger Manwood and his family; the place where it lies was formerly St. Laurence chancel. In the chancel is a monument of stone much defaced; on it are the figures of a manand woman kneeling, in a praying posture, for Abraham Rutton, formerly mayor, and Susan his wife, by whom he had seven sons and six daughters. He died in 1608; and for his descendant the Rev. John Rutton, obt. 1763, rector of this parish. Against the south wall, is a handsome monument of marble, with these arms, Argent, five chevronels, sable, and per pale, azure and gules, a lion rampant, argent; and an inscription for several of the family of Hougham. Against the same wall a tablet, for Mary, wife of Joseph Stewart, esq. obt. 1775; arms, Argent, a lion rampant, gules, over all, a bend raguled, or. Over the south door, a marble monument for Richard Solly, gent. thrice mayor, obt. 1731; and Anna his wife, daughter of John Crickett, gent, by whom he had ten sons and three daughters; arms, Azure, a chevron, party per pale, or, and gules, between three soles, naient, argent. At the west end of the nave is an altar tomb, with an inscription, shewing, that in a vault underneath, lie several of the Cricketts; another altar tomb, with an inscription, for several of the Nowells; arms, Three covered cups. By the gallery stairs, on an altar tomb, an inscription for Tho. Danson, preacher, of this town, who died 1764; on a raised monument of brick, an inscription, for several of the name of Jordan; this stands close before, and hides the altar part of a monument, under an arch in the north wall, to the memory of Sir William Loverick, of Ash, and dame Emma his wife, the daughter of Sir John Septvans, of that parish, who are said to have been the principal repairers, or builders of this church, after it had been burnt by the French, and were buried in king Henry IV.'s reign; on an adjoining tomb an inscription for the Maundys.

 

There are stones, pointing out the entrances into the vaults of Solly and Stewart, and there are inscriptions on a board, commemorating the benefactions of John Dekewer, esq. Solomon Hougham, gent. Sir Henry Furnese, bart. and Mr. Peter Jarvis.

 

Several names appear on the stones, on the outside of the east and north walls of the chancel. Sir Edward Ringely, of Knolton, was buried in Jesus chapel, in this church, on the left side of the altar. In the 35th of king Henry VIII. William, lord Clinton, is said to have been interred under a gilded arch in the south wall of this church, which arch was walled up in king Edward VI.'s reign, but it was visible some time afterwards in the church yard, perhaps it may be the same projectioin that now appears there, on the south side of the chancel. William Condie, who founded the chantry, afterwards called by his name, in this church, was likewife interred, together with his wife, in the south isle of the old church, near the lord Clinton's tomb; but there is nothing now to point out precisely the situation of their remains, nor those of Thomas Manwood, gent. who died in king Henry VIII.'s time and was buried under the belfry. Stephen Perot was buried likewise in this church in 1570.

 

There are several altar tombs in the church-yard, one of which is for the family of Dekewer; arms, Vert, on a cross, engrailed, or, five fleurs de lis, sable; in the first and fourth quarters, a caltrop, argent; in the second and third quarters, a lion rampant, of the last.

 

An anchoress had her cell at the east end of this church in the 20th year of king Henry VIII.

 

At a small distance south-west of St. Mary's church, was a church or chapel, dedicated to St. facob, supposed by many to have been a parochial church; there is nothing lest now to point out the situation of the building, the cemetery remains and is used occasionally as a burial place, for the use of St. Mary's parish. This church-yard seems to have got into lay hands at the suppression, for in 1578, it was enfeoffed by Edward Wood, to certain persons, for the necessary uses of the parish. The trust was renewed in 1604 and 1649. At the south-west corner was an hermitage, the residence of an hermit. The last hermit in it was John Steward, in king Henry VIII.'s reign, who was afterwards vicar of St. Mary's church, whose duty it was to minister to strangers and the poor, to bury the dead, and pray for the people in the chapel, which was destroyed, as well as others of the like sort, in the beginning of king Edward VI.'s reign. Great part of this building was standing at the latter end of Edward VI.'s reign; there was in it a brotherhood of St. Catherine, consisting of both brothers and sisters, which was benesitted by the will of John Wynchelse, of Sandwich. It appears that this church or chapel was under the management of the officers of St. Mary's parish, and that the building had been repaired in the years 1445 and 1478.

 

The church of St. Mary is a vicarage, the patronage of which has ever been part of the possessions of the archdeaconry of Canterbury, to whom the appropriation of the church likewise formerly belonged; it did so in the 8th year of king Richard II. anno 1384, when on the taxation of the spiritualities and temporalities ecclesiastic, in this diocese, the church of St. Mary's appropriated to the archdeacon, was valued at eight pounds, and the vicarage was valued at only four pounds, and on account of the smallness of it, was not taxed to the tenth. (fn. 47) The vicarage is valued in the king's books, in king Henry VIII.'s reign, at 8l. 1s. since which time, and it should seem during the reign of queen Elizabeth, the great tithes, or appropriate parsonage of this church, were given up by the archdeacon to the vicarage, so that the vicar has been since intitled to both great and small tithes within the bounds of this parish, which induced several of the incumbents to stile themselves rectors, but certainly wrong, for it is still a vicarage, the vicars of which are entitled to the receipt and possession of the great tithes, by grant from the appropriator.

 

¶In 1588 here were 385 communicants, and it was valued at forty pounds per annum. In 1640 here were the same number of communicants, and it was valued at sixty-eight pounds. It is now a discharged living, of the clear yearly value of forty pounds. It has been augmented by the governors of queen Anne's bounty, the greater part of the money from which has been laid out in the purchase of marsh land in Wood. nesborough. At present the vicar receives the tithes of about eighty-four acres of land. There were great disputes formerly, between the appropriators of Eastry and the vicars of St. Mary's, respecting the tithes of a small district of land called Puttock's downe; but the decisions were constantly against the vicars of St. Mary's, and the tithes now belong to Word, a chapel of ease to Eastry.

 

Besides the ordinary small tithes, the vicar of this parish, as well as the incumbents of the two other parishes in Sandwich, collect from every house a certain sum, under the denomination of dues; this payment is said to be a composition for all the house, gardens, barns, and stables, according to custom, since the 12th year of queen Elizabeth; and the vicar of St. Mary's receives besides, 6s. 8d. annually, under the denomination of tithe of the old Crane.

 

In 1776 there were one hundred and sixty-eight houses in this parish, and six hundred and fourteen inhabitants; and the rents of it were in 1787, according to the pound rate, at rack rents towards the poor, upwards of 3,500l. per annum.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol10/pp152-216#h2-...

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

It took China long way to develop and produce a true supersonic fighter aircraft: in March, 1964, Shenyang Aircraft Factory began the first domestic production of the J-7 jet fighter. However, the mass production of the aircraft, which had been developed through Soviet help, license production and reverse-engineering, was severely hindered by an unexpected problem—the Cultural Revolution. This incident and its consequences resulted in poor initial quality and slow progress.

 

This, in turn, resulted in full scale production only coming about in the 1980s, by which time the J-7 design was showing its age. However, through the years the J-7 saw constant development and refinement in China.

 

One of the many directions of the prolific J-7 family was the J-7III series, later re-coded J-7C. This variant was in so far special, as it was not based on the 1st generation MiG-21F. It was rather a reverse-engineered MiG-21MF obtained from Egypt, but just like the Soviet ejection seat, the original Soviet radar failed to impress Chinese, so a domestic Chinese radar was developed for the aircraft called the "JL-7". JL-7 is a 2 cm wavelength mono pulse fire radar weighing 100 kg, with a maximum range of 28 km, and MTBF is 70 hours.

 

However, due to the limitation of Chinese avionics industry in the 1980s, the performance of the domestic Chinese fire control radars were not satisfactory, because due to their relatively large size, the nosecone had to be enlarged, resulting in decrease in aerodynamic performance of the series. As a result, only very limited numbers of this series were built.

 

The J-7III prototypes comprised a series of a total of 5 aircraft, equipped with domestically developed HTY-3 ejection seat and KL-11 auto pilot. These machines had to be powered by the domestic WP-7 engine (a copy of the MiG-21F's Tumansky R-11) because the intended WP-13F (a license build of the Tumansky R-13) failed to meet the original schedule. The J-7III was planned to enter service in 1985, but due to the delay of WP-13 development, it was not until 1987 when the design was finally certified.

 

Production of the true J-7C fighter started in 1989, when the WP-13 became available, but only a total of 17 were built until 1996. It was soon superseded by the J-7IIIA, the prototype of the more sophisticated J-7D. This upgraded all-weather fighter was equipped with KJ-11A auto pilot, JD-3II TACAN, ADS-1 air data computer, Type 563B INS, WL-7A radio compass, Type 256 radar altimeter, TKR-122 radio, 930-4 RWR, 941-4A decoy launcher, and an improved JL-7A radar.

The fighter was to be armed with PL-7 & PL-8 AAMs and carried a twin 23 mm gun (a copy of the MiG-21MF's ventral GSh-23-2 cannon). A HK-13A HUD replaced HK-03D optical sight in earlier models. The upgraded JL-7A fire control radar had look-down/shoot-down capability added.

 

The production J-7D received an uprated WP-13FI engine, and initial certification was received in November 1994, but it was not until more than a year later in December 1995 when the model was finally fully certified due to the need to certify the WP-13FI on the aircraft. But, again, the results were not satisfactory and only 32 were built until 1999.

 

Even though the J-7C and D had been developed from a much more modern basis than the earlier MiG-21F derivatives, the "new" type offered - except for the more capable radar and the all-weather capability - no considerable benefit, was even less manoueverable in dogfight situations, more complex and expensive, and also had a very limited range. What was needed was a revolutionary step forward.

 

Such a proposal came from Chengdu Aircraft Corporation's general designer Mr. Wang Zi-fang (王子方) in 1998, who had already worked on the J-7D. He proposed the addition of fuselage elements that would partly replace the inner wing sections and create lift, but also offer additional room for more and better avionics, allowing the carriage of state-of-the-art weaponry like the PL-11 AAM, together with more internal fuel. Furthermore, the adaptation of the WS-13 turbofan, a new engine for which project work had just started and which would improve both range and performance of the modified aircraft.

 

In 2000, while an alternative design, the J-7FS, had been under parallel development and cleared for service by then, CAC received green lights for a developmental technology demonstrator under the label J-7DS (S stands for Shi-yan, 试验, meaning "experimental" in Chinese).

 

While the general third generation MiG-21 outlines were retained, the blended wing/body sections - certainly inspired by US American types like the F-16 and the F-18 - and a new, taller fin changed overall proportions considerably. Esp. from above, the bigger wing planform with extended LERXes (reminiscent of the MiG Analog experimental delta wing aircraft that were used during the Tu-144 development in the Soviet union) created the impression of a much more massive and compact aircraft, even though the dimenions remained unchanged.

 

Thanks to the additional space in the BWB sections, new and better equipment could be installed, and the aerodynamics were changed, too. For instance, the J-7's air brakes under the forward fuselage were deleted and replaced by a new pair of splayed design, stabilizing the aircraft more effectively in a dive. The single air brake in front of the ventral fin was retained, though, as well as the blown flaps from the MiG-21MF.

 

The ventral gun pod with a domestic copy of the GSh-23-2 was also deleted; this space, together with the air brake compartment, was now used for a semi-recessed laser range finder, so that guided ammunition could be deployed. But a gun was retained: a new, more effective Type 30-I 30 mm (1.18 in) cannon (a copy of the Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1) with 150 rounds was placed into the port LERX, under the cockpit.

Inside of the LERX on the other side, compartments for new avionics (esp. for the once more upgraded JL-7B fire control radar) were added. With this radar and weapons like the PL-11 missile, the aircraft finally achieved the long desired BVR interception capability.

 

Flanking the new, longer WS-13 engine, the BWBs held extra fuel tanks. For en even more extended range and loiter time, provisions were made for a fixed air-refuelling probe on the starboard side under the cockpit.

Under the inner wings, an additional pair of pylons was added (for a total of seven), and overall ordnance load could be raised to 3.000 kg (6.600 lb).

 

The first J-7DS first flew in summer 2005, still only powered by an WP-13I engine, for a 22-month test program. Three prototypes were built, but only the first two aircraft were to fly – the third machine was only used for static tests.

The driving force behind this program was actually the PLANAF, the People's Liberation Army, Naval Air Force (中國人民解放軍海軍航空兵). While the Chinese Air Force rather placed its bet on the more modern and sophisticated Chengdu J-10 fighter, the PLANAF was rather looking for a more simple and inexpensive multi-role combat aircraft that could carry out both air defence and strike missions, and replace the ageing (and rather ineffective) J-8 fighters and Q-5 attack aircraft, as well as early J-7II fighters with limited all-weather capability. Consequently, the type was only operated by the PLANAF from 2010 onwards and received the official designation J-7DH ("H" for 海军 [Haijun] = Navy).

 

Production was still continuing in small numbers in late 2016, but the number of built specimen is uncertain. About 150 J-7DH are supposed to be in active service, mostly with PLANAF Northern and East Fleet units. Unlike many former J-7 variants (including its ancestor, the PLAAF's more or less stillborn C and D variants), the J-7DH was not offered for export.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 14.61 m (47 ft 10½ in)

15.69 m (51 ft 5 in) with pitot

Wingspan: 7,41 m (24 ft 3½ in)

Height: 4.78 m (15 ft 8½ in)

Wing area: 28.88 m² (309.8 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 2.8:1

Empty weight: 5,892 kg (12.977 lb)

Loaded weight: 8,240 kg (18.150 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 9,800 kg (21.585 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× Guizhou WS-13 turbofan with a dry thrust of 51.2 kN (11,510 lbf)

and 84.6 kN (19,000 lbf) with afterburner

 

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.0, 2,200 km/h (1.189 knots, 1.375 mph)

Stall speed: 210 km/h (114 knots, 131 mph) IAS

Combat radius: 1.050 km (568 nmi, 652 mi) (air superiority, two AAMs and three drop tanks)

Ferry range: 2,500 km (1.350 nmi, 1.550 mi)

Service ceiling: 17,500 m (57.420 ft)

Rate of climb: 195 m/s (38.386 ft/min)

 

Armament:

1× Type 30-I 30mm (1.18") cannon with 150 rounds in the port forward fuselage;

7× hardpoints (6× under-wing, 1× centerline under-fuselage) with a capacity of 3,000 kg maximum (up to 500 kg each); Ordnance primarily comprises air-to-air missiles, including PL-2, PL-5, PL-7, PL-8, PL-9 and PL-11 AAMs, but in a secondary CAS role various rocket pods an unguided bombs of up to 500kg caliber can be carried

  

The kit and its assembly:

Another Chinese whif, and again a MiG-21 derivative - a fruitful source of inspiration. The J-7DH is not based ona real world project, though, but was rather inspired by an article about a Chinese 2020 update for the MiG-21 from Japan, including some drawings and artwork.

The latter depicted a late MiG-21 with some minor mods, but also some characteristic F-16 parts like the chines and the BWB flanks grafted to it - and it looked good!

 

Since I recently butchered an Intech F-16 for my Academy T-50 conversion (primariliy donation the whole landing gear, including the wells), I had a donor kit at ahnd, and I also found a Mastercraft MiG-21MF in my stash without a true plan. So I combined both for "something Chinese"...

 

The build was pretty starightforward - except for the fact that the Intech F-16 is a rather clumsy affair (donating the fin and the fuselage flanks) and that no part from the Mastercraft MiG-21 matches with another one! Lots of improvisation and mods were necessary.

On the other side, the F-16 parts were just glued onto the MiG-21 fuselage and blended into one with putty (in several layers, though).

 

The fin was taken wholesale from the F-16, but clipped by about 5mm at the top. I originally wanted to use F-16 wings with wing tip launch rails and the stabilizers, too, but when I held them to the model it looked wacky - so I reverted to the Fishbed parts. The stabilizers were taken OOB, but the wing span was reduced at the roots, so that the original MiG-21 wing span was retained. Only the landing gear wells had to be adapted accordingly, but that was easier than expected and the result looks very organic.

 

With more wing area, I added a third pair of hardpoints under the wing roots, and I kept the gun under the cockpit in the LERX. That offered room inside of the fuselage, filled by a laser rangefinder in a canoe fairing where the original gun used to be.

 

On the tail, a new jet nozzle was mounted, on the fuselage some air scoops and antennae were added an an IR sensor on the nose. A new seat was used in the cockpit instead of the poor L-shaped OOB thing. The PL-2 & -11 ordnance consists of simple AIM-9Bs and slightly modified AIM-120, plus some launch rails from the scrap box.

  

Paintings and markings:

Modern Chinese military aircraft are hardly benchmarks for creative paint schemes - and the only "realistic" option in this case would have been a uniform grey livery. The original J-7C PLAAF night fighters carried a high contrast sand/dark green/light blue livery, similar to the MiG-21 export scheme (a.k.a. "Pumpkin"), but I found the latter not suitabel for a naval operator.

 

I eventually found a compromise, using one of the J-7C schemes as pattern but using grey tones instead - still not very colorful, but the "clover" patterns would help disrupt the aircraft's outlines and support the modern look and feel of this whif.

 

Basic colors are Humbrol 140 (Dark Gull Grey, FS 36231) and 165 (RAF Medium Sea Grey) from above, plus 122 (IAF Pale Blue, FS 35622) on the undersides. With the dark grey pattern placed with no direct connection to the Pale Blue undersides, there's even a blending effect between the tones - not spectacular, but IMHO effective.

 

The cockpit interior became pale teal (a mix of Soviet Cockpit Blue and white), while the landing gear wells were painted with a mix of Humbrol 56, 119 and 225 - for a yellow-ish, dull metallic brown. The wheel discs became bright green (Humbrol 131), and any di-electric panel and the radome became deep green (Humbrol 2).

 

The decals come from a Begemot MiG-21 sheet (roundels), while the tactical 5-digit code comes from an Airfix 1:72 B-17 sheet. The yellow code is a bit unusual, as well as its place on the fin, but both occur on Chinese fighters.

The code itself is based on the information published in the 2010 book “Chinese Air Power” by Yefim Gordon und Dmitriy Komissarov, where the Chinese code system is explained – I hope that it is more or less authentic.

 

The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter blue-grey shades, but no weathering, since modern Chinese aircraft tend to look pretty clean and pristine. Since the kits both did not feature much surface details, and a lot of the few OOB details got lost during the PSR process for the BWB wing sections, I painted some details and panel lines with a soft pencil - a compromise, though. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

  

The result is a pretty subtle whif, and with the F-16 parts added the result even looks very conclusive! From above, the extra fuselage width makes the Fishbed look very massive, which is underlined by the extended stabilizer span. But I think that retailing the original MiG-21 delta wing was a good decision, because it helps retaining the Fishbed's "fast" look.

I am just not 100% happy with the finish - but for the crappy kits I used as basis it's O.K.

 

Part 2 of a global assessment

 

This report provides an update and further assessment of the sources, fate and effects of microplastics in the marine environment, carried out by Working Group 40 (WG40) of GESAMP (The Joint Group of Experts on Scientific Aspects of Marine Protection). It follows publication of the first assessment report in this series in April 2015 (GESAMP 2015). The issue of marine plastic litter was raised during the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in June 2014. Delegates from 160 countries adopted Resolution 1/6 on ‘Marine plastic debris and microplastics’ (Annex I). The resolution welcomed the work being undertaken by GESAMP on microplastics and requested the Executive Director of UNEP to carry out a study on marine plastics and microplastics. This was to be based on a combination of existing and new studies, including WG40. This provided the motivation for GESAMP to revise the original terms of reference to reflect both the request from UNEP to contribute to the UNEA study, and the key recommendations from the WG40 2015 report.

 

Each main section begins with key messages followed by a short summary of related findings from the first report. Each section ends with conclusions, knowledge gaps and research priorities. Greater effort has been made to describe the nature, distribution and magnitude of sources of macro- and microplastics. These are described by sea-based and land-based sectors, together with the main entry points to the ocean. Spatial (regional) and temporal differences in both sources and entry points are examined. One previously unrecognized source of secondary microplastics highlighted is debris from vehicle tyres.

 

The distribution of microplastics in the five main ocean compartments (sea surface, water column, shoreline, seabed and biota) are described, together with the transport mechanisms that regulate fluxes between compartments. Regional ‘hot-spots’ of sources, distribution and accumulation zones are reported, in response to the UNEA request.

 

The effects of microplastics on marine biota have been explored in greater detail.

 

Greater attention has been given to the interaction of microplastics with biota. A comprehensive literature review has been assembled with tables summarising the occurrence of microplastics in a wide variety of marine organisms and seabirds. There does appear to be an association between uptake of microplastics and changes in the physiological or biochemical response in some species, observed in laboratory experiments. It is not clear whether this will be significant at a population level with current observed microplastic numbers. The current understanding of the interaction of plasticassociated chemicals with biota is reviewed, using laboratory-based experiments, theoretical studies and field-based observations. It appears very likely that this interaction will be dependent on:

 

the species;

the relative degree of contamination of the plastic, the biota concerned and the marine environment (sediment, water, foodstuff) in that region;

the size, shape and type of plastics;

and several time-related variables (e.g. environmental transport, gut desorption rates).

 

This remains a contentious area of research. The occurrence of nano-sized plastics in the marine environment has yet to be established and we are dependent on drawing inferences from other fields of science and medicine when considering possible effects. Microplastics can act as vectors for both indigenous and non-indigenous species. Examples include pathogenic Vibrio bacteria, eggs of marine insects and the resting stages of several jellyfish species.

 

A new section considers the possible effect of microplastics on commercial fish and shellfish. Microplastics have been found in a variety of commercial fish and shellfish, including samples purchased from retail outlets. Generally the numbers of particles per organism are very small, even for filter-feeding bivalves in coastal areas bordered by high coastal populations. At these levels it is not considered likely that microplastics will influence the breeding/development success of fish stocks (food security) nor represent an objective risk to human health (food safety). However, data are rather scarce and this is an area that justifies further attention.

 

The economic aspects of microplastic contamination are considered in another new section. This relies heavily on studies looking at the effects of macrodebris on various sectors (e.g. fisheries, shipping, tourism, waste management), given the paucity of knowledge of direct economic effects of microplastics. Acting on macroplastics may be easier to justify, as the social, ecological and economic effects are easier to demonstrate. This in turn will reduce the quantities of secondary microplastics being generated in the ocean. One significant cost that may be incurred would be the provision of wastewater treatment capable of filtering out microplastics. Such systems are relatively common in some rich countries but absent in many developing nations. Clearly, there are many other reasons to introduce improved wastewater treatment (nutrient reduction, disease prevention), with reduction in microplastics being an additional benefit.

 

Social aspects are focused around factors influencing long-term behaviour change, including risk perceptions, perceived responsibility and the influence of demographics. This is key to implementing effective, acceptable measures.

 

A separate section summarizes good practice guidance on sampling and analysis at sea, in sediments and in biological samples. There are no global ‘standards’ but if these guidelines are followed then it will be easier to generate quality-assured data, in a cost-effective manner, and for datasets to be compared and combined with more confidence.

 

The final main section presents an initial risk assessment framework. Having described some basic principles about risk, likelihood and consequences the section provides a conceptual framework and two case examples (one real, one hypothetical) of how the framework can be utilized.

 

The report concludes with key conclusions and recommendations for further research.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

It took China long way to develop and produce a true supersonic fighter aircraft: in March, 1964, Shenyang Aircraft Factory began the first domestic production of the J-7 jet fighter. However, the mass production of the aircraft, which had been developed through Soviet help, license production and reverse-engineering, was severely hindered by an unexpected problem—the Cultural Revolution. This incident and its consequences resulted in poor initial quality and slow progress.

 

This, in turn, resulted in full scale production only coming about in the 1980s, by which time the J-7 design was showing its age. However, through the years the J-7 saw constant development and refinement in China.

 

One of the many directions of the prolific J-7 family was the J-7III series, later re-coded J-7C. This variant was in so far special, as it was not based on the 1st generation MiG-21F. It was rather a reverse-engineered MiG-21MF obtained from Egypt, but just like the Soviet ejection seat, the original Soviet radar failed to impress Chinese, so a domestic Chinese radar was developed for the aircraft called the "JL-7". JL-7 is a 2 cm wavelength mono pulse fire radar weighing 100 kg, with a maximum range of 28 km, and MTBF is 70 hours.

 

However, due to the limitation of Chinese avionics industry in the 1980s, the performance of the domestic Chinese fire control radars were not satisfactory, because due to their relatively large size, the nosecone had to be enlarged, resulting in decrease in aerodynamic performance of the series. As a result, only very limited numbers of this series were built.

 

The J-7III prototypes comprised a series of a total of 5 aircraft, equipped with domestically developed HTY-3 ejection seat and KL-11 auto pilot. These machines had to be powered by the domestic WP-7 engine (a copy of the MiG-21F's Tumansky R-11) because the intended WP-13F (a license build of the Tumansky R-13) failed to meet the original schedule. The J-7III was planned to enter service in 1985, but due to the delay of WP-13 development, it was not until 1987 when the design was finally certified.

 

Production of the true J-7C fighter started in 1989, when the WP-13 became available, but only a total of 17 were built until 1996. It was soon superseded by the J-7IIIA, the prototype of the more sophisticated J-7D. This upgraded all-weather fighter was equipped with KJ-11A auto pilot, JD-3II TACAN, ADS-1 air data computer, Type 563B INS, WL-7A radio compass, Type 256 radar altimeter, TKR-122 radio, 930-4 RWR, 941-4A decoy launcher, and an improved JL-7A radar.

The fighter was to be armed with PL-7 & PL-8 AAMs and carried a twin 23 mm gun (a copy of the MiG-21MF's ventral GSh-23-2 cannon). A HK-13A HUD replaced HK-03D optical sight in earlier models. The upgraded JL-7A fire control radar had look-down/shoot-down capability added.

 

The production J-7D received an uprated WP-13FI engine, and initial certification was received in November 1994, but it was not until more than a year later in December 1995 when the model was finally fully certified due to the need to certify the WP-13FI on the aircraft. But, again, the results were not satisfactory and only 32 were built until 1999.

 

Even though the J-7C and D had been developed from a much more modern basis than the earlier MiG-21F derivatives, the "new" type offered - except for the more capable radar and the all-weather capability - no considerable benefit, was even less manoueverable in dogfight situations, more complex and expensive, and also had a very limited range. What was needed was a revolutionary step forward.

 

Such a proposal came from Chengdu Aircraft Corporation's general designer Mr. Wang Zi-fang (王子方) in 1998, who had already worked on the J-7D. He proposed the addition of fuselage elements that would partly replace the inner wing sections and create lift, but also offer additional room for more and better avionics, allowing the carriage of state-of-the-art weaponry like the PL-11 AAM, together with more internal fuel. Furthermore, the adaptation of the WS-13 turbofan, a new engine for which project work had just started and which would improve both range and performance of the modified aircraft.

 

In 2000, while an alternative design, the J-7FS, had been under parallel development and cleared for service by then, CAC received green lights for a developmental technology demonstrator under the label J-7DS (S stands for Shi-yan, 试验, meaning "experimental" in Chinese).

 

While the general third generation MiG-21 outlines were retained, the blended wing/body sections - certainly inspired by US American types like the F-16 and the F-18 - and a new, taller fin changed overall proportions considerably. Esp. from above, the bigger wing planform with extended LERXes (reminiscent of the MiG Analog experimental delta wing aircraft that were used during the Tu-144 development in the Soviet union) created the impression of a much more massive and compact aircraft, even though the dimenions remained unchanged.

 

Thanks to the additional space in the BWB sections, new and better equipment could be installed, and the aerodynamics were changed, too. For instance, the J-7's air brakes under the forward fuselage were deleted and replaced by a new pair of splayed design, stabilizing the aircraft more effectively in a dive. The single air brake in front of the ventral fin was retained, though, as well as the blown flaps from the MiG-21MF.

 

The ventral gun pod with a domestic copy of the GSh-23-2 was also deleted; this space, together with the air brake compartment, was now used for a semi-recessed laser range finder, so that guided ammunition could be deployed. But a gun was retained: a new, more effective Type 30-I 30 mm (1.18 in) cannon (a copy of the Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1) with 150 rounds was placed into the port LERX, under the cockpit.

Inside of the LERX on the other side, compartments for new avionics (esp. for the once more upgraded JL-7B fire control radar) were added. With this radar and weapons like the PL-11 missile, the aircraft finally achieved the long desired BVR interception capability.

 

Flanking the new, longer WS-13 engine, the BWBs held extra fuel tanks. For en even more extended range and loiter time, provisions were made for a fixed air-refuelling probe on the starboard side under the cockpit.

Under the inner wings, an additional pair of pylons was added (for a total of seven), and overall ordnance load could be raised to 3.000 kg (6.600 lb).

 

The first J-7DS first flew in summer 2005, still only powered by an WP-13I engine, for a 22-month test program. Three prototypes were built, but only the first two aircraft were to fly – the third machine was only used for static tests.

The driving force behind this program was actually the PLANAF, the People's Liberation Army, Naval Air Force (中國人民解放軍海軍航空兵). While the Chinese Air Force rather placed its bet on the more modern and sophisticated Chengdu J-10 fighter, the PLANAF was rather looking for a more simple and inexpensive multi-role combat aircraft that could carry out both air defence and strike missions, and replace the ageing (and rather ineffective) J-8 fighters and Q-5 attack aircraft, as well as early J-7II fighters with limited all-weather capability. Consequently, the type was only operated by the PLANAF from 2010 onwards and received the official designation J-7DH ("H" for 海军 [Haijun] = Navy).

 

Production was still continuing in small numbers in late 2016, but the number of built specimen is uncertain. About 150 J-7DH are supposed to be in active service, mostly with PLANAF Northern and East Fleet units. Unlike many former J-7 variants (including its ancestor, the PLAAF's more or less stillborn C and D variants), the J-7DH was not offered for export.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 14.61 m (47 ft 10½ in)

15.69 m (51 ft 5 in) with pitot

Wingspan: 7,41 m (24 ft 3½ in)

Height: 4.78 m (15 ft 8½ in)

Wing area: 28.88 m² (309.8 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 2.8:1

Empty weight: 5,892 kg (12.977 lb)

Loaded weight: 8,240 kg (18.150 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 9,800 kg (21.585 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× Guizhou WS-13 turbofan with a dry thrust of 51.2 kN (11,510 lbf)

and 84.6 kN (19,000 lbf) with afterburner

 

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.0, 2,200 km/h (1.189 knots, 1.375 mph)

Stall speed: 210 km/h (114 knots, 131 mph) IAS

Combat radius: 1.050 km (568 nmi, 652 mi) (air superiority, two AAMs and three drop tanks)

Ferry range: 2,500 km (1.350 nmi, 1.550 mi)

Service ceiling: 17,500 m (57.420 ft)

Rate of climb: 195 m/s (38.386 ft/min)

 

Armament:

1× Type 30-I 30mm (1.18") cannon with 150 rounds in the port forward fuselage;

7× hardpoints (6× under-wing, 1× centerline under-fuselage) with a capacity of 3,000 kg maximum (up to 500 kg each); Ordnance primarily comprises air-to-air missiles, including PL-2, PL-5, PL-7, PL-8, PL-9 and PL-11 AAMs, but in a secondary CAS role various rocket pods an unguided bombs of up to 500kg caliber can be carried

  

The kit and its assembly:

Another Chinese whif, and again a MiG-21 derivative - a fruitful source of inspiration. The J-7DH is not based ona real world project, though, but was rather inspired by an article about a Chinese 2020 update for the MiG-21 from Japan, including some drawings and artwork.

The latter depicted a late MiG-21 with some minor mods, but also some characteristic F-16 parts like the chines and the BWB flanks grafted to it - and it looked good!

 

Since I recently butchered an Intech F-16 for my Academy T-50 conversion (primariliy donation the whole landing gear, including the wells), I had a donor kit at ahnd, and I also found a Mastercraft MiG-21MF in my stash without a true plan. So I combined both for "something Chinese"...

 

The build was pretty starightforward - except for the fact that the Intech F-16 is a rather clumsy affair (donating the fin and the fuselage flanks) and that no part from the Mastercraft MiG-21 matches with another one! Lots of improvisation and mods were necessary.

On the other side, the F-16 parts were just glued onto the MiG-21 fuselage and blended into one with putty (in several layers, though).

 

The fin was taken wholesale from the F-16, but clipped by about 5mm at the top. I originally wanted to use F-16 wings with wing tip launch rails and the stabilizers, too, but when I held them to the model it looked wacky - so I reverted to the Fishbed parts. The stabilizers were taken OOB, but the wing span was reduced at the roots, so that the original MiG-21 wing span was retained. Only the landing gear wells had to be adapted accordingly, but that was easier than expected and the result looks very organic.

 

With more wing area, I added a third pair of hardpoints under the wing roots, and I kept the gun under the cockpit in the LERX. That offered room inside of the fuselage, filled by a laser rangefinder in a canoe fairing where the original gun used to be.

 

On the tail, a new jet nozzle was mounted, on the fuselage some air scoops and antennae were added an an IR sensor on the nose. A new seat was used in the cockpit instead of the poor L-shaped OOB thing. The PL-2 & -11 ordnance consists of simple AIM-9Bs and slightly modified AIM-120, plus some launch rails from the scrap box.

  

Paintings and markings:

Modern Chinese military aircraft are hardly benchmarks for creative paint schemes - and the only "realistic" option in this case would have been a uniform grey livery. The original J-7C PLAAF night fighters carried a high contrast sand/dark green/light blue livery, similar to the MiG-21 export scheme (a.k.a. "Pumpkin"), but I found the latter not suitabel for a naval operator.

 

I eventually found a compromise, using one of the J-7C schemes as pattern but using grey tones instead - still not very colorful, but the "clover" patterns would help disrupt the aircraft's outlines and support the modern look and feel of this whif.

 

Basic colors are Humbrol 140 (Dark Gull Grey, FS 36231) and 165 (RAF Medium Sea Grey) from above, plus 122 (IAF Pale Blue, FS 35622) on the undersides. With the dark grey pattern placed with no direct connection to the Pale Blue undersides, there's even a blending effect between the tones - not spectacular, but IMHO effective.

 

The cockpit interior became pale teal (a mix of Soviet Cockpit Blue and white), while the landing gear wells were painted with a mix of Humbrol 56, 119 and 225 - for a yellow-ish, dull metallic brown. The wheel discs became bright green (Humbrol 131), and any di-electric panel and the radome became deep green (Humbrol 2).

 

The decals come from a Begemot MiG-21 sheet (roundels), while the tactical 5-digit code comes from an Airfix 1:72 B-17 sheet. The yellow code is a bit unusual, as well as its place on the fin, but both occur on Chinese fighters.

The code itself is based on the information published in the 2010 book “Chinese Air Power” by Yefim Gordon und Dmitriy Komissarov, where the Chinese code system is explained – I hope that it is more or less authentic.

 

The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter blue-grey shades, but no weathering, since modern Chinese aircraft tend to look pretty clean and pristine. Since the kits both did not feature much surface details, and a lot of the few OOB details got lost during the PSR process for the BWB wing sections, I painted some details and panel lines with a soft pencil - a compromise, though. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

  

The result is a pretty subtle whif, and with the F-16 parts added the result even looks very conclusive! From above, the extra fuselage width makes the Fishbed look very massive, which is underlined by the extended stabilizer span. But I think that retailing the original MiG-21 delta wing was a good decision, because it helps retaining the Fishbed's "fast" look.

I am just not 100% happy with the finish - but for the crappy kits I used as basis it's O.K.

 

I have been trying to get inside Temple Church for some years now. Lat time was in January when the warden assured me it would be open on Saturday, only to find after travelling up from Dover that the door was locked, despite the sign on the door saying it was due to be open.

 

Anyway, all good things come to those that wait.

 

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

 

The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.

 

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

 

The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

 

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?

 

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

 

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.

 

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

 

Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

 

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’

 

Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

 

***

 

Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

 

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.

 

Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

 

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

 

The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.

Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.

And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’

 

***

 

The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.

 

The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.

 

Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.

 

By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.

 

Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.

 

Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.

 

It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.

 

‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’

 

Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.

 

England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’

 

We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’

 

The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’

   

THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT

In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.

 

Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.

 

By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.

 

One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.

 

In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.

 

Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.

 

In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.

 

In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.

 

In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.

 

Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.

 

www.templechurch.com/history-2/timeline/

Les fortes pluies dues à la tempête Calvinia, en janvier 2020, ont provoqué une élévation brutale du niveau de l’étang du Gol qui a eu pour conséquence la rupture du cordon dunaire et une "vidange" de l’étang, faisant passer brutalement sa profondeur d'environ deux mètres à 55 cm au niveau du kiosque d'observation des oiseaux. En outre, la plus forte connexion entre l'océan et l'étang a accentué le taux de salinité de l’eau, provoquant la mort de centaines de tilapias, une espèce assez sensible aux changements de salinité.

 

The heavy rains due to the Calvinia storm in January 2020 caused a brutal rise in the level of the Gol pond which resulted in the rupture of the dune cord and a "draining" of the pond, causing its depth of about two meters to 55 cm at the bird watching kiosk. In addition, the stronger connection between the ocean and the pond has increased the salinity of the water, causing the death of hundreds of tilapia, a species quite sensitive to changes in salinity.

 

L'étang à son niveau normal : www.flickr.com/photos/130828646@N02/18982612765/in/album-...

Oh boy. We’re in for trouble. The greatest albums…of all time? Are they nuts? Where do they get the nerve? is.gd/18k8Fs

by thomas_elementary_art ift.tt/1Xso1jj

The spill of light from a projector showing a video-art installation creates unintended potential

In today's race for immortality in the products we use, it is only fair to mention another worry, wasting solar energy. Hopefully, a new department of regulations will be created with thousands of regulations pertaining to solar functions permitted. In an administration that will be remembered for writing more regulations than all other administrations in the history of the United States, it is only right that the populace be further regimented by rule about how much sunshine we can consume and when we can consume such solar energy. If we the people, use more than our share, will there be enough sunhine for other nations?